Countering Insurgency from the Air: The Postwar Lessons

Abstract

Air power has been employed in counter-insurgency (COIN) campaigns almost since its inception in the first decade of the 20th century. The utility of aircraft against insurgents has been controversial and punctuated by debates as to its efficacy, as well as by concern over the political complications that can be caused by its use. Drawing upon a variety of post-Second World War examples, this paper contends that air power is of considerable value to the security forces in COIN campaigns, particularly in the reconnaissance and transport roles. Although modern weapons and targeting devices have increased the value of aircraft in striking against insurgents, the article suggests that there are distinct limitations to the employment of air strikes against such targets, though the presence of air power can exert a significant psychological influence. Air power's contribution to a COIN campaign is best measured not in isolation, but rather in terms of its contribution to the joint effort of the security forces.

Notes

1. Examples of pre-First World War deployments are generally little known, but include the French use of aircraft in Morocco from 1912; from 1913, these aircraft were used to bomb rebel positions, apparently to some effect. The United States Army also employed aircraft before the American entry into the First World War, in expeditions against Mexico in 1916.

2. ‘Officers Warn of Plight of British Troops’, Guardian, 23 September 2006; ‘Major Attacks “Useless” RAF in leaked e-mails’, Daily Telegraph, 23 September 2006. For views regarding suitable aircraft, see, for example, Key Publishing Forum: Modern Military Aviation, online at: ⟨http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/forumdisplay.php?f = 5⟩.

3. Ministry of Defence, AP3000: British Air Power Doctrine, 3rd Edition (London: TSO, 1999).

4. For full details, see Anne Baker, Wings Over Kabul: the First Airlift (London: William Kimber, 1975).

5. To prevent confusion with the events of the Indonesian Confrontation, the term ‘Netherlands East Indies’ (NEI) will be used when referring to the 1945–1946 intervention, even though the nationalist movement had declared an independent state of Indonesia.

6. Although often overlooked, there is a small but useful corpus of literature on the intervention. See, for instance, Richard McMillan, The British Occupation of Indonesia 1945–1946: Britain, the Netherlands and the Indonesian revolution (Abingdon: Routledge, 2005); and Peter Dennis, Troubled Days of Peace: Mountbatten and South East Asia Command (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987).

7. David Lee, Eastward: A History of the Royal Air Force in the Far East 1945–72 (London: HMSO, 1984), pp.38–63.

8. John Springhall, ‘“Disaster in Surabaya”: The Death of Brigadier Mallaby during the British Occupation of Java 1945–46’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, Vol.24, No.3 (September 1996), pp.442–43 .

9. David Jordan, ‘“A Particularly Exacting Operation”: British Forces and the Battle of Surabaya, November 1945’, Small Wars and Insurgencies, Vol.11, No.3 (Winter 2000), p.105.

10. Headquarters, Malaya Command, The Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya 2nd Edition (Kuala Lumpar: HQ Malaya Command, 1954), Chapter XVII.

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid.

13. Wing Commander John Dowling, RAF Helicopters: The First Twenty Years (London: HMSO, 1992), p.73.

14. Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations, Chapter XVII.

15. Royal Air Force, Air Publication (AP) 3410 The Malayan Emergency, 1948–1960 (London: Ministry of Defence, 1970), p.106. Upon declassification, this volume was published as Malcolm R. Postgate, Operation Firedog: Air Support in the Malayan Emergency 1948–1960 (London: HMSO, 1992).

16. Ibid.

17. Ibid., p.107.

18. Ibid., Annex M, pp.167–8.

19. Ibid., p.89.

20. Ibid., p.150.

21. Tony Geraghty, Who Dares Wins: The Special Air Service, 1950 to the Gulf War (London: Warner Books, 1993), pp.338–41. ‘Tree-jumping’ was literally that – parachuting from an aircraft into the jungle canopy, the paratrooper then lowering himself to the ground with the aid of a long rope. Unsurprisingly, there were some serious injuries sustained from landing – or more accurately crashing – into the branches of the enormous trees that made up the jungle canopy, which led to the abandonment of the practice as soon as an alternative method of insertion was available.

22. Postgate, Operation Firedog, p.150.

23. James S. Corum and Wray R. Johnson, Airpower in Small Wars: Fighting Insurgents and Terrorists (Lawrence: Kansas University Press, 2003), p.165.

