WAPO Op-ed on airpower

[Entropy]

This op-ed came out today and it's generating a lot of controversy.

There are so many problems with this essay it's difficult to know where to begin. It's not just the opinion itself, but also the supporting facts which are almost completely without merit.

The author's penchant for hyperbole is striking. She cites Pentagon numbers that kinetic strikes decreased from 6% to 5.4% of sorties. From that small number she concludes:

- We are "avoiding the death of innocents at all cost"
- We have "all but grounded" air support
- We have "largely relinquished the strategic advantage of American air dominance."

Such claims apparently appeal to the editors at the NYT but are obviously bogus to anyone with minimal knowledge of the topic.

Some excerpts and commentary:

But news reports indicate that our troops under heavy attack have had to wait an hour or more for air support, so that insurgents could be positively identified. “We didn’t come to Marja to destroy it, or to hurt civilians,” a Marine officer told reporters after waiting 90 minutes before the Cobra helicopters he had requested showed up with their Hellfire missiles.

Waiting 90 minutes to receive air support has nothing to do with Gen. McChrystal's directive restricting use of kinetic air operations. The restrictions are meant to caution against the use of ordnance, not the use of aircraft. If it takes the Marines 90 minutes to receive Cobra support (an organic asset) then that means they were probably supporting another unit or were delayed because of some operational factor. As I understand it, there's nothing in the guidance that restricts getting an aircraft overhead - in fact that is typically encouraged because aircraft provide additional situational awareness for the ground forces in addition to being ready to employ munitions if needed.

While the number of American forces in Afghanistan has more than doubled since 2008, to nearly 70,000 today, the critical air support they get has not kept pace. According to my analysis of data compiled by the United States military, close air support sorties, which in Afghanistan are almost always unplanned and in aid of troops on the ground who are under intense fire, increased by just 27 percent during that same period.

Correlation =/= causation. Why would anyone expect the number of CAS air sorties to rise in lock-step with troop levels? Regardless, the author subsequently cites data which directly contradicts this argument:

Pentagon data show that the percentage of sorties sent out that resulted in air strikes has also declined, albeit modestly, to 5.6 percent from 6 percent.

And then:

According to the military’s own air-power summaries, often when the planes or helicopters arrive, they simply perform shows of force, or drop flares rather than munitions. It is only a matter of time before the Taliban see flares and flyovers for what they are: empty threats.

I last deployed to Afghanistan in 2005. Shows-of-force were very common then and their continued use is nothing unusual. Enemy forces do not typically see them as empty threats particularly since munition employment is only somewhat more restricted under Gen. McChrystal's guidance and not banned outright. The author is assuming, wrongly, that aircraft are performing shows of force because they were denied authority to drop ordnance, which is almost never the case. Typically, a ground unit will requests a show of force for its own sake and not because weapons employment was denied.

Perhaps the directive against civilian casualties could be justified if one could show that Afghan lives were truly being saved, but that’s not the case. According to the latest report by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, the number of civilian deaths caused by Western and Afghan government forces decreased to 596 in 2009, from 828 the year before. But the overall number of civilian deaths in the country increased by 14 percent, to 2,412, and the number killed by Taliban troops and other insurgents rose by 41 percent. For Afghan civilians who are dying in greater numbers every year, the fact that fewer deaths are caused by pro-government forces is cold comfort.

This is one reason the Taliban is so unpopular in Afghanistan, but the argument that Afghans will cut us some slack for only killing one civilian for every five the Taliban kill is particularly egregious and uninformed.

Clearly, however, the pendulum has swung too far in favor of avoiding the death of innocents at all cost. General McChrystal’s directive was well intentioned, but the lofty ideal at its heart is a lie, and an immoral one at that, because it pretends that war can be fair or humane.

For the author some irrelevant and contradictory statistics along with cherry-picked anecdotes count as clarity. I could not disagree more.

[Entropy]

That's from the New York Times.

Thanks, I edited the post. Not sure how I screwed that up!

[Entropy]

One of the author's supporting anecdotes is wrong. There's now nothing in the op-ed to support the author's claims.

[Danny]

I could have filled in the blanks for the commentary with other examples and cite specific sources. They may or may not have done a good job of sourcing their objections. Leaving that aside, you don't really believe that an AR 15-6 investigation is going to disparage a tactical directive of a four star general, do you?

I had predicted on my blog a weeks back that the field grade officers who were at the helm when the Kunar incident occurred had better find another line of work ... and soon.

[William F. Owen]

This got published in the NY Times?? It's rubbish. This kid knows very little about military operations. While I defer very little to rank, age, title or experience, but this is an object lesson in the truism, that if you want to show your ignorance, start talking.

Yet again, someone who cannot tell the difference between, war, warfare, plans, policy, strategy and tactics!

More troops should equal less need for stand-off fires, because you should have greater freedom of action (more resources) in planning operations.
Moreover stupid ROE poorly applied will always lead to trouble.

This actually annoys me, because while I think saying "hearts and minds" in baby talk, this kid comprehensively undermines, all the argument against the H&M policy by saying stupid stuff.

.... if you do not study warfare or have never been taught about, do not comment on it.

[SethB]

Her previous work was published in SWJ.

Despite the acknowledged shortcomings of air attacks within the current framework of U.S. counterinsurgency, for the time being air power in general and close air support operations in particular will continue to be indispensable components of the Afghan war. Constrained by a shortage of troops, vast and dispersed areas of operations, limited human intelligence, and proximate insurgent sanctuaries, CAS is a lifeline for coalition troops. Yet with the exception of nuclear weapons, arguably no military has used a weapon of war more judiciously than the American military’s use of airstrikes in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, even remarkable restraint has proven insufficient. While the physical and psychological toll of air strikes on the civilian population is undisputable, the American military’s hesitating use of CAS not only runs the risk of putting the lives of its troops in danger and affecting their willingness to patrol larger AO, but of encouraging insurgents to fight under the literal aegis civilian human shields. Frank acknowledgement of civilian deaths and timely distribution of reparations might marginally mitigate public outrage, but neither are not long-term solutions. Irrespective of how it is applied American air dominance will not decide the Afghan war. Success or failure in tackling the underlying problems which have made coalition forces so air-dependent will.

Lara M. Dadkhah is a graduate student in Security Studies at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. She has worked as an open source analyst covering biodefense issues in Iran and Afghanistan, and as a data analyst for current coalition information operations in Afghanistan