Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Can The US Enforce A Libyan No Fly Zone By Bombing Libya's Airstrips?



Cratered Runways -- Neptunus Lex

President Obama and Defense Secretary Gates are getting a little cross-aisle feedback from the Senate:

(Kerry) contradicted Defence Secretary Robert Gates, who condemned “loose talk” about a no-fly zone last week, saying it amounted to military intervention. “A no-fly zone begins with an attack on Libya to destroy the air defences,” Dr Gates told a congressional committee hearing.

Speaking on CBS, Senator Kerry said: “That’s actually not the only option for what one could do. One could crater the airports and the runways and leave them incapable of using them for a period of time.”

The senator, a Vietnam War veteran and Democratic presidential nominee in 2004, was backed by senior Republican colleague John McCain.

Senator Kerry’s Vietnam War experience as a brown water sailor had little to do with alpha strikes on runways, which are deucedly hard to crack for any extended period of time, often fiercely defended and relatively easy to repair.

Senator McCain, on the other hand, does have some relevant domain experience on air defenses:

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