Saddle up for Syria? Or Op Deny Christmas '13

[Lawman]

I don’t think rebels are doing this:
https://www.foxnews.com/world/2018/04/25/adversaries-jamming-air-force-gunships-in-syria-special-ops-general-says.html

That’s unfortunate not suddenly news. Been going on for a while now.

Between this and Ukraine though it’s nice of Russia to give us lots of stuff to study/compile intel on for a change. Only fair since we’ve given them nearly 2 decades to do the same.

[matmacwc]

First time I’ve seen it open source.

[Lawman]

First time I’ve seen it open source.

 

I think it’s just the first time it’s been run as a headline story on one of the Big3 cable news networks stateside. I know a lot of smaller news groups out there have been doing reports on “what the Russians are up to” for the last couple years and their EW activities have definitely come up often. Stuff like them harassing NATO members along the border.

 

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/15194/russia-jammed-phones-and-gps-in-northern-europe-during-massive-military-drills

 

Just one example.

 

But yeah, definitely some purpose built needling going on between them and us. Not unlike the sudden jump in tech and weapons we are seeing show up in certain theaters like the Stan. Cold War never really ended, it just got ignored for a while.

[HarleyQuinn]

How a 4-Hour Battle Between Russian Mercenaries and U.S. Commandos Unfolded in Syria

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/05/24/world/middleeast/american-commandos-russian-mercenaries-syria.html

“The Russian high command in Syria assured us it was not their people,” Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told senators in testimony last month. He said he directed Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “for the force, then, to be annihilated.”

“And it was.”

Signed "Bad Ass - Mad Dog Mattis"

Edited May 25, 2018 by HarleyQuinn

[afthunderchief16]

This might make things interesting for a few days. Not sure why you’d want to try and target some Vipers with an SA-5, though, either.

Syria downs IL-20, Israel to blame?

[Disco_Nav963]

I hope we are taking advantage of our special relationship with Israel to get the After Action Reports on all these strikes. The Israelis have more and more current real-world SEAD experience than just about anyone around.

[DirkDiggler]

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-45626251

SA-20s for Assad.  I'll be curious to see what impact this will have on Israeli air ops/how they deal with this.

[Day Man]

Load them up with trons before FENCE-in, a la Stuxnet?

Edited September 25, 2018 by Day Man

[Majestik Møøse]

The Russians will have more to worry about than the Israelis.

[HarleyQuinn]

"Syria Accidentally Shot Down a Russian Plane. Now Russia Is Giving Syria Better Missiles."...LMAO

[Clark Griswold]

From The Federalist:

https://thefederalist.com/2018/12/27/3-questions-ask-next-open-ended-foreign-intervention/

Best summation of what needs to be asked in Congress before the next adventure in failed state x.  

No good answers no AUMF.

Edited December 28, 2018 by Clark Griswold

[FLEA]

Good article. Those are absolutely questions we need as a country to better address.

I would add we need to rethink how we will handle terrorist and terrorism operations in the future. Specifically in regards to combatant status determination and operational approach.

The most recent academic studies are showing the strategy of HVI wack-a-mole, shows little evidence to effectiveness. The most glaring evidence, that we've been doing it for 18 years and nothing  has changed. Civil policing models have proved far more effective at routing non-state terror groups in other countries though. There's often that idea that the military is a political tool. It might be a hammer, and we are flattening nails when we need a crow bar to pull them out. 

[Clark Griswold]

On 12/28/2018 at 4:40 AM, FLEA said:

Good article. Those are absolutely questions we need as a country to better address.

I would add we need to rethink how we will handle terrorist and terrorism operations in the future. Specifically in regards to combatant status determination and operational approach.

The most recent academic studies are showing the strategy of HVI wack-a-mole, shows little evidence to effectiveness. The most glaring evidence, that we've been doing it for 18 years and nothing  has changed. Civil policing models have proved far more effective at routing non-state terror groups in other countries though. There's often that idea that the military is a political tool. It might be a hammer, and we are flattening nails when we need a crow bar to pull them out. 

Agreed.  

I'm not sure we have the paitience for the way we decide, plan, execute and sustain our engagements in these conflicts to a satisfactory resolution to keep doing them but if we are going to continue to engage in sustained efforts in these failed states, ungoverned areas, insurgencies, etc... we have to do it differently.  

The modern American military / Federal government is not built to do this: persevere & sustain a long-term foreign policy involving a WOG effort (military, diplomatic, informational, cultural and developmental efforts) that will stretch over many election cycles, at best will take 20+ years to conclude to a state where withdraw can happen without immediate collapse after something better has been won in thousands of TICs, HVI capture/kills, clearing operations, etc...

