“Some Degree of Airpower”
A cowardly, mendacious editorial from The New Republic on Syria:
To be clear, we do not want to see troops deployed to Syria. We are not arguing for another Iraq or another Afghanistan—both of which have offered cautionary lessons about the limits of American power. We are not even necessarily arguing for another Libya, since the geography of the Syrian conflict might not permit as extensive an air campaign as was used against Muammar Qaddafi. All we are recommending is that the United States and its allies look for ways to help the rebels hold off Assad’s troops, by arming them or using some degree of airpower on their behalf, or both.
“Some degree of airpower” is really a fun little phrase, isn’t it? You would wonder how such a sloppy phrase made it to print, except that the answer is obvious; the writers of the editorial don’t have the faintest idea of what airpower is or what it can do. Here is what “some degree of airpower” in Syria would require:
1. A major initial attack, led by cruise missiles and potentially stealth aircraft, to disable and destroy the Syrian Air Force and the Syrian air defense network. This would be demanded by any air commander from any country, in order to ensure the security of follow on strikes. The Syrian Air Force has ~400 fighter aircraft alone, plus ground attack. It’s not hard to envision an attack that would destroy the entire SAF without chance of substantial American/NATO losses, but it would be a MAJOR undertaking. Similarly, Syria has a large air defense network, mostly of Cold War vintage. Not terribly difficult for a modern air force to destroy that network, but it would take a while and require a lot of strikes. “Some degree of airpower” in this case means a massive, sustained air assault against the Syrian military just to kick the door open.
2. Air attacks directed against Syrian artillery and armor in urban areas, in close contact with rebels. This is doable, but requires a substantial investment of recon assets to track the movement of Syrian Army forces and to distinguish between them and rebels. This will also require tight coordination with the rebels, which in the past has required the presence of Western special forces. To level the playing field between Syrian heavy forces and the rebels, the campaign would likely have to be considerably more substantial in terms of aircraft and ordnance than the Libya campaign, which targeted a much smaller, much less professional military force under considerably more favorable geographic terms.
3. A political commitment by NATO or the United States to the survival and victory of one or another rebel coalition. We can pretend that the US would destroy the Syrian Air Force, bomb the Syrian Army, and then just hope that Assad and the rebels came to some kind of friendly accommodation, but eventually we reach a “George, you can type this shit, but you can’t say it!” moment.
“Some degree of airpower,” indeed. If TNR wants regime change, it should call for forcible regime change, with a massive air campaign backed by naval assets and SOF. If it doesn’t, then the editors of TNR should take a break, buy a Kindle, go to the beach, and start reading about what airpower is and does. Might not reduce the stupid quotient, but couldn’t hurt.
This is what happenes when you can watch in real time innocent children being blown up by effing bastards, but you can’t do anything about it without killing thousands of people and quite possibly starting a new civil war on top of the old one.
Sometimes it might be best just to turn off the news and spare yourself the heartache.
We can pretend that destroying the US would destroy the Syrian Air Force,
Surely that’s not what you meant to say.
Cheerfully corrected!
I hate this condescending dismissal of anti-war arguments. People didn’t turn against the Iraq War because they got bored and weary, but because they saw it fail. I’m not (mostly) against intervening in Syria because I got plumb tuckered out by the Libya operation.
No one needs a replay of those comment threads.
Airpower could mean C4ISTAR, EW, blockade, no-fly zones or transport as well as (or instead of) ground attack.
It might, but that still entails all the same problems, doesn’t it?
If you declare a no-fly zone, you have to be willing to enforce it, and the second you have to start doing that, you’re at item #1 on the checklist above.
The same holds for transport and/or EW. If you’re going to do those things, you need to establish a secure environment in which you _can_ do them, which means, again, you’re at item #1.
We’re going to spend a million dollars to tell a guy with a pointy stick where the artillery piece is located?
We’re going to spend a million dollars to tell a guy with a pointy stick where the artillery piece is located?
Well, we could do, but it’d probably be better to tell the 10,000 guys with assault rifles.
And, you know, the IAF managed to destroy the single most important strategic target in the entire country without stealth aircraft or cruise missiles a few years ago.
Right. And I would think that the difference between a) a sustained campaign of support for Syrian rebel forces against Syrian Army heavy units and b) a single strike against a nuclear facility would be obvious, but then…
10,000 Syrians with assault rifles – some of whom had even fired one before last week! – is not the same thing as the IDF air force.
