SyriaPentagon expands Syria attack plan

Published 9 September 2013

The Obama administration, in an effort to mobilize American public opinion to support a strike against Syria, has stressed that any military action would be limited in scope, but the Pentagon is preparing for a longer, and broader, campaign of bombardment of Syria than it originally had planned. The plan includes heavy missile strikes which will be followed by second and third waves of bombing of targets which were not initially destroyed or sufficiently damaged. The plan calls for the use of cruise missiles and aircraft from a U.S. Navy aircraft group in the Red Sea, and long-range bombers from outside the theater.

The Obama administration, in an effort to mobilize American public opinion to support a strike against Syria, has stressed that any military action would be limited in scope, but the Pentagon is preparing for a longer, and broader, campaign of bombardment of Syria than it originally had planned. The plan includes heavy missile strikes which will be followed by second and third waves of bombing of targets which were not initially destroyed or sufficiently damaged.

The Los Angeles Times reports that the bombing are planned to take three days.

One reason for extending and broadening the bombing campaign is that the delays in carrying it out, together with the telegraphing by administration’s officials of what the campaign would and would not do, have allowed Assad to disperse forces, empty headquarters, and hide mobile assets.

The expansion of the target lit beyond the initial fifty or so targets means that the United States will likely use bombers and even aircraft rom aircraft carriers in the Red Sea. There are five U.S. Navy warships now stationed off the Syria coast, but the carry only about 150 cruise missiles among them, and expanding the target list – and visiting some targets more than once – would require more firepower.

The Navy’s aircraft carrier group in the Red Sea also includes a one cruiser and three destroyers, with about 120 additional cruise missiles.

There will be several volleys and an assessment after each volley, but all within 72 hours and a clear indication when we are done,” one officer familiar with the planning told the Times.

Experts inside and outside the military doubt that even a longer air campaign, using cruise missiles fired from offshore, will meaningfully hurt Assad’s forces and sufficiently degrade them to deter future use of chemical weapons. One officer described the planned operation as little more than a multi-day “show of force,” not a game-changer in Syria’s bitter civil war.

The planned U.S. attack “will not strategically impact the current situation in the war, which the Syrians have well in hand, though fighting could go on for another two years,” another U.S. officer familiar with the latest intelligence estimates told the Times.

The administration has faced a nearly impossible task, a task made more difficult by its own, at times contradictory, statements and by domestic political realities. The administration wants to punish Assad for repeated use of chemical weapons – yet does not want to punish him too hard so as to tile that military balance between his forces and those of the rebels. Also, the administration wants the attack to carry a clear moral message – that the use of chemical weapons is unacceptable and should be punished and deterred. Yet, in order to gain the support of skeptical lawmakers, the administration had to promise an attack of such limited scope and duration that it unlikely to be much of a punishment or much of a deterrence of future use of chemical weapons.

It’s got to lead to something or we’re going to be back in the same situation a year from now,” Mark Kimmitt, a retired Army brigadier general and former top Middle East planner who served as a Pentagon and State Department official during the George W. Bush administration, told the Times. “So we’ve got to have a larger target set.”

Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged during congressional testimony that there was a possibility of follow-up strikes. He said the Syrian military was moving forces, making it more difficult for the United States to strike units and equipment capable of delivering chemical agents.

At this point our intelligence is keeping up with that movement,” Dempsey said. He also noted reports that prisoners and other noncombatants had been moved to potential military targets where the U.S. might strike to serve as human shield.