NATO Post Libya
On Thursday, 27 October 2011 the UN Security Council voted unanimously for a resolution ‘ending the mandate for foreign military action at 23:59 Libyan time on 31 October’. During the military action the NATO-led coalition had flown 26,000 sorties of which 10,000 were labelled strike missions. Interestingly, the resolution was passed despite an eleventh-hour appeal from Libya’s NTC to continue the mission, arguing that it needed more time to assess its security needs.
For NATO the Libyan campaign was a success. However, as the
leaders of the alliance meet in Chicago in May 2012, there will be some
important lessons to be learned. The reliance on the United States for the
backbone of the Command and Control system is one that will need to be
addressed if other coalitions of the willing are to be deployed at short
notice. The combination of low collateral damage, the replacement of the regime
and the zero-casualty count for their own forces provides an outcome that
political leaders entering any kind of war would dream about. The Libyan rebels
paid the price in blood whereas the collation paid the price in treasure. The
final debate as to the actual cost of the campaign will no doubt be the subject
of some discussion as various media sources try and come up with a final and
definitive answer. But, by any standard metrics of war, the campaign in Libya
was a new form of conflict. One conducted principally from the air and with
great precision. But is it one that can be replicated elsewhere?
The answer to that question is a resounding no. Libya had a
number of quite specific aspects to it. These need to be appreciated before
anyone suggests that suddenly a new form of casualty-free (i.e. painless)
warfare can be carried out by NATO at locations across the world where they
feel they need to intervene. The horrors of the humanitarian intervention in
Somalia by President Clinton still beckon for anyone rash enough to believe
that warfare can be painless.
That air power showed its huge flexibility in OPERATION
UNIFIED PROTECTOR is not in doubt. Towards the end of October 2011, the RAF
Tornados had flown over 1,400 sorties and amassed over 8,000 hours of flying
time. The RAF Typhoons also flew 600 sorties and accumulated over 3,000 flying
hours.
New tactics, flying Tornados and Typhoons together as a
two-ship configuration, had also been developed. Warfare often sees tactical
innovation and OPERATION ELLAMY was no different. The mix of the two aircraft,
flown as a two-ship configuration, provided additional versatility in terms of
the weapons payloads that were available on a single armed reconnaissance
mission. The mix of the 1,000 pounds Enhanced Paveway carried on board the
Typhoon and the Brimstone and other Paveway variants on the Tornado provided a
huge level of flexibility to address emerging targets. During the campaign the
RAF, RN and Army Air Corps (AAC) launched 1,470 guided weapons. The Paveway
achieved a hit rate of close to 88 per cent. The bombs that fell outside the
immediate designated area missed the target by a matter of a few meters.
Throughout the campaign the French Air Force and the RAF
both undertook a large range of missions that showed the inherent versatility
and flexibility that now exists in their weapons systems. In the course of the
NATO operations over 26,000 missions had been flown. Many of those lasted a
number of hours and required a number of visits to tankers to refuel. In the
course of OPERATION ELLAMY over 30,000 tonnes of fuel were transferred from
VC-10 and Tristar aircraft operating in support of the mission.
When deployed on armed reconnaissance it is hard to forecast
the type of targets that might emerge. What appears from an orchard or emerges
from the side of a street to threaten civilians, is hard to predict at the
point the aircraft is prepared for a mission. Emergent targets were not always
single units, such as a MBT, APC, Artillery piece or Pick Up Trucks (PUT).
Complex targets also presented themselves in the form of troop concentrations
at staging points, ammunition and fuel dumps and mobile command and control
centres. Having a range of weapon systems at the disposal of the crews allowed
them to be selective in their application of air power.
Being able to select an appropriate weapon system to attack
an emergent target, whilst reducing the risk from collateral damage, is a
hugely important capability. The Storm Shadows also proved their value working
alongside the Tomahawk missiles launched in the course of the campaign by the
RN. The RAF and the RN can be very pleased with their current inventory. The
future prospects also look good, as the RN adds the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF)
into its inventory in the future. Operating from a carrier offshore that
ability to project air power will also add an additional level of versatility
into the ability to conduct a range of possible intervention missions on a
global basis.
That does not mean that lessons cannot emerge from the
Libyan campaign that might suggest that Paveway and Brimstone might also have
additional versatility built into their warhead designs. The ability to ‘dial a
yield’ before a target is attacked would undoubtedly provide an additional
element of versatility when attacking lightly armed vehicles.
The contribution of naval gunnery, an art that many will
think must have gone out many years ago, is still something to be considered.
