Yes but with the caveat that they wanted the lowest risk to US service members during the bombing. This means using up the fire and forget stuff rather than the guided munitions attached to planes. They have good air superiority, but poor logistical options to do that.
The traditional way to do this is to park two carrier groups within 500 miles of the target and convey tonnes of cheap munitions to the targets (as in iraq, Libya & kosovo) the problem for the US is that it means parking a carrier within drone range. You'd then establish a land base and move forward. Again all of the logistics of doing that are vulnerable to drone.
So this is the route they chose.
Until the US have something to counter drones cheaply, then they'll get stuck like this.
I would love to know the honest opinions of our top brass. They had to know sitting out of (most) drone range and leaning almost entirely on long range surface-to-surfsce missiles wouldn't even come close to clearing the way for more standard bombing runs.
They would have known going into this war the plan was fundamentally flawed before we even committed to firing a single munition.
Yes but with the caveat that they wanted the lowest risk to US service members during the bombing. This means using up the fire and forget stuff rather than the guided munitions attached to planes. They have good air superiority, but poor logistical options to do that.
The traditional way to do this is to park two carrier groups within 500 miles of the target and convey tonnes of cheap munitions to the targets (as in iraq, Libya & kosovo) the problem for the US is that it means parking a carrier within drone range. You'd then establish a land base and move forward. Again all of the logistics of doing that are vulnerable to drone.
So this is the route they chose.
Until the US have something to counter drones cheaply, then they'll get stuck like this.