Replication Data for: Looking to the Skies: Operation Unified Protector and the Strategy of Aerial Intervention

What are the different ways in which an intervener can use airpower to enhance a rebel organ-ization’s ability to capture government-held territory? Multiple studies have analyzed how foreign airpower can be employed as a counterinsurgency tool, intended to reduce the frequency and lethality of insurgent attacks. However, many civil wars are fought conventional-ly, and non-state actors can benefit from military interventions that helps them to overcome the advantage in capabilities often enjoyed by their government adversaries. I analyze how airpower can be used in support of a rebel organization engaged in a conventional civil war, contributing to its ability to produce salient battlefield information. I argue that that an inter-vener can employ direct attack against heavy weapons and anti-aircraft assets, and interdiction of command and control capabilities and logistics, in order to diminish the government’s ad-vantage in conventional capabilities. In doing so, foreign airpower contributes to the rebels’ ability to capture territory, a crucial intermediary goal and source of battlefield information when attempting to impose defeat on the government. Through a quantitative case study of Operation Unified Protector and the 2011 Libyan Civil War, I find that coalition airstrikes against the Libyan government’s heavy weapons, logistics, and anti-aircraft assets contributed to the Libyan rebels’ ability to capture territory. By contrast, strikes against the government’s command and control capabilities had no effect.