Cold Water Time
Mar. 2nd, 2011 07:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
danalwynWell, predictably, the neo-cons realized that they finally had a chance to do something. After all, Egypt and Bahrain (and Saudi Arabia when it goes) are all US allies, so you can't sell them out for something as transient or useless as freedom or democracy or some other things like that which we don't really care about. But nobody likes Gaddafi. So that gives us a chance to call out the troops and get some primo photo ops.
(Not to say that the liberal interventionists and anti-genocide people haven't gotten their share).
Fortunately, a bunch of people have showed up to throw cold water on people. First it was CENTCOM's James Mattis throwing water on John McCain. Now it's escalated to Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
In fact, out of the people I normally respect, I haven't seen much enthusiasm for the whole "let's go save Libya" crowd. This is in contravention to a lot of calls from inside Libya - Twitter and Facebook are filled with calls for the world to watch and for someone to do something about the fact that Gaddafi is firing on his own people. But even among those who really like democracy and really want to help Libya don't seem to have much enthusiasm for it.
Mattis makes the point that if you really want to establish a no-fly zone over Libya, you'll have to patrol the airspace. If you want to patrol the airspace, you'll have to neutralize Libya's ability to shoot you down, and most of that is in their Air Defense network.
The Libyan Surface-to-Air Missile (SAM) network is a relic of the Cold War, but it effectively covers the coast of Libya, and is described in impressive (but possibly boring) detail in this IMINT blog post. You don't have to read the post, you just need to understand the thing that's giving CENTCOM nightmares. Libya's SAM network consists of S-200 long-range, and S-75 and S-125 medium-range missile (SA-5, SA-3, and SA-2 if you insist on NATO naming conventions). The S-200 batteries are extremely long-range, up to 300 km, and it only takes four of them to cover the entire coast of Libya. But the other missiles are much shorter range, less then 50km. Because Gaddafi wanted to defend his key city of Tripoli, several batteries are placed near enough to the city that their coverage to overlap. And because of their short range, those missiles are inside the city of Tripoli. That means to neutralize them (and their supporting radars) enforcing planes will have to fire into Tripoli itself. Precision weapons usually hit targets closely, but even if they do the collateral damage of hitting a site inside Tripoli with a 66kg warhead can be deadly. Don't ask what happens when you miss.
Basically, there's no way to actually enforce a no-fly zone without bombing Tripoli. Nobody wants to bomb Tripoli, especially when nobody knows what's really going on down there. It's dangerous enough when you have forward observers guiding the bombers in - doing it by firing stand-off missiles into the middle of a city is a bad way to go.
Nobody wants to take responsibility for bombing Tripoli on their own. The Americans and the Europeans may be sending more and more ships, but for now all they'll do is stand off the coast. Unless Gadaffi forces their hand, the US will wait for the UN to approve, and with the Russians threatening to veto it's a good thing Libya is doing a good job of freeing itself without our intervention, because they'll be waiting for us for a long time.
(Not to say that the liberal interventionists and anti-genocide people haven't gotten their share).
Fortunately, a bunch of people have showed up to throw cold water on people. First it was CENTCOM's James Mattis throwing water on John McCain. Now it's escalated to Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
In fact, out of the people I normally respect, I haven't seen much enthusiasm for the whole "let's go save Libya" crowd. This is in contravention to a lot of calls from inside Libya - Twitter and Facebook are filled with calls for the world to watch and for someone to do something about the fact that Gaddafi is firing on his own people. But even among those who really like democracy and really want to help Libya don't seem to have much enthusiasm for it.
Mattis makes the point that if you really want to establish a no-fly zone over Libya, you'll have to patrol the airspace. If you want to patrol the airspace, you'll have to neutralize Libya's ability to shoot you down, and most of that is in their Air Defense network.
The Libyan Surface-to-Air Missile (SAM) network is a relic of the Cold War, but it effectively covers the coast of Libya, and is described in impressive (but possibly boring) detail in this IMINT blog post. You don't have to read the post, you just need to understand the thing that's giving CENTCOM nightmares. Libya's SAM network consists of S-200 long-range, and S-75 and S-125 medium-range missile (SA-5, SA-3, and SA-2 if you insist on NATO naming conventions). The S-200 batteries are extremely long-range, up to 300 km, and it only takes four of them to cover the entire coast of Libya. But the other missiles are much shorter range, less then 50km. Because Gaddafi wanted to defend his key city of Tripoli, several batteries are placed near enough to the city that their coverage to overlap. And because of their short range, those missiles are inside the city of Tripoli. That means to neutralize them (and their supporting radars) enforcing planes will have to fire into Tripoli itself. Precision weapons usually hit targets closely, but even if they do the collateral damage of hitting a site inside Tripoli with a 66kg warhead can be deadly. Don't ask what happens when you miss.
Basically, there's no way to actually enforce a no-fly zone without bombing Tripoli. Nobody wants to bomb Tripoli, especially when nobody knows what's really going on down there. It's dangerous enough when you have forward observers guiding the bombers in - doing it by firing stand-off missiles into the middle of a city is a bad way to go.
Nobody wants to take responsibility for bombing Tripoli on their own. The Americans and the Europeans may be sending more and more ships, but for now all they'll do is stand off the coast. Unless Gadaffi forces their hand, the US will wait for the UN to approve, and with the Russians threatening to veto it's a good thing Libya is doing a good job of freeing itself without our intervention, because they'll be waiting for us for a long time.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-03 03:57 am (UTC)I'm not saying that the people of Libya don't deserve help, or that foreign nations shouldn't try to redress some of the harm that their support of dictators (for the sake of foreign stability and access to resources) has caused. But it is very much a "Damned if you do/Damned if you don't" situation.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-03 04:11 am (UTC)I wish we would spend less time fighting against democracy overseas - or at least stop pretending we don't. It's making me feel more hypocritical then normal.