Images like the one above were once the stuff of science fiction. You know, like 1911’s Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle. This is a picture of Libya’s Ghardabiya airfield that the U.S. military precisely demilitarized over the weekend. As Vice Adm. William Gortney explains:
These strikes were carried out last night, East Coast time, by three B-2 bombers launching from [Missouri’s] Whiteman Air Force Base dropping Joint Direct Attack Munitions. The photograph…shows an overview of that airfield before the strike. And this is a dual-use airfield, meaning that it’s also used for civilian commercial traffic. You can see the area — let me point it out to you — in green here in the center area is where the commercial part is. And the military-hardened aircraft shelters for their fighter aircraft are in these triangular shapes in the four corners. We targeted only…those facilities outside the box…Here is a depiction of one of the targets, one of those triangular parts, and you can see the scar damage from the hardened aircraft shelters, one of which we’ve blown up [apparently both kinetically and photographically] here that is actually flattened.
These are the “unique capabilities” President Obama was referring to when he said “the United States will contribute our unique capabilities at the front end of the mission to protect Libyan civilians.”