A Reaper unmanned aircraft has dropped munitions on terrorists who had attacked Iraqi security forces in the Anbar desert, say the Ministry of Defence.
The MoD say that British Armed Forces continue to provide a significant contribution to the global coalition ensuring the Daesh terrorist group does not become resurgent in Syria and Iraq, with Royal Air Force aircraft flying daily armed reconnaissance patrols.
“On Tuesday 6 October, a small group of Daesh extremists attacked Iraqi security forces in the desert of Anbar province, west of Baghdad. A coalition air strike provided immediate support to the Iraqi troops, and succeeded in destroying half the attacking Daesh group. An RAF Reaper was then tasked to deal with the remaining terrorists.
The crew of the Reaper successfully located them, and at an appropriate moment, with no sign of a strike posing any risks to friendly forces or any civilians, conducted a carefully planned attack with a GBU-12 guided bomb.”
The Iraqi forces subsequently reported that the threat had been eliminated.
Boom! It would be nice to see a smaller munition implemented on these platforms though. I can’t help but feel that a guided bomb is perhaps overkill when dealing with “a small group of Daesh extremists”- perhaps something similar to a Martlet?
As Captain Ramsey said in Crimson Tide “drop that F*cker, twice”
My assumption is that we cant’ afford the integration of Marlet or similar, and this is why they fly with US only ordnance.
The long term saving of using cheaper bombs never seems to come into the equation, as all decisions seemed to be about making savings in the short term.
That’s how HM Treasury works, unfortunately.
According to Wikipedia, a GBU-12 costs $21k apiece, as they’re basically a 500 lb GP bomb with a laser guidance kit. In the grand scheme of precision munitions, I believe that’s pretty good value. I don’t think a Martlet will come in significantly cheaper than that, but I’ve not seen a unit price for them anywhere…
Compared to most bomb/missiles which seem to cost around the £100k mark, they are pretty cheap if that cost is true. Still expensive for what they will be used against in realistic scenarios, its all relative.
Our own Protector UCAV’s will use British Paveway 4 and Brimstone. These weapons are not cheap, but they are highly accurate, which greatly reduces that chances of collateral damage, and unnecessary loss of life.
The GBU-12 is also highly accurate as is the Hellfire and other weapons the Reapers carry.
What happened to all the school kids that were being taught for years by ISIS? They must be around fighting age by now (or very close to it)
Are we likely to see resurgence over the next decade anyway?
My worry is that the ‘idea’ of ISIS will be around for some time yet. What are Iraq doing from an education perspective I wonder.
Cheers
M@
There probably doing a better job than the NUT are doing for ours.
Until such a time that there is a stable Middle East/ Africa, we will have ‘freedom fighters’ springing up and fighting the rich west that keeps bombing them and stealing their countries wealth. I write the above based on how they perceive it, not how we do. l would guess it would be extremely easy for kids to be brought up with that idea also. Really the west (and Russia) need to change how they look at the regions and instead of trying to juice them for everything possible, try and build stable countries, even if that means in the… Read more »
A lot of these fighters escaped to Libya, Chad and Mali. It’s kind of funny, but those who escaped to Libya were fighting both Libyan factions. Thus a lot of them moved south, which explained why the fighting in Mali and Chad ramped up over the last few years.