Forget the small arms. If the White House really wants to alter the course of the Syrian civil war, it may well need to impose a no-fly zone. The good news is it probably won't be too hard to pull off, given the battered state of Assad's air defenses. The bad news is it could drag the U.S. into a wider war.

Bashar al-Assad's air force that has conducted between 115 and 141 air strikes a month from January through April of this year, largely with old Czechoslovakian-made L-39 Delfin trainer jets and helicopters such as the Soviet-designed Mi-8, Mi-17 and Mi-24.

The weapons may be old, but many analysts believe that they've made a crucial difference as pro-regime troops have seized the momentum in Syria's civil war. Some in the U.S. government are pushing for a total no-fly zone similar to the one imposed on Libya in 2011 in order to take out that air force.

(The map above shows the location of Assad's main air bases - the prime targets of any American campaign to limit Assad's power to strike from the sky.Let us know if we're missing any.)

On Friday, Anthony Cordesman of the influential Center for Strategic and International Studies said that anything less than (a pretty darn expensive) no-fly zone that totally grounds Assad's air force would be a "half-pregnant" solution similar to "supplying too few arms of too few lethality," as the U.S. and other nations have been said to be doing secretly for months without giving the rebels enough of an advantage to overthrow Assad.

A full-on no-fly zone would involve the U.S. and any other nations launching a high end assault with everything from B-2 stealth bombers to submarine and ship-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles aimed at destroying Assad's radars, missile sites and air defense control networks. It'd be similar to what was done at the start of Operation Odyssey Dawn, only bigger due to the fact that Syria has a much better air defense network than Libya did. Once these door-kickers have taken out the most dangerous elements of Syria's air defenses, other strike fighters such as U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagles, F-16 Vipers -- some of which are already in neighboring Jordan --, and U.S. Navy and Marine Corps F/A-18E/F Super Hornets and F/A-18 Hornets would then be relatively free to hunt down and destroy Assad's aircraft on the ground or in the air.

Read on

With the U.S. flying B-2 stealth bombers, F-22 Raptor stealth fighters, and B-52 bombers over the Korean Peninsula, we thought we'd give you a quick run-down on the air defenses these jets could face if the Korean War ever went into Round Two.

Sure, North Korea is said to have one of the densest air defense networks on Earth. But it's largely made up of 1950s-, ‘60s-, and ‘70s-vintage Soviet-designed missiles and radars -- the type of weapons that the U.S. military has been working on defeating for decades via a combination of radar jamming, anti-radar missiles, and stealth technology. In fact, the B-2 and F-22 were designed in the 1980s and 1990s specifically to evade such defenses, and the ancient B-52s could simply fire AGM-86 cruise missiles at North Korea from well beyond the range of the country's air defenses.

Let's take a look at the missiles in the North's air defense system that have claimed U.S. fighters in conflicts around the globe since 1990. (Keep in mind that hundreds of these missiles have been fired at U.S. forces in the last 23 years with only a handful of losses.) All of these systems are of Soviet origin -- some were actually built in the USSR and others were license-made in North Korea. (Note, for this post we're not even looking at the radars, antiaicraft guns and some of the older shoulder-fired missiles the North Koreans have)

SA-2 Guideline: The SA-2 is famous for downing Gary Powers' U-2 spy plane over Russia in 1960, and it would go on to claim dozens of U.S. planes during the Vietnam War. North Korea may (may is the key word there) have up to 1,950 of these missiles. Although old, Iraqi SA-2s did manage to take out a U.S. Navy F-14A+ and an F-15E Strike Eagle during the 1991 Gulf War. The SA-2 was adopted by militaries around the globe during the Cold War and has a range of 28 miles and a maximum altitude of 28,000 feet. Even with upgrades, these missiles won't be too effective against American planes.

SA-6 Gainful: There are unconfirmed reports that the North has an unknown number of these missiles. The SA-6 is sometimes nicknamed "the three fingers of death" because it has three missiles laid out next to each other on the launcher. The SA-6 is also a 1960s-vintage design (in service since the 1970s) that can be defeated relatively easily with modern jamming and missiles that lock onto the radar beams emitted by many surface-to-air missile batteries. Still, an SA-6 shot down a U.S. Air Force F-16 over Iraq in 1991 and another F-16 over Bosnia in 1996. However, some accounts claim that, during the Kosovo air war of 1999, Yugoslav forces fired 477 SA-6s without a single kill.

SA-3 Goa: This is another Soviet-designed missile from the 1960s that has taken down a handful of modern U.S. fighters. The North is said to have up to 32 batteries of these missiles with at least six sites -- equipped with concrete bunkers to protect the missiles and their radar -- protecting Pyongyang (as of 2010, anyway). An SA-3 shot down a U.S. F-16 over Iraq in 1991. During the Kosovo war, a Yugoslav army SA-3 famously scored history's only kill against a stealth jet when its crew got lucky and spotted a U.S. Air Force F-117 Night Hawk stealth fighter while the jet's bomb-bay doors were open, briefly ruining the jet's stealthy shape. (It didn't help that the F-117s had flown the same routes on their attack runs so many times that the defenders could predict where they would be.)  Later that year, another Yugoslav SA-3 shot down a U.S. F-16 over Serbia.

SA-13 Gopher: This is a mobile, low-altitude, heat-seeking missile system designed in the 1970s to protect Soviet ground forces from close-air support runs by Western jets. SA-13s shot down two U.S. Air Force A-10 Warthogs during the 1991 Gulf War. (Again, there are only unconfirmed reports the North has these.) Keep in mind that the A-10 flies low and slow while hunting ground targets, making it exactly the type of plane the SA-13 is meant to counter. (The SA-13 reportedly hit a total of 27 coalition jets during the Gulf War, downing 14, but besides the A-10s those jets were older, Vietnam War-vintage planes.)

