DOD News Briefing with Vice Adm. Gortney from the Pentagon on Libya Operation Odyssey Dawn
Go to http://www.defense.gov/news/PAO_DJS_Slides_19Mar11_v3.pdf to view briefing slides associated with this transcript.
GEOFF MORRELL: Good afternoon. Thank you all for coming in on a Saturday afternoon. We’ve gathered you all here today in order to provide you with an operational briefing by Vice Admiral Bill Gortney, who is the director of the Joint Staff.
Admiral Gortney will update you on Operation Odyssey Dawn, the international coalition’s military enforcement of U.N. Security Council resolution 1973. The admiral is kind enough to join us this afternoon and he’ll make a very brief statement and then offer you all the opportunity to ask a few questions, but obviously he has operational matters to attend to, so this will not be a lengthy engagement.
With that, Admiral.
VADM WILLIAM GORTNEY: Thank you.
Good afternoon. Thank you for coming everyone. As you know, we’re on the leading edge of a coalition military operations designed to enforce United Nations Security Council resolution 1973 in Libya. The goals of these initial operations are essentially twofold; first, to prevent further attacks by regime forces on Libyan citizens and opposition groups, especially in and around Benghazi; and second, to degrade the regime’s capability to resist the no-fly zone we are implementing under that United Nations resolution.
To that end, earlier this afternoon over 110 Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from both U.S. and British ships and submarines struck more than 20 integrated air defense systems and other air defense facilities ashore.
On the slide to my left – back one slide, please. On the slide to my left you can see the rough locations of the military targets struck. You will notice that most of them are on or near the coast, a fact which made their destruction vital to the enforcement of a no-fly zone since so much of the air activity we have seen and so much of the regime’s military efforts have been in this part of the country. These strikes were carefully coordinated with our coalition partners. The targets themselves were selected based on our collective assessment that these sites either pose a direct threat to the coalition pilots or through use by the regime pose a direct threat to the people of Libya.
Because it is night over there it will be some time before we have a complete pictures of the success of these strikes. I want to stress, however, that this is just the first phase of what will likely by a multi-phased military operation designed to enforce the United Nations resolution and deny the Libyan regime the ability to use force against its own people.
This is an international military effort urged by the Libyan people themselves and by other Arab nations. We are joined by several other allied partners and are committed to supporting their efforts. Indeed, we continue to receive commitments of support and participation in leadership from both Arab and European partners.
In these early days, the operation will be under the operational command of General Carter Ham, commander of U.S. Africa Command. And the commander of Joint Task Force Odyssey Dawn, which is the name of this operation, is Admiral Sam Locklear, who is embarked on board USS Mount Whitney in the Mediterranean. We anticipate the eventual transition of leadership to a coalition commander in the coming days.
That said, the U.S. military has and will continue to use our unique capabilities to create the conditions from which we and our partners can best enforce the full measure of the U.N. mandate. Our mission right now is to shape the battle space in such a way that our partners may take the lead in both – in execution. As the president has said, we are not going to use force to go beyond a well-defined goal, specifically the protection of the civilians in Libya.
And with that I will take your questions.
MR. MORRELL: Lita.
Q: Hi. I’m Lolita Baldor with AP. Can you give us a little bit more clarity on the strikes and the targets including, perhaps, just a bit more on what exactly U.S. ships, submarines, et cetera, did, and was there anything beyond the cruise missiles that is being done by the United States?
VADM GORTNEY: Both from U.S. ships and submarines and a U.K. submarine a total 110, maybe 112 Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles, once again, targeted specifically at taking down the critical nodes of the integrated air defense system, which includes surface-to-air missile sites, early warning sites, key communication nodes.
Located up on the slide to my left you’ll see many of them. Most of them are in the western part of the country. That’s where those critical nodes are located and that’s why we targeted them there. But it does build – give us the ability specifically with taking down the long-range surface-to-airs, the SA5s, taking them down, and then the C2 (command and control) architecture that goes with that opens up as broad a space as possible for the no-fly zone.
MR. MORRELL: Tony.
Q: Just on the missiles themselves, you mentioned these are the new generation tactical Tomahawks?
VADM GORTNEY: It was a mixture of our old Tomahawks and the newer tactical Tomahawk.
Q: Do the new ones allow you to loiter over air space and take pictures actually before they drop in?
VADM GORTNEY: Not pictures. They have -- they give us the ability to loiter, and then we can shoot them a target and they will go to the target. But in this particular mission we use them as we have just as one of the older Tomahawks.
Q: Well, they’re clearing the air space basically for the non-stealthy fighters to go in or for jammers to go in?
VADM GORTNEY: They allow us to penetrate a high -- what we would call a medium to high threat without putting the air crew at risk.
Q: Okay.
VADM GORTNEY: Create the conditions for manned aircraft.
Q: And has the no fly zone enforcement begun? And what coalition members will enforce that? Will U.S. jets be in the air?
VADM GORTNEY: At this point we are creating the conditions to be able to set up the no-fly zone, and once we have established and confirmed that the conditions are right then we will move forward into the next – one of the next phases of the campaign.
Q: So it has not yet begun enforcement?
VADM GORTNEY: That’s a tough one to say based on how you call – do we have airplanes patrolling over Libya to enforce a no-fly zone? No, ma’am, we do not. But I would say we are beginning that because we’re setting the conditions to be able to reach that state.
MR. MORRELL: Chris.
Q: Admiral, will Colonel Gadhafi’s tanks and heavy artillery also be targeted going forward?
VADM GORTNEY: I’m not – I’m going to have to limit my discussion today to the actions that were taken thus far, and I’m not going to be able to discuss potential future operations.
MR. MORRELL: Kevin.
Q: Admiral, you said that protecting the population of Benghazi was one of the goals, but I