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Bringing Attack Helicopters into the Libyan War

“There has been no doubt that the rebels have been unable to take advantage of what the airstrikes have been doing,” Paul Beaver, a defense analyst in London, told the BBC World Service radio. “The air campaign has been relatively successful, but what we know from Kosovo in 1999 is that you can’t destroy every […]

“There has been no doubt that the rebels have been unable to take advantage of what the airstrikes have been doing,” Paul Beaver, a defense analyst in London, told the BBC World Service radio.

“The air campaign has been relatively successful, but what we know from Kosovo in 1999 is that you can’t destroy every tank,” said Mr. Beaver. “In Kosovo, we thought that 250 Serbian tanks had been destroyed, it turned out to be 13. We know already that NATO has attacked one particular tank [in Libya] more than five times, because they’ve been hoodwinked into it by Qaddafi forces lighting a little fire to make it look as if it’s a vehicle that’s got its engine running.”

“Very clever things are being done,” added Beaver, “which is why you need helicopters that can get in, and they are more discriminating than aircraft at 15,000 feet.” ~The Christian Science Monitor

When the war started 67 days ago, it is safe to say that none of the intervening governments believed that it would come to this. Indeed, if they had known, it is doubtful that many of them would have agreed to intervene. Of course, that’s how people are lured into backing military interventions. They are assured that military action will not take very long, the costs will be minimal, and success will be guaranteed and swift. The introduction of attack helicopters not only represents a significant escalation of the war, but it is an acknowledgment that the war is stalemated and its campaign hasn’t been nearly as effective as the main Western political leaders assumed it would be.

At Danger Room, David Axe explains how the addition of attack helicopters will make NATO more effective against Gaddafi’s forces, but points to the increased risk to NATO personnel:

The British and French gunships are equipped with rockets, guns, guided missiles and sophisticated day and night sensors. Both types, plus their American counterparts, have proved to be some of the deadliest weapons of the Afghanistan war. But in the open terrain of North Africa, against an opponent armed with anti-aircraft guns and heat-seeking missiles, the helicopter gunships could prove as vulnerable to ground forces as ground forces are to them.

As Axe notes, the risk of casualties or captured personnel is much greater, and that is going to create political pressure on allied governments back home to wrap up the war sooner rather than later. There is not much tolerance for casualties from “humanitarian” missions in the U.S. (see Somalia), and there is not likely to be much more tolerance for them in France and Britain. There was limited popular opposition to the Kosovo war because NATO suffered no casualties in combat, but things would have been different if pilots had been killed or captured.

States that have the means and the inclination to intervene militarily in other nations’ conflicts seem to have little patience when these interventions go awry or run into obstacles, because at some level they have known all along that they have no business being involved in these conflicts. These governments are happy to intervene as long as the direct costs are very small, but once they become significant they remember that they have no discernible interest in the conflict. Because there is no discernible interest in the conflict, the intervening governments were never willing to make a full commitment to their military effort. In the end, they know that they cannot justify the expense and risks to their electorates. So we get this sort of halting, piecemeal escalation in the hope that just a little bit more pressure will force the targeted regime to give in.

Reuters reported on the French announcement yesterday:

“Twelve helicopters is not a lot,” Ken Freeman, associate fellow of the Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies (RUSI), told Reuters.

“They tend to be quite vulnerable, so they are probably going to be used very carefully … You could probably say it is a sign that people are running out of ideas of what to do. This is doing something other than sitting on your hands [bold mine-DL].”

David Bosco reminds us that there was a push to use Apaches in Kosovo:

No doubt many readers will recall that NATO’s 1999 Kosovo operation had its own helicopter drama. Then NATO commander Wesley Clark requested American Apaches early in the conflict, but a combination of Pentagon hesitance, Macedonian reluctance and to host them, and logistical delays kept the Apaches out of action for most of the conflict.

We shall see how quickly France and Britain bring their helicopters into the war. Unfortunately for NATO and for the people of Libya, the war isn’t going to end before they will be able to use them. I have the sinking feeling that the governments involved are going to look back on this decision with regret.

Update: Britain now denies that it has decided to deploy attack helicopters, despite French claims that it intended to do this:

Not content with their own announcement, French officials also said that Britain would deploy helicopters too. That apparently surprised the British House of Commons, not in a pleasant way, and British officials angrily denied that any decision had been made.

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