

Keep the surveillance planes flying. Fry the radar. While the sun hangs in the sky, let Libya's pilots know they're on borrowed time if they take off.

There's a lot of talk about setting up a no-fly zone over Libya – especially now that Moammar Gadhafi used his planes to take the oil refinery city of Ras Lunuf back from the rebels, and especially now that the Director of National Intelligence proclaimed that Gadhafi would eventually beat back the opposition, unless there's some serious outside support. But NATO stopped short of any such decision on Thursday. A raft of U.S. military leaders, from Defense Secretary Robert Gates to Adm. Michael Mullen to Gen. James Mattis of Central Command, have warned that a no-fly zone is neither a simple or antiseptic operation.

Air Force leaders and veterans of no-fly campaigns contacted by Danger Room agree with that caution. Keeping Gadhafi's planes and helicopters out of the sky is no cakewalk, and the objectives are anything but clear. But they sketched out the following picture of what one might look like.

Blowing up Libya's surface-to-air defenses is the first wave of a no-fly campaign, as Secretary Gates noted. But to do that, there's an even more preliminary step: use the AWACS surveillance and command planes that NATO is now flying 24-7 to find Libya's radars, command and control and missile stations. "I'm absolutely certain," says retired Gen. Pete Piotrowski, a former Air Force Vice Chief of Staff, "that the intelligence community knows the location of the surface to air missiles and the radars," thanks to the AWACS.

High-speed anti-radiation missiles, or HARMs, can then take out the radars – which would render the Libyans' missiles dumb without having to take out every missile station. Bombing would take care of the Libyan command and control centers, too, once AWACS identifies them. And a blind Libyan air command can't challenge NATO aircraft. "If you take out the command and control, [the Libyans] may get lucky," says retired Maj. Gen. Irv Halter, who helped run Operation Northern Watch, the no-fly zone over northern Iraq, "but they'll be looking through a soda straw."

A trickier target will be the Libyan fleet of attack helicopters, which Marine Commandant James Amos identified as a crucial part of Gadhafi's arsenal. While it's possible that precision weaponry from the NATO aircraft thousands of feet above could take the copters out, military analyst Kori Schake of the Hoover Institution suggests using French and British carriers in the southern Mediterranean to launch helicopters of NATO's own, plus "missiles and naval gunfire" to keep the copters grounded. (There's also talk of cratering runways and helicopter staging areas, so the aircraft can't get off of the ground.)

Halter notices something significant about the Libyan MiG and Mirage jets: They're flying at about 15,000 feet, and only during the day. That tells him they're worried about shoulder-fired and truck-launched missiles from the rebels beneath them, and their own pilots aren't very accurate at night. Accordingly, that means any Combat Air Patrol to keep the Libyans out of the sky should cover the daylight hours – 14, 16 hours at most.

Piotrowski's calculation is to run four Combat Air Patrols, or CAPs, of two aircraft each during that time: F-15s, F-16s, maybe with the F/A-18s from the Navy or Marines, equipped with air-to-air missiles to shoot down Libyan planes if necessary. (Retired Lt. Gen. Dave Deptula recently wrote that NATO should use F-22 Raptors, but Halter said the Raptor's stealth capabilities weren't necessary for Libya; besides, there aren't any F-22s based in Europe.) From Irving's perspective, an open-ended mission would require about 50 fighters – F-15s and -16s, plus British Tornadoes and French Mirages – with eight planes in the air at all times during the CAPs. He also advises keeping at least 10 and up to 20 KC-135 airborne tankers in the skies to allow for refueling – meaning those tankers won't be helping planes over Afghanistan refuel.

Where would those planes fly from? In addition to keeping an aircraft carrier in the southern Mediterranean, pretty much everyone agrees that the ideal base to support a no-fly mission is Naval Air Station Sigonella in Sicily, about 300 miles from Libya. It's got "a good runway, a good taxiway that can act as an alternate/emergency runway, reasonable amounts of parking for large and small aircraft alike, and of course housing for the operations and maintenance crews for a Northern Watch-level of resources," says retired Col. Rod Zastrow, another Northern Watch veteran.

Zastrow thinks Northern Watch, a mission that lasted over a decade, is particularly illustrative for Libya. "We would have roughly four F-15 aircraft flying what I would call 'top cover' and then a number of aircraft below or near us ready to engage any [surface-to-air missiles] that might pop up or to drop bombs on pop-up AAA [anti-aircraft artillery] or pre-approved targets as retribution for AAA fired on us on the current mission," he recalls. Add up all the AWACS, other intelligence aircraft, refuelers and fighters, and by by 1999, the U.S. had 24 planes in the air "to cover maybe a three-hour window on a roughly every-other-day schedule."

If all this seems like a large commitment, on an open-ended schedule, it should. All the debate over a no-fly zone hasn't resolved just what the goal of the mission would be. Buying time for the rebels on the ground? Eventually taking out Gadhafi's ground forces – which, after all, do the majority of the fighting? Staying until Gadhafi is overthrown? Also, what would the rules of engagement be? Anything that flies during the day dies? Just fighter aircraft, or would Libyan troop transport copters be fair game? And remember, as Irving reminds, "anything you use for this, you are choosing not to use them for something else."

Piotrowski says the no-fly zone should only be imposed if NATO is planning to do other things to tip the military balance to Gadhafi's enemies. Whether it's equipping the rebels or getting a proxy Arab force to help them on the ground – Piotrowski balks at NATO planes providing close air support to the Libyan rebels – the fact that NATO will be intervening means it needs "something leading to the overthrow of Gadhafi." All of a sudden, a no-fly zone – which, after all, is an act of war – doesn't seem so antiseptic. No wonder NATO isn't exactly jumping to set one up.

Photo: U.S. Air Force

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