Uprising in Libya

[Raj Ahten]

The New York Times ran an interesting piece yesterday where they interviewed captured troops from Qaddafi's side. It speaks of officers acting badly by abandoning troops and lying to them constantly. Apparently his troops have also had a worsening supply situation shown by things such as multi day waits for medical evacuation. These reports match a lot of what you hear about forces in the third world and gives some confirmation about how neglected Libya’s army in general has been.

Aricle here.

[xerex]

Gaddafi's Libyans seem to be very heavy users of artillery and extensive combined arms in general. This seems to be in stark contrast with their reputation as so incompetent they can not defeat technicals with tanks. Did they suddenly improve since the debacle of Chad invasion ?

using numerous kinds of arms does not mean using "combined arms" What the Libyan seem to be doing a lot of is using unsupported artilley without sufficient mobile units to advance quickly or infanrty support to actually hold ground.

part of the Libyan military's incompetance was and is thier over reliance on artillery to do thier fighting for them. They prefer pounding at a distance to actually up close fighting.

from the book "Arabs at War" it is stated that Libya sent a unit down to Uganda to assist Idi Amin in his war with Tanzania. Since the Libyans were the only artilley equipped force in the war at first they made good progress agianst the Tanzanians.

Then the Tanzanians noticed the Libyans didnt post sentries and were unfamiliar with terrain. So they launched a sneak attack at night skirting a swamp and ended up capturing half the Libyan artilley.

The Libyans ended up retreating all the way to the Ugandan capital.

[doomboy536]

Didn't the Libyans also end up losing a huge amount of tanks to militia carrying RPGs and riding around in pickups?

[Sea Skimmer]

Gaddafi's Libyans seem to be very heavy users of artillery and extensive combined arms in general. This seems to be in stark contrast with their reputation as so incompetent they can not defeat technicals with tanks. Did they suddenly improve since the debacle of Chad invasion ?

No it’s just that the Libyan military has always had many different units of highly varying quality so that only the people known to be loyal are remotely trained. Being able to merely use your weapons doesn't mean much; all the more so when you are using BM-21 rocket launchers to randomly shell a city. Anyone could do that, literally anyone, the things are dead simple. Military competence goes a lot deeper, and no I would not say they’ve done that great on combined arms, they sent unsupported tanks into Misrata over and over again to be ambushed and blown up, drove right int anti tank ditches ect... The elite units have some real training, but still awful officers.

Moral counts for everything in war; those Libyan troops defeated infamously in 1987 had tanks but it was coming after nine years of blatantly unjust war (steal part of Chad for uranium to make nukes, great rallying cry to whip up the troops) war in which Libyan forces backing Chadian insurgents were mostly victorious. In the last year the insurgents turned against the Libyans. The insurgents then attacked a base actually inside Libya, using modern weapons like Milan anti tank missiles from France that could kill T-55/T-62 tanks at long range and overran the base defenders who were all unwilling conscripts who never expected to be attacked on Libyan soil. The more effective Libyan troops had been deployed elsewhere. However France then put a stop to the whole war, before the brunt of Libyan forces in the area were defeated (So who knows what would have happened) out of fear that the war was going to become a much larger thing and Qaddafi might mobilize his whole military.

The embarrassed Qaddafi agreed to an end to the fighting, and then blew up Pam Am 103 the next year.

[Simon_Jester]

So, to see if I understand-

Qaddafi's troops have a great deal of heavy metal, but limited training for the troops (including tank crews and the like) and a very low-quality officer corps? Obviously there'd be exceptions to that rule, but is that what you're getting at in general, Skimmer?

[Serafina]

So, to see if I understand-

Qaddafi's troops have a great deal of heavy metal, but limited training for the troops (including tank crews and the like) and a very low-quality officer corps? Obviously there'd be exceptions to that rule, but is that what you're getting at in general, Skimmer?

Keep in mind that such undertrained troops are perfectly adequate for supressing badly armed militias - they will be equally badly trained, but have worse equipment.
Meanwhile, keeping your loyal troops well trained ensures that they can defeat the rest of your army even when they have superior numbers.

Such a thing makes a lot of sense for a dictator who isn't planning to fight fair wars anyway - it'll either be against weak neighbors, internal rebels or first-world armies, and that method is enough to win the first two while better training won't be much use against the latter anyway.

[Simon_Jester]

I understand the logic- it worked well enough for Qaddafi for thirty years and would no doubt continue to work for him today were it not for Western air support of the rebels, from which nothing could save him.

I just want to make sure I'm not missing anything from Skimmer's take on the situation.

[Sea Skimmer]

Qaddafi's troops have a great deal of heavy metal, but limited training for the troops (including tank crews and the like) and a very low-quality officer corps? Obviously there'd be exceptions to that rule, but is that what you're getting at in general, Skimmer?

