Follow every announcement of the failure of a round of negotiations on the Renaissance Dam between Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan. Loud voices in Cairo call for the adoption of the military option to resolve the crisis, while Egypt has not formally spoken of a solution other than negotiations. Al Alia "to face existential challenges that threaten national security.

Ethiopia meets such voices and allusions to respond, stressing that its army is ready to repel any attack on the Grand Renaissance Dam, and last Wednesday launched a balloon to test the Egyptian reaction in the event that it began filling without signing a final agreement, and the Ethiopian TV announced that the Minister of Irrigation Silesi Baqli confirmed the start of filling the dam And television did not lie the news until 5 hours after it was broadcast.

Between announcing the news and then denying it, social media witnessed what might be called the "five-hour war." Contrary to what the Egyptians expected of a violent Egyptian response or an official threat from their government, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry was content with an urgent official request for clarification from the Ethiopian government regarding the validity of this matter.

Within the framework of the official Egyptian hints, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi met with the army leaders last March, but what was published about this meeting was just a construction talk, and during his inspection of the air force's fighting units in the western military zone of the Egyptian army a month ago, Sisi said that his country's army " He is one of the strongest armies in the region, but he is a rational army that protects and does not threaten. "

He directed his speech to the combat units of the Air Force, saying: "Be prepared to carry out any mission within our borders or if necessary outside our borders," which departed more than Libya to Ethiopia.

A comparison
on the military option calls for a comparison between the Egyptian and Ethiopian armies. In this regard, the Global Firepower Foundation stated at its site at the beginning of the current world 2020 that the Egyptian army is ranked ninth, while the Ethiopian army ranks 60th among 138 armies in the world.

As for the Air Force, the Egyptian army possesses 1054 different warplanes, including 215 fighters, 59 military cargo aircraft, in addition to 388 training aircraft and 294 military helicopters, while the Ethiopian army owns only 86 warplanes, including 24 fighters and 16 attack aircraft, in addition to 9 military cargo aircraft and 33 military helicopters, of which only 8 are attack helicopters.

With regard to the ground forces, the Egyptian army possesses more than 4 thousand tanks, 10 thousand armored vehicles, a thousand self-propelled artillery, and more than 2189 field guns, while the Ethiopian army has 400 tanks and 650 artillery.

In terms of the navy, the Egyptian naval fleet includes about 320 marine vessels, including two aircraft carriers, 7 corvettes, and 4 submarines, in addition to 50 patrol ships and 9 frigates, and Ethiopia does not have a naval fleet, because it is a landlocked country that has not had a sea port since Eritrea's independence from it in 1993.

In terms of military expenditures, the defense budget of the Egyptian army is 11 billion and 200 million dollars, compared to 350 million dollars for Ethiopia, and the total number of soldiers in the Egyptian army is about 920 thousand soldiers, and the number of soldiers currently in service is 440 thousand, while the number of reserve soldiers reached 480 thousand , Compared to the number of the Ethiopian army of 162 thousand soldiers, and Ethiopia has no reserve soldiers.

It remains to be remembered that the last war fought by the Egyptian army was over 47 years old, while the last war fought by the Ethiopian army was with Eritrea, and broke out in May 1998 and continued until May 2000.

A test
7 years ago, the American Stratfor Institute issued a report in which it reviewed Egypt's military options to strike the Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, stressing that there are significant restrictions on Egypt's use of a military solution to deal with the Renaissance Dam crisis, and drew attention to the distance between the two countries, and said it stands a major obstacle in Targeting the Renaissance Dam, explaining that Egypt has not invested in refueling, which makes it more difficult.

The American Institute report considered that "targeting the dam from the Sudanese lands is the only solution for Egypt" but he warned that the launch of the Egyptian planes from Sudan "is politically complicated, given the international consequences on Egypt and Sudan, and the latter's exposure to direct military retaliation from Ethiopia."

Not far from the previous opinion, analyst Martin Gehlen of the German newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau said in his article last May that Sudan is finding itself in a fragile position between these fronts, amid the division of leaders after The revolution on the issue of the Nile waters, as Prime Minister Abdullah Hamdouk tends to the Ethiopian side because he has lived in Addis Ababa for a long time, and is said to be in close relationship with the Ethiopian Prime Minister Abi Ahmed. On the other hand, the Sudanese army's chief of staff tends firmly to Egypt and its Sisi president For strategic considerations. "

Imagination and
in an attempt to clarify the point of view of Egyptian specialists in this regard, an Egyptian military expert told Al-Jazeera Net - preferring not to be named - that "talking about the possibility of Egypt taking military action to destroy the dam seems to be an implementation of imagination, and taking such a step should be to achieve an end No care is taken, and the matter seems not technically and militarily guaranteed, because access alone is not enough, but rather the achievement of the goal of access. "

Asked about the French "Rafale" military planes that Egypt had bought and the possibility of using them in any possible military scenario regarding the Renaissance Dam, he said that "America has the strongest army in the world, but its military operations during the past two decades in Afghanistan and Iraq prove that it is not enough just to possess the latest aircraft To achieve success in hitting targets, which made her decide to withdraw from there. "

He concluded his speech that the Egyptian regime is well aware of the dire consequences of military intervention in the entire region, which entrenches the issue of excluding this proposition, even with the blockage of the negotiating path over the dam, but the cries of the media loyal to him calling for a military strike are nothing but a tornado launched at the instigation of security agencies to contain opinion The year in Egypt.