The Indiana NG actually reported that they will be deployed to the area in October with a dozen or so A-10s.

No current drone is capable of air-to-air combat.

Unless a child fighter is pointing a gun at you, they should never be engaged. Children are drawn into this kind of movement without being able to understand their actions. I will ever blame a child for being indoctrinated against their will (and all indoctrination is).

The US military is pretty awful when it comes to occupying territory. But it is unparalleled when it comes to logistics. As they say; amateurs study strategy, professionals study logistics.

The Pentagon tweeted that they hit ground targets and escorted other fighters and bombers. They can carry 2,000 pounds of bombs.

I doubt there will ever be a hard number. This is the kind of situation where the definition of a civilian becomes tricky. With the exception of children, there's a lot of gray area between casual Syrian civilian and internet starring ISIS fighter.

It's pretty impressive how precise precision weapons have become.

Exactly. Although I do like the old disruptive camo job on them.

You are right about the Navy. They don't want them and it would be a challenge to reactivate them. But I'm also not convinced the Navy brass doesn't really know what it wants or needs a lot of the time.

A nuclear refit is pretty much out of the question, but why not an updated diesel refit? I don't know much about the specifics, but several newer commercial ships are being outfitted with CNG.

I'm not sure a new one could be built. The method used to manufacture the steel armor has been lost to time.

Under congressional mandate, two of the Iowas (the New Jersey and the Wisconsin) must be ready for reactivation within two months.

I see them moving a Mistral class. No indications that it's crewed by Russian sailors. It obviously wasn't operating under its own power. You linked a video from AFP, but not the actual AFP link. When I googled it I found the original video, and there's no mention of a Russian crew, just that it was being moved to a…

Which is why it freaked the Soviets out when Reagan recommissioned the Iowa class battleships. Anti-ship missiles were never meant to defeat the belt of armor on a battleship. At the moment of impact, most of those missiles have less momentum than an AP shell from one of the nine Mark 7 guns on an Iowa class. Granted…

500 is not very many.

The US Navy has some pretty impressive countermeasures to combat missiles. Can't do much about the Sunburns, but they are a rare and expensive missile.

Nobody is talking about reducing sanctions. Did you miss the NATO meeting?

I would think a salvo of Tomahawk missiles could handle a Bastion-p system. It may be a mobile system but it's not like it's hard to spot.

Maybe we need more Virginia-class subs. Although after reading that wiki page I'm reassured since they only have 7 Sovremenny-class destroyers while we have 62 Arleigh Burkes.

Two balloons. And I know, it was just a joke