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Old 04-08-2011, 07:23 AM
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Exclamation Mission Creep In Libya: It Has Begun

Written By : John Hawkins
One of the problems with getting involved in a country militarily is that the whole business has a tendency to take on a life of its own, one that you don’t always expect, particularly if it’s not clearly defined. Welcome to mission creep, boys and girls.

…This time around, Obama has bungled the whole thing worse than most people realize by having such an open-ended mission. Not even the people in the coalition, which is already fracturing, seem to be agreed on why we’re there. Are we there to protect civilians? Are we there to get rid of Gaddafi? Are we there to institute democracy? No one seems to know for sure — even in the White House.

…So, despite the fact that the best thing Obama could do at this point would be to just get the hell out of there, it won’t be so easy. That’s because if let’s say, the coalition falls apart, Obama will be blamed. If Gadaffi stays in power, Obama will be blamed. If Gadaffi slaughters the rebels, Obama will be blamed. If Gadaffi is overthrown and the country becomes an Islamic Republic or splits into squabbling parts, Obama will be blamed. That’s the price you pay for being the biggest dog in the pack. You can tell everybody you’re just another poodle, but everybody knows better.

That’s why sadly, tragically, Obama is about to get an education in that line from the Godfather, “I try to get out and they keep pulling me back in.” Let’s hope that Obama has gotten enough on-the-job training at this point to keep our troops home and just take any PR hits that may come.” —
John Hawkins, March 23, 2011
Here we are, just three weeks later, and guess what? There’s already talk of sending in ground troops.
The United States may consider sending troops into Libya with a possible international ground force that could aid the rebels, according to the general who led the military mission until NATO took over.

Army Gen. Carter Ham also told lawmakers Thursday that added American participation would not be ideal, and ground troops could erode the international coalition and make it more difficult to get Arab support for operations in Libya.

Ham said the operation was largely stalemated now and was more likely to remain that way since America has transferred control to NATO.

…Asked if the U.S. would provide troops, Ham said, “I suspect there might be some consideration of that. My personal view at this point would be that that’s probably not the ideal circumstance, again for the regional reaction that having American boots on the ground would entail.”

President Barack Obama has said repeatedly there will be no U.S. troops on the ground in Libya, although there are reports of small CIA teams in the country. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates told lawmakers last week that there would be no American ground troops in Libya “as long as I am in this job.”
So if there’s really no way that we’d consider putting troops on the ground, then why do we have a general publicly saying we might put troops on the ground? Could it be that despite the fact they’re publicly saying that’s absolutely, positively not going to happen, they’re actually considering it? Of course, they are. If there’s anything we’ve learned about Obama by now it’s that every promise comes with an expiration date.

PS: If Obama choose not to get congressional approval to continue the mission or decides to put troops on the ground, I favor cutting off the funds for the mission. That wouldn’t be putting our troops at risk, it would be protecting them for risk in a pointless waste that has absolutely nothing to do with America’s interests.

PS #2: The fact that NATO is so incompetent that they can’t handle something like this without America doing all the heavy lifting tells you a lot about their real military capabilities and none of it is good.

http://rightwingnews.com/libya/missi...-it-has-begun/
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Old 04-08-2011, 01:53 PM
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Exclamation

DOD Announces U.S. Force Posture Revision in Europe

The Department of Defense announced today that it is revising its 2004 plan to withdraw two of its four brigade combat teams (BCTs) from Europe. Based on the administration's review, consultations with allies and the findings of NATO's new Strategic Concept, the department will retain three BCTs in Europe to maintain a flexible and rapidly deployable ground force to fulfill the United States' commitments to NATO, to engage effectively with allies and partners, and to meet the broad range of 21st century challenges. This decision will be implemented in 2015, when we project a reduced demand on our ground forces.

The three BCTs remaining in Europe after 2015 -- the Heavy, Stryker and Airborne BCTs -- offer capabilities that enable U.S. European Command to build partner capacity and to meet interoperability objectives while supporting the full range of military operations, including collective defense of our NATO allies under Article 5 of the Washington Treaty.

This BCT mix will be complemented by other capability enhancements, including the forward deployment of Aegis ships, land-based missile defense systems in Poland and Romania as part of the European Phased Adaptive Approach, forward-stationing of special operations aircraft, and a permanent aviation detachment in Poland. Taken together, these measures will enhance and rebalance the U.S. force posture in Europe to make it more capable, more effective, and better aligned with current and future security challenges.
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Old 04-16-2011, 11:28 AM
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NATO runs short on some munitions in Libya


Gallery: Conflict and chaos in Libya: As international airstrikes continue against forces loyal to Moammar Gaddafi, rebels face difficult battles.




By Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe, Friday, April 15, 8:46 PM


Less than a month into the Libyan conflict, NATO is running short of precision bombs, highlighting the limitations of Britain, France and other European countries in sustaining even a relatively small military action over an extended period of time, according to senior NATO and U.S. officials.


