We're back in Somalia

Any ground forces there, or just airstrikes?

 

Well, no shit. :

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070109/ap_on_re_af/somalia_277

We had helicopters in there today also.

 

Hmmmm ... Interesting.

We only have three helicopters that could be remotely confused with "gunships." The Navy and Marines' Super-Cobra, the OH-6, a very small Army special operations bird, and the Army's Apache. All have very, very short ranges -- nothing that could launch a suprise attack from a carrier.

Am I making sense here?

 

Could be Uh-1s but most African countries seem to favor Russian equipment, so I doubt they were ours.

 

I'm sure there's been a forward operating base set up somewhere nearby. Somalia is actually a country the size of Texas.

 

That's what I'm saying. It'd be hard to get a helicopter with a 400-mile range into and out of a country the size of Texas without anyone knowing it.

Are our soldiers in Somalia? I'd have to bet against that.

 

I wish other nations would respond to crises in Africa that way.

 

Not I. There are places in this world that we should be to make it a safer place. There are some fucked up things going on in Africa.

 

Russian-designed (actually, Soviet-designed) Mi-24 Hind, someplace land-based. Current operators on that side of Africa include Ethiopia, which has taken a major hand in the most recent events in Somalia.

Of course, somebody could have refitted an old Huey which we definitely manufactured. The OH-6 (although what you're thinking of is either the AH-6J or the MH-6J) is commercially available as the Hughes H-6 and can probably be rigged up with this, that or the other.

But I would bet on it being an Ethiopian-operated Hind.

1stADD: The Ethiopian military was actually the first to use the Hind in combat, during the Ogaden War in 1977-78 against --- surprise! --- Somalia. That was the conflict that started Somalia on the road to being the cesspool it is today.