MESOP TODAYS COMMENTARY : END OF ALL ILLUSIONS – Moscow Scuppers US Coalition Plans for No-fly Zone in Syria

By Sam Jones – Financial Times – d 2015-10-05 05:35 GMT – Russia’s bombing of anti-regime rebels in Syria has been described as a disaster for the US-led coalition’s efforts to destroy Isis, the Islamist militant group, but the Kremlin’s real challenge to Washington is in the skies above the war-torn country. Alongside a modest Latakia-based contingent of two dozen Su-24 Fencer and Su-25 Frogfoot jets — planes designed to strike land targets — Moscow has deployed assets which render the prospect of no-fly zones enforced by the US or its allies over Syria impossible to enact.

Just weeks ago, after months of diplomacy, officials were close to an agreement on enforcing aerial safe-zones to end the Assad regime’s bombing of civilians in northern and southern Syria, according to diplomats and military officials in the US-led coalition. The agreement was based on Jordanian and Turkish plans presented earlier this year.

Many officials believe an imminent move to ramp up coalition activity in Syria precipitated the Kremlin’s sudden intervention late last month.

“The ultimate reason all this is happening is because of the renewed focus on Syria and the need for some sort of political solution there — something which we thought we could achieve by enforcing no-fly zones, safe zones,” said one senior European diplomat.  But any hopes of military co-ordination with Russia to achieve this, even in the wake of its disruptive deployment, are swiftly being dashed. Nato’s supreme military commander in Europe, US General Phillip Breedlove warned last week that the alliance was “worried about another A2/AD bubble being created in the eastern Mediterranean.” A2/AD stands for anti-access, area denial.

Gen Breedlove’s fears have been realised in the past days as Russia’s small deployment of four Su-30 “flanker” jets, which are at Latakia’s Bassel al-Assad air base — highly manoeuvreable aircraft designed to shoot down other aircraft — has been augmented with a far more powerful arsenal.

Russia’s ministry of defence announced on Friday the deployment of its navy cruiser the Moskva to Latakia. The Moskva is armed with a complement of 64 S-300 ship-to-air missiles, Russia’s most powerful anti-aircraft weapon.Deployment of S-300s — or other similarly sophisticated systems, also known as triple-digit Sams — has long been one of the Pentagon’s biggest fears in the Middle East. The S-300 system, which has an operating range of 150km, is capable of striking down all but the most sophisticated stealth aircraft. It means most missions flown by Washington’s coalition allies — Jordan, for example, uses F-16 jets — are now highly vulnerable. Even the UK’s deployment of Tornados and Typhoons at the Royal Air Force’s base at Akrotiri, Cyprus, is threatened by the missiles.

“The Russian forces now in place make it very, very obvious that any kind of no-fly zone on the Libyan model imposed by the US and allies is now impossible, unless the coalition is actually willing to shoot down Russian aircraft,” says Justin Bronk, research analyst at the Royal United Services Institute.  “The Russians are not playing ball at deconfliction — they are just saying, ‘keep out of our way’. The coalition’s operations in Syria will be vastly more complex from a risk assessment point of view and from a mission-planning point of view.”  Even surveillance missions above Syria by US and coalition aircraft will be complicated. One Nato air force officer said the organisation expected to start seeing the kind of “cold war tactics” and brinkmanship Russia has recently been using in the Baltics. Pilots will be briefed to expect powerful Russian radar systems “lighting up” their aircraft in shows of strength, he said. Preventing the creation of US-led coalition no-fly zones in Syria is important for Moscow’s influence over events in the country. With the Assad regime’s territorial grip looking fragile in recent months, the added imposition of a US-led coalition no-fly zone could have forced negotiations that would have led to a loss of Russia’s influence. Now any diplomatic or political process that does occur will do so on Moscow’s terms.

“Russia’s military actions are serving political ends of which there are several,” says Alex Kokcharov, Russia analyst at IHS Janes, the defence consultancy.

For Mr Putin, US and Nato “no-fly zones” have additional resonance too.

“Putin was deeply shaken by the overthrow of Gaddafi in Libya,” Mr Kokcharov notes. “There is something at a personal level that is motivating this.”

For Russia military planners, no-fly zones — seen in the West as a measure of humanitarian mercy — are often seen as tools of regime change.