{"id":32083,"date":"2012-09-20T16:30:24","date_gmt":"2012-09-20T20:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=32083"},"modified":"2012-09-20T16:30:24","modified_gmt":"2012-09-20T20:30:24","slug":"attack-on-camp-bastion-the-destruction-of-vma-211","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=32083","title":{"rendered":"Attack on Camp Bastion: The Destruction of VMA-211"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.defensemedianetwork.com\/stories\/attack-on-camp-bastion-the-destruction-of-vma-211\/\" target=\"_blank\">Stole the title from a better writer than I. <\/a><\/p>\n<p>I noted the shift\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=32033\" target=\"_blank\"> here<\/a>, but let John amplify:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Late on Friday, Sept. 14, 2012, a\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.infoplease.com\/spot\/taliban.html\">Taliban<\/a>\u00a0insurgent force of sappers attacked the NATO ISAF base,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Camp_Bastion\">Camp Bastion<\/a>, in Afghanistan, resulting in the worst loss of U.S. airpower in a single incident since the Vietnam War. Two Marines, including VMA-211\u2019s commanding officer, were killed in the attack, and nine other personnel (eight military and one contractor, reportedly) were wounded. By the time the base was secured roughly five hours later, six U.S. Marine Corps (USMC)\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.defensemedianetwork.com\/photos\/the-harrier-jump-jet-45-years-photos\/\">AV-8B+ Harrier \u201cjump jets\u201d<\/a>\u00a0had been destroyed, and two more \u201csignificantly\u201d damaged. In addition, three refueling points were destroyed, and six \u201csoft-skinned\u201d aircraft hangers were damaged to some degree. As a result of this attack, the air strength of\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.3maw.usmc.mil\/external\/3dmaw\/mag13\/vma211\/\">Marine Attack Squadron 211 (VMA-211 \u2013 \u201cThe Avengers\u201d)\u00a0<\/a>presumably 10\u00a0 aircraft<a href=\"http:\/\/www.3maw.usmc.mil\/external\/3dmaw\/mag13\/vma211\/\">,<\/a>\u00a0was almost completely destroyed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I considered this event as a significant shift in focus by the Taliban. Sadly it is even worse than I thought.<\/p>\n<p>One more like this and we will be discussing a paradigm shift.<\/p>\n<p>And the withdrawal date is known&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Stole the title from a better writer than I. I noted the shift\u00a0 here, but let &hellip; <a title=\"Attack on Camp Bastion: The Destruction of VMA-211\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=32083\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Attack on Camp Bastion: The Destruction of VMA-211<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":467,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geezer-alert"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/467"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32083\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}