A brief history of blowing up Smurfs

Here is the ad about the smurfs for UNICEF that caused a storm a few weeks ago.


This one's a bit close to me for a few reasons. I'm a dad, but also, I used to plan bombing missions for the Air Force. My official job title was Target Intelligence Specialist.

You see the ads showing the cool high-tech steel grey planes and the blue skies, but I used to do Bomb Damage Assessment to see if the missions' were accomplished.

I had an interesting time during the first Gulf War. I was assigned to a tactical reconnaissance unit. These are fighter jets that have cameras in the nose and they take pictures instead of dropping bombs, or shooting other planes out of the sky or taking stuff from one place to another. Those are basically the things the Air Force does. That and marry the locals, make friends in foreign countries and have free air shows by flying these cool looking planes around.

Some of those planes are classic examples of that one rule of evolution; current use does not equal original intent. The B-52 for example, was developed in the 50's to fly slim Whitman, James Earl Jones, and the rest of the crew on a one-way high altitude trip to the Soviet Union and the end of the world thanks to the foreign policy of Mutual Assured Destruction, We didn't launch on Them, because They would retaliate and blow the whole planet up, and They knew We were willing to do the same if They launched against Us. Dangerous game, but with all the failsafes developed for the missiles, bombers and subs, they started coming up with other reasons to use some of the expensive gear we taxpayers paid for.

Viet Nam became the excuse for dropping bombs on people, so they would fly B-52s from some little island like Guam or even North Dakota, and be home for dinner.

When the powers that be got tired of killing our grunts, we still had these expensive planes, and the nuclear commitment was still helping us out-spend the Soviets.

Over time though, air defenses got better and better, so the B-52; a plane that was developed for flying high altitude missions, had to come up with new tactics for survivability. Pilots learned to fly these buses at about 200 feet off the ground with improved radar, and Infrared sensors. so that they could slip in under enemy radar, and avoid all the missile defenses.

During that time, policy changed and the thought of Low Intensity Conflict, or as they call it today Asymmetrical Warfare, where the End of the World wasn't the objective, just blow up a few Bad Guys until CNN got tired of covering the war.

These happen in places that aren't Europe. Where the client countries can't afford expensive things like the latest radar-guided missile systems. They bought Anti Aircraft Artillery (AAA), because you can jam electronics, but bullets are dumb, and are obey only the laws of physics. And they can be repurposed to shooting things on the ground too.

That's what happened in Iraq. Pilots of any plane that dropped ordnance and that was invited to the party had to re-learn their jobs. Instead of fast and low, the had to fly fast and high. For fighter planes like the F-16, dive bombing became popular again instead of tactics like a maneuver that would loft the bomb toward the target like a slow pitch softball.

B-52's would drop their "stick" of bombs from six miles high, and about six miles away, blowing up a rectangle about one mile by about a mile and a half. You never heard anything until the first bombs hit.

No shrieks.

No whines.

Nothing. The smoke and flames were also minimal.

The earth would shake and everything went to hell.

I don't regret what I did. Never will. The batter I and my peers did our job, the fewer people had to actually die. We blow up headquarters or a communications center, we could cripple thousands of troops without having to kill them.

Niccolo Macchiaveli once remarked that war was an extension of politics, and I couldn't agree more. We dominated Iraq both times, and yet we're losing more than we could have ever hoped because the political effort was nowhere nearly as effective nor as well-planned as the military part.