He opens with a 2008 quotation from Tony Cordesman, a former national-security advisor to Sen. John McCain and now an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), "Much of the reporting on the Iraqi and Afghan wars focuses on the ground dimension. ... The fact remains, however, that Iraq and Afghanistan are air wars as well, and wars where airpower has also played a critical role in combat."
Dunlap's article explains that the current counterinsurgency field manual, FM 3-24 for short, written under the direction of our Savior-General David Petraeus, did provide an accurate forecast of how COIN operations in Iraq proceeded in 2007-8. Because air power played a much larger role than FM 3-24 envisioned.
Dunlap is making a pitch for the usefulness of air power in COIN warfare. This is a pretty good statement of the undying faith of air power zealots in the infinite usefulness of their favorite service:
Was airpower omitted from the operations that produced 2007’s successes? Hardly. Of enormous significance is the fact that airstrikes in Iraq increased fivefold between 2006 and 2007. In addition, virtually every other aspect of airpower was exploited during the surge with great effect. In short, contrary to the assumptions bred by FM 3-24, ground-force commanders rather unexpectedly embraced airpower’s potential and created the modern era’s most dramatic revolution in COIN warfare.This is basically the boilerplate argument for using air power in fighting counterinsurgency wars, in Iraq primarily against urban combatants. The claim is that "precision and persistence" minimize civilian casualties. But actual experience doesn't bear that out. And when the US Air Force is dropping 2,000-lb. bombs in crowded urban residential areas, it's almost certain that civilian casualties will result.
This article examines why airpower became critical to COIN operations in 2007, a trend continuing today and one with huge implications for the future. Among other things, it will discuss the revolutions in precision and persistence that have so radically enhanced airpower’s value in COIN warfare. It will also outline the strengths and weaknesses of the Air Force’s new doctrine on irregular warfare which seeks to capture the service’s COIN approach. The author argues that while FM 3-24’s surface-force-centric approach to COIN can work, recent experience in Iraq demonstrates that leaders of all services want a more joint and interdependent concept that exploits airpower in all its dimensions. Such an approach can reduce the need for the enormous numbers of US ground forces FM 3-24 entails, freeing them to prepare for other kinds of conflicts. Airpower can help, this article contends, to provide options for decisionmakers faced with a COIN challenge that capitalize on systems which are also useful in other kinds of conflicts. (my emphasis)
They also make the pitch that because air power can accomplish such magically effective things that it reduces the need for ground troops, and therefore minimizes American casualties. I'm convinced this is the thinking behind McCain's claims that Americans care only about American casualties, not the presence of American troops in Iraq.
In fact, we've seen over and over, in Vietnam and now in Iraq and Afghanistan, that the heavy reliance of artillery and air power actually has a major effect in undercutting the long-term possibilities of political stabilization.
You can guess the general line of Dunlap's argument from here. The Surge was successful - because it used so much bombing and shooting from air power. The Air Force has super-duper weapons that can practically obliterate a gnat on someone's arm while leaving the person unscathed. And we have golly-gee new technology like unmanned armed drones to kill people with. He even quotes defense analyst Loren Thompson those drones provide really neato-keeno intelligence, too, "almost like having your own little satellite over a terrorist cell."
And, besides, those backward natives are so dumb and barbaric that they're scared to death of our magic air weapons, which primitives like them can't possibly fathom:
The precision and persistence of today’s airpower creates opportunities to dislocate the psychology of the insurgents. Insurgents’ sheer inability to anticipate how high-technology airpower might put them at risk can inflict stress, thereby greatly diminishing their effectiveness.Don't bother thinking too hard about what a phrase like "dislocate the psychology" of someone may mean. It's all a bunch of hype about how super-terrifying and superior our weapons are. Why, he says, "Airpower can unnerve even the fiercest fighters."
None of this is new. This has been the promise of air power since it was invented. In the 1930s, it was anticipated that bombing cities would cause public morale to crumple and make their side continuing the war impossible. There were similar claims in subsequent wars. The toys for the boys were different in Vietnam, but the optimistic claims were similar. In fact, no amount of disconfirmation of such theories by actual experience seems to phase the faith of the air power true believers.
This is a classic profession of faith:
As important as imposing this kind of "friction" on the minds of enemy combatants may be, it is also still possible in certain circumstances to use airpower kinetically to influence the civilian population, albeit not in the traditional way. Doing so can help win hearts and minds. For example, consider the effect when B-1 bombers destroyed an al Qaeda torture compound in early March 2008. After the facility was flattened, a former Iraqi victim declared, "I'm a lot happier now . ... It was like my mother gave birth to me again." Furthermore reports say that "[a]s Coalition forces left the area, villagers stood on the side of the road cheering and clapping to be rid of this remnant of al-Qaida." (my emphasis)What? No flowers being showered underneath the planes' flight paths?
After this, I wouldn't have been surprised to see him write that air power helps paint schools and distributes candy to friendly kiddies, favorite images of the CENTCOM press office.
The realities of the effects of air power are so different from what Dunlap tries to convey here that it's almost a joke. But COIN in the "in" thing in the military right now. And, like during the Vietnam War, the Air Force doesn't want to come up short on the budget bucks. Budget dollars are no joking matter for them.
But in terms of what really happens, the notion that he outlines in the conclusion that we can successfully wage counterinsurgency warfare in foreign countries by relying mainly on blasting villages and urban neighborhoods from the air is just cracked:
Considering all the brutal realities of twenty-first century insurgencies it is imperative, as strategist Phillip Meilinger observes, to completely recast America's approach to COIN in an effort to achieve "politically desirable results with the least cost in blood and treasure." Doing so, Meilinger contends, requires the adaptation of a new paradigm that leverages airpower's precision strike and persistent ISR capabilities with US Special Forces and indigenous troops on the ground - much the formula employed with great success in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and northern Iraq in the early 1990s. Overarching this effort would be a reconceptualization of the entire fight against extremism, one that makes psychological operations the main "weapon" and posits an intelligence entity as the supported command.As Tom Englehardt and Nick Turse have argued for a long time, the mainstream press is doing a poor job on reporting about the air war. The fact that such potentially disastrous theories as the one argued by Dunlap are being taken seriously by decisionmakers is another reminder of how important it is for the press to start doing their job much better on this aspect of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
To be sure, a COIN doctrine compatible with America's posture in the world, as well as its high-tech strengths, does not necessarily eliminate the need for "boots-on-the-ground." It does, however, emphasize that indigenous forces should comprise the bulk of the counterinsurgent force ratios outlined in FM 3-24. They can be supported by US Special Forces, along with specially trained Army advisers, but the "face" of the COIN effort interfacing with the local population should be native, not American. This blend of local ground forces reinforced with US advisers and sophisticated American technology can work; recent reports, for example, "showed the Iraqi Army to be considerably resilient when backed by Coalition airpower." Necessary for success, however, is not just any kind of airpower, but rather the high-tech precision and persistence-enabled airpower that has proven so effective since 2007.
Of course, the solution to any COIN situation will never be exclusively military. Yet at the same time it is a mistake to underestimate what military means can accomplish. In that respect, exploitation of the air weapon can contribute as never before. The experience of 2007 clearly demonstrates that its newfound precision and persistence have revolutionized COIN warfare. US doctrine must evolve to fully capitalize airpower's newly enhanced prowess. (my emphasis)
Tags: air power, air war, charles dunlap jr, counterinsurgency, iraq war
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