We’ve covered here before the inter-service debate over the role of airpower in counterinsurgency operations. For some background information, check out this article in Air Force magazine, and this post at Small Wars Journal. There seemed to be a pretty good consensus that the counterinsurgency model laid out by the Petraeus Doctrine would see airpower demoted to a supporting role–transport, surveillance, reconnaissance, but only very rarely direct engagement with the enemy. Last month David Kilcullen, COIN adviser to General Petraeus, spoke on the issues surrounding this debate:
I think here in Iraq, there’s a number of sort of airpower writ-large functions–air reconnaissance very important, aerial surveillance, both by manned and unmanned vehicles, is critical, it gives us this, if you like, unblinking eye that allows us to understand what’s going on in the environment; the use of fast air combat power for interdiction and strike is important, it’s more important in desert areas and underpopulated rural areas than it is in cluttered, sort of target-rich environments like in cities, where you can really do a lot of damage to the civilian population. So we don’t tend to use airpower heavily inside cities. Having said that, if we do need to, we certainly do draw on that capability. And we do tend to use sort of cannon and direct strafing activity, rather than necessarily going straight for the kill-box approach, where you deluge an area in high-explosive. I think the other really important function is transport and mobility….
That comment seemed to confirm the suspicions of the Air Force that the new team in Baghdad did not see airpower as critical to combat operations there. But now the Tank points to this story from the AP:
Four years into the war that opened with “shock and awe,” U.S. warplanes have again stepped up attacks in Iraq, dropping bombs at more than twice the rate of a year ago. The airpower escalation parallels a nearly four-month-old security crackdown that is bringing 30,000 additional U.S. troops into Baghdad and its surroundings – an urban campaign aimed at restoring order to an area riven with sectarian violence. It also reflects increased availability of planes from U.S. aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf. And it appears to be accompanied by a rise in Iraqi civilian casualties…. In the first 4 1/2 months of 2007, American aircraft dropped 237 bombs and missiles in support of ground forces in Iraq, already surpassing the 229 expended in all of 2006, according to U.S. Air Force figures obtained by The Associated Press…. Air Force figures show that, after the thousands of bombs and missiles used in the 2003 “shock and awe” invasion, U.S. airpower settled down to a slow bombing pace: 285 munitions dropped in 2004, 404 in 2005 and 229 in 2006, totals that don’t include warplanes’ often-devastating 20mm and 30mm cannon or rocket fire, or Marine Corps aircraft.
What to make of this? I asked Brig. Gen. Robert Holmes, deputy director of Operations at CENTCOM, during a conference call this morning:
HOLMES: I read that article this morning. That was no real surprise as you track the numbers. As we continue the presence of our force there and working with the Iraqis and the need for very precise fire and effects on the adversary, particularly when it comes to troops in contact, this becomes a weapon of choice. And airpower is a very good way to deliver that. You’ve got the means and capability and I think that we’re using it. So, I think if you look at the increase connected with the levels of violence and the effectiveness of Coalition forces partnered with the Iraqi Security Forces, that this is just a means of doing what needs to be done to continue to go after the anti-Coalition militias and the terrorist elements there. WWS: So this is just an organic development? This is not a strategy that’s come down from above, or just the fact that there’s an extra carrier there? HOLMES: No. It’s a means of providing fires and effects to forces that are engaged with the enemy. So, no. There was no deliberate plan, if you will, in my mind–maybe there’s somebody out there that had it in there mind, but not in mine–that this was a deliberate, we will now double our bombings.
According to Holmes, the troops on the ground are just calling for air support more often. Given that there are more troops on the ground overall, it’s not so surprising that there would be more activity in the air as well. Still, this story ought to squelch any misgivings the Air Force has about Petraeus. With Petraeus letting them put bombs on target–and at a greater rate than at anytime since 2003–the Air Force remains relevant to COIN operations and is therefore better able to justify its budget at a time when many would like to see the Pentagon spend less on warplanes and more on infantry.
