NATO is running short of crucial ammunition like precision bombs following less than a month into the Libyan conflict, indicating the limitations of the participating European Union nations in sustaining the military action over an extended period of time, NATO and U.S. officials have said.
This alone demonstrates that NATO thought the war would be over by now.
I'm not shocked at this news. Although it is distressing to see a small air war against an enfeebled enemy depleting European ammunition stocks so quickly.
Europeans basically assume we'll take care of this sort of thing, so the Europeans don't waste much money buying smart bombs to sit around unused. Normally, they figure that they just need to run a few token bombing runs while we do the work so that they can sit at the post-war table, too.
Our bombs don't fit European planes. So hopes that Khaddafi will run out of money before NATO runs out of bombs may be dashed.
Unless our smart diplomacy can pull a fast one, it will be an all-American war in no time at all. Or we let Khaddafi win.
Isn't nuanced foreign policy grand? One can almost feel our reputation abroad being restored every day.
UPDATE: The Washington Post expands on the pathetic European war near Libya:
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.
So in less than a month, European NATO countries have managed to contribute 58 strike aircraft. I'm not counting the planes tracing figure eights in the empty skies over Libya.
And the British and French are already running out of smart munitions. But not to worry! We can ship missiles and bombs to the Belgian, Norwegian, Danish, and Canadian 24, because their planes can use American weapons.
This quote has it about right:
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.
The vast West European continent can't deploy even a full wing of combat aircraft and sustain it in a war against Libya for more than a month. And Russia worries that NATO will attack them?
I'm getting depressed. Libya is going to beat NATO unless we take over the war (and then fight it right). If only Europe early on had sent in even a single combat division to land near Tripoli and drive on the capital to take it, the major combat operations would be over and the smart bomb shortage never would have raised its ugly head.
