The two-month-old civil war in Libya is about to get a lot deadlier, for both sides.
In a bid to break a weeks-long stalemate in Libya, France and the U.K. have simultaneously made a portentous decision. Both countries are deploying tank-busting attack helicopters from their respective amphibious ships, currently sailing off the Libyan coast.
“What we want is to better tailor our ability to strike on the ground with ways that allow more accurate hits,” said French diplomat Alain Juppe.
There are three British Army WAH-64D Apaches (pictured above) embarked on the assault ship HMSOcean, with up to three more on the way. The choppers were recently re-certified for shipboard use, as a partial replacement for the Royal Navy’s recently-retired aircraft carrier and Harrier jump jets.
An unspecified number of French army Tiger choppers were reportedly among a dozen choppers aboard the assault ship Tonnerre.
The British and French gunships are equipped with rockets, guns, guided missiles and sophisticated day and night sensors. Both types, plus their American counterparts, have proved to be some of thedeadliest weapons of the Afghanistan war. But in the open terrain of North Africa, against an opponent armed with anti-aircraft guns and heat-seeking missiles, the helicopter gunships could prove as vulnerable to ground forces as ground forces are to them.
That’s a lesson the U.S. Army learned the hard way in Iraq in 2003, when Iraqi troops unleashed a barrage of ground fire on an aerial armada of 32 Apache gunships passing over the city of Najaf. One Apache was shot down and its two-man crew captured. Most of the rest of the helicopters were damaged. The Army aborted the mission and quickly changed its helicopter tactics to include flying faster and higher.
Despite the new methods, the U.S. has lost scores of gunships to crashes and enemy fire in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001.
The French and British choppers could face similar dangers. Though NATO succeeded in destroying many of Qadhafi’s fixed, long-range Surface-to-Air Missile systems in the early hours of the bombing campaign that began on March 20, the Libyan regime’s small, mobile SA-6 and SA-8 missiles have proved more difficult to find and kill. These weapons, plus the countless shoulder-fired missiles in Qadhafi’s arsenal, pose a “high risk” to NATO aircraft, according to the Pentagon.
“There’s even more risk using helicopters as they are easier to shoot down, and it’s a serious political problem if you have casualties or people captured,” Daniel Keohane of the E.U. Institute for Security Studies told Reuters.
Perhaps even more disconcerting is that NATO didn’t seem to know the French helos were showing up.
“At this stage, we have heard that they have got a ship with helicopters in the Mediterranean,” a NATO spokesman tells the Los Angeles Times. “They’re not part of us.”
If that lack of coordination continues, it’s almost a surefire recipe for friendly fire.
On the other hand, no warplane is more adept than the attack helicopter at flying low, searching close, finding and killing dug-in ground troops. Gunships, particularly American Apaches, are easily the most called-upon and most devastating weapon on the NATO side of the Afghanistan war. With adequate protection, the right tactics and — most importantly — a willingness to accept losses, the British and French choppers could make a big dent in Qadhafi’s remaining forces.
The decision to deploy attack helicopters was a long time in coming, a clear sign NATO appreciates the major escalation that the move represents. As early as April, analysts were saying helicopters might be necessary to root out Qadhafi’s most determined defenders. The British Apaches began preparing for sea operations in early May. In the meantime, the Royal Navy tried less risky methods of hitting Qadhafi’s troops, including gunfire from the destroyer HMS Liverpool.
As Britain and France up the ante in Libya, the U.S. continues to resist playing a larger role. U.S. Air Force A-10 attack planes and AC-130 gunships already represent the alliance’s most precise ground-attackers, short of helicopters. Plus, “we continue to provide the majority of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pointed out.
But the Pentagon, notably, has not volunteered its own Apache and Cobra attack helicopters for ultra-dangerous Libya duty.
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