Big Blue in the Back Seat
BLUF: Air Force senior leaders fail to grasp the fact that if the Air Force wants to contribute to winning COIN, we should be looking to our airmen, not our iron.
Discussion: The problem is that the Air Force views IW and COIN as a means of employing iron instead of people. Yes, COIN requires the disciplined use of Air Force iron IOT execute kinetic strikes and ISR. However, the idea that Big Blue should just sit back and let the ground-pounders execute population-centric COIN while we sit inside the wire is a by-product of years of indoctrination inferrring that any movement back towards the ground will inevitably lead to re-establishment of the Army Air Corps.
Recommendation: Get out of the back seat and into the driver's. Train, equip and deploy airmen tasked with supporting Air Force ground operations ISO unified COIN strategy. IW, and by association, COIN, are population-centric and require people, not planes.