As warships have tended to go for stealthy shapes the guns have always appeared
to stand out. In an age of the missile system there may be those tempted to
think that removing guns from warships is a good idea. For many the use of
naval gunnery in the Falklands conflict is a distant memory. OPERATION ELLAMY
was to highlight its enduring contribution to the littoral battle.
Any notion that naval gunnery is a capability that is no
longer required should be rejected very quickly. Even though little was made of
its use in the media, naval shore bombardment is not a capability that should
suddenly be lost. In the course of OPERATION ELLAMY the warships HMS Liverpool,
Iron Duke and Sutherland would fire 240 rounds from their guns. These varied
from star shells that illuminated suspicious activity on the coastline to high
explosive rounds aimed at destroying coastal artillery installations that had
fired upon NATO warships.
On several occasions Libyan Special Forces who had tried to
approach NATO warships in inflatable boats were chased away by star shells.
Being illuminated at night when you are trying to operate covertly has a huge
psychological impact. As the RN develops its thinking for the Type 26 Global
Combat Ship, and its export potential, they would be wise to retain that
capability.
Their collation colleagues also contributed to the overall
effort providing a blend of air power that enabled strike missions to be shared
out across many NATO countries. As always in such situations the Danish Armed
Forces and the Norwegians made significant contributions, as did the Belgians.
For those in NATO seeking to use the campaign in Libya as a
form of new approach to intervention on the international stage, a moment’s
reflection might be in order. Colonel Gaddafi and his sons were not that
difficult a regime to topple.
In order to take an objective view of the outcome it is
vital for anyone to analyse the mistakes made by the Gaddafis. Had they played
any one of these differently, the campaign may well have gone on long enough to
make the international community tire of what would readily be characterised by
the media as another failed and flawed attempt to intervene in an overseas
country.
Gaddafi made several obvious mistakes. Many of these are
reflective of an ego and personality that was deeply flawed. In part these
contributed to his downfall. The list of mistakes is long and worth some
detailed analysis and discussion. They include:
The regime appeared to be totally unprepared for war. It was
as if Gaddafi had concluded that by making the right noises and gestures to the
international community he would be allowed to survive. He dramatically
underestimated the will of many of those, including David Cameron and Nickolas
Sarkozy, to follow up on their rhetoric. This was a bad misjudgement and
typical of a person who is unable to read the international hymn sheet that was
being written at the time.
Gaddafi’s rhetoric, labelling of the rebels as members of Al
Qaeda, was an attempt to sow confusion into the ranks of the international
community. It barely raised an eyebrow in political circles. Certainly many
so-called experts in international terrorism raised themselves from their
armchairs to venture into the television and radio studios to echo his
narrative. Many opined that the rebels had been infiltrated by Al Qaeda, with
the implication that if Gaddafi’s regime were to fall woe betide the
international community, especially European nations, whose southern flank
would be exposed to an Al Qaeda-led government in Libya that their military
action had installed.
Gaddafi should have played for time when the international
community was debating establishing a no-fly zone. His offers of a ceasefire
appeared opportunistic and insincere. His words and actions appeared out of
kilter with each other. Given the degree of ISTAR coverage of Libya he should
have known that he needed to visibly show a lessening threat to Benghazi as the
second week of March came to a close. Had he done this, and played his
long-established ties with Russia carefully, he could have dragged out the
debate within the United Nations.
This mistake was repeated when progress on the campaign
slowed to a halt in June. This is a crucial issue for NATO and one that is
often overlooked. When conducting military operations of this type it is
unlikely that the end game, whatever that means, will suddenly be reached. The
100 hours ground war that brought the Iraqi War in 1991 to an end is not
representative. It had taken weeks of bombing to shape the battlefield so that,
as the ground forces moved in, the Iraqis surrendered en masse. Gaddafi should
have anticipated the stalemate and played for time when some members of the
international community started to debate a possible end game where Gaddafi
would have stayed in power. He should have seen this as a moment of weakness in
the international community’s resolve and made gestures that would have seen
him remain in some titular position. His intransigence at this point was
crucial. It is axiomatic in international politics that delay and obfuscation
creates opportunities. This was a lesson and insight that Gaddafi failed to
appreciate. Had he played for time, offered a segregation of Libya and then
played a longer psychologically-focused campaign, he may still be alive today.
