A relic of days gone by
Today’s Guardian reports possibly the most pathetic and desultory news in the history of war: two British Tornado aircraft destroyed an ISIS pick-up truck. Two jets that cost $27 million each managed, between them, to blow up a battered Toyota pick-up truck, that ISIS probably scored for free but will probably cost a maximum of $5000 to replace. Fortunately the pilots of these two hyper-sophisticated jets made it back safely to their base in Cyprus without being shot down and beheaded. All in all, a good 6 hours’ work!
This story is so full of pathos and futility that it is hard to stop laughing. Is this our contribution to the protection of Kobani and the hundreds of Kurds fixing to die there? We fly two planes for six hours, and use a $50,000 bomb to blow up a pick-up truck? This is how the mighty West is going to stop ISIS from executing every Kurdish soldier in Kobani?
Media reports that hundreds of Kurdish Peshmerga have crossed the border into Syria to fight thousands of ISIS soldiers who have captured many villages in the area and are closing in on Kobani. Assuming those thousands are actually 1000, and that they are all in pick-up trucks, how many missions will the RAF have to fly and what will it cost? Sky news reports that the cost of operating one Tornado on one mission is 210,000 pounds, without dropping a bomb. A single paveway bomb costs 22,000 pounds. So for two Tornadoes to blow up one pick up truck cost 442,000 pounds. Of course, they might have dropped all four of their paveways, and two Brimstone missiles (105,000 each), destroying six pick-ups at a total cost of 708,000 pounds.
If we assume that those 1000 soldiers are all in pick-ups, and all the pick-ups have a weapon on, we could guess 4 dudes in the back (around the gun) and 2 dudes in the seats. Assuming that the Tornado hit the pick-up truck in tandem, that kills 6 men. With 6 men per truck you need about 150 trucks to get to Kobani, and at 6 trucks per mission (assuming full use of all those super-cool weapons) then you’re looking at 40 or so missions, minimum. That’s 28 million pounds to blow up 150 pick up trucks and kill 1000 ISIS soldiers. Of course this estimate is ludicrously optimistic, and if the report is to be believed (and previous reports in which the RAF flew 5 missions without finding a target) then probably it’s more likely that one mission= one pick-up truck, on average. So 150*444,000 pounds, or about 70 million pounds.
Of course, those pick-up trucks had weapons mounted on them. News reports suggest that ISIS captured 50 or so M198 Howitzers, which cost $500,000 each. If we assume that 10 of them are being used in Kobani then the attacks might cost them $5 million. So for 70 million pounds, we can degrade $5 million worth of weaponry and maybe $1 million worth of pick-up trucks. It appears that the RAF is flying a couple of missions a day, so even at its most optimistic this task will take 7 days (more like 10 or 20, assuming it’s possible at all). Will Kobani still be standing in 7 days’ time?
ISIS are rumoured to have $1 billion in reserve, and 30,000 soldiers. If they capture Kobani they will replenish all the pick-up trucks the RAF destroys (newsflash! pick-up trucks are ubiquitous, and Tornadoes are not). It’s probable that all those Kurdish fighters coming into Kobani are bringing weapons, probably heavy weapons supplied by the Australian army to the Kurds in Mosul. So ISIS will win back everything they lose without expending a cent of their savings. Once they’re in the city bombing them will be impossible. Meanwhile ISIS are said to be at the gates of Baghdad, even attacking a prison and the HQ of the Badr militia two weeks ago. It seems pretty obvious to me that air strikes are not working, troops on the ground are the only solution, and the Iraqi army is either sympathetic to ISIS, or not willing to stick around to be executed after they lose. So long as ISIS keep moving, and US and British air strikes are being launched from bases many hours’ flight away, it’s going to be impossible to seriously impede their combat ability. Two tornadoes fly out, locate a squad of ISIS trucks, blow up the best target, return home; three hours later two more Tornadoes turn up, but they have to look around to find the targets, because the trucks have moved. It appears that they frequently fail to find a target, and return without firing a shot. If air war is going to work, it is going to need close air support weapons – A10s and helicopters – but no one dares to deploy a helicopter near ISIS since they captured US anti-aircraft missiles, and the only country capable of deploying A10s in range, Turkey, was denied access to them. So we have high speed jets at the limit of their range scouring empty desert looking for pick-up trucks. This is how we are going to stop ISIS from killing a couple of thousand Kurdish men (and any civilians without the means to escape).
