Maverick's World

Who is "Abhimanyu" today?

In the Mahabharata mythos the alliance of the righteous Pandava Princes was able to defeat the numerically superior Kuru Army through a variety of disruptive warfare techniques. One of these techniques is captured in the account of the thirteenth day.

One the thirteenth day of the war, the Pandava alliance faced a formidable defensive formation constructed by the Kuru Army general staff. In order to penetrate this formation, Abhimanyu, one of the sons of the Pandava Prince Arjun conducted an aggressive patrol that imposed heavy losses on the Kuru Army.

The aggressive patrol ended with the death of Abhimanyu but it achieved considerable success as it degraded the Kuru General Staff in the eyes of their soldiers and it rendered the Kuru defensive strategy unviable.

The decision to accept the sacrifice of Prince Abhimanyu was taken by the Pandava General Staff only when they were left with no other options.

While I do not believe these accounts of the myths to have traceable historical accuracy, I do feel they contain important tools to interpret what is going on in Syria.

Last week it appears the Hammers of Hatzerim disabled the IRGC drone capabilities in Syria. This IMHO enables SOF/LRP ops to proceed with reduced interference in the region.

A US lead coalition of air and naval assets has gathered around Syria with the (now) publicly expressed aim of punishing Assad and breaking up his comfy relationship with Russia and Iran (see Trump tweet of today morning for details).  As Trump has not approached Congress for additional authority or funding - it does not seem that this will be a long campaign. It is most likely expected to be a short lived expectation. Given the state of Russian and Iranian lines of communication in the region and Assad's lack of depth, this is not an unreasonable idea but then the Iraq invasion of 2004 was supposed to be a limited affair also.

Based on the burst of EAM traffic yesterday - I feel it likely that element of surprise has been lost. The reports of RuAF AD and Mainstay AEW ac suggest that SyAAD is still a viable entity. As long as SyAAD remains active - the likelihood of success in aggressive action (absent the element of surprise) is low. Even if a momentary air dominance is achieved, it will likely be heavily contested by SAMs.

The key operation (JMHO) is disabling the SyAAD infrastructure permanently.

Having lost the element of surprise one has two basic options

1) Feint - draw AD attention to one side (say the West) by making ominous suggestions that the de-confliction line between RU and Allied forces is likely to be breached because Syrian and IRGC have sheltered too close to RU assets and then launch an attack over Deir Ezzor in the East.

2) "Abhimanyu's Sacrifice" - launch an attack with the specific goal of drawing out air defense assets from their coverage and in doing so compromise the overall effectiveness at the cost of your attacking force.

Obviously the second option is not ideal, but given that there is very little room otherwise to achieve DOD objectives in a climate where Trump is disconnected from reality and more obsessed with meeting his obligations to Putin and Bibi Netanyahu - it may be the only option available to DOD planners.

I sense Trump wants another stupid piece of theater with cruise missiles, but there is no effectiveness to that per the DOD's point of view or the perspective from Israel Even Bibi can't sell houses in the West Bank if there is a perennial risk of an Syrian/IRGC backed chemical weapons attack.

So right now - unless Putin tells Assad to take a vacation in Tehran*. This is most likely going to end up with Russian and DOD losing lives in an attempt to force Assad to leave Damascus**.

* Also  while Putin is telling people off - perhaps he can tell Laura Ingraham to remain on vacation also because man - that lady is becoming massively annoying.
**I hear his family and a number of Assadholes are already leaving for Lebanon but I don't believe Assad has left himself.

posted by maverick @ 6:11 AM