How did the air war in Afghanistan get stuck in the sky? It's not just the often-unproductive rules and policies for allocating air power (although that certainly plays a role). Nor is it simply the Taliban's ability to spin every off-kilter bomb into a propaganda win (although that's important, too). According to Colonel Gary Crowder, who spent from 2006 to 2008 helping direct that air war from its headquarters, the U.S. military has had all sorts of problems getting the air component of the Afghanistan conflict right. Not only was the U.S. Air Force slow to get new, safer weapons into the fight. Not only did American troops lag in their training and nurturing of a home-grown Afghan air force. But strategically, the current American model of counterinsurgency may be "flawed" -- focusing "far too much on U.S. forces doing the fighting." Now, Crowder argues, the American military is "in the worst of all possible situations (just as we were in Iraq in 2006 and Vietnam in 1965): we ousted the government; failed in the occupation to impose capacity and sufficient power and authority in local government; and allowed an insurgency to develop."
His full response is below. Obviously, these are his personal thoughts and opinions -- and not those of the Department of Defense or of the U.S. Air Force.
1) Our inability as airmen to develop more effective, accurate methods of employing air capabilities in support of our ground forces puts our forces at increased risk. We have been very slow to develop smaller weapons. While deployed to the region 2006-2008, I proposed the employment of 2.75- and 5-inch laser guided rockets. I also pressed hard for the DIME FLM (Dense Inert Metal Explosive Focused Lethality Munition) in a standard Mk 82 (500-pound bomb) case. It's a bomb with no steel case -- and consequentially, significantly lower fragmentation damage. In essence, it's a blast only weapon.
The Navy and Marine Corps have essentially already fielded the equivalent of about a 50-100 pound bomb. It's a 500-pound general purpose bomb with only 27 pounds of explosive, compared to the 192 pounds in a typical 500-pound bomb; that gives it about 1/3 less frag distance. But this bomb has been used far more in Iraq than Afghanistan; as the intensity of operations there increased, airmen were reluctant to trade-off full weapons (like the 500-pound Mk 82s) because of the relative paucity of airpower and the desire to have the necessary hard-nosed capability when required. Improvements are being made, but there is no silver bullet in this fight.
We also have failed to develop indigenous air power fast enough. We have been in Afghanistan for eight years and the Afghan National Air Corps still does not have a light attack capability. Bluntly put, the problem is not that civilians are dying, but that the civilians are dying as a consequence of the use of NATO airpower. Indigenous population tolerance for civilian casualties (this is not Des Moines) is directly proportional to who is doing the killing. Local populations understand more than we the difficult choices in war and the unavoidable nature of collateral damage. However, if it were Afghan Air Corps pilots, or mixed Afghan/NATO crews, in Afghan Air Corps Attack aircraft, it is my opinion the Afghan public would be more tolerant. Progress has accelerated over the last several years on the development of the Afghan Air Corps, but we are paying the price now for the lack of focus in this area in the first five years of the war.
A third challenge is the lack of use of Forward Air Controllers and light attack/observation aircraft. Persistent Light Attack Armed Reconnaissance (LAAR) aircraft would demonstrably alter the calculus in instances such as those described by you in this article.
An aircraft, such as an OV-10, developed for and used extensively in Vietnam, could operate persistently at 3,000-5,000 feet in Helmand Province. Armed with laser rockets, small footprint weapons and mini-guns, these aircraft would have greater loiter time -- and provide the opportunity for much greater situational awareness in these types of small unit battles. The aircraft could employ air power much more precisely, and would significantly reduce (though not eliminate) the likelihood of collateral damage and/or civilian casualties. This is clearly not an indictment of the brave men and women we have doing the job today in the air and on the ground today; it is, I believe, a valid critique of my service which has not innovated and adapted at the institutional level as rapidly as we have done in previous conflicts. Using general-purpose forces for counterinsurgency makes sense if that is all you have. But it is difficult to understand why we as an Air Force have failed to develop a family of light attack, light observation and light transport aircraft eight years into this fight.
Progress is now being made. The Air Force will be acquiring 15 light attack aircraft, 15 light transport aircraft in the near future. Additional near term utility evaluations of such aircraft are also being proposed. The Air Force has fielded large numbers of Predator and Reaper remotely piloted aircraft that are indispensible to today’s fight. Additionally, the Air Force has fielded a new light observation aircraft the MC-12, which took eight months from concept to its first flight in combat this. The MC-12 is a remarkable example of what can be referred to “right tech” air power and it is my firm belief that the MC-12 will rapidly become the workhorse of counterinsurgency airpower for the foreseeable future. The first light/medium transports, the C-27J are already in the hands of the Afghan National Air Corps and the Air Force will deploy similar aircraft to Afghanistan in 2010. With the addition of the planned light attack and transport within the next two years we will finally have the capability to employ a full compliment of counterinsurgency aircraft in that role. This family of aircraft will, when fully deployed, create nothing short of a revolution in the employment of air power in counterinsurgency. This is change and progress, but few in the Air Force have truly embraced these capabilities or concepts.
- Finally, it is my fervent belief that we simply have a flawed model of counterinsurgency. This should not be seen as a critique of operations in Afghanistan or in Iraq, but of our current national approach to the counterinsurgency problem. Our counterinsurgency strategies focus far too much on U.S. forces doing the fighting. This is a lose-lose proposition. We may be able to gut through the current fights -- an increasingly likely proposition with the quality of leadership now in place. But, at present, we are in the worst of all possible situations (just as we were in Iraq in 2006 and Vietnam in 1965): we ousted the government; failed in the occupation to impose capacity and sufficient power and authority in local government; and allowed an insurgency to develop.
We now are in a position where the large-scale introduction of conventional forces is essential to stabilize the situation. Yet the mere presences of those forces simultaneously undermines the credibility of Afghanistan's indigenous forces and government. Again, this is not to discount the success of the surge in Iraq or what I see as the likely success of the surge in Afghanistan. The Army and Marine Corps' counterinsurgency field manual was specifically written to deal with this kind of fight. However, as Ralph Peters has stated clearly, our failure in both Iraq and Afghanistan was directly attributable to a lack of "occupation" doctrine, not a lack of counterinsurgency doctrine. The broader question we seem to have never asked is: Why is it that we are fighting counterinsurgency ("COIN") this way and if we must support another nation facing an insurgency in the future, is this the way to do it? A far more appropriate and likely more effective model for the U.S. in counterinsurgency operations is Air Force Lt. Col. Edward Lansdale and the Huk rebellion in the Philippines (1946-1952), compared to the current COIN hero, French Army Lt. Col. David Galula in Algeria (1954-1962).
[Photo: USAF]
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