Getting involved in Syria would be lunatic, but there’s something interesting in the way the Assad regime has behaved. The pressure to “do something” in Libya (largely coming from France, Italy and Britain) really ratcheted up when the government began bombing the rebels. That led to calls for a “no-fly zone”, which in turn led to airstrikes, which in turn became a full blown air campaign complete with special forces, etcetera.
I’ve only been casually following the news from Syria, but I don’t think I’ve seen a single story that mentions government airplanes bombing rebels/civilians/cities. This may be just because I’ve missed these stories. It also may be that the Syrian air force is more of an air-to-air outfit than an air-to-ground one (the IDF being their chief worry). But is it possible that the Assad regime concluded that not using air power against its own people would reduce the possibility of foreign military intervention (Western or otherwise)? Between Iraq (1991-2003) and Libya (2011), no-fly zones have a way of becoming regime change, and preventing calls for the former might be a low cost way of forestalling the latter.
It may just be that Syria is a more compact area than Libya, so that ground forces can quickly get to wherever force is wanted. (By Assad, that is.)
However, lunacy is the TNR preferred modality and strategy.
There is also the oddity that Syria’s pilots are predominantly Sunni. There is a chance that planes sent to bomb resistance would instead land in Turkey.
“no-fly” zones still require us to destroy the Syrian Air Force and their air defense network before they could be enforced.
Neutralise. Not destroy.
You’re joking, I infer.
The distinction is important. The Iraqi Air Force wasn’t destroyed in 1991. It was neutralised (much of it fled to Iran).
Someone here doubtless knows about this and I don’t, but here is the Wikimuse:
The first week of the air war saw a few Iraqi sorties, but these did little damage, and 38 Iraqi MiGs were shot down by Coalition planes. Soon after, the Iraqi Air Force began fleeing to Iran, with 115 to 140 aircraft flown there.[17] This mass exodus of Iraqi aircraft took coalition forces by surprise as the Coalition had been expecting them to flee to Jordan, a nation friendly to Iraq, rather than Iran, a long-time enemy. As a purpose of the war was to weaken Iraq militarily, the coalition had placed aircraft over western Iraq to try to stop any retreat into Jordan. This meant they were unable to react before most of the Iraqi aircraft had made it “safely” to Iranian airbases.
So your distinction perhaps is not one that the Coalition intended to make, let alone one that’s repeatable in Syria.
Well, I suppose we could send in teams of commandos to steal all the distributor caps off the airplane engines
Didn’t they do that in the second season of Hogan’s Heroes?
I suppose it might be possible to continuously re-crater Syrian runways while deliberately avoiding killing the parked aircraft, but it would take more ordnance, more sorties, and would kill more people on both sides than just destroying the parked aircraft.
I’m not familiar with the layout of the Syrian airbases, but I’d assume that many of their aircraft are not lying parked by the runway. If the aircraft are in hardened shelters or in rock bunkers, their destruction becomes an order of magnitude more expensive piece of work.
Couldn’t we just take up a collection and pay the Turks to take care of things for us?
The New Ottoman Empire might be an improvement for more countries than just Greece.
[Cue Homer Simpson: "Mmmm ... empires."]
I’m sure you meant to say [Cue Homer Simpson: "Mmmm ... Turkey."] as Homer thinks about a Thanksgiving dinner.
Sorry, I’m an obnoxious joke pedant.
Turkey is concerned about touching off a massive ethnic struggle that will spill over into their territory. Lots of Kurds in Syria, for example.
Conquer Syria and then deport all the Kurds to the newly renamed Southwest Kurdistan. Win-win!
… I am channelling Newt Gingrich as Grand Vizier.
Turkey?
Dang ol’, dang ol’ buncha totalitarian Muslim terrorist extremists, tell you what. Don’t mess with Texas!
Any reading suggestions?
For the TNR crew? I’d suggest starting with Pilot Pups and gradually working up from there. Professor Farley can no doubt provide more appropriate selections for your level.
Break them in gently … Snoopy & the Red Baron, then onto Biggles
All I can say is, the Israeli Air Force easily had its way with the SAF back in 1982, and the Coalition was untroubled by Saddam’s 500+ modern fighters in 1991. Tactical & technical progress has strongly favored the US & the West since that time, so I think you’re giving the SAF a bit too much credit.
No, your making Farley’s case for him, since both instances you cite started with Farley’s requirement No. 1. Of course, it could be done, but it would require a lot of resources to do.
The coalition also generated almost 3,000 sorties on the first day and averaged about 1,000 thereafter, not including the 200 or so TLAMs launched. That is not “some degree of airpower” as the authors of the editorial appear to mean.
