Russia Bombs More Targets in 1 Day than Obama Did in 1 Month

http://www.frontpagemag.com/point/260464/russia-bombs-more-targets-1-day-obama-did-1-month-daniel-greenfield

75 percent of pilots are returning without dropping any ordnance

October 15, 2015

Daniel Greenfield

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A little tidbit buried in a New York Times piece filled with lots of confused mumbling about Russia's military capabilities. Apparently a former Cold War power which has access to US military secrets any time it wants them is actually capable of projecting some force (despite its lack of 'smart power'). The left, which is obsessed with cutting our military, insists that we so outclass anyone else that we don't need to invest in national defense.
But then it turns out, we do.

"That has also given officials and analysts far greater insight into a military that for nearly a quarter-century after the collapse of the Soviet Union was seen as a decaying, insignificant force, one so hobbled by aging systems and so consumed by corruption that it posed little real threat beyond its borders."

We saw what we wanted to see.

The strikes have involved aircraft never before tested in combat, including the Sukhoi Su-34 strike fighter, which NATO calls the Fullback, and a ship-based cruise missile fired more than 900 miles from the Caspian Sea, which, according to some analysts, surpasses the American equivalent in technological capability...
In a report this month for the European Council on Foreign Relations, Gustav Gressel argued that Mr. Putin had overseen the most rapid transformation of the country’s armed forces since the 1930s. “Russia is now a military power that could overwhelm any of its neighbors, if they were isolated from Western support,” wrote Mr. Gressel, a former officer of the Austrian military.
Russia’s fighter jets are, for now at least, conducting nearly as many strikes in a typical day against rebel troops opposing the government of President Bashar al-Assad as the American-led coalition targeting the Islamic State has been carrying out each month this year.

Of course there's a trick to that. The Russians aren't bound by our crazy rules of engagement and don't care about collateral damage. We're carrying out very few air strikes. Obama wants air strikes as a drone war.

Defense officials said that the strikes in Syria are more likely to look like a targeted counterterrorism campaign than a classic military campaign, in which a combatant commander picks targets within the parameters set by the commander in chief.
In Syria, officials said the administration wants to ensure that any strikes didn't resemble the "shock-and-awe" campaign that kicked off the 2003 Iraq war and instead be kept more like the low-intensity, occasional strikes conducted in Somalia or Yemen.

American pilots report not being allowed to fight ISIS.

U.S. military pilots carrying out the air war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria are voicing growing discontent over what they say are heavy-handed rules of engagement hindering them from striking targets.
They blame a bureaucracy that does not allow for quick decision-making. One Navy F-18 pilot who has flown missions against ISIS voiced his frustration to Fox News, saying: "There were times I had groups of ISIS fighters in my sights, but couldn't get clearance to engage.”
He added, “They probably killed innocent people and spread evil because of my inability to kill them. It was frustrating."
Sources close to the air war against ISIS told Fox News that strike missions take, on average, just under an hour, from a pilot requesting permission to strike an ISIS target to a weapon leaving the wing.

So even when our people fly...

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., recently complained that 75 percent of pilots are returning without dropping any ordnance, due to delays in decision-making up the chain of command.

The Russians aren't running a drone war or worried about collateral damage.

American officials, while impressed with how quickly Russia dispatched its combat planes and helicopters to Syria, said air power had been used to only a fraction of its potential, with indiscriminate fire common and precision-guided munitions used sparingly.

We're the ones actually operating at a fraction of our potential.