"French airstrikes in Mali..." Topic

Just airstrikes so far. I wouldnt be surprised to see boots soon though:
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Thanks for sharing the link.

I saw that on the tellie today, in the subtitled news, but only a brief headline.

I also read yesterday that government ground forces had fired on the Islamists for the first time yesterday, to stop their advance southwards.

The French have also sent troops to the Central African Republic. Their aircraft may be having to do double duty in both countries.

Interesting. I noted the article listed French Gunships too. Interesting scenario.

Appears they have now raided Somalia too, to try to get one of their advisors back:

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They lost a Gazelle gunship and a pilot in Mali.
-Kle.

Hurrah for the French! It's overdue.

Sorry to hear about the pilot.

If they are using a Gazelle as a gunship it's understandable why they lost it.

Gazelles did OK in Cote d'Ivoire.

Different missions, different requirements. Why are the French forces not backed by Tigres?, Or was this a recce unit thrown in because it was the closest rotary asset?

Vive Le' France !

Milites,

Yes, the French are so stupid. The USA would always use Apaches in such roles. Oh, hang on…

Yeah, those "Little Birds" can pack a punch too !

I suspect it has something to do with Gazelles and not Tigres being based in Chad.

French Gazelles have always been used as light attack helos. In the AT role they field 4 HOT missiles whilst infantry support versions have rocket and gun pods.

Also it turns out that the Gazelle was not shot down. A pilot was killed though by small arms.

The Gazelle was scrapped after landing, so not shot down, technically. It was apparently conducting a gun run with 20mm, so would have got pretty close. From comments made by the French they seem to have underestimated their opponents, who seem to be heavily armed, courtesy of the Libyan Civil War.

As I said before, if you use such machines to act as gunships you are risking them being shot down, not saying stupid, but they are not designed for the role. Seems operation Serval is being run on a Rumsfeldian small footprint.

I wonder why this has been done.

Perhaps these helicopters were only reco – or some agressive reco – and not expecting a strong AA defense.

Perhaps the French Army was too much accustomed to see African militias on 4x4 not very willing to fight.

Technically, the 4e RHFS (= Régiment d'hélicoptères des forces spéciales) is a part of the French Army (I mean, land army), not of the French Air Force. Their heritage is the "ALAT" (aviation légère de l'armée de terre) which as its name implies, is part of the Army, not of the Air Force.

I haven't seen many explanations of these losses released by the French military to the French press – yet.

Milites,

One might as well ask why the US didn't deploy Apaches to Somalia or why the British Army didn't use Challenger tanks in Northern Ireland. The biggest, meanest, hardest kit you have is not always appropriate.

The French retain the Gazelle in addition to the Tigre for the same reason the Americans retain the AH-6 in addition to the AH-64.

Don't think a Chally patrolling the streets of Londonderry, instead of a brick is remotely the same, to be honest. Operation Serval looks like a sticking plaster Op, on the cheap, with perhaps, as Patrice commented on, and the French government have stated, off the record,, these are not just 'guys in trucks'. Seems the Gazelle closed to gun range, to engage a rebel column, and paid the price. Yes they used HOT missiles in the Ivory coast but that has a 4km range, and they were targetting heavy weapons and buildings.

I can only assume the Gazelle crew, attacking at 2:00-3:00 am, (apparently brought in to strike a threatening rebel advance) thought their night vision aids would allow an unopposed strike. Speculation, but it's the SOP of people like the Night Stalkers, trouble is night is not the shield it was, especially with cheap camera phones able to detect IR strobes/designators. Our enemy is becoming cleverer at leveraging off-the shelf technology and we will pay dearly if we think a couple of companies of 'elite' troops backed up by a few fighter bombers and a few support assets are good enough, anymore. Don't forget the RPG gunners in Mogadishu supposedly learned their techniques for crippling helicopters from AQ. The internet allows rapid disemination of information and the events of the Gazelle crippling will be on every jihadists hard drive now.

Sorry, IMHO, fast slick, plexiglass bubbles, flown by SF pilots, conducting gun runs at ultra-low level are rapidly becoming a thing of the past, unless against the weakest of opposition. If we want to tackle these growing Islamist groups we should pony up and train a dedicated strike force. Oops, did I say pay more money, sorry 280,000 disruptive families, in the UK, with their born for profit off-spring, need their subsidised lifestyles. A sad situation of misplaced priorities, replicated throughout Europe and increasingly in the States.

