Gadhafi's air force his ace in the hole

BEIRUT, Lebanon, March 7 (UPI) -- Libya's embattled leader Moammar Gadhafi has stepped up airstrikes against rebel forces in the east of the country, underlining how his air force has become his ace in the hole in his desperate fight for survival.

This is likely to strengthen calls for the Western powers to impose a no-fly zone aimed at grounding Libya's Russian- and French-built MiGs and Mirages to take the heat off the rebels seeking to thrust toward Gadhafi's stronghold around Tripoli.

In recent days the 18,000-man air force has carried out raids against the oil ports of Brega and Ras Lanuf, seized by the eastern rebels after the insurgency broke out Feb. 15.

The rebels haven't been dislodged but they admit that while they can hold out against Gadhafi's Russian-built T-72 tanks they have few effective defenses against his air power.

Gadhafi appears to be committing his warplanes sparingly, holding back his main force on a tactical level.

"Air power is being used in a calculated way and he's launching probing attacks," observed Shashank Joshi of London's Royal United Services Institute.

That could mean he wants to have reserves to meet any foreign intervention, such as a no-fly zone, in what seems to be shaping up into a full-scale civil war in Libya.

Gadhafi is well positioned to block any westward thrust by the rebels because the 620-mile coastal highway from Benghazi, the rebel capital, is vulnerable to air attack, as is another highway through the desert further south.

A handful of pilots have defected in recent days but the air force is made up largely of Libyans from tribes that staunchly support Gadhafi and who have proved to be loyal.

Providing he can sustain operations by the backbone of his offensive air power and providing the rebels don't become the beneficiaries of sizeable Western military aid, military analysts believe Gadhafi can hold out for some time.

It's not clear how much access Gadhafi has to what is believed to be billions of dollars stashed away abroad during his 42-year rule.

The United States and its European allies have frozen Libyan assets, including a sovereign wealth fund totaling $70 billion.

But in the meantime, Gadhafi is using his air force, with its 94 MiG-25 Foxbat fighters and ground attack jets, 115 MiG-23s, 30 French-built Mirage F-1s and 35 Russian-built Mi-25 and Mi-35 Hind helicopter gunships, to keep his enemies at bay while trying to recover rebel-held oil centers in the east.

Another key asset: Gadhafi also has 115 transport aircraft, including 15 U.S.-made Hercules and 40 Russian-built Il-76 and L-410 transport aircraft, as well as several squadrons of U.S.- and Russian-built transport helicopters that allows him to rapidly move his ground forces around his vast country.

This capability could prove to be decisive in the battle under way.

Gadhafi may have lost a significant part of his army through defections but he had never put much trust in the military anyway, building a regime-protection force of some 20,000 elite commandoes and militias as well as richly paid mercenary shock troops from Chad and Niger.

So neutralizing his air force is essential if his military capabilities are to be crippled, while leveling the playing field for the rebels' forces.

British Prime Minister David Cameron says he favors a no-fly zone but U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates doesn't. The Americans, heavily engaged in Afghanistan and still withdrawing from Iraq, are reluctant to get involved in combat operations in Libya.

Any no-fly zone would need to be enforced, as the two imposed in northern and southern Iraq after the 1991 war were by U.S. and British warplanes right up to the March 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

That means combat, with the first priority suppressing Libya's air defenses, not just Gadhafi's jet fighters but large numbers of Soviet-era surface-to-air missiles.

No one's wild about the idea of an open-ended military commitment in Libya, particularly one that has, so far at least, not been endorsed by the U.N. Security Council.

Any coalition air operation would involve at least one U.S. carrier in the Mediterranean -- currently it's the USS Enterprise -- and land bases in Europe, courtesy of France, Spain, Italy and even Greece.