Uprising in Libya

[Big Orange]

Another reason why I think Britain is too out of shape to go around saving the world (even though I'm not against bombing Gaddafi on principle), while showing how dumb, arrogant, and averse to strategy the British establishment is:

Forces serving in Libya to be told: you face the sack
Royal Navy personnel taking part in the Libyan intervention and soldiers fighting in Afghanistan will be told next week that they could be sacked under defence cuts, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.
Military commanders from the Army and Navy will inform serving members of the Armed Forces on Monday that they could be among more than 2,000 uniformed personnel to be made redundant in September.

Those eligible for the redundancy programme starting next week will include some soldiers presently completing tours in Afghanistan. Seamen currently aboard warships and submarines in the Mediterranean supporting operations in Libya will also be told they could be included.

The prospect of making redundant personnel on operations will be highly controversial in light of ministers’ repeated promises to protect the front line.

Although not certain that those deployed in the Mediterranean and Afghanistan will be sacked, commanders fear morale will be seriously harmed by making front-line personnel eligible for redundancy.

“It is inevitable there will be disharmony when you are making targeted sackings across the board,” said a Navy source.

On Monday, the Army and Navy will set out the first redundancies. The Daily Telegraph understands the Army will announce that 561 redundancies will be made on Sept 1. Approximately 150 of those will be officers, raising questions about the Army’s future leadership.

The Navy is expected to announce that about 1,600 job losses will be made on Sept 30. Approximately one third are expected to be officers.

Ultimately, the Army will lose 7,000 personnel and the Royal Navy 5,000 over three years.

The Army and Navy will begin the redundancy programme by setting out the “fields” or groups of personnel whose numbers must be reduced. Every employee potentially at risk has to be informed by their employer.

It is believed that some sailors on HMS Cumberland, a frigate enforcing the Libyan arms embargo, could fall within the fields where cuts will be made.

Submariners on HMS Turbulence, a Trafalgar-class submarine off the Libyan coast, could also be eligible.

In the Army, it is understood that cuts will be made across all units, with some infantry, cavalry, artillery and logistics personnel losing their jobs. The Gurkhas will be particularly affected, sources said.

Ministers have previously promised that no one serving in Afghanistan would be sacked because of the cuts announced in last year’s defence review.

The Ministry of Defence said the promise would protect personnel in Afghanistan on Sept 1, when the Army redundancies begin. Those preparing to deploy or who have just returned from the country will also be shielded. However, many personnel now in Afghanistan will be eligible for inclusion in the redundancy programme, because they will leave well before September.

Troops from 16 Air Assault Brigade — including the Household Cavalry, the Irish Guards and the Parachute Regiment — are currently finishing a tour in Helmand. A senior Army source said: “We are inevitably going to get grizzled sergeants who will be told by their commanding officer on Monday that they are in the field for taking redundancy. It won’t be pretty but there’s no other way to do this.”

Patrick Mercer, a Conservative MP and a former Army officer, said he was concerned at how the MoD was dealing with the issue. “Whatever the rights and wrongs of defence cuts it is vitally important that our fighting men and women are not undermined while they are fighting the Queen’s enemies.”

Andrew Robathan, the Minister for Defence Personnel, Welfare and Veterans, said: “That we have to make any Armed Forces personnel redundant is deeply regrettable and a consequence of the dire economic situation and appalling deficit in the defence budget that we inherited. On the dates redundancy notices are issued no personnel preparing for, deployed on, or returning from combat operations and in receipt of post-tour leave will be made compulsorily redundant.”

Michael Dugher, the shadow defence minister, said: “Ministers should stick to undertakings they have given that their cuts will not impact on the front line.

“Such treatment will rightly be seen as shabby in the extreme.”

The Telegraph

[aieeegrunt]

"...Making mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than then uniforms, an' they're starvation cheap
An' hustlin drunken soldiers when they're goin' large a bit
Is five times better business than paradin' in full kit..."

[Sarevok]

ETA to the post above since I missed the editing deadline:

In history most popular uprisings like the French Revolution, the Russian Red October, the American War for Independence or even the armed insurgency against the Soviet incursion in Afghanistan had the rebels fare poorly until either large swaths of the army defected, they got professional military drill and/or massive support from the outside. Therefore I ask again, what exactly were the people complaining so vocally about the lybian rebel's performance expecting? I mean scoffing and mocking does kinda' imply they expected better, doesn't it?

