MSF bombing
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You are currently reading a thread in /k/ - Weapons
You are currently reading a thread in /k/ - Weapons
/k/, what do you think about the MSF hospital bombing? I can't ask /pol/ because they're clueless about military stuff.
I usually see these friendly fire incidents as being down to trigger happy pilots or wrong coordinates but there seems to be something different about this.
Why did it take 30 minutes after a distress call was made for them to cease fire? Why were they claiming that the hospital was bombed on the word of Afghan FAC, then changed the story and said it was actually on the initiative of the AC-130 crew? If the air force was responding to troops under fire would they usually send up an AC-130?
>>27802809
It was an unfortunate accident and nothing more. The crew onboard the aircraft sure as shit didn't realize they were shooting a hospital, and odds are if they even knew there was one in the town, they thought it was the one further away from the combat zone that got out unscathed.
The fact that it only took 30 minutes for the distress call to cause a ceasefire tells us one of two things
>the chain of command is impossibly efficient to get an order through that fast
Or more likely
>they ran out of things to shoot at after 30 minutes
The changing stories were probably a mix of people misremembering what happened and someone trying to cover their asses.
And an AC-130 was sent up because they're great for operations like that. It's like having an artillery battery that can loiter above the battlefield far longer than any regular strike aircraft can. The incident in question was less of a "shit we need CAS as fast as possible" and more of a "we need something to support an assault on this town"
Remember - as much as the media and MSF are trying to portray this as another My Lai, this is nothing of the sort. It's an unfortunate accident, and, while we should be owning up to it and trying to make amends, it doesn't deserve to be sensationalized like MSF is doing.
The real story that you're not going to hear is
>Airstrike was intentional to kill Big Boss
>MSF was played like a damn fiddle
They were played like a damn fiddle
>>27802894
So what were they meant to be shooting at if it was on their own initiative? Or did they cover their own asses by denying that they gave FAC capability to some pakis?
>>27802809
Fuckin hell I was thinking about metal gear
>>27802894
Also I was wondering if there was some spoopy spiracies behind this because I've been hearing about MSF doing shady meddling in politics for a while.
>>27802945
Don't worry, all of us were.
>>27802940
Odds are here's what happened:
The crew aboard the plane is hearing from the guys on the ground that they're being shot at. They see people running around the hospital, and shots seem to be coming from it. They open fire on where the shots seem to be coming from, and in the chaos of it all end up wrecking the hospital.
They bombard until things seem clear, unaware of what they've just done because there's no way in hell an outside caller is going to be able to alert the Pentagon of something like this and then get a ceasefire order relayed all the way down the chain in just 30 minutes.
After the fact, the crew hears of the brewing shitstorm, and, thinking they're going to be in a shit ton of trouble, claim that the sand people told them to shoot there. However, the story falls apart eventually, probably thanks to the crew/their lawyers realizing that they probably won't be held legally accountable even if they did make the decision to open fire alone.
>>27802998
You're saying a western NGO in Afghanistan would have to call the Pentagon if they were under attack? Wouldn't they have a hotline to local forces considering the Taliban will attack anything western?
>>27803014
They claimed they called the Pentagon, and acted all indignant that the Pentagon couldn't immediately stop an attack literally half a world away.
They try to distance themselves from US forces and avoid associating with us to try to gain acceptance from the Taliban so they can set up hospitals in their areas. It kind of works (which is why the hospital was there in the first place), but it means they're thoroughly fucked in the event something goes wrong. Worse, it means they're now in the line of fire when the Taliban decide they make a very nice human shield.
>>27803054
>They claimed they called the Pentagon
Do you have a source for that cuz that would explain a lot.
>>27803092
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/05/msf-hospital-bombing-afghanistan-no-armed-men-taliban
Turns out I was wrong - they called the NATO Afghanistan Mission headquarters.
Regardless, when someone calls up and says "hey, we're being bombed at this town," it's a lot harder than you'd expect to find exactly who to tell to stop shooting.
>>27803138
I would think it would be easy to send out a message on a guard channel telling anyone currently doing an airstrike to cease fire.
>>27803148
You don't want to stop literally every air operation going on in the region though. Stopping legitimate CAS missions could cause more deaths than it stopped.
On top of that, it often times is more complicated to send out messages like that than you'd expect.
Really we won't know just how bad we fucked up until the investigation is completed. I'd expect some kind of system to better designate non-targets to come out of this.
>>27802809
>/k/, what do you think about the MSF hospital bombing?
IT WAS OURS DAMMIT. GIVE IT BACK
>>27803172
Would there really be multiple aircraft that had just launched airstrikes at the time of the call? This is after a wind-down in Afghanistan after all.
>>27803207
There very well may have been - we don't know the full story yet.
There also may have been concerns over a false alarm. Just because it's MSF calling doesn't mean they know exactly what's happening. And an NGO doesn't hold authority over the military. It could have been that the guy who they called had to go run around to find the right people to locate the aircraft in question (if there even was one) and then find the person responsible for calling off the attack itself.
>>27802809
IM NUCLEAR
>>27802894
THERE WAS LIKE A GIANT RED CROSS ON THE ROOF AND THE WORDS MSF HOSPITAL.
>The crew onboard the aircraft sure as shit didn't realize they were shooting a hospital
CIA plz go.
This was just a motherfucking ops to tell MSF they had to gtfo. Which they did, how surprising ! Everybody knew where the hospital was. Chances to take this building for something else were basically Z E R O. So yes, it sure was intended.
This, or the crew was high on mushrooms manning their guns and screaming after imaginary skinwalkers crawling around the fuselage.
Which one is it /k/ ?
>>27805577
>THERE WAS LIKE A GIANT RED CROSS ON THE ROOF AND THE WORDS MSF HOSPITAL.
sure there was.
>>27802809
Its war. shit happens
The inspection was a smoke screen
They got played like a damn fiddle
