Mission for Spec Ops - Opinions?

[fredtheobviouspseudonym]

Remember that all the world knows we have Tomahawks and that the US of A can zap any above-ground facility.

The answer is obvious.

I'm not sure about the geography near Latakia but if some element of the local government wants to preserve a CBW facility putting it underground -- way underground -- would be logical. While the US does have nifty deep-penetrating bombs I don't think that Tomahawks carry them. You'd need to send one or more aircraft over (think said bombs are too heavy for current drones) and that would be a problem.* Also, if only the entrances were dug from the surface and the rest of the facility was branched out from the entry shafts, target planners might not know exactly where the key production areas are within the facility or how deep they are. (Both data are necessary for a successful deep strike with bombs. If not available, you could well just blow holes in the ground and not affect the facility.)

Of course, a ground-penetrating nuclear weapon would deal with such a facility but there'd be a few minor political consequences with that . . .

So you have two reasons to send in a ground team. One would be to get into the plant and determine the lay-out for the bomb-strike planners. The other would be just to blow up the entrance shafts (and release chemical weapons) to make use of the facility out of the question. (I wouldn't want to dig into a chemical-weapons production facility that had been blown up -- too much chance of a leak and hard to mine in a MOPP suit . . .

*Sending over an F-22 or B-2 would be doable but there's a chance, even faint, of a loss (and at c. $2 billion a pop a B-2 would be a pricey loss.) Also, it would be pretty obvious who had hit the facility (gee, how many nations in the world have bombs that could go through 100 meters of earth and blow up reliably . . . ) So if you send in a ground team, suitably politically sanitized, you could claim it was almost anybody.

Assuming, of course, that the opposition does not capture anyone alive.