{"id":182377,"date":"2015-10-06T19:53:00","date_gmt":"2015-10-07T00:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/10\/06\/good-7\/"},"modified":"2015-10-06T19:53:00","modified_gmt":"2015-10-07T00:53:00","slug":"good-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/10\/06\/good-7\/","title":{"rendered":"Good"},"content":{"rendered":"

It appears that the Russian military deployment to Syria has put the kibosh on plans for establishing a no fly zone in Syria<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Considering what “No Fly Zones” are these days, the military overthrow of a sovereign nation, (see Libya) this is a good thing:<\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s bombing of anti-regime rebels in Syria has been described as a disaster for the US-led coalition\u2019s efforts to destroy Isis, the Islamist militant group, but the Kremlin\u2019s real challenge to Washington is in the skies above the war-torn country.<\/span>

<\/span>Alongside a modest Latakia-based contingent of two dozen Su-24 Fencer and Su-25 Frogfoot jets \u2014 planes designed to strike land targets \u2014 Moscow has deployed assets which render the prospect of no-fly zones enforced by the US or its allies over Syria impossible to enact.<\/span>

<\/span>Just weeks ago, after months of diplomacy, officials were close to an agreement on enforcing aerial safe-zones to end the Assad regime\u2019s bombing of civilians in northern and southern Syria, according to diplomats and military officials in the US-led coalition. The agreement was based on Jordanian and Turkish plans presented earlier this year. <\/span>

<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>\u201cThe ultimate reason all this is happening is because of the renewed focus on Syria and the need for some sort of political solution there \u2014 something which we thought we could achieve by enforcing no-fly zones, safe zones,\u201d said one senior European diplomat.<\/span>

<\/span>But any hopes of military co-ordination with Russia to achieve this, even in the wake of its disruptive deployment, are swiftly being dashed.<\/span>

<\/span>Nato\u2019s supreme military commander in Europe, US General Phillip Breedlove warned last week that the alliance was \u201cworried about another A2\/AD bubble being created in the eastern Mediterranean.\u201d A2\/AD stands for anti-access, area denial.<\/span>

<\/span>Gen Breedlove\u2019s fears have been realised in the past days as Russia\u2019s small deployment of four Su-30 \u201cflanker\u201d jets, which are at Latakia\u2019s Bassel al-Assad air base \u2014 highly manoeuvreable aircraft designed to shoot down other aircraft \u2014 has been augmented with a far more powerful arsenal.<\/span>

<\/span>Russia\u2019s ministry of defence announced on Friday the deployment of its navy cruiser the Moskva to Latakia. The Moskva is armed with a complement of 64 S-300 ship-to-air missiles, Russia\u2019s most powerful anti-aircraft weapon. <\/span>

<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>\u201cThe Russian forces now in place make it very, very obvious that any kind of no-fly zone on the Libyan model imposed by the US and allies is now impossible, unless the coalition is actually willing to shoot down Russian aircraft,\u201d says Justin Bronk, research analyst at the Royal United Services Institute.<\/span>

<\/span>\u201cThe Russians are not playing ball at deconfliction \u2014 they are just saying, \u2018keep out of our way\u2019. The coalition\u2019s operations in Syria will be vastly more complex from a risk assessment point of view and from a mission-planning point of view.\u201d <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Just to remind you, the Libyan model was for the air forces to provide close air support for the rebels while arming them to the teeth.<\/p>\n

Libya is now a complete mess, of course, with no functioning central government, and ethnic cleansing of  their more darkly complected citizenry.<\/p>\n

And this is the model that General Strangelove<\/strike> Breedlove wants to repeat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It appears that the Russian military deployment to Syria has put the kibosh on plans for establishing a no fly zone in Syria. Considering what “No Fly Zones” are these days, the military overthrow of a sovereign nation, (see Libya) this is a good thing: Russia\u2019s bombing of anti-regime rebels in Syria has been described …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[981,964,986,1006,1033],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-182377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civil-war","category-foreign-relations","category-middle-east","category-military","category-russia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182377"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182377\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}