There are very few Tigres in the inventory.

It is not unusual in war to have casualties. It does not mean failure, it might just mean you actually get in the thick of it. Churchill said something like:
"Soldiering can be, at times, really dangerous"

Distances are enormous; logistics are way difficult; places are devoid of much. Europe as a whole, only has a few dozen C130, half if not more from RAF, and 4 C17 from RAF.
Logistical nightmare to bring in troops and sustain them.
A race is on and the opposition knows it.

Jcfrog,

Good assessment. Even the mighty French are now having to rely on RAF and RCAF C-17s for strategic transport.

Europeans spend too much money on shiny jets and not enough on key strategic enablers ala strategic transports, air-to-air refuellers, reconnaissance and electronic warfare (e.g. look at Libya where US mainly provided these assets).

I very much like that quote from Churchill !

A good NYT article on the situation, suggesting the French are fighting a bit of an American Frankenstein.

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They deployed 3 Tigers to Afghanistan and also used them in Libya. My guess is they will deploy to Mali, especially after the Gazelle incident, where they will perform a similar role to that of their Afghan deployment, recce and strike.

It sounds like the whole operation is being rushed in response to a rapidly deteriorating situation. Presumably France is initially utilising what's nearby & available, rather than an optimised force. Hence Gazelles doing strafing runs & getting hit by lots of small arms.

Note that the mighty AH64 Apache proved to be very vunerable to small arms fire in Iraq when used for very close support

Just a couple of tidbits :
- The helicopter strike against a convoy was carried out in the afternoon, not at night
- The deceased pilot was in fact flying a HOT missile-armed Gazelle, not a 20mm cannon-armed one
- His helicopter received small arms fire and he was hit in the thigh, a severed femoral artery causing his death after he was evacuated to Mopti. The other pilot was not hit.
- His unit (4e RHFS) was based in neighbouring Burkina-Faso as part of the GFS Sabre special ops task-force which has been prepositioned in the event of further hostage rescue operations
- 4e RHFS only has a few Tigre gunships (4 planned, 2 currently available) which _appear_ to have been engaged in Somalia at the same time. Three Tigre gunships are apparently on their way to reinforce the 4e RHFS detachment…

Operation Serval isn't run on a Rumsfeldian small footprint: it's a scramble run on a shoestring with everything nearby thrown in ASAP.

Note that the mighty AH64 Apache proved to be very vunerable to small arms fire in Iraq when used for very close support

Most helos are. You can armour the cockpit, but intakes and rotor heads are still pretty vulnerable.

Yes, Choppers can be extremely vulnerable. That's why based on previous experiences(Vietnam for one) even after FA and CAS prep, possibly HOT LZ are avoided. We used to say in the 101, never put a Chopper where you wouldn't put a truck … Gunships advantage is it's ability to "pop-up" from behind cover and fire at targets with long range weapons(AT missiles, smaller rockets, mini-guns, etc.). And flight routes are usually(hopefully) suppressed with CAS and/or FA, known as SEADS(Suppression of Enemy Air Defense Systems). But even with that there are no guaranties, like in many combat ops. And generally Forced Entry Ops are avoided.

As of this morning, US is airlifting an additional 5-600 French troops to the region and providing refueling tanks for the French.

I saw an interesting picture in the new of French soldiers driving around in a technical complete with rear mg.

I hope this turns into a Nam style quagmire. The liberal imperialists of France, England and USA give the Islamists training, money and arms to fight Libya and Syria, and now they end up fighting them!

I hope it does not, as tens of thousands of Malian civilians have had to flee in terror from the rampaging Islamists. Really amazed at people who gloat about countries being torn apart, just to feel validation of their beliefs. Finally if the wheels do come off, it's the soldiers who have to dig the politicos out of the mess their smug policies created.

Anyway, dafydd, this should make you smile, think of all those terrified women and children, forced to submit to barbaric, arbitary laws! Who knows perhaps they will beat and torture vegetable vendors for having tomatoes and cucumbers together.

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Dafydd – explain the thousands of gleeful, tricoleur waving Malians all delighted the French have intervened?

I assume you'd prefer they spent their lives cowering under sharia?

How marvellous it must be to decry 'liberal imperialists' when living in a nice, rural English county rather than having to, you know, actually understand what is going on.

