Air Force general lashes out at ISIS strategy critics

Air Force Lt. Gen. John Hesterman, commander of the Combined Forces Air Component of Operation Inherent Resolve, said the air campaign against the Islamic State is like nothing U.S. air power has ever faced, and that the critics don’t know what they’re talking about in this case.

“The comparisons being made to [previous] conflicts against armies and nation-states don’t apply in this case, and the folks making them frankly haven’t been in a fight like the one we’re in now,” Hesterman said. “This enemy wrapped itself around a friendly population before we even started. There is no, and never has been, a well-developed target set which is necessary to do what we’ve done in the past.”

But Hesterman’s argument was questioned when put in the context of the conflict in Vietnam, where U.S. airpower also had to engage an enemy that was tightly entwined with the civilian population.

“As Senator McCain knows from his own military service in Vietnam, the United States has indeed faced an enemy that wrapped itself around a friendly population,” said Dustin Walker, a spokesman for Vietnam veteran and Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

“One of many lessons from the Vietnam War is that an air campaign disconnected from a ground campaign is a recipe for strategic failure. As the President ignores the lessons of history, we are losing time and [the Islamic State] is regaining the operational initiative.”

In defending U.S. airpower performance, Hesterman added further support to a controversial statistic offered by U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken this week, that U.S. airstrikes had killed 10,000 Islamic State fighters.

U.S. and coalition airstrikes have “enabled virtually every victory on the battlefield,” Hesterman said. And in the 10 months since air operations began, airstrikes have “removed more than 1,000 enemy fighters a month on the battlefield.”

As for the sortie debate, over the past several weeks, McCain has also questioned why about 1 in 4 sorties don’t involve weapons drops. As of April 30, of the 7,319 combat sorties flown over Iraq and Syria this year, coalition aircraft dropped munitions in 1,859 of those sorties, about 25 percent of the time. McCain has used those statistics to argue that the operation needs combat air controllers on the ground calling in airstrikes. Instead, those controllers are in remote locations at joint operating centers watching the battle by overhead surveillance.

Hesterman also defended his air campaign against criticism — some of it coming from pilots who are flying these missions and who have reached out to reporters to express their views — that it is taking too long to get munitions on target from the point of identification.

“The thought that guys are waiting around watching the enemy do damage and we’re not doing anything about it? That is patently false,” Hesterman said.

He said the targets are often intertwined with the civilian population, and even in battle, friendly forces are difficult to discern from Islamic State forces.

Hesterman said that in almost 100 cases since the air campaign began, an initial identification of an enemy turned out to be incorrect, and the U.S. airstrike was called back.

“That’s not an indictment on our aviators — it’s near impossible to tell them apart,” Hesterman said, referring to Islamic State fighters and Iraqi friendly forces. “They dress roughly the same and they’re using the same equipment.

“So imagine if those strikes had been made — even a fraction of them — the coalition would have unwound some time ago.”

Despite the difficulties in telling friend from foe, Hesterman said that the set up of joint terminal attack controller (JTAC) support away from the battlefield in remote joint operating centers, where they manage airstrikes via surveillance feed, is still the best way to conduct airstrikes.