It (the American Military) was built to deter and if necessary win quickly in a X number of major conventional fights with its active forces and generated reserves (if required).  We do not have the depth to constantly sustain thru rotation a long-term counter-insurgency, stabilization, rebuild and assistance mission(s) without eroding our force thru repetitive deployments, use of conventional systems ill-suited for low intensity conflicts and with nebulous mission objectives.  

I've had a similar debate going with a friend who retired recently and we've been arguing over the points made in this article on NR:

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/12/the-frustrating-necessity-of-staying-in-syria-and-afghanistan-explained/

If you accept what the author (David French) proposes in his article, that leaving only allows for the worst elements to return and plot to attack us again and that long-term engagement at whatever level is required (albeit done well) is better than disengagement then we must accomplish these national efforts differently IMHO.  As they are not conventional military conflicts / foreign policy challenges they must be planned, resourced, sustained and executed differently than a force-on-force deterrence/contingency scenario.

My suggestions would be:

- Public agreements made between the major political parties that objectives, strategy and resourcing will span election cycles, regardless of changes in political majorities.  The OODA loop at anyone time in these marathons is longer than a Presidential Term and a helluva lot longer than the 2 year House cycle, allow for reassessment at 6 year cycles with the Senate mainly keeping watch and adjusting as required.  Not perfect but without some new legal structure/entity at the Federal level, I think it is best we can do.

- Make appropriations for these conflicts separate from the NDAA and have a dedicated funding vehicle (tax).  It is a particular foreign policy effort of the USA, not the general defense of our sovereignty, interests and allies and should be created, debated and passed/vetoed as such.  Multi-year with specific sunset date(s) with an exit plan, policy decisions and resources set aside to allow for withdrawal if not renewed.  The funding vehicle is key, the American people should know what the cost monetarily is explicitly and if I were king for a day, I would require the Executive Branch to justify and report on the operation ala the "Why we Fight" movies of WWII at least every year coincidental with the State of the Union address.

- Apply legal restrictions on utilization of military members in these operations to prevent abusive over-utilization unless that member requests specifically to return to the operation.  This could require the resurrection of the draft, force the creation of bonuses for deployment above the normal limit or some other manpower solution.  So be it.  If the nation wants a win / better end state in this effort, pay for it in conscripted national service, money for the warfighters or don't do it.  This limit would be different for different AFSCs or MOSs and where you actually deploy too, but everyone would be protected ultimately by a limit to spread the effort. 

- Allow for acquisitions to be performed outside of the regular DoD / Service Component structure and allow the UCC to legally acquire and own systems during these named operations.  If CENTCOM wants the LAAR for example but Big Blue doesn't, CENTCOM has its own resources and legal authority to acquire, operate and sustain.  This is not to open the floodgates for X number of specialized systems only suitable for X operation, common sense is to be applied but there must be a method better than what we have now (excluding Big Safari) to allow the UCCs to bypass Force Providers if they are intransigent in the face of real operational requirements.

Well, I think I'm rant complete with that.  Just my hope we do things differently if we want to keep trying to fix likely un-fixable problems.

[JBueno]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/07/us-to-let-turkish-forces-move-into-syria-abandoning-kurdish-allies

[pawnman]

5 hours ago, JBueno said:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/07/us-to-let-turkish-forces-move-into-syria-abandoning-kurdish-allies

American standard.  Same thing we did in Afghanistan in the 80s and in Iraq during Desert Storm.

[Orbit]

What do you think we should do? Stay in Syria indefinitely? 

[bennynova]

I am all for pulling out in the Middle East.   Those idiots want to be at war.  It’s their way of life.   

 

I would rather spend our money and manpower helping protecting/people who want to be helped.   

 

I think its it’s a great move. 

[di1630]

Today’s social media and news is full of people outraged that we are abandoning the Kurds...most of those people had never heard of the Kurds.

This was going to happen eventually.


Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network mobile app

[waveshaper]

Repost/reminder (again/sadly);

I would think we would be getting good at this abandoning the Kurds and withdrawing US forces from Kurdish turf by now but I have my doubts we have learned any lessons. The last time we did this "Emergency Evacuation" stuff in a Kurdish AO was circa 1996 in Iraqi Kurdistan and it was a complete cluster f#*k.

