Libyan forces clashed with Tunisian border forces:
Forces loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi fought a gun battle with Tunisian troops in a frontier town on Friday as Libya's conflict spilled over its borders.
Pro-Gaddafi forces shelled the town of Dehiba, damaging buildings and wounding at least one resident, and a squad drove into the town in a truck chasing anti-Gaddafi rebels.
Tunisia only has 27,000 troops, so although they could deal with any persistent Libyan border identification issues (if deployed to the border), I doubt that they would try to be a decisive force in the Libyan civil war.
And while loyalists battle for the port and airport of Misrata, which remains under rebel control, NATO stopped loyalists from mining the Misrata harbor:
British Brigadier Rob Weighill, director of NATO operations in Libya, said NATO warships stopped pro-Kadhafi forces on Friday from laying water mines in Misrata's harbour.
"Our ships intercepted the small boats that were laying them and we are disposing the mines that we found," Weighill told reporters via videoconference from his headquarters in Naples, Italy.
Also interesting:
In Paris, the military said French jets were dropping inert bombs packed with concrete instead of explosives to destroy Kadhafi tanks without killing civilians.
Spokesman Thierry Burkhard denied rumours that the use of the 300-kilogram (660-pound) training devices was prompted by a shortage of real bombs, adding that the first such strike crushed an armoured vehicle on Tuesday.
Saying the use of cement bombs wasn't prompted by a shortage of smart bombs isn't the same that there isn't a smart bomb shortage. In France's defense, we used the same trick during the no-fly zone battles with Saddam's air defenses in the 1990s when Saddam placed air defense systems near mosques or schools to bait us into inflicting collateral damage he could broadcast to the world to undermine our sanctions and containment. Concrete smart bomb warheads would hit close enough to disable unarmored air defense weapons with cement chips (if not a direct hit) without damaging nearby buildings with the blast of a regular bomb. So it could be a good idea to use such bombs within Libyan cities both to avoid collateral damage and to save the exploding bombs for other targets.
Which brings me back to the question of how much our air offensive has hurt the loyalist arsenal. This article puts some numbers on it:
[The British director of NATO operations over Libya] said the target hit during the aerial onslaught include 220 tanks and armored personnel carriers, 200 ammunition facilities and 70 surface-to-air missile systems.
"NATO has already demonstrated the extent to which we are versatile and able to switch focus depending on where the major threats to civilian populations are," he said, adding that the alliance is now also focusing on Zintan and Yefrin, two towns southwest of the capital Tripoli where pro-Gadhafi forces were conducting offensive operations. NATO said its warplanes had already destroyed a dozen tanks in the region earlier this month.
So in about 40 days of air attack, we've destroyed 5.5 tanks and armored vehicles each day. This puts some context into the NATO claim 6 days earlier that we've destroyed 30-40 percent of Khaddafi's ground force capabilities.
Let's put it at 40% since that was a while ago. Destroying 220 loyalist tanks and armored fighting vehicles must mean that the whole loyalist force in combat must be capable of deploying 550 tanks and armored personnel carriers. Assuming about 30 tanks and armored vehicles for a small mechanized battalion totaling no more than 500 troops, that would mean about 18 battalions are in action--which would seem to be close to my guess early on of what Khaddafi could put in the field with his loyal regular forces (10,000 loyal regular troops overall, plus other less reliable regular troops, mercenaries, paramilitaries, militias, and naval and air force personnel pressed into ground service). Plus there are artillery pieces and rockets in military vehicles plus civilian vehicles pressed into service to avoid NATO planes.
But as I noted in the post linked above, Khaddafi started the war with over 4,000 tanks and armored vehicles. If Khaddafi only needs 550 to equip his fielded units at 100%, we have a way to go if attrition is to disarm Khaddafi. Unless we kill the crews of every vehicle destroyed and Khaddafi can't get replacements, we'd have to destroy about 3,500 tanks and armored vehicles just to start cutting into the front-line strength (minus tanks that can't be put into operation and any stuck in rebel territory at the start of the civil war). We've gotten 220 so far, leaving about 3,200 to go.
At the rate of 5.5 tanks and armored vehicles destroyed per day, we can look forward to finally cutting into Khaddafi's frontline strength in 582 days. Assuming concrete bombs can match the work of the exploding kind.
And you wonder why I look for means other than air strikes that might topple the Khaddafi regime?
I really hope we get lucky.
