Thursday, August 25, 2011

Counting Coup

Any discussion of the effectiveness of the NATO air campaign should just ignore the simplistic count of enemy equipment destroyed from the air:


So in five months of air strikes we destroyed 555 tanks and armored vehicles? We got 610 other military vehicles and 285 artillery pieces (including rocket launchers)? So 111 tanks, 122 other vehicles, and 57 artillery per month? Or fewer than ten total per day?

And given that stopping Khaddafi's air force from killing civilians was the justification for intervention, isn't it notable that we destroyed only 10 warplanes?

War is not so quantifiable and tallying up our coups against the loyalists may make our air force people content but misses the point of how you win wars. Libya had plenty of weapons and just destroying them at this rate would have taken years to disarm Khaddafi.

Let's work a little harder on the lessons of the war, shall we? In the end, we did way more than what we planned to do in order to achieve victory. Let's not think that the original notions of an air-power campaign led to victory.