SA-16 Gimlets: The North Koreans reportedly have hundreds of these 1980s-vintage, shoulder-fired, heat-seeking missiles, which like the SA-3s are meant to protect ground troops from low-level attacks. Iraqi forces downed three A-10 Warthogs during the Gulf War using Gimlets. (The SA-16 has evolved into the SA-24 Grinch, one of the most feared shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles.)

Finally, here are a few systems North Korea has -- or may have -- that haven't downed U.S. jets but that are still worth noting.

The SA-4 Ganef: This is a fierce-looking, mobile system from the 1960s meant to shoot down high-flying bombers. The SA-4 has a range of about 34 miles and can reportedly reach altitudes of around 80,000-feet. Still, it's been retired by most operators and is only in use by a few former Soviet republics and possibly North Korea.

SA-5 Gammon: The North may have up to 40 batteries of this old design meant to shoot down high-flying bombers at long ranges. The SA-5 was introduced in the mid-1960s and is largely a fixed system, meaning it's difficult to hide from U.S. fighters equipped with anti-radar missiles -- though the North supposedly has them hidden in concrete bunkers. Their fixed status also means that they can simply be avoided by strike aircraft. One of the strengths of the SA-5 is that the system can be plugged into a variety of radars, improving its ability to find targets. It should be noted however, that both Syria and Libya employ or employed such missiles. They didn't do much to help Muammar al-Qaddafi against the NATO air campaign of 2011, and they didn't prevent Israel from destroying a Syrian nuclear facility in 2007 (though the latter operation reportedly used a cyber strike to blind Syrian radars to the presence of Israeli jets).

SA-17 Gadfly: This system is nicknamed "four fingers of death" since, you guessed it, it's got four missiles laid out next to each other on the launcher. The North Koreans may have hundreds of these missiles (though this is unconfirmed and some dispute whether they have any), which were developed by the Soviets in the 1970s and largely fielded in the 1980s. The SA-17 reportedly has a range of about 19 miles and an altitude of 46,000 feet. Both the missile launcher and its radar system are mobile, meaning they can try to hide from enemy bombers. The SA-17 system is used by lots of countries with fairly robust air defenses, such as China, India, and Iran (which reportedly developed a knock-off version). Georgia was able to down several Russian jets, including a TU-22M strategic bomber/reconnaissance jet, with SA-17s during the 2008 war there. Meanwhile, Israeli warplanes took out a convoy of Syrian SA-17s that were supposedly being shipped to Hezbollah in January.

In light of the Gmail-related scandal involving former CIA chief David Petraeus, one has to wonder if, given the relative ease by which an intelligence agency -- or just about anybody -- can break into a private email account, government officials entrusted with the nation's most sensitive information should be allowed to keep personal email accounts while in office?

True, Petraeus' email was never actually broken into or hacked by the FBI. Agents gained access to his naughty notes by monitoring Paula Broadwell's email and then asking Broadwell if she was having an affair with Petraeus. She fessed up and gave them access to her computer and with it, even more of his emails. Nevertheless, the very revelation that our nation's top spy used at least one relatively unsecure Gmail account has prompted people to raise the above question.

I recall being surprised whenever one of Petraeus retired predecessors would reply to my emails from an AOL email account (insert 'they still exist' joke here) or something equally pedestrian. It just seems a little odd that people with access to incredible secrets use the same email services the rest of us do. (Granted, the former officials I email with have been out of office for years, sometimes decades. But don't you just expect former spy chiefs to use some tricked out, semi-creepy, super-secret email? Maybe that's just me.)

If hacked, these emails could reveal plenty about the personal lives of their owners who hold high office. Hackers probably wouldn't find state secrets, but they could find plenty of personal information -- travel plans, info about friends and family, online purchases, bank accounts, the list goes on and on. As Google knows for business purposes, a look at someone's email can paint a pretty valuable picture of who they are. Google uses this information to sell ads tailored to your interests. You can imagine what spies would do with it.

Still, there are questions about what type of service officials could use -- perhaps something like Hushmail or TigerText or some NSA-furnished email -- and how effective it would be. Would these texts and emails be monitored by the FBI for intrusions? (This would raise some interesting privacy issues, especially for the acquaintances of the government officials.) Even if top U.S. government officials use secure services for their personal emails and texts, is it realistic to assume that their personal information could be kept safe if their acquaintances are using unsecure email and texting services?

One noted IT security expert familiar with the intelligence world that I spoke with said that while it's surprising that officials such as CIA directors use Gmail and similar email clients, it would be challenging to develop a secure method for them to transmit private information.

"I don't really think the government has the ability to deploy something like that, and one of the reasons why people use these [private] systems is they don't want that same level of monitoring going on with their private emails that they would get under any government supplied system," said the expert.

The expert recommended that CIA directors and the like take a page from private business executives' playbook and use Gmail's two-step authentication system, which is, according to him much more secure than competitors such as Yahoo (the result of a major hack Google suffered in 2009), and then hire an outside company to scan their laptops, smartphones, and tablets for intrusions every few days. "You tell ‘em, 'Don't log into the hotel PC, don't log into the airport kiosk, none of that kind of stuff.'"

These frequent scans are vitally important since they will be one of the only ways to protect against spear-phishing attacks by foreign intelligence agencies that have hijacked the email accounts of a VIP's acquaintances.

At the end of the day, the expert reiterated, public officials should simply keep sensitive info out of their email.

"What could somebody find if they just logged into your email one day," he said. "Is your social security number in any of the emails, your tax return? I go through periodically and I just purge everything I can find."

One government official who seems to get this is Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who doesn't use email, partially out of concerns about its vulnerability to hacking.