Replies

However, read this, and you will understand aircraft carriers are optional.

There are precisely 20 B-2 bombers. The darn things are so rare that they gave them individual names rather than tail numbers. They don't have tails either so I guess that OK.

However the point is that 20 planes, no matter how good, aren't going to give you sufficient air cover for an invasion. They can carry out one heck of a strike, but provide air superiority, not a chance in heck.

B-52s and B-1s need clear sky, and without fighters you aren't going to be able to guarantee that. Not with an openly hostile Egypt right across the border. To easy for some SAMs to find their way into Lybian hands. The Egyptians have a lot of Soviet Era stuff (they actually have three times the number of SAM batteries as the US military) that could end up in the hands fellow Muslim Brotherhood members. No problem for the B-2, but a real problem for B-52s flying without fighter cover.

So the answer comes down to ...
B-2 = Not Enough of them
Drones = Insufficient bomb load
Carriers = None in the area
F-15, F-16 & F-22 = (Fighters and Wild Weasels) Can't get the bases from the Euros.
B-52 & B-1 = Can't survive without cover from the fighters, jammers and wild weasels.

Besides even if you could provide air cover, you would need at least a division level force to take over an entire country. You would probably need more than that, but a division is more or less a minimum. No force anyplace near that size is embarked. It would take 7-10 days just to get them into a port and get the gater fleet loaded.

Now before you yell out 82n't airborne, they are light infantry without armor or logistical support. You can't resupply them by air because every plane full of beans bullets and bandages is going to be a sitting duck for the thousands of man portable missiles Obama lost track of when the MB took over Libya. You need close air support to suppress the manpads, and escort the cargo planes. We don't have close air support in the Med.

Airborne troops, or any light infantry, count on calling in air support to deal with any armor. Sure the Libyans probably only have a few old T-72s, but against light infantry without air cover that would be enough. Did I mention we don't have close air support in the Med.

Want to bring in tanks of our own, first you need to get them to the ports, load them on the ships and send them from US on shins going 12 knots. Not going to be there in a week that is for darn sure.

No, they're not. You need carriers off the Gulf if Sirte to provide CAP and Close Air Support for the Ground Troops until a MAW could be flown in, probably to the old Wheelus Air Force Base once the MEF had overrrun the base.

A Google Map of Wheelus, right smack dab on the Tripoli Beachfront, can be found here.

As you can plainly see, any effort to grab Wheelus would be a primary object of an MEF force. This would probably require a forced landing by an brigade-sized unit and an airborne operation by the Ready Brigade to keep the natives busy elsewhere while the airfield was secured so that follow-on forces could be brought in.

B-2's are nice for the heavy load, but they don't have the loiter time a carrier based ship's got.

As an alternative, we could go elsewhere in Libya, say, to Benghazi. We have scads of road maps left over from the Eigth Army's campaigns against Rommel during the Second War and from our time there during the fifties and sixties.

Nevertheless, I think we would want a couple of carrier groups there to help things along.

Best.

Chris