Drone nails Al Zawahiri in Kabul
 

Some very welcome good news. Took a while.
Once more Taliban assurances prove utterly worthless - does anyone believe anything that these slugs promise?
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/0...trike-00049089

I don’t support the Taliban at all. But “these slugs” are true Afghani natives, and like them or not they are being Afghani’s.

Good that we put this Al Queda down.

It's about damned time. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
Just saw the speech, the messaging in it of "we will find you and we will take you out" was well delivered.


Would have preferred to see the guy treated for some age related ailment at some US sponsored hospital. Making him a martyr is just dumb, imho.

Nope. This killing sends a message, and if you listen to the speech you'll understand the larger message.
Same with killing Osama. The message President Biden sent today was "we won't forget" and "we will find you and we will take you out" which is the kind of message thugs like that understand.

Based on the results to date, that strategy is an abject failure.
Really think that we need a different approach, because the current one is not working.

How do you define success or failure.

That is the problem. People like Etudiant will change the goal posts on you. Which is why I ask him now to give is his definition od success or failure. Of course, he will make sure to come up with something that fits the failure narrative.

But lets look at a repeat of 9/11. There hasn't been one. That could be considered a success. On the other hand, there will likely be an islamic militant attack somewhere in the next few months. Etudient will call it an example of how the policy is a failure.

Personally, I am happy with the drone strikes. They keep the enemy hunkered down. Bin Laden was apparently forced to use hand-written notes. Not exactly efficient. Sometimes, that is the best you can expect for a while. Martyr? Perhaps worshipped whether dead or alive.

Either way, those who would consider him a martyr are at the stage of being determined to attack, so keep 'em hunkered down. And don't be fooled by those who who have ulterior motives. As the blind, elderly Egyptian cleric responsible for the first World Trade Center attack proved.....those who state that they should be treated for an age related ailment are either fools or have an ulterior motive.

One weapon with a proper warhead would have done the job better and eliminated any other A-Q supporters nearby. Anyhow, looking forward to seeing the vid

Latest media reports indicate that careful planning was done regarding how to carry out the strike so as to reduce collateral. The job was done perfectly.

Converting this guy to hamburger means no one can take hostages to try for an exchange and the hamburger isn't going to be issuing any coded messages to his followers. His human rights can no longer be violated - no worries about religious or dietary accommodations. And the use of a non-explosive device limiting the chance of anyone claiming to be completely innocent and having no idea what he did for a living also dying was apparently successful.

If his followers believe there is an afterlife, they should be happy he got there, maybe not in one piece, but still .There's no details on the conversion process to post-mort existence so just assume he's surrounded by other similar spirits.

Think of the engineers of that system - the aerodynamicists and the controls engineers and the EEs - all creating a collision, likely managed from half the planet away, launched from tens of miles away, onto a target the size of an a-hole. When I compare this to the alternative of sending 500,000 troops to go door to door asking if that guy was home? This was a far better choice.

What did the Air Force hit him with? Report says "two hellfire missiles". That'd be two big bangs. But photos of the house seem to show it more or less intact. Unarmed Hellfire? Surely not.

Hellfire Ninja - it has a 100 pound (or so) block of metal and a bunch of actuated blades that pop out just before reaching the target to Ginsu knife whoever is standing in the immediate vicinity that the block of metal manages to miss.

Reports indicate the development was started under Obama, who was looking for a device that would not cause massive collateral damage to those even a short distance away from the target. The previous experiences of obliterating dozens of people surrounding a target had spoiled the political view - basically even though the person being targeted had slaughtered innocents by the dozens to thousands, it was considered poor form to do the same to immediate friends and family of the terrorist.

So this was created to be far more specific.

Years ago I saw footage of the FOG-M system. Even with a completely inert demonstrator one could chose which passenger in a car would get the brunt of the damage. I expect this is similarly fine tuned.

I heard it was some sort of UAV with spinning knife blades.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...pAVd4QE86NfALb

Thought bubble: “If the Taliban were using him as a tool to counter-act the encroachment of IS in Afghanistan…”

The 9X is the modern version of "dying by the Sword".

Yeah, and some of us know how bloody hard that is to pull off. Props to the professional who were able to put it all together.

These new less explosive drone weapons certainly sound like an improvement. The collateral damage of older weapons always made me wonder if they were doing more harm than good overall. I mean there was the example of the wedding being hit in Yemen IIRC, and another were over 100 rural villagers were killed in a botched attempt to attack Isis in Syria. How many people did the killing off all these civilians radicalise over the years? Even the myriad of times the target was successfully neutralised but a neighbour or innocent bystanders were also killed is huge,

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...an-deaths.html

It’s always been a weird thing about drones, if a special forces team shot dead 10 innocent civilians in a marketplace whilst targeting a terrorist, there would be uproar, but we don’t react the same way to drones taking out non combatants.

I think that is part of why politicians fell in love with using them.

But largely to avoid casualties in the Home Team, surely? A coffin arriving at Andrews AFB is Bad Media.

It's not that simple (largely?) but I am sure that's also a part of their attraction.
Depending upon how they are used, and which ones we are talking about, and what the environment is (permissive or non permissive)
a) they aren't very loud, b) don't have a big visual signature, c) can be micro managed by higher echelons of the chain of command (personal experience) and d) all of a sudden, with little-to-no warning "Boom" happens more or less from out of the blue. That can have a certain psychological impact.