Hang on the BBC keeps telling us that they are the good guys in Syria. How comes you don't want them in Mali then?

Good is a very relative term. The only reason Assad isn't normally mentioned in the same breath as folks like Pol Pot, Hitler and Stalin is that Assad has fewer people in his country to kill for the crime of disagreeing with him.

Better than Assad != people you'd want as neighbors.

Regarding Sharia, many Muslims are all for it.

Many of them live under Sharia without a formal government adoption of it – e.g. sharia law applied in Pakistan by tribal/community leaders and not Pakistani government courts.

In Australia, Muslims are pushing for their family laws to be based on Sharia and not Australian Common and legislated law.

In Malaysia there are some larger groups pushing for sharia (opposed by Chinese and other minorities).

Just cause it's appalling to us, doesn't mean it's appalling to them.

As for Assad, he's better for international stability than Islamists or even worse a failed state (and the UN has already stated that Syrian Civil War has a sectarian basis).

And if the West is so concerned with Islamism why don't we wipe out the Persian Gulf states? These guys are heavily involved in funding Islamism, especially the Saudis and Qataris.

The West right now is rudderless. There is no direction in foreign policy. The war on Terror has proven to be a joke with West supporting Jihadist groups in Libya and initially Syria. NATO nearly started becoming the Saudi/Qataris enforcement agency.

The Chinese and Russians have got a far better grip on their foreign policy aims.

When I studied foreign relations at Uni, we were taught that there's a school of thought that given it's inherent complexity, foreign policy should not be at the whim of democratic and populist fashions. Same applies to economics

The last decade has seen Western foreign policy go down the toilet of populist whims and the West's interests have suffered for it with badly orchestrated wars and economic failure.

Although the BBC's moral compass has become somewhat skewed over the years, I cannot remember them portraying hardline Islamists as the good guys. Then again i stopped watching their version of news along time ago, so who knows.

Syrian and Libyan rebels have been portrayed as good guys by Western media.

Libya is now overrun with out-of-control militias, some of whom are Islamists whilst the US and co have acknowledged that some of the Syrian militias including some of the more successful and prominents ones are Islamist as well.

However the general news media coverage still portrays Syrians as the good guys though many of them are involved in the same level of butchery as Assad's forces.

Libya is forgotten other than that "riot" that killed the US Ambassador. The Americans were probably a little bit embarrassed that the people they helped topple Gaddafi contained Islamists that have now turned their attentions to the Great Satan.

Maybe the US should've paid attention to the fact that some key Libyan insurgents had experience in Iraq and Afghanistan killing Americans.

As stated, Western foreign policy is rudderless and based on whims of idiot politicians who haven't got a clue.

Spot on.

The Islamists represent a tiny minority in both the Libyan and Syrian insurgencies and have NEVER been seen as the 'good guys' or portrayed as such by Western governments or media. That's like saying we support Hizbollah because we support the Lebanese Government. Extreme Islamists are a festering boil on the arse of the insurgencies, but they are very far from controlling the insurgencies.

It may have escaped your attention, but the 'mainstream' Syrian insurgents have been having to fight Islamist insurgents in addition to Assad's forces and have been rescuing Western hostages taken by the Islamists. In Libya meanwhile, the people of Benghazi rose up and drove the bastards out following the Islamist murder of the US Consul there:

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There were plenty in America and Europe who advised against the Libya intervention, strangely though those opinions were not as well reported as other opposition views, previously, on other military interventions. Of course there is butchery on both sides, it's a civil war, atrocities are par for the course, scores are settled.

As for rudderless policy, look whose in charge, it should give you a clue, most have never done anything apart from being professional politicians. Good at getting power (though our Dave is a bit lacking in that department), but hopeless in exercising it. Everything becomes just an elongated campaign exercise and national priorities are ordered by optics.

The French, in Mali, are dealing with the consequences of the Libyan intervention, but there is some poetic justice as they pushed for it in the first place. I don't take any delight but perhaps we need to get a bloody nose to get us to pause and take stock. Then again that defeat is bourne hardest by those least culpable, though the longer it takes the bloodier it will be. Especially as one side seems to have the momentum at the moment, whilst the other is constantly reacting, hence operation Sticking plaster, sorry Serval. Sigh.

