The U.S. Air Force is increasing the number of bombings and missile firings onto enemy targets in Afghanistan, although you probably haven’t been hearing much about it.
While U.S. Central Command puts out a daily tally of bombing runs in Iraq and Syria to document the steady progress in the war on the Islamic State, the statistics for that “other war” in Afghanistan aren’t as readily available.
But recently, U.S. Air Forces Central Command released a breakdown of airstrikes that shows a recent uptick in the number of monthly airstrikes that have been conducted by the United States in support of the Afghan security forces who have been battling a resurgent Taliban.
February saw 200 weapons releases, up from only 54 in January and the highest monthly total since last October, when 205 bombs were dropped (or missiles were fired). October was the only month in 2016 that cracked the 200-release mark, and the same goes for October 2015, which saw 203 releases.
So why are strikes on the rise? One of the reasons is weather.
“The weather significantly degraded air operations in January and the numbers for that month are likely low because of it,” said Navy Capt. Bill Salvin, chief spokesman for Operation Resolute Support, in an email.
“Second, [in February] there was significant fighting in Helmand, particularly around Sangin in which U.S. air assets supported Afghan Security Forces efforts to defeat the Taliban.”
U.S. commanders have been given more latitude to order airstrikes to go after the Taliban, a change that went into effect last summer under the administration of President Barack Obama.
Therefore the uptick in airstrikes, with the most bombs dropped in a single month since last October, is just a result of clear skies and good targets.
But the numbers tell another story, namely how the U.S. stopped providing much air cover for the struggling Afghan Army after Obama declared an official end to the war, and brought most U.S. forces home after December 2014.
From more than 4,000 bombs dropped in 2012, the number dropped to 947 in 2015.
The 203 munitions expended in October 2015 came when the Taliban briefly took over the northern Afghan town of Kunduz, and the U.S. was forced to use air power to help the Afghan’s retake the town. That was also when a Doctors Without Borders hospital was also mistakenly shelled by an AC-130 gunship, killing 43 people including doctors and patients.
And there is one more big takeaway from the Air Force spreadsheet. The air campaign in Afghanistan is a shadow of the massive air war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
Since 2014, 4,903 weapons have been released over Afghanistan, compared to 72,771 in Iraq and Syria.
But comparing the two theaters isn’t an exact science, and the data can be confusing and misleading.
The U.S. Central Command’s daily report on Iraq and Syria contains this convoluted caveat: “A strike … refers to one or more kinetic engagements that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a single, sometimes cumulative effect in that location. For example, a single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone Islamic State vehicle is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against a group of Islamic State-held buildings and weapon systems in a compound, having the cumulative effect of making that facility harder or impossible to use.”
So the attack that leveled a building in Syria Thursday, which was conducted by multiple aircraft, both manned and unmanned, counts as a single strike.
But targeters at the U.S. Air Forces Central command have a much simpler, easy to understand way to illustrate the level of effort over Afghanistan. Don’t count the planes. Don’t count the missions. Don’t count the targets. Just count the bombs.