Infact the Rebels have done some astounding things. Like destroy Mig-23 jets with machine guns. They are doing well inspite of their poor armaments.

[GeorgeOrr]

I came across these extremely graphic videos and I'm not sure what to make of them. Are these the people Obama wanted to help?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=547j6BUvLw8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2T8nlGI-64
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WL7frA8d2wc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVukQDXuCSE

[Metahive]

Have you checked the sources? It reeks of astroturfing and propaganda, particularly the "Rebels=Al-Quaeda" claim they prominently feature. May I ask you how you happened upon these particular batches of videos?

[HMS Sophia]

Like destroy Mig-23 jets with machine guns.

I'm assuming you mean in the air. Which is kind of cool.
And by machine gun, are we talking a 50 cal. or the 20mm AA guns we've seen strapped to the back of Toyota pick-ups?

[K. A. Pital]

Today in the news there were reports of NATO bombing the crap out of rebels they were supposed to help - with videos of the aftermath - and the rebels being quite pissed off. As well as, yeah, first reports of inevitable civilian dead and wounded.

[Pu-239]

According to Al-Jazeera, the bombing may be in response to the aircraft being fired at by Daffy infilitrators.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6DiA7l9 ... r_embedded

[Pu-239]

The Wapo on the other hand attributes it to celebratory gunfire.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/lib ... story.html

[Tribun]

In other news, an oil tanker is getting loaded at Tobruk. How much can the rebels gain from oil tanker, I wonder? The sum should be quite high, I imagine, especially for their normal level.

[Prannon]

I'm more interested in the economic legitimacy it seems to offer to the rebels. The article I read on the BBC mentioned that Qatar and Italy have both recognized the Transitional Council as the sole legitimate government of Libya.

[Beowulf]

In other news, an oil tanker is getting loaded at Tobruk. How much can the rebels gain from oil tanker, I wonder? The sum should be quite high, I imagine, especially for their normal level.

Assuming a standard-ish Aframax tanker (~100k tonnes capacity), and a $100/barrel price, a tankerful of oil is worth about $55 million dollars. Not too shabby. Naturally, it varies depending on exactly how much they get per barrel, and how big the tanker is, as well as how dense the oil is.

[Simon_Jester]

Even then, the credibility it gives them may be worth more than the fifty million dollars of oil; if they can organize Cyrenaica well enough to run its major ports and keep up some degree of industrial activity, it's a sign that they may actually be able to govern the country, rather than simply having the place fall into chaos as soon as Qaddafi goes.

[Thanas]

In other news, NATO refused to apologize to the rebels for hitting them. The reason: "They used tanks, so they had to be Ghaddafi troops".



Meanwhile, Germany is continuing to make a fool out of itself. Now the Parliament is considering a "humanitarian mission" to Rebel territories. So...we are going to land Ground troops there who are supposed to "only defend themselves when fired upon" to help stave off a humanitarian catastrophe? While we also pray real hard that Ghaddafi does not attack the German mission? How is that supposed to work? Unless the objective is to drag Germany into the war via proxy, I cannot make sense out of this.

[PeZook]

In other news, NATO refused to apologize to the rebels for hitting them. The reason: "They used tanks, so they had to be Ghaddafi troops".

I am always flabbergasted at that. What, do the terrorists government troops win if you say "Oh damn we're really sorry", even when knowing there was no way to really avoid the bombing?

Maybe some of our locals will be able to explain the reasoning behind that with extensive knowledge of otherwise useless military trivia?

[Alyeska]

An apology makes you look weak in front of others. Must save face.

[Thanas]

Yeah, but the Vice-Commander of Nato was especially arrogant and smug when he proclaimed that. It looked like he basically did not even care.

[K. A. Pital]

Yeah, but the Vice-Commander of Nato was especially arrogant and smug when he proclaimed that. It looked like he basically did not even care.

I don't think it's a "we look weak if we apologize" (look weak before whom, the war-torn Third World nation in Africa?!). It's a genuine "we don't give a flying fuck", simply callousness that is universally common to military officials.

