by NoOneImportant » Tue Dec 17, 2013 3:56 am
Barrel bombs? Sounds like improvised stuff. Looking to drop and have barrels explode seems a bit half-baked to me - as they don't "fit" on any real combat aircraft, and if they aren't being delivered by combat air, all other methods of delivery are hardly precise - I guess we could be talking modified jet aux. drop tanks, but the supply would be limited.
While I can't say for sure, but if in fact they are barrels designed to explode, it would seem to me that the most probable method of delivery would be to push them out the door of either helos, or cargo aircraft - rather crude in either case. Either Assad is running short of "real" ordinance - 250lb, 500lb, 1000lb, and 2000lb air dropped bombs, and they are trying to improvise high-explosive devices, or they are attempting to create improvised napalm. In the first case it would signal a significant logistical problem, in the second case it would make more sense, as my understanding is that napalm - gelled gasoline - has been out of production since Vietnam. The other alternative, perhaps, might be rebels targeting Assad forces, or rebels targeting other rebels. In any case civil war is always the least civil of wars.
In either case I understood that Alepo had long since been re-taken by Assad, and pacified?
Barrel bombs? Sounds like improvised stuff. Looking to drop and have barrels explode seems a bit half-baked to me - as they don't "fit" on any real combat aircraft, and if they aren't being delivered by combat air, all other methods of delivery are hardly precise - I guess we could be talking modified jet aux. drop tanks, but the supply would be limited.
While I can't say for sure, but if in fact they are barrels designed to explode, it would seem to me that the most probable method of delivery would be to push them out the door of either helos, or cargo aircraft - rather crude in either case. Either Assad is running short of "real" ordinance - 250lb, 500lb, 1000lb, and 2000lb air dropped bombs, and they are trying to improvise high-explosive devices, or they are attempting to create improvised napalm. In the first case it would signal a significant logistical problem, in the second case it would make more sense, as my understanding is that napalm - gelled gasoline - has been out of production since Vietnam. The other alternative, perhaps, might be rebels targeting Assad forces, or rebels targeting other rebels. In any case civil war is always the least civil of wars.
In either case I understood that Alepo had long since been re-taken by Assad, and pacified?