Do you have any sources which say anything more precise than “Less than a month into the 2011 Libya campaign, NATO came close to running out of PGMs, which are both advanced and expensive bombs”, or which back up their sweeping claims with hard data, attributable reports, or anything else which can be checked?
I’ve seen similar things said, but they’re impossible to reconcile with the official statements about numbers of weapons used, & numbers in stock. Given that irreconcilability, I prefer to rely on the statements made by the various governments. They stated numbers of weapons used, mostly broken down by type. Those numbers can be cross-checked against numbers bought, & numbers stated as used in other conflicts, e.g. Afghanistan. For Brimstone, for example, the total fired in anger to date is about 15% of the number bought.
It’s possible that some of the smaller air forces, e.g. that of Denmark, may have had shortages – but not NATO. France & the UK, which did the bulk of the bombing, were nowhere near to running out of anything except DMB, unless one assumes that both the UK & France have been lying for years about how many PGMs they’ve bought, or lied about how many they used.
It seems that whereas my opinion has been formed by hard numbers in official statements, yours has been formed by vague & unquantified claims made by journalists.
Sorry but i’ll take the many reports on the issue over your blind faith that nothing was wrong.
Sign In
