Yesterday an international coalition began Operation Odyssey Dawn against Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces. The organizational structure set up to conduct operations is Joint Task Force (JTF) Odyssey Dawn. The JTF commander is U.S. Navy Admiral Samuel J. Locklear who is directing operations from the command ship USS Mount Whitney. Twenty four additional ships from Italy, Canada, the United Kingdom and France are also part of the JTF.
The JTF launched the opening salvo of 110 Tomahawk cruise missiles from U.S. submarines and frigates. The targets were Libya’s air and missile defense systems around Tripoli and along the coast. As mentioned in earlier blogs, in order to set up a no-fly zone it’s necessary to destroy Libya’s capability to shoot down coalition aircraft participating in enforcement of the zone. The Pentagon announced in addition to cruise missiles the U.S. will provide command and control. During a briefing to the media, Navy Vice Admiral William E. Gortney, director of the Joint Staff stated: “The goals of these initial operations are essentially twofold: first, to prevent further attacks by regime forces on Libyan citizens and opposition groups, especially around Benghazi, and second, to degrade the regime’s capability to resist the no-fly zone we are implementing under that United Nations resolution. Gortney said the targets were carefully picked and either threatened coalition pilots or posed a threat to the Libyan people. “I want to stress that this is just the first phase of what will likely be a multipurpose military operation designed to enforce the UN resolution.” Of note, the U.S. airmen and sailors will also launch electronic attacks against the missile defense systems.
The Admiral said for now the U.S. was in charge but, “we anticipate the eventual transition of leadership to a coalition commander in the coming days…Our mission now is to shape the battle space in such a way that our partners can take the lead in execution.” I found it interesting that there has been intense speculation in the media over who was in charge of these operations. France? Great Britain? All they had to do was check with the Pentagon. Maybe they did and didn’t believe them…go figure.
Things to look out for in the coming days. The Arab League has endorsed the no-fly zone. What if any forces will the various nations provide to participate? Early in this crisis, key members of the Libyan government and military had gone over to the side of the rebels. In spite of that, Colonel Qaddafi was able to consolidate his support and launch the attacks against the rebel forces. With the involvement of the international community, will his support start to erode again? The high tech weapons will destroy Libya’s air defense but the man portable surface to air missiles will remain. In this era of media scrutiny of military operations, just shooting down one of the aircraft enforcing the no-fly zone would be a tactical victory for Libya. I call this the golden BB effect. The UN resolution also calls for an arms embargo. Will the coalition stop and search merchant ships suspected of carrying arms to Libya? If so that will require a significant naval effort.
Think I’ll end here. As always, my views are my own.
