NATO Sees Flaws in Air Campaign Against Qaddafi

Despite widespread praise in Western capitals for NATO’s leadership of the air campaign in Libya, a confidential NATO assessment paints a sobering portrait of the alliance’s ability to carry out such campaigns without significant support from the United States.

The report concluded that the allies struggled to share crucial target information, lacked specialized planners and analysts, and overly relied on the United States for reconnaissance and refueling aircraft.

The findings undercut the idea that the intervention was a model operation and that NATO could effectively carry out a more complicated campaign in Syria without relying disproportionately on the United States military. Even with the American help in Libya, NATO had only about 40 percent of the aircraft needed to intercept electronic communications, a shortage that hindered the operation’s effectiveness, the report said.

report also spotlights an important issue for the alliance that dates to the Balkan wars of the 1990s: that the United States has emerged “by default” as the NATO specialist in providing precision-guided munitions — which made up virtually all of the 7,700 bombs and missiles dropped or fired on Libya — and a vast majority of specialized aircraft that conduct aerial intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions, or I.S.R. in military parlance.

“NATO remains overly reliant on a single ally to provide I.S.R. collection capabilities that are essential to the commander,” the report said.

In this criticism, however, several American and other allied officials said they saw a silver lining. The NATO report played a significant role in helping the alliance agree in February to acquire its own dedicated air-to-ground surveillance system to track and target hostile ground forces, the officials said.

The assessment also helped spur a French-led initiative backed by the Obama administration to establish a hub for allied surveillance aircraft, including Predator and Global Hawk drones, at an Italian air base in Sicily. This concept is modeled after a similar approach NATO has developed in Afghanistan, and it is expected to be approved by allied leaders at a NATO summit meeting in Chicago next month.

In addition, European defense ministers agreed last month on an ambitious proposal to expand the allies’ aerial refueling fleet, another American-backed measure that NATO officials will highlight in Chicago.