They've already sent in the attack helicopters, so what's next? If the anti-government forces don't turn things around quickly, there will be more calls for troops on the ground. At the moment, they are holding their ground (at best) and struggling to win new territory. This is yet another war and another cost that nobody in the "rich" countries can afford.
The head of the Royal Navy has warned that the fleet will not be able to continue the current scale of operations around Libya beyond the summer unless ministers take tough decisions about what they want to prioritise.
Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope, the First Sea Lord, said the navy had planned for a six-month commitment but that the government would have to make "challenging decisions" about what it wanted to do thereafter.
Stanhope also conceded that if the aircraft carrier Ark Royal and its Harrier jump jets had not been mothballed last year, they would have been deployed to the Mediterranean.