Gaddafi’s employment of mercenaries showed from the outset
how unsure he was about the loyalty of some parts of his military
establishment. When a leader is so uncertain about such a fundamental point it
shows that he is in a very bad situation. As events in Syria and Egypt have
shown, when a dictator retains the loyalty of his armed forces it is difficult
for a rebellion to gain the kind of traction needed to bring down a government.
One mistake Gaddafi and his henchmen was to make throughout
the campaign was to underestimate NATO’s ISTAR capabilities, and the ways in
which sensors could rapidly cue aircraft in to destroy emergent targets. All
the NATO-wide experiments on sensor cueing that had been undertaken over a
number of years suddenly all bore fruit. It was, and remains, an impressive
capability and one that NATO should do all it can to maintain for the future.
Despite the subordinate role played by the United States in the campaign, its
ISTAR assets were essential to the precise nature of the way targets were
attacked, helping avoid collateral damage.
Gaddafi failed to implement the full suite of asymmetric
options that he could have done as the campaign unfolded. The efforts of the
Libyan military in the maritime sphere were particularly derisory. Despite
frequent attempts by Libyan Special Forces to mount operations at sea none were
successful. Royal Navy submarines became adept at using their sonar systems to
track the Rubber Inflatable Boats as they launched. Each mission was
successfully intercepted. The Libyan Navy was almost ineffective and the
half-hearted attempts to mine various harbours in Libya using a form of
floating IED added little to the military effort. Had the Libyan Navy been able
to confront and perhaps sink a NATO warship in Libyan coastal waters, with some
loss of life, it may have placed what was an uneasy alliance under some
increased pressure. Moreover had he been able to resort to cyberspace or to
unleashing acts of terrorism in Europe – as he threatened to do at one point –
he would have tested the political cohesion of the NATO alliance and a public
wary of being drawn into yet another apparently endless campaign. A suicide
bomb attack in London, Paris or any other national capital of a nation involved
in the campaign, would have quickly created media comparisons with the backlash
from the war in Iraq and its impact of Muslim communities in Europe.
Gaddafi’s harnessing of his terror weapons – the FROG and
SCUD missiles – came to epitomise a military campaign that was flawed. The
single time a SCUD was launched against the rebel forces it fell short and did
not cause any casualties. By owning such weapons Gaddafi could well have
terrorised the local people in Tripoli as the campaign moved into its end game.
The way the Iraqis camouflaged and continued to fire their SCUD missiles in the
1991 war created huge problems for the coalition – causing the diversion of a
great deal of military effort to detect and eliminate the launchers. In Libya
on several occasions the launchers were discovered by ISTAR and quickly
destroyed by attacks from the air. His failure to adopt the classic tactics of
using human shields also missed an opportunity. The exceedingly low levels of
civilian casualties during the war are a reflection of a huge effort put into
targeting by NATO. But is also reflected the fact that Gaddafi was clearly no
student of recent military history.
This catalogue of failures should be remembered and if
necessary debated at length as people come to analyse the campaign in greater
detail. It was Gaddafi’s ineptitude as a leader in a time of war, and the fact
that he surrounded himself with family and sycophants, that led to his demise.
Had he been more agile and flexible he could well have survived.
The Paradigm of Intervention
In the immediate aftermath of publishing its much-maligned
Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) the United Kingdom’s coalition
government became embroiled in a military adventure in Libya. Somewhat
unexpectedly this would shine an intense spotlight on the outcome of the SDSR.
It would also provide an immediate opportunity to conduct a detailed assessment
of its impact on the United Kingdom’s ability to project military power onto
the world stage using the outcome from the campaign to validate the
decision-making that took place in the SDSR.
The Prime Minister, David Cameron, perhaps tiring of all the
criticism of the SDSR, seemed really keen to prove his doubters wrong. At the
time of writing, as aircraft from many of the coalition partners involved in
the Libyan campaign return home and the newly-recognised National Transitional
Council (NTC) gets down to work to create a new Libya, the final outcome is far
from certain.
For many commentators the outcome of the military campaign
in Libya creates an opportunity to redefine the paradigm of intervention that
has arisen since the events in America on 11 September 2001. Upstream
activities in Iraq and Afghanistan have been hugely expensive, very complicated
and difficult for member states with governments created from electoral mosaics
across the political spectrum. As military campaigns they have had to learn
whilst ‘in contact’ with our adversaries rather than lay out the doctrine of
how to fight a war and then execute that approach.
For David Cameron this was not an approach that was sustainable.
It is always difficult during wartime for a political leader to overtly
criticize his armed forces. The ongoing military commitment of the United
Kingdom provided a huge constraint on the Prime Minister’s freedom of
manoeuvre. The general public would not wear any challenge to the military in
the open. Cameron has insisted on at least one occasion that he has ‘robust’
discussions with the UK CDS – Sir David Richards.