Yes, like any regime like this officers are chosen for loyality not competence, and have little or no respect for the men they control. His 32nd brigade might be equal to typical two year conscripts to be generous, but the other regime defense brigades are worse, and all of these units have had untrained or poorly trained conscripts thrown into them to gain more numbers, as well as suffering from some level of defection. The regular army was crap and has ceased to exist, and the pro Qaddafi militia are on the same level of as the rebel militia and may be inferior in moral. The Libyan army reserve was so bad the men got one day of class room instruction per year as training; which actually is about how bad a lot of Western European territorial forces were in the Cold War but those were intended to be third rate troops.

He has epic amounts of equipment for the size of the country, during the 1980s Qaddafi had more jets and tanks (over 2,000) then the UK did with something like an eighth of the population. He still has all that stuff in huge depots but never ever could man it all. That's a current problem, NATO blows up tanks and artillery in the field but Qaddafi has these depots to find replacements in, and NATO efforts to attack those depots are crippled by lack of jets and certain political factions that oppose the very concept of those raids. So the supply of weapons is near endless, so is the supply of ammo, I've counted over 200 ammo bunkers myself and he easily has in the range of 50,000-75,000 tons of ammo if not more. It gets worse since while one hit on an ammo bunker is likely going to consume everything inside, dropping a 2000lb bomb into a 350x150ft warehouse full of tanks isn't going to wreck everything. Air strikes in the field that don't kill pro Qaddafi troops are basically not effective because anything they loose can be replaced in hours. Its comical and just sad how many times over the effectiveness of the attacks could be increased by ONE B-52 sortie per day. It will be at least another month are current rates before NATO will have really heavily eaten into these depot areas; the British and French have been calling for more attacks this way and more help to do it for a while now. Fucking stupid as shit too... bombing the depots will cause few losses of human live to anyone, let alone civilians and yet its somehow controversial to do it. But militarily Europe is just an American outpost anyway. Makes me glad though that this has all put the 'Germany on Security Council RAR!' bullshit to rest forever.

[Simon_Jester]

Out of morbid curiosity, why did Qaddafi accumulate such vast stockpiles of weapons if he knew he'd never be able to man them all?

[Sea Skimmer]

Why wouldn't you want more weapons if you could get them easily? I mean seriously... no one ever lost a war from having too much stuff even if most of it is rusting. Plus its just prestige I’d imagine; and delusions of eventually conquering or rallying some kind of pan African union to his banner that would need weapons. He did pass some of the stuff on to African states over the years such as his backing of everyone’s friend Idi Amin in Uganda. Also Egypt had and has huge army and has never liked Qaddafi, almost invading and destroying him in 1976, so a huge pile of weapons he might be able to man in an emergency with untrained men was a slight deterrent. All that stuff would have been dirt cheap for him to buy, the USSR never gave away weapons to anyone who could pay but he got most of this stuff around the them that the USSR was rearming with new T-64/T-72 generation weapons and had lots of surplus. Thhe depots are almost all out in the desert, and mostly in the central-western part of the country so as has now happened, a rebellion in the country cannot easily seize the stockpiles. The rebels in the east captured little of it except some ammo stocks, and even then at least one major ammo dump was blown by a pro Qaddafi officer on the first day of the revolution. I've noticed a lot of new ammo bunkers in the west in these depots, many depots look fairly new (a lot was parked in the open until the 1990s) while everything in the east is run down. Qaddafi saw all of this long coming, make no mistake on any of it.

More recently Qaddafi placed an order for 180 T-90 tanks; which I think gives a fair indication of how much heavy equipment his 32nd Brigade could actually use. The brigade is more like a division in strength but no one seems to have that clear an idea how big it really is because of random security detachments being all over. His planned buy of fourteen Rafael fighters also fits with what we’ve seen of the air component of the 32nd brigade and the pro Qaddafi air strikes which appears to come from a weak squadron of Su-22s.

[Sea Skimmer]

Can't find a decent article on it, but it appears yet another attempt by Qaddafi to invade Tunisia, this time attempting to make a large outflanking movement through the desert to take the border crossing at Wazin from the rear, and thus avoid the rebel held mountain road, was made today but thwarted without shooting by Tunisian troops. One blurb said it was estimated at 50 vehicles and 200 men… and since such claims are more likely to be an exaggeration the and under estimation this continues to show Qaddafi is weak. He can't even find a thousand men to spare to ensure the rebels in the western mountains starve.

[Thanas]

Makes me glad though that this has all put the 'Germany on Security Council RAR!' bullshit to rest forever.

Merkel had already given up on that two years ago, since it had become clear earlier that the USA and the UK would block any such move no matter what. It was an illusion to believe those two nations would agree to anything that would diminish their power. (Also, it is extremely unlikely Germany would gain anything by having a permanent seat on the council anyway, seeing how we are pretty much a shoe-in whenever we apply for the SC anyway).

[Sea Skimmer]

It’s the veto power you gain; which is very important for the nuclear powers, certainly less so for Germany. None of the Permanent Security Council aspirations except India make any sense because of that. But here we have a situation in which literally ten more bombing planes would make a big difference and all of Europe cannot cough it up merely to blow up largely unmanned structures. It’s pretty sad.

