Dempsey: Syria no-fly zone costly

WASHINGTON – The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has told the Senate Armed Services Committee that establishing a no-fly zone over Syria would cost the U.S. $500 million to $1 billion a month and that it might not quell the conflict there because President Bashar Assad’s military primarily relies on artillery, not air power, for most of its offensives.

The no-fly zone scenario was one of several U.S. options that Army Gen. Martin Dempsey presented in a letter to Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., and Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the ranking Republican on the panel.

The letter, dated Friday and released Monday, was written at the senators’ request following a contentious committee hearing last week in which Levin and McCain were dissatisfied with Dempsey’s response to a question about whether he’d recommended U.S. intervention in Syria to President Barack Obama. Dempsey said such a decision was a civilian one and that he had only discussed the military options with the president.

McCain vowed to block Dempsey’s nomination for a second term as Joint Chiefs chairman if he didn’t get sufficient answers. Neither McCain nor Levin commented Monday on Dempsey’s downbeat assessment of U.S. options, though they released a letter of their own in response, asking Dempsey for specifics about what options might change the military balance in Syria, where the civil war has killed more than 93,000 people on both sides.

Congress and the administration have yet to reach a consensus on how, or even whether, to provide weapons to the Syrian rebels, whose anti-Assad campaign is made up of as many as 1,200 largely independent groups, including some that are openly affiliated with al-Qaida.

Only now have congressional intelligence committees signed off on a proposal the Obama administration made more than a month ago to have the CIA funnel unspecified arms and training to rebels aligned with the moderate Supreme Military Council, led by a defected Syrian general, Salim Idriss.

In a statement Monday, Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said his committee “has very strong concerns about the strength of the administration’s plans in Syria and its chances for success.”

“After much discussion and review, we got a consensus that we could move forward with what the administration’s plans and intentions are in Syria with committee reservations,” he said.

In describing the no-fly zone option, Dempsey said that the U.S. could use “lethal force to prevent the (Assad) regime from using its military aircraft to bomb and resupply,” and that such a move would likely result in “the near total elimination of the regime’s ability to bomb opposition strongholds and sustain its forces by air.”

But he said such an effort would cost $500 million and $1 billion a month and would run the risk of having U.S. boots on the ground if American jets were shot down by Syrian anti-aircraft systems.

“Risks include the loss of U.S. aircraft, which would require us to insert personnel recovery forces,” Dempsey wrote. “It may also fail to reduce the violence or shift momentum because the regime relies overwhelmingly on surface fires – mortars, artillery and missiles.”

Dempsey offered similarly bleak assessments of four other options.