What the nature of these discussions are one can only
speculate, but it is not difficult to imagine that the Prime Minister has a
specific set of views on the degree of overlap that exists between some areas
of military capability. It is not hard to believe that one of the principles of
David Cameron’s approach to defence matters is to imagine that the United
Kingdom’s armed forces did have excess capacity that could be taken out. The
question was how to do it?
Any leader who tried to place any blame for failure on the
armed forces would pay a heavy political price. Cameron has instead not chosen
to provide an audible criticism. He has chosen to be far more subtle. Through
the mechanism of the SDSR he chose to take out capability that was felt to be
redundant for the kind of balanced forms of warfare that he envisaged, with the
ODA, the FCO and the MoD playing specific roles within an overall strategy by
which the military instrument of power would be applied in the future.
It the heat of the SDSR, and given the speed with which is
was undertaken, it is not difficult to imagine that the implications of the
some of the decisions taken around the table were not discussed in any great
depth. It was an assumed outcome that the force levels would be cut, the only
issue was by how much.
Cameron’s doctrine for the United Kingdom’s armed forces has
therefore been based on a covert recognition by some close members of the
Cabinet that there was a little too much overlap built into the United
Kingdom’s military capability. To state that view would have to receive the
opprobrium of the press and the British public at large. To hold it covertly,
only for its stealthy hand to be revealed in the wake of the SDSR, is a very
different matter.
For David Cameron the outcome of the initial phase of the
war in Libya will have reinforced his view that it’s now time for NATO to take
similar ‘difficult decisions’ and to stop fielding equipment that sustains
industries in countries that frankly cannot possibly get value for money out of
the investment in equipment. What is needed is bulk buys of equipment from seasoned
and expert suppliers. This will be at the heart of the next stage of the
reformation on which David Cameron has embarked. It will prove a most difficult
challenge. Resolving overlaps in the capabilities of the United Kingdom’s armed
forces is one thing. Addressing the wider issues at a European and then NATO
level is a very different matter.
Glossary
AAC Army Air
Corps
AAG Air-to-air
Gun
APC Armoured
Personnel Carrier
AQIM Al Qaeda in
the Islamic Maghreb
ASaC Airborne
Surveillance and Control
AWACS Airborne Early
Warning and Control System
CIA Central
Intelligence Agency
CJEF Combined
Joint Expeditionary Force
COMUKTG Commander United Kingdom Task Group
COIN Counter Insurgency
CSAT Supreme
Council of National Defence
FAC Fast Attack
Craft
FATA Federally
Administered Tribal Area
FEBA Forward Edge
of the Battle Area
GAINS Global
Positioning System Aided International Navigation System
GPS Global
Positioning System
IED Improvised
Explosive Device
ICC International
Criminal Court
IMINT Image
Intelligence
ISAF International
Security Assistance Force
ISTAR Intelligence,
Surveillance, Target Acquisition and Recognition
JFHQ Joint Force
Headquarters
JSF Joint
Strike Fighter
JSTARS Joint
Surveillance and Target Attack Radar System
MBT Main Battle
Tank
MANPAD Man Portable
Air Defence
MRLS Multi-Rocket
Launch System
MoD Ministry of
Defence
NATO North Atlantic
Treaty Organisation
NEOCC Non-Combatant
Evacuation Operation Coordination Cell
NSC National
Security Council
NTC National
Transitional Council
OAV Other
Armoured Vehicles
ODA Overseas
Development Aid
OV Other
Vehicles
ORBAT Order of Battle
PUT Pick-up
Trucks
RAPTOR Reconnaissance
Airborne Pod for Tornado
RFTG Response
Force Task Group
RAF Royal Air
Force
RN Royal Navy
SAS Special Air
Service
SDSR Strategic
Defence and Security Review
SDR Strategic
Defence Review
SDT Social
Dominance Theory
SIS Secret
Intelligence Service
SPG Self-Propelled
Guns
TARDIS Tactical Air
Reconnaissance Deployable Intelligence System
TIW Tactical
IMINT Wing
TLAM Tactical Land
Attack Missile
TLC Toyota Land
Cruiser
UAE United Arab
Emirates
UN United
Nations
UNITAR United Nations
Institute for Training and Research
UNOSAT UNITAR’s
Operational Satellite Applications Programme
UNSCR United Nations
Security Council Resolution