This is so pathetic. The journalists reporting on this intervention are so chuffed about all this hardware and blowing-up-stuff. My god, the Europeans even have a cruise missile named after a GI Joe character (Storm Shadow! What’s not to like?!) How can they not be devastating? But the sad fact is that ISIS have pick up trucks, and dudes with attitude. Spending a quarter of a million pounds to blow up a battered technical and a dude with attitude is not efficient. Nor is it going to help the people fighting those dudes. ISIS are fighting a classical war of movement, and given their numbers and the tools they’re using, it’s ridiculously inefficient to try and destroy them using modern air warfare. Boots on the ground, or go home!
The sad reality is that there’s nothing we in the West can do from afar to stop this monster. ISIS is the Middle East’s Khmer Rouge, and they have arisen from the same hellish swamp: just as the Khmer Rouge seized power violently in the aftermath of the US destruction of Cambodia, ISIS are seizing power violently in the aftermath of the mess created by the US in Iraq, and by the US and Europe in Syria. It’s an object lesson in failed states: create them, and the psychopaths will come. The best way to stop ISIS was to stop the second Iraq war, but our leaders (of all political stripes) were so stupid, vain and cruel that they thought the second Iraq war was a grand idea. ISIS is the brainchild of Tony Blair, John Howard and George Bush. They made it, and their inheritors cannot stop it unless they are wiling to expend the lives and blood of western soldiers that they were so loathe to shed in the past war. Of course that’s not going to happen, so instead they’ll spend millions of dollars blowing up pick-up trucks for a year, until they have trained a force of rebels who will enter Syria just to die. This is what our “civilized” society created, and what our leaders refuse to commit to fixing.
So what should Barack Obama do? I think he should take the $70 million required to defend Kobani, and invest it in a time machine. It doesn’t matter that we don’t have any idea how to build it, so long as the money is put down, and a law passed to guarantee a million bucks a year until the thing is made, everything will be fine. Eventually (maybe a thousand years from now), someone will finally make the time machine. Then the first thing they will do is go back in time and deliver the plans to Barack Obama, at the opening ceremony of the research project. Brilliant! Then someone can go forward in time far enough to get a mind control machine; then they can go back in time to 2003, and stop the second Iraq war. Then ISIS will never happen, and everyone will be happy.
Or we could spend $70 million blowing up second-hand Toyota pick-up trucks, at half a million bucks a pop. Which do you think is the more cost-effective strategy?
Compromise and Conceit 
October 4, 2014 at 8:35 pm
Well, the Khmer Rouge was stopped when they attacked Vietnam, which promptly invaded and installed a new regime – the same one currently in power.
War is not a game of cost-benefit in the terms you set out (although that side has some part). ISIS has bounced much of the Iraqi Army out of the Sunni areas by being the best organised, best motivated Sunni force. It has had a harder time when it has come up against equally motivated forces – the Kurds and Shia militias (both stiffened by a small amount of Iranian help and guidance). As a small force, dependent on continued victory to maintain an uneasy coalition (Sunni tribes, other Islamist militias) it can’t afford too many stand-up battles. Truck bombs in Baghdad have been a feature for the last several years, but the Shia have kept a pretty firm grip on the capital and areas south.
US-sponsored air power can severely limit ISIS ability to deploy large forces, move supplies, or use heavier assets such as tanks and artillery. See, eg, the German experience in France in 44, where movements that previously took days stretched to weeks, and units arrived at half-strength. It’s not the technicals destroyed that count, it’s the ones that move only at night, in dribs and drabs, minus supply trucks, and then attack without artillery support.
BTW And technicals are soft targets for well-trained troops. Australian companies guarding refugee supply routes in Somalia were attacked on several occasions. The Australians had no heavy weapons, but the results ended up something like Australians 67, Somalis nil.
