America's Asymmetric Advantage

[RTK]

"The relative sterility of air power — which the boots-on-the-ground types oddly find distressing as somehow unmartial — nevertheless provides greater opportunity for the discreet application of force largely under the control of well-educated, commissioned officer combatants. "

I refer back to David Kilcullen's 28 Articles: Rank means nothing; talent is everything.

Additionally, David Galula would argue that it's pretty damned tough to conduct the civil-military operations that take 80% of your time in a COIN environment from 30,000 feet.

I have a hard time believing that a Major General is basing his argument off of the fact that he doesn't forsee another rebuilding effort like Iraq in the future. More proof that certain elements of leadership are completely out of touch with reality.

[slapout9]

The Air Force is scared to death that the general public will find out how bad they have been ripped off with expensive planes. It is the age of the guided missile!! From the Stinger's to an ICBM. And they should "not" be under the control of the Air force but the Army. Missiles are long range artillery, not an airplane!

It is wasteful to spend all that money on planes when it can be done with missiles. They are better,cheaper and safer. Not only that but the D3A (CARVER)targeting process is better and easier to understand then what is being passed for EBO.

I lived in Orlando,Fl. during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis and It was the deployment of Army missiles all around south Florida that had as much to do with them giving in as the Naval blockade (which was a good idea). I saw what Army Missile power can do, they would have hit Cuba before the planes could have even be started. This was a very scary time. Since that time the Army has been systematically stripped of the missile artillery it needs to have to support it's land elements, defend the American homeland from air attack and protect USMC elements operating far inland if they need to.

The Army should declare war on the air force and take back the missiles, and with the help of a few good Marines (Infantry)America will be protected again.

I don't know what logo will end up on the SWC coin but we should send him one or two so he can get the education that he did not receive in college.

[Bill Moore]

My conspiracy theory is that this paper is a timely spin piece on air power not focused on the military community, but focused on Congress (dollars). It is timely in that Iraq is becoming ever more unpopular, midterm elections are looming, new and old Congressmen next Spring will have to offer alternatives to "staying the course", so unfortunately this article may sell to the intended audience for all the wrong reasons.

But looking past that, there are some merits to this article (not much). Air power is our asymmetric edge, and I don’t think that can be argued. It currently gives us battlefield dominance in almost all kinetic situations. It is best applied in conjunction with other joint forces, but it can be applied effectively unilaterally to execute punitive raids. I can’t argue that, nor can I argue that not all small wars, conflicts, etc. require us to obligate our nation to execute FID/COIN, which is not only expensive economically, it almost always is costly politically (we lose consensus and unity) and morally (we start on moral high ground, but over time our position degrades to the point where we are fighting to get back on the moral high ground as we're portrayed as occupiers and the source of all problems for that particular nation). We should never sign up for COIN lightly, because we are putting our national reputation on line in by engaging in a situation where it is very hard to effect a positive outcome. That means we still require the ability to execute punitive type strikes without buying the country and signing on for nation building as a viable option. Air power permits that at a limited cost (planes are expensive, but so is moving and sustaining a BDE of soldiers). What the article failed to mention (not surprisingly) is the use of air power alone, especially against non-state actors, is frequently perceived as a sign of weakness by our enemies. They don’t think we have the will to commit to our troops to the fight, thus if we use JDAMS unilaterally we could very well embolden our enemy. On the other hand a JDAM strike in conjunction with paratroopers dropping in, or Marines coming over the beach presents another image altogether.

Finally, I think the killing of AMZ could have been executed by any infantry platoon, but why give him the opportunity to kill a soldier and sign off with an IO victory? On the other hand, air power alone never could have found him.

Overall the article is laughable, but if it works we’ll see new work shortly on Air Force Golf Courses and O-Clubs, while the Army and Marines carry the bulk of the fight underfunded.

[Uboat509]

I can't decide if this is bald-faced blind parochialism or one of the most cynical things I have ever read. Did I read this wrong or did he actually marginalize the value winning the hearts and minds the populace and gaining intelligence on the ground? Either he knows absolutely nothing about COIN or he is hoping that his intended audience doesn't. It also it appears that he has drawn the wring conclusions from the Israeli experience in Lebanon. He appears to believe that Israeli reliance on a pure air response early on in the fight was a success despite all the evidence to the contrary. I expect this kind of thing from a fighter jock. I have no idea what his intent was.

SFC W

[Steve Blair]

I can't decide if this is bald-faced blind parochialism or one of the most cynical things I have ever read. Did I read this wrong or did he actually marginalize the value winning the hearts and minds the populace and gaining intelligence on the ground? Either he knows absolutely nothing about COIN or he is hoping that his intended audience doesn't. It also it appears that he has drawn the wring conclusions from the Israeli experience in Lebanon. He appears to believe that Israeli reliance on a pure air response early on in the fight was a success despite all the evidence to the contrary. I expect this kind of thing from a fighter jock. I have no idea what his intent was.

SFC W

The AF doesn't really deal with COIN outside of some small communities, so it's a good bet that he DOESN'T know anything about COIN. A RAND report for the AF was referenced in another thread, and so much of it is concerned with the basics of COIN and LIC that you can tell that most of the AF leadership is clueless.

[marct]

You know, I don't think I have come across a better example of rhetoric in the face (or absence) of reason in years! I have to make this mandatory reading for my students. The imagery! The classic use of atrocity tales and wonder tales! What artistry!!!!

