Reply #21: Don't stone me, but he's partially right [View All]

[krispos42]

The Air Force and Navy still have enormous striking power at their disposal and can maintain it for quite a while. Navy F/A-18s and Air Force F-15Es and F-16s can drop plenty of ordinance. B-52s and B-1Bs can launch clouds of long-range cruise missiles and guided and unguided bombs. Cruise missiles can also be launced by the Ticonderoga-class cruisers, Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, and Los Angeles-class submarines. And those 5-inch guns on the destroyers and cruisers can spit out 20 rounds a minute, each shell weighing 70 pounds and with a range of nearly 15 miles.

The real problem here is that we seem to lack the troops and logistics to invade and hold the places that we flatten. Bombing does not conquer land in and of itself. You need the famous "boots on the ground" to take, occupy, and administer what we bomb. I think we can currently muster up a troop of Boy Scouts to occupy Tehran.

Draft, anybody?