{"id":5210,"date":"2010-05-11T00:36:46","date_gmt":"2010-05-11T08:36:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=5210"},"modified":"2010-05-10T21:18:03","modified_gmt":"2010-05-11T05:18:03","slug":"airstrike-limits-frustrate-ground-forces-pilots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2010\/05\/11\/airstrike-limits-frustrate-ground-forces-pilots\/","title":{"rendered":"Airstrike Limits Frustrate Ground Forces, Pilots"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <em>Air Force Times<\/em> reports on comments from troops in Afghanistan that the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.airforcetimes.com\/news\/2010\/05\/airforce_cas_050910w\/\">restrictions on airstrikes over the past year have emboldened the adversary<\/a>.\u00a0 While the mere sight of B-52 contrails was once enough to send the enemy scurrying, they now often ignore armed fighters directly overhead.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The Taliban no longer run and hide when they see a fighter jet overhead, brazenness that airmen attribute to the nearly year-old directive to limit close-air support.<\/p>\n<p>[JTACs] and fighter pilots report that insurgents are encouraging <!--more-->each other to continue firing because they know the Air Force\u2019s F-16s and A-10s are dropping far fewer bombs now than this time last year.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Keep fighting; [coalition forces] won&#8217;t shoot&#8221; is the order that enemy leaders are giving \u2014 in Pashtun and Dari, words that the JTACs have heard over their radios.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Some have already claimed that <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2010\/03\/04\/adversaries-use-american-virtues-as-weapons\/\">the enemy has &#8220;beaten&#8221; American airpower<\/a> through an effective information campaign that has made allied forces averse to strike in order to avoid civilian casualties &#8212; or even the appearance of them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Air Force Times reports on comments from troops in Afghanistan that the restrictions on airstrikes over the past year have emboldened the adversary.\u00a0 While the mere sight of B-52 contrails was once enough to send the enemy scurrying, they now often ignore armed fighters directly overhead. The Taliban no longer run and hide when they see a fighter jet [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[58,13,228,478,479,2,230],"class_list":["post-5210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fighter-pilot","tag-afghanistan","tag-aircraft","tag-airpower","tag-b-52","tag-fighter","tag-military","tag-taliban"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5210\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}