Chapter 1158 Huge Casualties

The most fatal thing was that a missile hit the ammunition depot of the air force base.

The explosion of the ammunition depot was like the coming of the end of the world. All kinds of high-performance and high-quality fighter ammunition released all their capabilities in an instant, ravaging everything around like the eruption of Mount St. Lawrence. The flames of the explosion ignited almost everything within a two-kilometer range. There were many "firemen" walking around, and the fire and smoke enveloped the entire base.

It was not until noon the next day that the fire department put out the fire.

The subsequent loss statistics were far more than people expected.

The entire air force base was destroyed.

Except for 4 F-15 and 8 F-16 fighters in the air, the remaining 43 aircraft were all lost, killing 1,123 people and injuring 238 people.

The entire Incelik Air Force Base was destroyed this time, causing losses of billions of dollars.

And the city of Adana also caused thousands of casualties due to the missiles falling, and the reason for such a large number of casualties was that a Scud missile fell in a shopping mall.

The Supreme Command of the Joint Forces fell into a deathly silence when it received the news.

The loss was really too great!

Although other air bases were also attacked by Iraqi missiles, the combined losses were not as great as those of Incirlik Air Base.

The Commander-in-Chief of the Supreme Command of the Joint Forces immediately issued an order to immediately implement news control and not allow any reports about this incident to be spread by the media, at least not for the time being.

However, this decision was made too late.

Adana is a large city in Turkey, and there are many media. When Incirlik Air Base was attacked, many newspaper reporters and TV reporters from the United States, France, Germany and other countries rushed to the scene. They urgently wrote reports on the photos they took overnight, and sent them to their own newspapers by fax, and also posted them on the Internet. TV reporters even broadcast live on TV.

The Commander-in-Chief of the Supreme Command of the Joint Forces issued a news control order, but it was no longer possible to control it. The relevant news had been reported and was overwhelming on the Internet.

There was even a German reporter who wrote in his report that he witnessed the entire process of the attack on Incerik Air Base and expressed serious doubts about the specific performance of the Patriot missile: "As far as I can see, of the 20 incoming missiles, the Patriot missile launched 24 missiles and only intercepted 4 missiles. The interception success rate is very low. The Patriot missile is not as reliable as the Americans claim."

The Patriot missile has been questioned not just now. As early as the Afghanistan War, the Patriot missile was questioned. However, at that time, the Patriot missile interception success rate reached 68%, which was barely acceptable.

However, since the outbreak of the Iraq War, facing the large-scale missile attack from Iraq, the joint forces' Patriot missile interception success rate was very low, and the relevant news has been reported more than once.

This Iraq War, since the myth of the Tomahawk cruise missile was shattered, it was also the myth of the Patriot missile.

The Americans vigorously built the "National Strategic Defense System" and the "Theater Defense System", and the core is the Patriot missile.

Raytheon and the Pentagon have made the Patriot missiles so amazing that the U.S. Congress has passed a huge budget bill to purchase more Patriot missiles.

However, in the Iraq War, the Patriot missiles failed to protect Israel, Turkey, and the joint forces.

With the Patriot missiles, anti-aircraft machine guns, anti-aircraft guns, and fighter missile interception, the joint forces' success rate in intercepting Iraqi missiles is in the range of 50-60%.

This time, Iraq's missiles destroyed the Incirlik Air Force Base, killing thousands of people and causing billions of dollars in losses!

The news was also reported in the United States, and all public opinion in the United States was shocked.

The most proud thing about air defense missiles in the United States is the Patriot missile, which is ranked alongside China's Aegis missile as the most advanced air defense missile in the world.

But now, this pride has been shattered.

The American people feel that they have been fooled.

"Can the Patriot missile intercept missiles?" Countless Americans couldn't help but doubt.

Thousands of demonstrators came to the White House to protest the US government's unjust war and the transfer of interests between the US government and Raytheon, which resulted in the "Patriot" missile being an unqualified product and killing American soldiers. They demanded the withdrawal of troops from the Middle East and stopped wasting dollars.

They couldn't understand why the United States launched the Iraq War after launching the Afghanistan War and before the Afghanistan War was over.

If the war in Afghanistan was launched because of 9/11 and to severely punish Bin Laden, then Americans would support it. But launching the Iraq War was fundamentally unjust and a wrong war.

They clearly felt that after the United States launched the Iraq War, prices were rising, and gasoline prices were also rising. Now you have to pay twice or even three times the US dollars for the same gasoline.

Moreover, before the ground troops entered Iraqi territory, there were thousands of American soldiers who died, and with the soldiers from other countries, there were more than 10,000, and the war military expenditures were hundreds of billions of dollars.

The military expenditure submitted by the Pentagon for 2004 has reached a record high of 750 billion US dollars, which is simply unacceptable.

In the eyes of more and more Americans, this war is simply the second Vietnam War!

Now Iraq has thousands of American soldiers as prisoners.

The videos of these prisoners crying and repenting, shouting for their parents to save them, have been on the Internet and have never disappeared.

There is also the war in Afghanistan, which has been fought for more than two years. As a result, the US military now controls only 35% of the territory in Afghanistan, and the military expenditure burned is hundreds of billions of dollars.

The US Department of Defense urgently started a public relations campaign, first holding a press conference, and first denying the number of casualties.

Because according to the US military's death statistics standards, as long as the soldiers are not killed on the spot by the other side's direct means, even if they die after emergency treatment, they are considered to have died of illness and are not included in the list of casualties.

That is to say, although many people died in the attack on Incerik Air Base, unless they were killed directly by missiles, they were not included in the list of casualties, such as being killed by oil leaks and fires in the aircraft or by explosions in the ammunition depot.

However, this behavior made the soldiers' families extremely angry. You know, relatives died here, and it also involves the pension standards. The gap is huge.

In the Korean War and the Vietnam War, the US military's list of casualties was far lower than the other side's statistics. In addition to the need for publicity, a very important reason is that it involves pensions. (End of this chapter)