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Comment by alkonaut | Hacker News Reader

Isn’t the US still maintaining regular attacks from the air over Afghanistan, and the taliban has no advanced AA apart from manpads, meaning the US and allies has full air superiority?

How can the taliban operate in that environment? Shouldn’t any camp, convoy or even individual armed pickup truck be the target of air strikes even as the US withdraws ground troops?

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There's no such thing as perfect reconnaissance from the air, let alone unlimited fuel and ammunition. You can't always tell with 100% accuracy whether you're bombing a Taliban camp or a wedding party.

Frankly, the policy decision has been made that the fate of Afghanistan is of marginal strategic value to the United States. That's why we're leaving. Why would we try and eradicate an insurgent ground force from the air--a feat that has never been accomplished in all of military history--if keeping a minimal troop presence to deter them from overrunning the rest of the country wasn't considered worthwhile?

Remember that kobanî almost fell to ISIS, it only held thanks to the kurdish ground combatants (helped by western air force strikes). If you cannot hold ground, no amount of airstrikes will push a ground army back.

Maintaining air superiority indefinitely isn't sustainable. An F-15E costs something like $29K per flight hour, a B-1B double that. And that's not even counting the cost of munitions. Those aircraft have been used so hard since 2001 that the airframes are literally falling apart, and there isn't enough funding to replace them on a 1:1 basis.

It's not my area but there are probably lots of vehicle columns from refugees. That means our pilots need to rely on Afghan forces on the ground to call for strikes.

That's been one of the problems with the Taliban all along, they blend in.

I was told by a military intelligence dude that airstrikes are mostly laser guided by ground based special forces when it comes to anti-insurgency stuff. The satellite imagery is just too inaccurate for small targets that shift around.

You're air superiority means nothing if you don't know who is the enemy and who is not. How can you tell if that truck is carrying boxes of ammo or boxes of clothes? Also you can't surveil everywhere and you cant track everything.

Furthermore airplanes can't hold ground they can clear it but that doesn't stop someone from hiding in a cave and coming back out.

This is the answer.

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