24. Ibid., p.166.

25. Ibid., p.171.

26. Philip Anthony Towle, Pilots and Rebels: The Use of Aircraft in Unconventional Warfare 1918-1988 (London: Brasseys, 1989) p.121.

27. Sir Robert Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency – Experiences from Malaya and Vietnam (London: Chatto & Windus, 1972), pp.106–7.

28. William T. Y'Blood, Down in the Weeds: Close Air Support in Korea (Washington DC: Air Force History and Museums Program, 2002), pp.8–9.

29. Stuart Griffin, Joint Operations: A Short History (London: Ministry of Defence Training Specialist Services, 2005), p.128.

30. Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations, Chapter III, Section 7.

31. Postgate, Operation Firedog, p.153.

32. Towle, Pilots and Rebels, p.45.

33. The ‘cab rank’ system relied upon formations of aircraft being airborne at all times during an operation, and called in to provide air support as and where needed. The system was effective, but inefficient in that aircraft could spend their entire sortie orbiting, waiting to be called in for an attack but not being employed. While this could be achieved with air forces of the scale found in the Second World War, maintaining this approach with the smaller air services of the postwar era proved difficult.

34. Jordan, ‘A Particularly Exacting Operation’, p.96.

35. Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations, Chapters III & XVII.

36. Ibid.

37. Ibid., p.122.

38. Towle, Pilots and Rebels, p.105.

39. Corum & Johnson, Airpower in Small Wars, p.169.

40. Ibid., p.167.

41. Towle, Pilots and Rebels, p.123.

42. A.J.C. Walters, ‘Air Control: Past, Present and Future?’, RAF Air Power Review, Vol.8, No.4 (Winter 2005).

43. Jordan, ‘A Particularly Exacting Operation’, pp.103–4, 107.

44. Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations, Chapter XVII.

45. Postgate, Operation Firedog, p.72.

46. Ibid.

47. See Jack S. Ballard, Development and Employment of Fixed-Wing Gunships, 1962–1972 (Washington DC: Office of Air Force History, 1982); and Bernard C. Nalty, The War Against Trucks: Aerial Interdiction in Southern Laos, 1968-72 (Washington DC: Air Force History and Museums Program, 2005), especially pp.291–303.

48. John Schlight, The War in South Vietnam: The Years of the Offensive 1965–1968 (Washington DC: Office of Air Force History, 1989) pp.257, 295; A.J.C. Lavalle (ed.) A Tale of Two Bridges and the Battle for the Skies Over North Vietnam (Washington DC: Office of Air Force History, 1985), pp.79–84.

49. Christopher Foxley-Norris, ‘The use of Air Power in Security Operations’, Journal of the Royal United Services Institute, Vol.XCIX, No.595 (Aug. 1954), p.557.

50. A major imperative in the development of the A-10 was the US Army's frequently expressed concern that the US Air Force was not interested in providing air support, leading to the army suggesting that it should obtain its own fixed-wing combat aircraft to perform the task. For reasons of inter-service politics, such a step was anathema to the USAF, and the A-10 appeared to offer the ideal platform to quash awkward questions about the service's commitment to the land battle. See Douglas N Campbell, The Warthog and the Close Air Support Debate (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2003).

51. See, for instance, Anthony H. Cordesmann and Abraham R. Wagner, Lessons of Modern War, Volume IV: The Gulf War (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996), pp.468–70, 517–427; Christopher E. Haave and Phil M. Haun, A-10s over Kosovo: The Victory of Airpower over a Fielded Army as Told by the Airmen Who Fought in Operation Allied Force (Maxwell, AL: Air University Press, 2003).

52. Towle, Pilots and Rebels, p.103.

53. Perhaps the most notorious incident occurred at the Hola prison camp, where eleven inmates were beaten to death. See, for instance, Simon Heffer, Like the Roman: The Life of Enoch Powell (London: Phoenix, 1999), pp.252–4, for a view of the parliamentary debate following this single incident.

54. See Corum and Johnson, Airpower in Small Wars, pp.406–17 for a full discussion of the political difficulties encountered by the Israelis.

55. See David Omissi, Air Power and Colonial Control: The Royal Air Force 1919–1939 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990); David Jordan & Gary Sheffield, ‘The British Army and Air Power’, in P.W. Grey (ed.) British Air Power (London: TSO, 2003), pp.67–9.

56. Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations.

57. Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgencies, pp.50–1.