Addendum: That said, I’m NOT saying that it’s something we should heedlessly rush in to. Can you not make a case that a “minimalist” level of international airpower intervention might push the citizens of Syria toward more active resistance to the regime, with military defections increasing as a result? Careful, we must be very careful.
a “minimalist” level of international airpower intervention
The first requirement of any intervention is that we assure that the Syrians aren’t going to hand us our asses. You don’t do that by thinking in terms of “minimalist” intervention.
Correct. You can’t go in with an unproven assumption that minimalist intervention will accomplish your goal. You have to be prepared with a plan in the event that minimalist intervention, whatever that really is, doesn’t work. Going in with a wish and a prayer that the people will turn against Assad and that military leaders will defect will get us into another Iraq.
And his specific point seems to be that we can proceed with a “minimalist” air intervention without first taking out the Syrian Air Force and air defenses. At some point, numbers will overcome technological superiority. Trying to determine that point by experiment is a bad idea.
But will provide valuable information for future fascist aggressors, whether american or otherwise
Expecting TNR to know, or even care about, the facts and realities of policies they propose is clearly unfair and a liberal double standard!
They’re just sorry President Lieberman isn’t managing the situation.
(That is all I ever have to remember when I wonder whether to subscribe to TNR again: they endorsed Joe Lieberman for president. I like the books coverage and some of the blogs, but the Lieberman thing is a deal-stopper. As is Peretz.)
I keep thinking of the line from Tom Stoppard’s Jumpers: “This is a British murder investigation, and some degree of justice must be seen to have been more or less done.”
One of Stoppards more delusional lines, for anyone familiar with the British criminal law system – ‘This aint a court of justice, son, this is a court of LAW’
After they way the Iraq War ended up, I’m not so sure the Israelis want Assad replaced. They’re likely worried that the popular uprising would result in a pro-Iranian government.
I thought the Assad regime and Iran were already pretty tight…..did I miss something?
[...] What people should know before they say say “some degree of airpower” with regard to Syria. [...]
You make it sound like the good folks at TNR actually care about logic, reason, or intellectual consistency. Their “policy analysis” is based on whichever opinion is polling highest right now, combined oh so subtly with the overriding opinion required by their corporate masters. It’s a fine line to tread, but when you do, you often have results akin to “Some degree of airpower…”
It’s tapdancing until the winds change, and they can endorse military intervention again with full-throated bull moose fury.
Doesn’t Syria have S-300s now? Not sure what version, but the recent ones are not particularly nice. Wikipedia also says they have some Buks and Pantsirs. Again, not sure their readiness or capabilities of export models, but they are significantly more capable than the SA-2, -3, and -5 that Libya had.
Good points, too. Another terrible case of wanting results on the cheap. I’m not sure if Libya really was all that positive a test case.
The US has done a pretty good job of having little to no ties to Syria(other than a lovely prisoner torture relationship in the early 2000s). And now of course the War Party wants to go ahead and ruin it.
The US government could definitely isolate some of Assad’s foreign backers by at least attempting to pass some sort of UN resolution stopping weapons resupply. Other than that, getting involved in a fourth war in the region would be incredibly stupid.
Good points to which I’d like to add one. Can’t The New Republic afford a map? Even “some degree of airpower” needs someplace to take off and land. Unless they’re planning on putting pretty much every US carrier in the East Med simultaneously they wouldn’t be able to generate enough sorties to do anything productive and that also pretty much makes the “and its allies” part moot.
Unless they imagine them flying out of Israel and if they can’t figure out the political pitfalls of that idea then they are not taking this seriously.
I’ll hazard that if they were thinking at all they were assuming use of Izmir Air Station and Icirlik Air Base, the two joint bases the USAF has in Turkey. The latter is conveniently located near the Turkish-Syrian border.
And I am not sure what is the position of the Turkish government towards allowing the US to attack Syria from its soil. Of course, they have been, to date, the most ardent supporters of Syrian opposition, but it is quite a different kettle of fish to provide logistical and material support to a party in a civil war than to become a belligrent.
The Turkish government needs to consider things in the long term: the US will leave Syria one day, but Turkey will remain there forever. And the Syrian government, even one held by the nowadays opposition, will remember who allowed their military bases to be used for a full-scale air campaign against the Syrian government.
This is truly a gross failure to understand military reality and the fact that operating within another hostile country for sustained periods its not video game easy, nor is it possible without tremendous effort, expenditure and crucially casualties inflicted and often sustained. Alternatively, it is a failure to WANT to understand.
Spot on with this one, Robert.
[...] Lawyers, Guns and Money, Robert Farley is scathing towards an ill-judged editorial at The New Republic calling for an untenable very partial military [...]