The two-month-old civil war in Libya is about to get a lot deadlier, for both sides.
In a bid to break a weeks-long stalemate in Libya, France and the U.K. have simultaneously made a portentous decision. Both countries are deploying tank-busting attack helicopters from their respective amphibious ships, currently sailing off the Libyan coast.
“What we want is to better tailor our ability to strike on the ground with ways that allow more accurate hits,” said French diplomat Alain Juppe.
There are three British Army WAH-64D Apaches (pictured above) embarked on the assault ship HMSOcean, with up to three more on the way. The choppers were recently re-certified for shipboard use, as a partial replacement for the Royal Navy’s recently-retired aircraft carrier and Harrier jump jets.
An unspecified number of French army Tiger choppers were reportedly among a dozen choppers aboard the assault ship Tonnerre.
The British and French gunships are equipped with rockets, guns, guided missiles and sophisticated day and night sensors. Both types, plus their American counterparts, have proved to be some of thedeadliest weapons of the Afghanistan war. But in the open terrain of North Africa, against an opponent armed with anti-aircraft guns and heat-seeking missiles, the helicopter gunships could prove as vulnerable to ground forces as ground forces are to them.
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