All that said, yes, the Iraq wars have been a disaster.
October 5, 2014 at 12:42 am
Interesting points Peter T, and I would like to agree, but I am not sure if the situation with ISIS follows the plan you have set out.
Well the Khmer Rouge was stopped when they attacked Vietnam
You seem to be implying that ISIS will stumble when they fight a “real” army. They have already beaten the Syrian army repeatedly. (I made this point at Quiggin’s too). I guess everyone is waiting for them to attack Tukrkey and lose. I think they aren’t that stupid.
It has a harder time when it has come up against equally motivated forces – the Kurds and Shia militias
I am really unconvinced that the Kurds are an equal to ISIS. Not only do they lack the equipment but they are mostly untrained. They have lost almost every battle they fought, even with air support. I guess we will see from what happens in Kobani … I also disagree about the need for ISIS to maintain momentum in order not to fragment. They simply need to maintain order, and prevent starvation and disease, to be seen as a huge boon by the people in their command. I think this is something that westerners underestimate about life in Eastern Syria and Western Iraq – especially since we don’t really know how much the previous Iraqi government was killing Sunnis (I see hints that it was actually pretty nasty). ISIS simply need to combine ruthlessness with good social services. I really don’t believe this western mantra that the tribes are so fractious that they just can’t be united. Not only is it a classic sci-fi staple, but history is full of examples of tribes being united. And the ISIS videos have object lessons in how they go about it, that look pretty compelling. So I’m not convinced by this.
See e.g. the German experience in France in 44
You have noticed the picture at the top of this post? I was trying to find one of those classic pictures of a line of heavy armour being strafed to shreds, from WW2, but couldn’t. I don’t think the situations are comparable. In WW2 in 1944, the German army had to move huge amounts of men and armour to fight huge amounts of men and armour (156,000 men in France alone). This meant huge columns of armour rushing along narrow roads, often unable to separate or stagger their movement due to fields, hedges etc. In contrast, ISIS typically have to move a couple of hundred men to fight a couple of hundred men, over open ground, often without much in the way of barriers or any need to bring extensive support material with them (technicals don’t require the same support equipment as tanks). So instead of a long line of trucks, tanks and APCs on a narrow road lined by trees, being attacked by planes flying from a base an hour away in hordes of 10 or 20, you have a gang of pick up trucks driving in loose formation on wide roads with no barriers (watch the video of ISIS drive bys if you doubt me – their targets often veer off road to escape them, and there are off-road chases in that footage). They are being attacked by perhaps two planes, that are flying from a base three hours away, with no idea what to look for, and no local knowledge. This is why I think that strafing picture from the top of this post is a relic of a bygone era, and this is why we read on the first day of the British entry into this conflict that they flew five missions without finding a target. I just don’t think air war is going to do it in this case.
Your example also doesn’t cut it for me. Yes, technicals are soft targets for well-trained troops. And where are those well-trained troops? They are nowhere near ISIS.
I think the attack on Kobani will tell us a lot. If ISIS capture Kobani, then that puts paid to the idea that the Peshmerga are their match, and that a poorly-trained and poorly-equipped milita can defeat ISIS with the help of US air support. From there the question is what they can do in Baghdad. For example, if they get far enough into Baghdad to focus heavy weapons on the Green Zone, what does that mean for Baghdad’s government and for US interests?
Finally, the other reason air support is not enough is that we can’t think of ISIS just in terms of preventing them achieving their strategic goals. Every one of their tactical goals ends with hideous human rights abuses, and in Kobani this will mean mass murder. Kobani had a population of 400,000 and some proportion are staying. ISIS have captured many villages on the road to Kobani, and in every one they are committing atrocities. It is not enough to say that eventually they will collapse. On their way to collapse they are going to cause a huge amount of pain and suffering. And air attacks are not, I think, going to stop them from doing that.
October 6, 2014 at 12:49 pm
I doubt Kobani is a key point. It’s too far from Kurdish main forces for them to intervene effectively, and the Turkish Army seems to be in neutral mode. So it will be lightly armed locals defenders against ISIS professionals. At best, airpower may be able to keep ISIS heavier weapons (especially artillery) out of the picture. But if it falls, that won’t be a major loss, although it will be another nasty massacre.
