Furthermore, then-U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Haig wanted to take proactive measures against Gaddafi because he had been using former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operatives (most notably Edwin P. Wilson and Frank E. Terpil) to help set up terrorist camps.

[10] After the December 1985 Rome and Vienna airport attacks, which killed 19 and wounded approximately 140, Gaddafi indicated that he would continue to support the Red Army Faction, the Red Brigades, and the Irish Republican Army as long as the European governments allegedly “supported anti-Gaddafi Libyans.”[11] After years of occasional skirmishes with Libya over Libyan territorial claims to the Gulf of Sidra, the United States contemplated a military attack to strike targets within the Libyan mainland.

In March 1986, the United States, asserting the 12-nautical-mile (22 km; 14 mi) limit to territorial waters according to international law, sent a carrier task force to the region.

[14] The attack mission against Libya had been preceded in October 1985 by an exercise in which the 20th TFW stationed at RAF Upper Heyford airbase in the UK, which was equipped with F-111E Aardvarks, received a top-secret order to launch a simulated attack mission on 18 October, with ten F-111Es armed with eight 500-lb practice bombs, against a simulated airfield located in Labrador, Canada south of CFB Goose Bay.

In six months of intensive training the special mission unit dropped more live ordnance in the Nevada and Utah test ranges than had been expended since the conclusion of the Vietnam War.

Over 30 F-117 Nighthawk stealth attack aircraft had already been delivered to Tactical Air Command (USAF) and were operating from Tonopah Test Range Airport in Nevada.

Within an hour of the planned launch of the F-117s, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger scrubbed the stealth mission, fearing a compromise of the secret aircraft and its development program.

[19] Another factor in the French decision was the United States' last-minute failure to participate in a retaliatory air raid on Iranian positions after the 1983 Beirut barracks bombings.

[20] After several unproductive days of meetings with European and Arab nations, and influenced by an American serviceman's death, Ronald Reagan, on 14 April, ordered an air raid on the following Libyan targets:[21] Among operational United States tactical aircraft, only the General Dynamics F-111 and the A-6 Intruder possessed the ability to attack at night with the required precision.

[21] America was on station in the Gulf of Sidra, but Coral Sea was preparing to leave the Mediterranean, and made a high speed run from Naples through the Strait of Messina.

[21] The raid began in the early hours of 15 April, with the stated objectives of sending a message and reducing Libya's ability to support and train terrorists.

[25] The F-111 bombers' rules of engagement required target identification by both radar and Pave Tack prior to bomb release to minimize collateral damage.

[note 1][21] Although the bombing operations were staged out of the UK, RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus was employed in the role of an alternate in case of emergency, and was used as such by at least one aircraft.

In the hours following the attack, the U.S. military refused to speculate as to whether or not the fighter-bomber had been shot down, with Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger suggesting that it could have experienced radio trouble or been diverted to another airfield.

[43] Furthermore, William C. Chasey, who toured the Bab al-Azizia barracks, claimed to have seen two flight suits and helmets engraved with the names "Lorence" and "Ribas-Dominicci", as well as the wreckage of their F-111.

[3] Gaddafi announced that he had "won a spectacular military victory over the United States" and the country was officially renamed the "Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriyah".

The allegation did not come to light until it was reported by The Sunday Times in March 2004—days after British Prime Minister Tony Blair paid the first official visit to Tripoli by a Western leader in a generation.

[51] In October 1986, Gaddafi financed Jeff Fort's Al-Rukn faction of the Chicago Black P. Stones gang, in their emergence as an anti-American armed revolutionary movement.

[53][54] In late 1987 French authorities stopped a merchant vessel, the MV Eksund, which was attempting to deliver 150 tons of Soviet arms from Libya to the Irish Republican Army (IRA),[55][56] partly in retaliation against the British for harboring American fighter planes.

[57] In Beirut, Lebanon, two British hostages held by the Libyan-supported Abu Nidal Organization, Leigh Douglas and Philip Padfield, along with an American named Peter Kilburn, were shot dead in revenge.

[60] The convicted Libyan, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who was suffering from terminal prostate cancer, was released in August 2009 by the Scottish Government on compassionate grounds.

The Government of Iran asserted that the attack constituted a policy of aggression, gunboat diplomacy, an act of war, and called for an extensive political and economic boycott of the United States.

The Soviet Union said that there was a clear link between the attack and U.S. policy aimed at stirring up existing hotbeds of tension and creating new ones, and at destabilizing the international situation.

The Wall Street Journal protested that if other nations applied Article 51 as cavalierly as the United States, then "the Nicaraguan government, very reasonably predicting that the U.S. is planning an attack on its territory, has the right to bomb Washington."

British Shadow Foreign Secretary Denis Healey told ABC News that, "by this same rationale of defense against future attack, Britain could bomb apartment blocks in New York and Chicago on the ground that they contained people sending money and military supplies to the Irish Republican Army.

Margaret Thatcher's approval of the use of Royal Air Force bases[65] led to substantial public criticism, including an unprecedented story in The Sunday Times suggesting the Queen was upset by an "uncaring" Prime Minister.

During a period where the Soviet Union was apparently attempting to lead a subtle diplomatic effort that could impact its global status, close association with the whims of Gaddafi became a liability.

At the same time, it clearly signaled that it did not want this action to affect negotiations about the upcoming summer summit between the United States and the Soviet Union and its plans for new arms control agreements.

[76] On 4 August 2008, President George W. Bush signed into law the Libyan Claims Resolution Act,[77] which had unanimously passed Congress on 31 July.

English alternative band The The’s 1986 album Infected features the song Sweet Bird of Truth which tells the fictionalised story of a US pilot on the Libya bombing raids.