Quote Originally Posted by slapout9 View Post
5 Rings Targeting of a terrorist organization.


http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/acsc/97-0393.pdf
Well I'll give it a look, but I am very doubtful, because:

a>) The RAF is trying to claim some insights into COIN, which are just woeful and play very fast and loose with the historical record to try and support their arguments.

b>) I think the overwhelming lesson of the 2nd Lebanon War is that Air Power has extremely limited utility in COIN, as concerns "kinetic" effects. The RAF is actually now trying to claim that AIR POWER did not fail in the Lebanon, but that it was given an impossible task, thus did not fail, per se.

c>) I also suspect that there are some very unhealthy pre-emptive USAF agendas in play in this paper.