[Thanas]

It’s the veto power you gain; which is very important for the nuclear powers, certainly less so for Germany.

Yeah, veto power is not that important for us due to us already getting our voice heard when we want it.....though why is it more important for the nuclear powers than for non-nuclear powers to have veto rights? Considering mainly conventional interventions are regulated by the SC, would the importance not be the same for every nation?

But here we have a situation in which literally ten more bombing planes would make a big difference and all of Europe cannot cough it up merely to blow up largely unmanned structures. It’s pretty sad.

Hmmm. What nations among those that have already committed to the bombing campaign are holding back?

[Slacker]

The United States, for one; if we parked a supercarrier off of Tripoli we could pretty much end this in a fortnight. But there's obvious domestic implications if "Obama got us in another war", also I believe there are clauses in NATO command structure if more than a certain percentage of a NATO force is American that would require an American commander, which we're trying to avoid.

[doomboy536]

The United States, for one; if we parked a supercarrier off of Tripoli we could pretty much end this in a fortnight. But there's obvious domestic implications if "Obama got us in another war", also I believe there are clauses in NATO command structure if more than a certain percentage of a NATO force is American that would require an American commander, which we're trying to avoid.

If there's one thing that this has proved it's that massed air power alone won't cut it, you need effective boots on the ground as well (which the rebels certainly are not).

[The Romulan Republic]

I disagree. The news seems to indicate, for the most part, that Gadaffi is getting steadily weaker. I will be extremely surprised if this year ends with Gadaffi in power.

[Sea Skimmer]

If there's one thing that this has proved it's that massed air power alone won't cut it, you need effective boots on the ground as well (which the rebels certainly are not).

Europe using less then a hundred combat planes, all of them tactical fighters some most of those lightweight types hardly counts as massed air power. Most days see under 50 air to ground missions flown.

[Prannon]

Personally, I'm not convinced that our aim should be to end this as quickly as possible. I think a lot of people get worked up on ending conflicts as soon as possible through some sort of intervention without allowing them to play out and reach a clear conclusion.

In this case, yes, the West via NATO has already intervened and prevented what would have been a natural conclusion to this conflict (the rebels being crushed and Gaddafi remaining in power). However, if the US were to park a carrier off the coast and bomb the country into oblivion then what would that say about Gaddafi? What would it say about the rebels? It would effectively say that the rebels were completely, emphasis on completely, unable to do it on their own and that the West was doing everything the entire time. That would be Very Bad for the post war government.

Also, I'm not convinced that the rebels represent ineffective boots on the ground. Relative to Gadaffi loyalists, they seem to have found their footing and, around Misrata at least, they're taking ground after having held onto the city after months of siege. That's not a small accomplishment for a rag tag team of hastily formed militia. This is especially true if NATO has been doing as few missions as Skimmer has indicated. To me, it shows that the rebels have been able to at least hold their own with a greater share of the work load, and this will probably play out well for the Transitional Council's legitimacy post-war.

[Slacker]

True, but at the same time I feel like we could be doing a little bit more of the heavy lifting-for example, holding the port open at Misrata to allow supplies in, or flattening their heavy artillery. Evening the playing field even more, so to speak. If only because it would've lessened the human suffering there even sooner. It's not like 155mm gun tubes are terribly small targets for fighter-bombers, after all.

[Talk738kno]

Even though Gadaffi has lots of metal to throw around, would much of the ones rusting in the depots be even usable given the maintenance that is needed to keep them running?

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Even though Gadaffi has lots of metal to throw around, would much of the ones rusting in the depots be even usable given the maintenance that is needed to keep them running?

They're out in storage facilities located in the middle of the desert. It hardly ever rains, and the humidity stays low year-round. Most of the stuff Gaddaffi's splurged on over the years will still be usable long after he's died of old age.

[Serafina]

Even though Gadaffi has lots of metal to throw around, would much of the ones rusting in the depots be even usable given the maintenance that is needed to keep them running?

They're out in storage facilities located in the middle of the desert. It hardly ever rains, and the humidity stays low year-round. Most of the stuff Gaddaffi's splurged on over the years will still be usable long after he's died of old age.

Well, there'll certainly be wear due to temperature changes and dust erosion, but yes, deserts are excellent for long-term storage - just ask the ancient Egyptians.

[Sarevok]

A lot of the stuff like BM-21 rocket systems or T-55 tanks also don't rely on modern electronics. So they should be easier to store.

[Sea Skimmer]

After long enough the wiring will still dry rot no matter what, especially since its 1960s and 70s wiring that might still be cloth covered in some instances. Also engines will seize up for good if no one ever turns them over (this may have been done though). But when you have thousands of vehicles to comb through for good ones, and cannibalize for parts it shouldn’t be hard at all for Qaddafi to keep pulling out usable stuff for the sized forces he has.