They keys here are ISIS ability to mobilise forces to back up/replace their elite of committed ghazis before attrition reduces them too far and, on the other sides, the ability to bring their superior manpower and other assets into play. They also have to play things so as to avoid Turkish or Iranian intervention, and keep Assad’s forces off their backs. They don’t seem too popular – more feared than loved. Bit like the Taliban.
Assuredly, if the Shia and Kurds don’t hang together, they will hang separately. But the Badr Brigades, Sadr Army and Peshmerga probably have the will and the numbers. Hezbollah has the experience and training (they gave the Israelis a bloody nose), as does the Quds Force. This is, potentially, a formidable coalition. Hezbollah and Assad have together been able to clear the Damascus environs and the western half of Syria, and have rallied more support as the war drags on. The Kurds have taken back Mosul dam and pushed back ISIS from Kirkuk. Badr and Sadr were instrumental in retaking Amerli.
I agree air attacks are not going to stop ISIS. But it can buy time. Western – especially US – strategy is a hopeless mess, mainly because it cannot make up its mind who its allies are, and stick with them. It keeps trying to play all sides (Saudis, Gulf states, Sunni opinion, Iraqi Shia, Kurds etc) as any move in one direction either upsets domestic factions or infringes some perceived interest. this is a recipe for repeated failure, which has duly resulted since 1982.
October 6, 2014 at 2:10 pm
Media reports seem to be suggesting that a lot of militants have died attacking Kobani, which suggests it may be something of a pyrrhic victory (especially if they are experienced fighters dying). Who can say, though, whether anything we hear from the media is true? Or even what the balance of experienced to inexperienced is in ISIS?
It’s cute that you mention the Taliban were more feared than loved – not so by the Americans at the time! One of the players in my game yesterday told me that he just watched Rambo 3, which is set in Afghanistan, and at the end of the credits it says “This movie is dedicated to all the brave Mujahideen fighting for freedom in Afghanistan.” Hahaha. A very good example of the foolishness of outsiders trying to “play all sides” as you put it. Indeed, ISIS seem to be doing well playing all sides, which I think is part of their strategy in Kobani. They have left the Free Syrian Army and Assad to wear each other down while they pick off easy gains on the border and consolidate their control over rival Sunni ethnic and religious extremist groups. And they are carefully avoiding enraging people who can actually hurt them (e.g. Turkey, whose diplomats they recently freed).
How much time will air strikes buy and at what cost in dollars, civilian lives and credibility? I can’t see a strategy for foreign powers in Iraq that doesn’t involve troops on the ground. I guess we’ll know in the next few weeks based on the outcomes in Kobani whether or not there has been any real benefit from these efforts …
October 6, 2014 at 4:13 pm
One of the casualties in reporting is clarity about who is whom. The Taliban are a case in point – the opposition to the Soviet-backed Najibullah government had several distinct elements. The main one was the various Pashtun “tribes”; the Taliban were religious students, mostly Pashtuns from Pakistan, who came in and, as a relatively disciplined and united force, were able to take Kabul and impose their rule. But the Taliban concept of a religious revival clashed with Pashtun tribal mores (and Kabuli urban traditions, and Turkmen/Hazara/Tajik aspirations) and there was a lot of quiet friction. The Taliban kept it together, partly by fighting the Northern Alliance (“stay with us and there will be booty – defy us and feel our wrath”). Now the government is back to fighting a combination of Pashtun tribes and religious radicals, only with US rather than Soviet backing. Plus ca change…
In Iraq, the key is the Shia-Kurd alliance, backed by Iran. To the Sunni ultra-orthodox, a Shia government is an abomination (and for Shia, it’s payback time for several decades of vicious persecution). Hence insurgency, ISIS etc. To back the Shia is to ally with Iran, de facto. The US keeps trying to weasel away from this uncomfortable truth.