The Libyan Islamist brigades might be a minority but they have gained power In particular Al Qaeda in Maghreb got a massive boost from the toppling of Gaddafi. Islamists as well as specific city militia and Gaddafi loyalists are all fighting for a piece of the pie.

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In essence NATO support strengthened Al Qaeda in Africa.

As for Syria, the insurgents have also fought Kurdish groups. In some case Syrian insurgent brigades have only fought when paid to do so.

These wars are awful $%^$ fights and it's probably best for the West to focus on containment and not active support of billigerents with shady backgrounds.

Milites, I totally agree with your last post especially the bit about poetic justice for the French and quality of politicians.

In Australia, most of the politicians seem have no real opinion on anything and do not appear to be informed on any area either.

Professional politicians are bad for democracy.

The attack on politicians, with little or no experience, was the central theme of Frank Ledwidge's presentation, (author of 'Loosing Small Wars'), which I was lucky enough to attend. He actually widened the attack and said the electorate were indirectly responsible for the disastrous operations in Iraq and Helmand, as it had been responsible for electing sub-standard politicians. Quite sobering really.

Quite a few Muslims are appalled at the Islamist interpretation of Sharia, which seems to sometimes border on the fantasies of a lunatic teenager. I'm always right, I can do anything, I'll kill/mutilate you if you disagree. Hence tens of thousands of Malians fleeing from their advance and the seeds of the Iraqi Awakening movement (though tribal self-interest and an acute understanding of power also helped). A strategy apparently which the US hoped to replicate in Mali, without the inconvenience of having thousands of troops secure the population first. West Wing politics triumph, or maybe not.

The Ledwidge presentation sounds interesting. I would've liked to atend something like that.

As for Islam, I agree that not all Muslims are the same and differing opinions exist even amongst Islamists (e.g. look at current Turkish moderate Islamist government).

Thanks to Saudi Wahhabist expansion and the failure of Arab nationalism, it seems that Islamism (both for and against) has become the driving dialogue in the Muslim world.

We are lucky, our local bookshop organises promotional presentations, where you buy the book at a reduced rate and get to hear and speak to the author. Though when Terry Pratchett spoke 2,000 people packed the Cathedral and a lottery was organised to win places for an audience with Sir Terry.

Your last paragraph is the real key to most of that regions ills now. Saudi petro-dollars have allowed a massive expansion of Wahhbi Mosques and Madrassas, supporting violent Jihad, when the cameras are off, of course. In the end our energy greed has fueled a problem which has cost and will cost a sum of money which, if only a fraction had been invested in alternative energy technologies or greater exploration, could have probably gone a long way to stop the spread of this nihilistic strain of Islam. The Cold War didn't help, as Saudi money was especially useful in frustrating Communist expansion in the region.

I remember vaguely, in my MBA days, Greiner's? revolution, evolution diagram showing yesterdays solutions becoming tomorrows problems, how bloody (literally) true.

Terry Pratchett speaking? Now I am impressed!

Wahhabism is the elephant in the room but the West refuses to deal with the problem.

"I hope this turns into a Nam style quagmire. The liberal imperialists of France, England and USA give the Islamists training, money and arms to fight Libya and Syria, and now they end up fighting them!"

I hope you watch your family die in the streets when it gets to you.

And just how ing old and out of touch are you? "Imperialism," "Colonialism" – you're just a tire old Leftist retread without a clue in the modern world – and, like all Western Leftists a hypocrite fighting battles from your armchair.

Or maybe you're one of the ones who goes out on holiday to smash shop windows and throw petrol bombs at police officers who are blue collar slobs just like you. That'll bring down the establishment.

French armour on the move :

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Basically, this says ERC90 Sagaies armoured cars, and VAB APCs (including remote controlled turret TOP versions) are on their way to Diabala.

A VAB TOP below

Number6 is totally confused, bless him.

Good point and intel R. Mark … And the West generally really does not care what God you pray to. But whether you use religion, idealogies like Communism, Imperialism, Nationalism, Naziism etc., or whatever excuse, reasons, etc. you use to attack the West … you become the enemy … But I do agree, the West generally needs to be concerned more with containment, then getting actively involved on the ground in many of these local civil wars/insurgencies …

To quote Star Wars, 'I have a bad feeling about this'. We have trod this path so many times and it rarely ends happily.

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Assistance to Malian forces has now morphed into direct combat and so it will probably keep on escalating.