Nato‘s Libya operations are costing millions and involving thousands of airmen and sailors. But who’s contributing to Operation Unified Protector? That’s the official name for the attacks on the Gadaffi regime’s bases and tanks by Nato aircraft and ships, plus the enforcement of the no-fly zone and the arms embargo.
Data journalism can help us find out. Nato, which has been running operations in Libya since the beginning of April, doesn’t give out details of individual member’s efforts so we went to each country’s defence ministry direct to find out for ourselves.
We wanted to know the answers to some specific questions, ending at the end of the first week of May. We set some very specific parameters: details for the first week of operations, operations taking place week commencing 2 May and totals for the whole operation, ending 5 May. We asked each country:
• How many aircraft, ships and military personnel are in the region?
• How many attacks and sorties has each country been involved in?
• Which base are they operating from?
By combining official responses, scraping the defence ministry websites of each country and news reports, we assembled the most complete breakdown of the Nato operation yet published. [Read more...]
