Negate Syrian Airpower
The mission most often proposed for Western airpower in discussions of intervention in Syria is to deny the Assad regime the use of air power as a means of attacking Syrian civilians and as a tool to support and facilitate military operations against opposition forces. is mission could be accomplished in two ways. The first option would be to establish and maintain an NFZ to keep the Syrian air force from approaching, or at least from approaching areas where it might attack rebel forces or their supporters, by threatening to shoot down aircraft that violate a specified exclusion zone (which, if it did not encompass the entire country, would likely include the airspace above and around the SAAF's bases, thus proscribing its aircraft from taking off). The United States and its allies have some experience conducting such missions in the Balkans and Iraq in the 1990s.The second option would be to simply destroy the Syrian air force or render its bases inoperative, thereby grounding its aircraft without having to rely on intimidation to achieve the result. is was the approach used in Libya in 2011, where the so-called NFZ actually amounted to destroying the Libyan air force on the ground at the outset of the operation. In Syria, the latter approach would be more decisive and, in many ways, could be less challenging than the former, although it might be harder to enlist international support for such an unconditionally destructive strategy.
