The Libyan Air Force & Air Defense

On paper Libya is a formidable military power. Unfortunately after you buy it, you have to maintain military hardware, and Libya is not known for doing that. As a result you end up with a shorter list of equipment that is actually in use.

The Aero L-39 Albatros and SOKO G-2 Galeb are generally listed as trainers, which they definitely are, but the Libyan versions have ground attack capabilities. Reports indicate that both types are being used in that role, and Libya has a lot of them.

The Mil-24 Hind has decades of use as an attack helicopter in wars large and small all over the world. It is almost as ubiquitous as the AK-47. They are armored as well as armed, so the opposition needs missiles or a well-aimed RPG to take one out.

They are still getting MiG-21 Fishbeds into the air and using then. Most blacksmiths can repair Fishbeds and even the Libyan Air Force can maintain them. They don’t have a lot of Fishbeds, and that is a good thing.

They do have a lot of the swing-wing MiG-23 Floggers, and that seems to be the most common aircraft in Libyan livery in the skies. With Libyan pilots they aren’t going to win too many dogfights, but they can slow down with extended wings and cause havoc on the ground.

They have two competent ground attack aircraft types from Sukhoi: the Su-22 Fitter and Su-24 Fencer. They too are swing-wing aircraft. They will be mauled by anything NATO sends against them, but they will absorb a lot of punishment from the lightly armed rebel forces.

Libya had MiG-25 Foxbats, but they have been retired by a lack of maintenance. They were in the process of getting their Mirage F1s rehabilitated, but they aren’t available, as most of the working F1s [two] are in Malta with their pilots who defected.

Libya has Soviet era anti-aircraft missile systems. I get nostalgic looking at the names, because most go back to when I was flying in the Med. [John McCain’s father, Admiral John McCain, was the commander of Naval Forces in the Med at the time, so you know it was a long time ago. John probably hadn’t crashed more than 3 aircraft at the time.]

They have the Dvina/Volkhov [SA-2 Guideline], Vega [SA-3 Goa], Neva [SA-5 Gammon], Kub [SA-6 Gainful], Strela [SA-7 Grail], and Osa [SA-8 Gecko] systems. The biggest problem will be the Strelas, which are shoulder-mounted like the Stinger.

The operators have a big problem – with the exception of the Strela, if they turn the systems on, they will receive a missile in return. About all they can do to preserve the systems is to keep them in civilian neighborhoods that NATO won’t bomb. Obviously that isn’t much of a solution, because NATO aircraft are unlikely to be flying over those neighborhoods, and even if they did, the buildings would interfere with the ability to launch on the aircraft.

My guess is that the B-2 Spirits and EA-18G Growlers neutralized the biggest threat that they presented early on in the operation. They would have used the Tomahawk attacks as “ferret” aircraft to light up the air defense system, and then wiped out whatever was turned on. SOP for SEAD. There would have been one or more RC-135s in the area to record the reaction and pinpoint additional targets, feeding data to the Mount Whitney to correlate and scrub. There would be messages sent to realign satellites to gather additional data that would be used in target selection for the following day.

The B-2s and Growlers probably didn’t fly more than two days, and the second day would have been an “insurance” mission. There would already be the phase two destruction of airfields [we have missiles and bombs specifically designed to render runways unusable], and you quickly transition to taking out any aircraft that becomes airborne.

Libya still has some surface-to-air missile systems, and some aircraft, but the only way they can keep them is if they don’t use them.