Bill, you mentioned that you thought this was a sales pitch and I really have to agree. It is pure political rhetoric aimed solely at providing a cleaner, safer (Greener?) alternative to those nasty bow-togs .

Lawvol, you asked an interesting question.

Blair says: You cannot engage in purely punitive operations and then walk away. There is a certain moral obligation to fix what you break, or help create the end state that you desire, once you engage in such operations.

Please explain. Where does this obligation comes from? From the limited reading I've done, it would seem that punitive operations have been the norm for many years (e.g. the British Empire). In resorting to a moralistic argument, whose morals do we use? I'm not trying to be quarrelsome, I just want to understand the thinking. I've read a few articles advocating a desire to do away with the "you break it -you bought it" theory.

Personally, I wouldn't have argued that it is a "moral" obligation but, rather, an ethical one where ethics is defined as "right action" (I tend to use a Buddhist definition). I would put the emphasis on the successfull achievement of a desired end state, rather than on an obligation to fix what you break.

You mentioned the British Empire and the use of punitive strikes. Sure, they have been one tool in the general arsenal of force options ever since the first cities started to develope. The problem with that is that they are not the only tool and they may not be the right tool to achieve a specific end.

What, after all, is the goal behind the application of force? It could be a fairly simple "raid" mentality - "kill the men, grab the women and sheep". It could be a goal of extermination - "kill them all, God will know his own" (God, I love that quote!). It could also be a shear statement of power - "F*$k with us and this is what you'll get." All of these are "punitive" goals designed to produce different results - loot, annihilation, and a "warning" respectively.

Are those the goals we are trying to achieve in, say, Afghanistan? Nope, so we have to change the tool to achieve the desired result. This isn't a morlalistic argument, this is a utilitarian agrument. In this case, "moral arguments" and moral standings are actually part of the tool kit, and rhetoric is as important as artillery.

Let's get back to the question of goals. What was the goal in attacking Afghanistan? (BTW, I *really* don't want to deal with goals in attacking Iraq so let's stick with Afghanistan ). The first goal was to topple the Taliban regime as a punitive example of what happens when a nation supports actions that the rest of the world considers to be "illegal". It certainly wasn't out of caring about the Afghan people or the Northern Alliance. This was a punitive raid at the state level with, pretty much, full international support.

As such, in order to "send the message", it had to not only topple the regime, it had to replace that regime with another that would be acceptable to the world community and would agree to play by the international rules of the game. In order to achieve this, the "new" regime has to have enough social stability to show its own people that it can a) protect them and b) offer a better chance of achieving "success" however success is culturally defined - that could be a greater income, it could be more sheep, it could be better education and, given human variation, it could be pretty much anything.

We, and by "we" I mean the international community, pretty much went into Afghanistan realizing this even if we didn't know exactly how to achieve it. Sure, we, and now I'm talking about Canadians, used a lot of moral rhetoric about helping the poor oppressed people of Afghanistan, but that was a secord or third order cause (i.e. justification) for popular consumption. The reality was that we wanted a massive regime change and we wanted to send a clear message to any other state that was sponsoring global terrorism. Most of the people involved on the Canadian side didn't really have any axes to grind about what form the government should take, although a number of us hoped for a restoration of the monarchy, mainly because a lot of us believed it would be the most stable form of regime given its 100+ years of history.

So, back to your initial question, Lawvol.

"Where does this obligation comes from? From the limited reading I've done, it would seem that punitive operations have been the norm for many years (e.g. the British Empire). In resorting to a moralistic argument, whose morals do we use?"

The obligation is to ourselves from a purely utilitarian standpoint. The obligation arose because while we were engaged in a punitive strike, the very nature of that strike demanded certain outcomes. This type of punitive strike is, actually, in the best traditions of the British Empire (take a look at the consolidation period in Indian history, say 1850-1890 and, also, the Zulu and Boer wars). The Brits were always quite good at this type of opperation, well, at least until the FO started to get involved . BTW, this specific type of "regime change", and the absolute demographic needs of the British Empire to use it, were behind the founding of British Social Anthropology (but that's another story...).

The moral arguments are secondary or tertiary arguments which, while very important, are not in and of themselves the reasons behind the goals. As to whose morality we use (and that really is a *very* good question), the answer is surprisingly simple - we use the morality of the group that will be most effective to the selected target. Thus we use Western, Christian based morality on the home fronts and we use Afghan, Islamic based morality in the Afghan front. When I said earlier that rhetoric is as important as artillery, I really meant it, and that means choosing the right round for each particular target .

Marc

[Steve Blair]

Good point, Marc. I used moral instead of ethical, which was poor word selection on my part. "What the general really meant to say was ethical...."

And if you need more examples of this sort of writing, take a look at a fair amount of what the AF produces for public consumption. Not the Air University stuff, since a fair amount of it is actually good and balanced, but the Air Force magazine stuff and policy-type pieces. They also tend to aim their stuff at political audiences, since the AF was really created by politics. Interesting stuff, in a way.

[marct]

Thanks, Steve, I will take a look at the AF magazine material. I'm always on the lookout for good examples of rhetoric and myths in action .

Marc

[marct]

Good point, Marc. I used moral instead of ethical, which was poor word selection on my part. "What the general really meant to say was ethical...."

Some days, I think I should slap myself in the head . I'm afraid I got too "technical" in my post. You were quite right to use "morals", at least in the sense that we have to live up to our own moral codes otherwise we will just end up feeling that we are immoral and full off guilt.

Marc