Is this a price we will pay for delaying war? Does Iraq have jammers that the Russians sold them that will throw off our GPS-guided bombs (JDAMs)? This is an example of the reason I have harped on going sooner rather than later. We did need some time to prepare but every day past mid-December has been a gift to the Iraqis. Giving your enemy time to prepare just means that they will prepare a surprise for us. Even if we do something to counter the Iraqi jammers, the Iraqis may come up with something else.
Obviously, we can defeat Iraq without JDAMs. We did it in 1991, after all. And JDAMs are not suited to mobile battles anyway against moving targets—the enemy probably won’t cooperate by keeping their armor stationary long enough to input a grid coordinate. Still, for fixed targets we will have problems if those jammers exist and work. Maybe we are lucky and some Russians scammed the Iraqis with Vietnamese FM radios labeled “GPS Jammer-O-Matic.”
Seriously, if we delay and invade and our enemy failed to come up with anything to thwart us, my worries will have been for nothing. But we aren’t there yet. And until we are, I will worry every day that the Iraqis are using this time to their advantage—and our disadvantage.
On to Baghdad already.
About Me
- Brian J. Dunn
- I live and write in Ann Arbor, Michigan. University of Michigan AB and MA from Eastern Michigan University. One term in the Michigan Army National Guard. Former American history instructor and retired nonpartisan research analyst. I write on Blogger and Substack. Various military and private journals have published my occasional articles on military subjects. See "My Published Works" on the TDR web version or under the mobile version drop-down menu for citations and links.
