A few days ago, two senior colonels from the Libyan Air Force supposedly defected to the island of Malta in hopes of seeking asylum from their home country. The pilots told police officials that they were ordered by the Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi to attack a crowd of civilian protestors and, since that’s a bat shit crazy thing to demand, they fled the country in protest.
At first glance I viewed this story as a righteous and rare act of defiance and nothing more. But then I thought to myself “what if they actually carried out their mission?”. Obviously they would’ve killed a lot of people, but I wanted to go further into the details. I wanted to learn about the weaponry and the devastation it would’ve caused. Figuring I could get a better understanding of how insane Gadhafi actually was and how brave his protestors must be, I dove right in. What I found was that, if this scenario was played out in the way it was intended, nothing short of a massacre would’ve taken place.
First off, let’s start with the planes. Both men we’re flying Dassault Mirage F-1D’s, a general purpose air-to-ground or air-to-air single seat fighter made by France in the late 70’s. The pilots stated that their original orders were to bomb the crowd, which means they could’ve used any number of devastating ordnances that are capable of attaching to the F-1’s wing pylons. It’s pretty obviously what kind of damage, for instance, a 200-pound dumb bomb could do when dropped on a crowd of people, so I won’t go into that.
For imaginations sake, let’s say the pilot’s took mercy on the crowd and only used their guns. Like many French aircraft built during the late-70’s and early 80’s, the F-1 was equipped with two-DEFA 553 cannons with 150 rounds per gun. These cannons used 30mm x 113mm rounds, commonly used to shred through fuel tanks on aircraft and wreak havoc on armored personal carriers. As far as I know, 30mm rounds generally aren’t used on “soft targets” (i.e. people) because it’d pretty much be a waste of ammo. A 30mm slug wouldn’t just punch a hole through a human; it’d vaporize them.
Now place yourself in the middle of one of these protests in Libya. As you walk through the crowd of men, women and children, you look up to see a faint silhouette of two military jets orbiting the mass of people. Suddenly, both planes turn in formation towards the crowd and open fire. I could only guess what a scene like this would look like firsthand , as I’ve fortunately never seen the business end of a fighter jet’s live cannon. However, I’ve watched enough footage to understand that a situation like this would be a horror show. Blood and body parts would be exploding around you as if you were in a cheap old horror movie. There wouldn’t be enough time to react. The crowd of innocent and hopeful civilians would be obliterated in a flash, all in the pursuit of freedom from a tyrannical government.
It’s hard to say whether or not those protestors were willing to become martyr’s, but I’m sure they all knew the risk was there. They’re ready to face Gadhafi head on, which is essentially saying they’re ready to give up everything for their country’s freedom. It’s a poetic and inspiring notion, but too often the outcome is tragic. Despite the pilot’s peaceful protests, many Libyan protestors have already been cut down by the hand of Gadhafi’s military. It’s a sad state of affairs, but I for one believe that, with a few more acts of heroism such as the one displayed by the Libyan pilots, a regime change in Libiya is on the horizon.
