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Post by Tangerine Sherlock on Mar 18, 2011 9:18:00 GMT 1
I see that this morning we are to impose a no fly zone with the French over libya.
Of course we are going to have to share one of the french aircraft carriers as we don't have one anymore!!! and fly out of Malta
Meanwhile the Americans have decided to take a back seat on this one so no stealth bombers i guess.
Mind you they probably would find it hard to explain to loved ones how their partner got shot down by a USA built and supplied Missile, talk about coming back to bite you
France, the UK, Lebanon, the US, South Africa, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Colombia, Portugal, Nigeria and Gabon all voted in favour, while China, Russia, Brazil, India and Germany abstained.
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Post by whitstabletangerin on Mar 18, 2011 9:36:40 GMT 1
America's reluctance to get involved might stem from the attack it made on Libya back in the 80's when France and Spain and Italy refused to give overflight permission and they left the UK and had to fly a further 1000 + miles out along the channel the bay of Biscay and south of Gib to get to their targets. It is quite possible on this occassion we may be given permission to use bases in Egypt and Tunisia but to be honest the Libyans havn't got much of an air force but saying that having the French on our side is enough of a worry.
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Post by Tangerine Sherlock on Mar 18, 2011 9:42:56 GMT 1
Thats what i thought when i heard the French where the major player and how could i forget the italians are the third air force mind you its easy to forget the italians.
If i was a Libyan pilot waking up to that news this morning i think, i would consider suddenly becoming ill.
The Libyan air force is not that strong but its all those nice shinny new surface to air missiles that the Americans sold to them that could be the problem
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Post by whitstabletangerin on Mar 18, 2011 10:06:02 GMT 1
I don't get this one about selling guns, missiles, planes to a country, if the West didn't supply them these countries would get them elswhere, if you remember the Falklands nearly all the equipement the Argies had were French supplied. The planes the Libyans have are either French or Russian and most of the guns are Ak-47's. If things really got out of hand in the Middle East and a similar conflict was against Saudi Arabia most of their stuff would be British built. Our old Navy ships have gone to some dubious nations in the past, we can sell arms today to a country and in a few years time that country could have changed out of all proportion, hindsight is a wonderful thing.
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Post by Tangerine Sherlock on Mar 18, 2011 11:26:17 GMT 1
The thing i don't like about it is the fact that the USA denied the sale of arms to them for years and years along with rather a few other things.
yes its true they can get them else where as you can everything in life but just sometimes maybe they should stop and think for a min before doing it, hindsight as you say is a great thing but was Gaddafi (one of over 300 ways of spelling his name) every really playing with a full deck of cards?
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Post by whitstabletangerin on Mar 18, 2011 12:04:45 GMT 1
Sherlock, there was an arms embargo on Libya until the EU, pressed for it to be lifted, in 2004 and since then the EU has been supplying Libya to the tune of 300+ million euros per year since. You can blame the US as much as you want but look at what we have supplied just for the year 2009 and these figures were from the Guardian newspaper not what you would call right wing. The UK SUPPLIED FOR YEAR 2009, in Euros Small guns 10,648
Ammo 3088
Bombs rockets Missiles 77,726
Fire control 185,562
Ground vehs 38134
Chemical Biological Weapons Tear gas 210,795
Military planes 810,664
Electronic equip 20,692,950
Survellance equp 3,522,744
Of the Eu countries the biggest exporters have been Italy, Germany, Uk and France.
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Post by Tangerine Sherlock on Mar 18, 2011 12:55:07 GMT 1
Calm down Calm down lol I was on about the arms supplied before 2004,
as for the exports shall we call them
Italy equipment will fall apart
French equipment will not work
Uk equipment will be out of date
its what ever the German Government supplied i would be worried about as it will be well built and functional
is it kick off time yet
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Post by yeoldetangerine on Mar 18, 2011 12:57:52 GMT 1
Oh dear, there are so many contradictions in the UK's position, it makes my head hurt.
Gaddaffi is bad ( guess we can all agree on that) and his use of foreign merceneries to subjugate his own people is wrong
Bahrein had a stern telling off by Hague ( reminds me of Denis Healey's comment about Geoffrey Howe, " like being savaged by a dead sheep"), and use 1500 foreign merceneries to subjugate their own people ( 1000 Saudi and 500 UAE)
We are on our beam ends financially, yet we suddenly have enough to fight a war ( Cameron's Falklands moment, or Iraq?)
We support Gaddaffi, (I know someone personally who was over there running UK university progammes) and now he must go
Saudi crushes internal dissent, not a peep out of the Foreign office
Has there ever been an air campaign in history which was successful without a ground assault? The Balkans, as the most recent example, suggests not. When DC first raised it, a senior American said the only way it would would work would be to take out their command and control network, as well as Airfields. I hope to God the Tornados aren't wasted again in the same way as they were in Gulf War 1.
Don't get me wrong, I crave democracy in every country, people should be able to vote for who they want however much money they have. But the UK seems to have a real selective view of who should be clobbered and who shouldn't. I just cannot see a win situation for us in this, and I can see a lot of our Aircrews paying the price for an ill thought out campaign.
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Post by Tangerine Sherlock on Mar 18, 2011 13:35:25 GMT 1
You know its going to be the air crew of the Tornado's that are going to have to go in.
The French main plane at the moment is the Mirage 2000 not great at low level, they have a good plane in the Rafale but don't have many of them at the moment
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Post by yeoldetangerine on Mar 18, 2011 15:16:35 GMT 1
I guess you are right about the Tornados, Whit, do the Typhoons currently have air to ground capability?
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Post by whitstabletangerin on Mar 18, 2011 15:31:41 GMT 1
Yes they do, the problem with the Libyans is that the west is not sure how good they are with their SAMS and exactly where they are. Having some of our special forces on the ground before air strikes take place such as in Kosova and Iraq play a crucial role in determining how the operations will proceeed. The special forces are in a world of their own, for all we know they may be there already, normaly they would go in 48 hrs prior to a hit.
Ps. perhaps I should explain, the Libyan air defence network of anti aircraft guns/SAMS. is highly mobile, the reason why special forces need to be on the ground is to track wherever possible. The defence radar network mainly on the coast around Tripoli and Benghazi post info to the sites but some SAM sites work independently
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Post by bigjohncraven on Mar 18, 2011 16:45:45 GMT 1
Well all very interesting but what the hell are all the rich arab countries doing?oh dont tell me they are sending troops to support the "Kingdom"of Bahrain in its efforts to stop people protesting! Meanwhile we are supposed to sort out the shit in Libia. We sold the bloody saudi's shit loads of military jets let them bloody sort it.
The wholw thing stinks. Not in my bloody name
War mongers Fuck off!!!
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Post by Tangerine Sherlock on Mar 18, 2011 17:08:56 GMT 1
All in the name of Oil
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