Here's the Situation we faced in 1996 (my memory is a bit foggy but this is some of the stuff I remember from this fiasco); During the Iraq Kurdish Civil War (1994-1997) we had - the Peshmerga slaughtering Peshmerga, the Turk military/Kurds/Iranians/Saddam's legions all backing different Kurd factions/tribes that were  slaughtering each other. The US Military was entangled (not by choice) with the Turk/Saddam backed KDP forces, the CIA (by choice IMHO) was supporting the Iranian backed PUK/PKK, and the State Department was stuck in the middle . Basically the situation in Northern Iraq was a complete mess. In late 1996 we finally said "Uncle", pulled the plug, and conducted an "Emergency Evacuation" of all our Forces/CIA/Diplomatic Personnel in Northern Iraq and the "Emergency Evacuation" of thousands of loyal Kurdish forces/key Kurdish leadership and their family members (Ref; Operation Pacific Haven/Operation Quick Transit I, II, III).

 

I would recommend the following actions/preparations in the event something like a very short notice "emergency evacuation/get out of dodge order" is given to all our folk in Syria Rojava (Syria Kurdistan). Hopefully, this round, we don't make the same stupid mistakes we made in 1996;

- Develop an actual OPLAN, prep/train our forces on the ground in Syria, and this time give our troops a wee bit of heads-up before the "bug out" order is given so stuff like this doesn't happen again; Excerpt (1996); "What the Americans left behind when they pulled out of the Military Coordinating Center in the frontier town of Zakho is instructive--and sad. The detritus of international altruism gone awry included weapons, computers, a radio still turned on, HumVee all-terrain vehicles, a larger number of ordinary cars, maps, diverse sensitive documents and a small library of spy thriller novels."

- Dust off/update/Prep/train/review lessons learned/etc from Operation Pacific Haven/Operation Quick Transit I, II, III.  Also prep Incirlik AB and Anderson AFB for a heavy influx of thousands of Kurd refugees/asylum seekers. Also, prep Little Kurdistan USA (Nashville) for this new/latest batch (Round 4) of potentially thousands of Kurdish refugees/asylum seekers (this should be the easiest task since Little Kurdistan USA has gotten pretty good at this stuff).

- Etc, etc, etc.

 

[MechGov]

I would recommend the following actions/preparations in the event something like a very short notice "emergency evacuation/get out of dodge order" is given to all our folk in Syria Rojava (Syria Kurdistan). Hopefully, this round, we don't make the same stupid mistakes we made in 1996; - Develop an actual OPLAN, prep/train our forces on the ground in Syria, and this time give our troops a wee bit of heads-up before the "bug out" order is given so stuff like this doesn't happen again; 

Except we won’t. I’d bet a paycheck that CENTCOM was caught by surprise again. While the last pump fake may have given a sense of urgency for planning, it’ll take a decent amount of foot dragging to make any withdrawal orderly.

It’s a cynically fitting end for OIR: a shitshow from the start.

[MechGov]

I would rather spend our money and manpower helping protecting/people who want to be helped.   

So the Kurds/SDF don’t want to be helped? It seems like they’ve been one of the better draft picks in the past few years.

I get the impression that we’re conflating US strategic incoherence and collective fatigue of open ended OCOs with a willingness to walk away from those conflicts, damn the consequences (and any allies). The SDF has been one of the few competent indigenous forces that is a militarily able and willing partner who actually has a shot of policing their own territory. Walking away from them like this will have repercussions for the US as well as discourage any future state or non-state actor from working with us in the future.

[Blue]

Shouldn't the Kurds have expected this from the start?  That we'd be by their side, every step of the way, and then one day we'd drop everything and leave?

I mean, as others have stated, we have a track record of doing just that.  One would think the Kurds would have planned accordingly.

[Danger41]

I spent a lot of time with the Kurds over the last few years and I think we should support them in getting their own state. Drastic, for sure, but the Iraqi Army of ~20k abandoned Mosul to 200 guys and the Kurds basically saved the day (including Baghdad). The only reason they’re so screwed is a treaty from post WW1 that left them in the cold. I know it’s about 15 layers deep with all the regional players and such, but they actually seem willing to join the 21st century and fight for what’s theirs.

[brickhistory]

Nothing has changed since I started this thread in, what 1978?

No vital national interest of ours is involved in Syria.  Let the savages fight among themselves.

As to the Kurds and us writing them off, again, well, there's much truth to be gleaned from "Animal House."

 

Funny though, Barry criticized for declaring a "red line," then doing absolutely nothing which made us look bad.

Orange man criticized for declaring we're leaving which makes us look bad.

 

In the end, what's in it for us?

 

[pawnman]

11 hours ago, Orbit said:

What do you think we should do? Stay in Syria indefinitely? 

I don't know what the answer is, but I know if we keep abandoning allies like this, we're going to have a hard time finding new ones when we need them.