By David Blair - World - Last updated: August 24th, 2014
1125 Comments Comment on this article
Modern fighter jets like this have nothing to fear from Syria's air force (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
Sir Christopher Meyer rose to become Britain's ambassador in Washington at the summit of a 37-year diplomatic career. So it was with some surprise that I read his analysis in the Telegraph on Saturday of what should be done about Isil in Syria.
Put simply, Sir Christopher thinks that America must bury the hatchet with Bashar al-Assad before launching any air strikes against Isil bases in Syria. "I can’t imagine the US would risk their bombers and drones being shot down by Syrian fighter aircraft or ground-to-air missiles," he writes. "To avoid that, US strikes would need to be done in co-ordination with Assad."
I could use many adjectives to describe this paragraph, but out of respect for Sir Christopher, I will restrain myself to calling it very odd indeed. The idea that Syrian "fighter aircraft" are waiting to soar into the sky to take on the US Air Force is extraordinary.
The stark truth is that Syria's air force has never lifted so much as a finger to defend the country against outside attack. Sir Christopher may not know that Israel routinely carries out air strikes in Assad's domain – and its jets do not bomb Isil camps in the remote desert, but targets in and around Damascus itself. As recently as June, Israeli aircraft were destroying stockpiles of missiles near the capital to prevent them from being delivered to Hizbollah. At least two other raids of this kind were launched in 2013.
Not a single Syrian jet took off in response – and, needless to say, no Israeli aircraft was lost. It's probable that Syria did not dare fire one lonely missile at the raiders.
The same happened back in 2007 when Israeli strike aircraft destroyed a nuclear reactor in the desert of eastern Syrian (without this operation, incidentally, this facility would now be in the hands of Isil). And Israeli jets encountered the traditional zero opposition when they hit terrorist training camps outside Damascus in 2003.
So the Syrian air force has a spotless and unmatched record of staying firmly on the ground whenever hostile jets are overhead. No pilots are less likely to scramble into action to defend their country. Never in the field of human conflict has so little been done by so few to defend so many.
Sir Christopher Meyer (Photo: AP)
Sir Christopher may be unaware that no Syrian fighter has managed to shoot down a single aircraft of any variety anywhere since 1973, when a handful of Israeli jets was destroyed during the Yom Kippur War. The last time that Syria's air force even tried to take on Israel was over Lebanon in the 1980s. This was not a glorious experience. The final score was 85 to nil; that is, Israel shot down 85 Syrian jets and lost none in air-to-air combat.
Having failed so utterly against Israel – and having sat out so many air raids against their territory – the idea that Syria's pilots would scramble to intercept the US Air Force is ludicrous. If some poor pilot was forced to embark on a suicide mission in one of Syria's antiquated MiGs or third rate Sukhois, we know what the outcome would be.
True enough, Syria's pilots do go into action quite frequently. Day after day, they bomb their own people in defenceless towns and villages. The lesson is obvious: this is an air force which specialises in killing helpless civilians on the ground. The one and only task of which Assad's airmen are capable is murdering the very people they are supposed to defend.
As for the "ground to air missiles" which Sir Christopher thinks that Syria could deploy against America, I assume that he is referring to the Russian S300 air defence system which Assad keeps trying to buy from Moscow. There is no evidence that this shield has been delivered in full. Even if it has, the Syrians would need months or years to train their personnel and make it fully operational.
Even if the S300 has been delivered and even if it was operational – and even if its coverage extended over the entire country, including the remote deserts held by Isil – the US Air Force could destroy this defence system the moment it was switched on. Sir Christopher may not realise that America has special missiles which home in on radars and eliminate them within seconds of being activated.
And even if – which I do not for a moment believe – it was somehow too risky for US jets to enter Syrian airspace, they could strike Isil with long range stand-off missiles without flying over the country at all. And even if it was too difficult to do this from above the Mediterranean (I can't think why) they could launch their attack from over Jordan, Iraq or Turkey – any one of which would open their airspace for this purpose.
So the idea that "co-ordination" with Assad is an essential precondition for a successful US strike on Isil is clearly false. Sir Christopher is a distinguished public servant and, normally, a learned commentator. On this occasion, he has offered perhaps the most implausible analysis of a military situation in the Middle East since Robert Fisk predicted that Iraq would give America a good thrashing in the Gulf War in 1991.
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1125 Comments : http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/davidblair/100283904/sorry-sir-christopher-meyer-but-america-doesnt-need-assads-help-to-strike-isil/
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