Video

Video: World leaders gathered in Berlin and Cairo to discuss the ongoing crisis in Libya. They are seeking an end to the violence, but rebels say government attacks on civilians are intensifying. (April 14)


Graphic


Graphic: Follow how events are unfolding in Libya.



The shortage of European munitions, along with the limited number of aircraft available, has raised doubts among some officials about whether the United States can continue to avoid returning to the air campaign if Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi hangs on to power for several more months.

U.S. strike aircraft that participated in the early stage of the operation, before the United States relinquished command to NATO and assumed what President Obama called a supporting” role, have remained in the theater “on 12-hour standby” with crews “constantly briefed on the current situation,” a NATO official said.

So far, the NATO commander has not requested their deployment. Several U.S. military officials said they anticipated being called back into the fight, although a senior administration official said he expected other countries to announce “in the next few days” that they would contribute aircraft equipped with the laser-guided munitions.

Opposition spokesmen in the western Libyan city of Misurata, under steady bombardment by government shelling, said Friday that Gaddafi’s forces had used cluster bombs, and Human Rights Watch said its representatives on the ground had witnessed the explosion of cluster munitions in civilian areas there. The Libyan government denied the weapons had been used.

A spokesman for the Misurata City Council appealed for NATO to send ground troops to secure the port that is the besieged city’s only remaining humanitarian lifeline.

The opposition has also repeatedly called for an increase in NATO airstrikes. The six countries conducting the air attacks, led by Britain and France, were unsuccessful at a meeting this week in Berlin in persuading more alliance members to join them.

NATO officials said that their operational tempo has not decreased since the United States relinquished command of the Libya operation and withdrew its strike aircraft at the beginning of April. More planes, they said, would not necessarily result immediately in more strike missions.

But, they said, the current bombing rate by the participating nations is not sustainable. “The reason we need more capability isn’t because we aren’t hitting what we see — it’s so that we can sustain the ability to do so. One problem is flight time, the other is munitions,” said another official, one of several who were not authorized to discuss the issue on the record.

European arsenals of laser-guided bombs, the NATO weapon of choice in the Libyan campaign, have been quickly depleted, officials said. Although the United States has significant stockpiles, its munitions do not fit on the British- and French-made planes that have flown the bulk of the missions.

Britain and France have each contributed about 20 strike aircraft to the campaign. Belgium, Norway, Denmark and Canada have each contributed six — all of them U.S.-manufactured and compatible with U.S. weaponry.

Since the end of March, more than 800 strike missions have been flown, with U.S. aircraft conducting only three, targeting static Libyan air defense installations. The United States still conducts about 25 percent of the overall sorties over Libya, largely intelligence, jamming and refueling missions.

Other NATO countries, along with the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Jordan, have contributed planes to enforcing a no-fly zone over Libya to prevent Gaddafi’s use of airpower, but so far have declined to participate in the strike missions.

After the Berlin meeting, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rassmussen said that 10 more aircraft were needed and that he was confident they would be supplied. A U.S. official said that Italy — which earlier in the week said it was not interested — may contribute planes to the ground attack mission, and that the Arab participants might also do so.

But with Gaddafi’s forces and the rebel army locked in a stalemate, Obama has resisted calls from opposition leaders, and some hardline lawmakers in this country, to move U.S. warplanes back into a leading role.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and other have called on Obama to redeploy U.S. AC-130 gunships, which are considered more effective over populated areas.

Although the gunships flew several missions early in the operation, Gen. Carter Ham, who commanded the mission before it was turned over to NATO, said last week that they were frequently grounded because of weather and other concerns.

The slow-moving aircraft, which flew as low as 4,000 feet over Libya, are also considerably more vulnerable than jet fighters to surface-to-air missiles. While much of Libya’s stationary air defenses have been destroyed, Ham said Gaddafi was believed to have about 20,000 shoulder-held SAMS at the beginning of the conflict, and “most” of them are still unaccounted for.

Concerns that supplies of jet-launched precision bombs are growing short in Europe have reignited long-standing controversies over both burden-sharing and compatibility within NATO. While allied jets have largely followed the U.S. lead and converted to precision munitions over the last decade, they have struggled to keep pace, according to senior U.S. military officials.

Libya “has not been a very big war. If [the Europeans] would run out of these munitions this early in such a small operation, you have to wonder what kind of war they were planning on fighting,” said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a defense think tank. “Maybe they were just planning on using their air force for air shows.”

Despite U.S. badgering, European allies have been slow in some cases to modify their planes and other weapons systems so they can accommodate U.S. bombs. Retooling these fighter jets so that they are compatible with U.S. systems requires money, and all European militaries have faced significant cuts in recent years.

Typically, the British and French militaries buy munitions in batches and stockpile them. When arsenals start to run low, factories must be retooled and production lines restarted to replace the diminished stock, all of which can take time and additional money, said Elizabeth Quintana, an aerospace analyst at the Royal United Service Institute in London.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...y.html?hpid=z1
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