NATO Contributions in Libya
By Via Ares, a very interesting breakdown of strike sorties over Libya. The US had a very high percentage of the early strike sorties, but as you can see that has dropped dramatically, with the French taking on a very high portion of the workload. Of course, tallying the numbers isn’t everything; different nations use different kinds of ordnance, and contribute in other ways. We’ll be able to put together a more complete breakdown in the next few weeks as additional data is released.
NATO discloses each day the total number of collective sorties flown in the previous 24 hours and the total of all sorties since the start of OUP, but it does not break it down into national contributions. Such national details can only be found sporadically and from different sources. National levels of strike sorties flown have fluctuated since NATO took over military operations in Libya on March 31, 2011. The following information matches each country’s most recent number of strike sorties to the number of total strike sorties by that date.
France: 33%, approximately 2,225 strike sorties (out of 6,745 total sorties by August 4)
US: 16%, 801 strike sorties, (out of 5,005 strike sorties by June 30)
Denmark: 11%, dropped 705 bombs (out of the 7,079 missions by August 11)
Britain: 10%, 700 strike sorties (out of 7,223 total sorties by August 15)
Canada: 10%, approximately 324 strike sorties (based on 3,175 NATO strike sorties by May 25)
Italy: 10% (Not applicable until April 27 when Italy committed 4 Tornados for strike sorties)
Norway: 10%, 596 strike sorties (out of the 6,125 missions by August 1, no longer active)
Whatever else we can say about the air campaign (and I’ll have some additional thoughts in tomorrow’s column), it has been a genuinely multinational effort.