Tuesday, March 16, 2010

What's Up With This?

Apparently the American MSM is unaware of or uninterested in this piece of news from Scotland. The US is shipping bunker buster bombs to Diego Garcia, an island in the Indian Ocean. Diego Garcia is run by the Brits mostly, it's their territory, but we leased the island back in 1971 and built ourselves a naval base there.

According to the article;

Contract details for the shipment to Diego Garcia were posted on an international tenders’ website by the US navy.

A shipping company based in Florida, Superior Maritime Services, will be paid $699,500 to carry many thousands of military items from Concord, California, to Diego Garcia.

Crucially, the cargo includes 195 smart, guided, Blu-110 bombs and 192 massive 2000lb Blu-117 bombs.


Over at FreeRepublic there are a slew of comments and the focus appears to be on whether this story is a plant to deter Iran or is otherwise not to be taken as serious. One commenter states the shipments have stopped and are being redirected to Spain.

However, a commenter on on Don Surber's post on the subject suggests that the size of the bombs means these are resupply items for the Afghan effort. The bombs are too small to do the damage needed to take out the assumed Iranian targets.

Personally, I hope that is all this is, a resupply of munitions. If it turns out to be more than that, a lot more will be at risk than Iranian targets.

2 comments:

Moonglum said...

Diego Garcia has been a staging area and transshipment point for the US military for decades. Prior to the second gulf war I believe we had equipment for an entire ACB (afloat prepositioning ship squadron 4 was there IIRC). Diego garcia has B2 bombers. Us sending more bombs, guns, heck anything, doesn't really send a signal. I'm sure that much of the prepositioned munitions and equipment have been shipped off and used and resupplied repeatedly.

Kheris said...

That's what I am hoping is the case here. I am beginning to wonder if perhaps the point of the article was to make a point elsewhere, unless the reporter is really that out of touch with what the base is for.