The Briefing Room
General Category => Military/Defense News => Topic started by: rangerrebew on April 15, 2017, 10:24:59 am
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US commander didn't ask permission to drop 'the Mother of All Bombs'
by Jamie McIntyre | Apr 14, 2017, 1:44 PM
The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan did not ask permission from the president before he ordered a massive conventional bomb to be dropped on a complex of tunnels used by ISIS fighters in a remote mountain region along the border with Pakistan, a senior defense official said Friday.
The GBU-43/B MOAB or massive ordnance air blast bomb, informally dubbed, the "Mother of All Bombs," is the largest non-nuclear bomb ever used in combat by the United States.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/commander-didnt-ask-permission-for-moab/article/2620309
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Didn't need to ask permission. It's a conventional weapon, big sure, but still conventional. That leaves it's deployment to the discretion of the senior commander in theatre under the current RoE.
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0bama would have denied permission due to "disproportionate" force...
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@Chosen Daughter
So perhaps the credit given Trump was a bit overdone. But I'll give him credit for giving commanders leeway.
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@Chosen Daughter
So perhaps the credit given Trump was a bit overdone. But I'll give him credit for giving commanders leeway.
Directly ordering the dropping of one such bomb is much less aggressive than delegating to your subordinates the authority to use whenever they see fit. That was an all-round excellent move by the President.