And why is that any surprise? How can a First Worlder, who sits in his warm cozy home and faces no threat of being accidentaly blown up by a bomb, care about some brown people in ... where is it now - Libya? Right, Libya-ah! ...being accidentally blown up? That seems extremely unlikely to me. Especially considering the fact that we're talking about a military commander. Those type of people undergo a special kind of schooling in devaluation of life. I wouldn't miss the mark if I say he cares more about his dog than about accidentally killed Libyans. After all, he is but an ape like we all are, and an ape trained in the art of war. Not the kind of person you expect to understand ethics. He is specialized to understand how to destroy military targets the most efficient way and accomplish war objectives, destroy stuff, deploy forces, run sorties, logistically support the military machine and so on. Even own soldiers in this job are turned into human assets, numbers in the plan, dots on the map, etc.

His very job is on the other end of the spectrum of human activities from the jobs and occupations that stimulate empathy to people. Truly, it is a wonder to me that some of our members expect more empathy from military commanders than they do from political leaders.

Incidentally, has any political leader apologized, or?

[aieeegrunt]

Friendly fire accidents like this are a lot commoner than is known in the general public. The NATO commander's apparent callousness is probably just the fact that if you want fire support, every so often your going to have a blue on blue screwup. Given this scenario here, where you have fire support from multiple first world militaries trying to coordinate with third world civilian militias, something like this was almost guarenteed to happen.

Many of the news articles I've read that have bothered to actually question the Libyan rebels on this matter, the rebels themselves are pissed but seem to understand this point.

[PeZook]

The actual point, on the other hand, is that it costs NATO literally nothing to go "shit, dudes, we're sorry" when this happens, and it's good PR.

Yes, we understand such incidents will happen, especially since the rebels don't have training or equipment to properly coordinate with air support. It doesn't hurt to express some basic regret every now and then.

You now, to show the west actually gives a fuck about the people it's helping.

I'd think generals would have some basic PR sense drilled into them in today's world of omnipresent media...

[Shroom Man 777]

Maybe some of our locals will be able to explain the reasoning behind that with extensive knowledge of otherwise useless military trivia?

That fiend McNamara thought it was more efficient and cost-saving to cut funding to military friendly-fire/accidental-bombing apologies, when back in the good old golden days of the SAC Saint Curtis had a 24 hour rotating fleet of military apologies constantly flying in the air, with each apology having a regret-load of five megasorries as proscribed by the exact computations of Herman Kahn? And these apologies were also powered by nuclear reactors? *inserts useless crap from the 1960s here*

The Air Force was going to make a new series of military apologies, but that fucker Jimmy Carter cut it again!

[Sea Skimmer]

Rebels call for more close air support for days, NATO obliges and mistakes happen. Yeah I see can see they wont apologize for that. A damn good reason existed why NATO didn’t want to fly those kinds of missions now that US assets are out of the picture. Trying to deduce a tactical situation looking through 500mph a soda straw from 20,000ft isn’t easy. This is NATO telling the rebels that if you want to win that way, you’ll have to accept this is going to happen. If the US was still involved then some armed Predators would be far more effective then fast jets for figuring out who is who.

[Sarevok]

Interesting point about the Predators Skimmers.

Does not anybody else have armed drones available for duty in Libya ?

[Zaune]

Interesting point about the Predators Skimmers.

Does not anybody else have armed drones available for duty in Libya ?

The British have Predators in service, but not in any great numbers, and in any case they don't have the range to be much use without a carrier to fly them off. The next best thing available to us would be Apache AH1s off the deck of HMS Ocean, but she's on exercise with the US Navy right now.

[aieeegrunt]

The actual point, on the other hand, is that it costs NATO literally nothing to go "shit, dudes, we're sorry" when this happens, and it's good PR.

Yes, we understand such incidents will happen, especially since the rebels don't have training or equipment to properly coordinate with air support. It doesn't hurt to express some basic regret every now and then.

You now, to show the west actually gives a fuck about the people it's helping.

I'd think generals would have some basic PR sense drilled into them in today's world of omnipresent media...

Ya you're absolutely right about that one. Also, it's been too long since the last Shroomy MacNamara 60's military shenanigans post, always makes me chuckle.