Behold the archer!

"Behold the archers - for they might just be the ones who keep us out of war, rather than dragging us into one." 

Years ago, when I was deeply immersed in the Navy's AEGIS Program, I learned quite a bit about the "new order of battle". Now I don't mean to date myself, but this was during the depths of the Cold War, with a Navy war with the Soviet fleet always being a huge concern. One of the strategies the Soviets would use in time of war was called a "saturation" attack. It was meant to simply overwhelm a carrier task force with incoming munitions. 

Of special concern back then was the Soviet Backfire (Tu-22M) bomber. They had the longest stand off weapon with their airborne cruise missiles. Quite often an AEGIS radar would pick up a Backfire trying to "game the system". See how close they could get before detected and then Navy jets would escort them away.

The Navy however, had their own plan for the Backfire. In a hot war, the Navy's order of battle was to "shoot the archer". Take out the Backfire before the Backfire could unload it's cruise missiles. It was all war game stuff as the cold war (thank God) never became hot.

The Soviet Union no longer exists, but the concept of the archer does. And we have some fine archers ourselves. Our archers are not Backfire bombers (although our B-52, B-1, and B-2 bombers are probably pretty good at it). Our main archer is the AEGIS class Destroyer. It is an excellent stand off platform. And trust me, you don't want to be on the receiving end of what a AEGIS weapon system has to offer. The AEGIS class Cruisers and Destroyers are true death machines.

Last night, President Assad got a small taste of what a Tomahawk fired from the Vertical Launching System on a AEGIS class Destroyer feels like. In fact, he got to taste almost 60 of them. The new version of the Tomahawk is deadly accurate. Satellite guided and fast, it most usually hits the bulls eye with absolute precision. 

Did Assad deserve such a treatment? This and a whole lot more. He gassed his own people with WMD. I have been squawking about this for years now. We knew after the 1991 Gulf War that Saddam had WMD. The feckless UN did not make him give them up after the cease fire. And the weapons inspectors from the UN were nothing but a joke.

Then, after numerous violations of the cease fire, the US went into Iraq to conduct regime change. Most everyone knew that the WMD still existed. It was thought he hid them in Syria, the Baqaa Valley in Lebanon, or both. But they were not in Iraq, and President Bush (43) paid a huge political price for it.

Marie Harf (former State Department spokes person) was on the news this morning. She was asked about why Syria still had chemical munitions. Her reply - "Well, at least they did not fall into the hands of ISIS". Hey Marie - wake up and smell the coffee. ISIS most likely has some of the bad stuff also since they are all over the place in Syria and Lebanon. And they are going to be around, and used on innocents, until the UN puts their big boy pants and conducts real inspections.

Until that happens, we still have our archers. Our archers are ready to do whatever the Commander in Chief asks of them. We are fortunate to have them. When the dogs of war start to growl, we will unleash our archers to restore the peace. Behold the archers - for they might just be the ones who keep us out of war, rather than dragging us into one.