October 6, 2014 at 4:25 pm
That’s their chickens coming home to roost isn’t it: they have spent years pretending that Iran is the worst actor in the region, when actually it’s a pretty reasonable place compared to some of the other things going on there, and they’ve backed themselves into a position from which they cannot get the help they need. It’s my personal view that they can’t rely on Turkey (which a lot of sensible people probably thought would be likely to align with US interests) because Turkey is more than happy to watch ISIS comprehensively destroy Kurdish dreams of an independent state. So the only alternative power in the region with an interest in stopping ISIS and the means to do so is the one state they cannot admit to working with. Which leaves them hoping regional crazies will step in to help instead. And if things get worse, means that they may be forced into a humiliating policy backdown with long-term implications for their relationship with Israel, in order to secure Iranian help in the defense of Baghdad.
If ISIS quickly roll up Kurdistan I guess Turkey will then be happy to step in and help. But that kind of calculation is incredibly grim. Would any of this be happening if Iran had been admitted back into the fold of civilized nations when Obama first returned to the presidency?
October 6, 2014 at 6:54 pm
Yeah, well the reward for Vietnam ousting the Khmer Rouge was several decades of sanctions plus a proxy guerrilla war. The Iranian reward for helping the US in Afghanistan was ever stronger sanctions and a campaign of covert action in Seistan. The Iranian reward for ousting ISIS would no doubt include a US bombing campaign in the name of upholding international law.
October 7, 2014 at 2:33 pm
Faustus – You’re calling for Western intervention regarding IS/ISIS/ISIL [1] because it’s an outcome of Iraq War II. But it’d seem to a casual observer that the Middle East has a long history of always shaping up for the next war/atrocity [2]. Given that, what time period do you want the West to work towards recreating? If the US crushed ISIS and restored a dictator in Iraq would that be OK, or would they then need to redeem their mistake in setting up that strongman?
I ask because it’d seem there is no circumstance in decades at least (and centuries possibly) where the you could say “The West bears no blame for this”.
Given that, why not just cut our losses? We’ve screwed the pooch at every turn for ages – at some point maybe just not installing the next madman is the right course of action? It’ll lead to significant loss of life in the region, but in the medium term everything seems to lead to that.
On a different topic:
@Peter T
“it cannot make up its mind who its allies are, and stick with them.”
“The Iranian reward for helping the US in Afghanistan was ever stronger sanctions and a campaign of covert action in Seistan.”
It is funny to watch you say the US should decide who their allies are and stick with them, then suggest that because an enemy helped them they should suddenly have become buddy-buddy.
[1] It would be nice if the international community could get together and agree the this group henceforth be called something like “Headchopping assholes in the Middle East”. In part because it may make it easier to separate out religious elements from the conflict.
[2] Enough of them with Western backing of someone who ends up being an asshat.
October 7, 2014 at 3:26 pm
No Paul, I’m calling for western investment in a time machine! I think I’m also saying that anything less than a full intervention would be a waste of time. I like to hope that such a claim is slightly less than enthusiastically barracking for such an intervention. I think you’re broadly right that probably the best thing to do is not to do anything, because every short term intervention has unpleasant long-term ramifications, though I’m not sure if this correct – Gulf War 1 might qualify as an intervention that didn’t further disrupt the balance of screwed-upness. I don’t think you could say that GW1 led to GW2 (except in the sense that someone was trying to emulate his daddy – but that’s hardly a geopolitical consequence of blowing shit up). So maybe there are actually times when “this time is different,” but then again maybe even a stopped clock is right twice a day. So I’m not so much advocating an intervention now as saying that what we are doing is a stupid and expensive waste of time.
I think you’ve misinterpreted Peter T – I think he is not so much saying the US should have buddied up to Iran, as pointing out that the Iranian government probably doesn’t feel there is much benefit to them of offering to help, given past experience. I wonder what the Persian word is for “schadenfreude”?
October 7, 2014 at 3:29 pm
Oh also, a resounding YES to calling them “Headchopping arsehats.” Their name is a great example of how much an organization with power can dominate a conversation simply by being able to enforce its choice of language…
May 22, 2022 at 7:54 pm
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