Air Power in Counter-insurgency: A Sophisticated Language or Blunt Expression?

Abstract

Historical and more recent experiences have reinforced the notion that air power can achieve effects through the use of both kinetic – or destructive – and non-kinetic engagements. The Royal Air Force has long been employed in a counter-insurgency (COIN) role. It has used its potential to conduct successfully many operations on the basis of a clear understanding of the local cultural, societal, and physical terrain. Such tactical subtlety has been harnessed to support wider strategic successes. Current operations show a similar, albeit fledgling trend in their developments. This article re-examines the utility of a ‘Force-Withheld’ (or non-kinetic) air power strategy in today's COIN operations. The objective is to review a contemporary effects-based approach to COIN against insights from a historical approach to air power employment. This review will illustrate the often neglected ‘constructive’ use of air power and will argue that advocates of air power in COIN must consider its non-kinetic contribution as much as its kinetic one.

Notes

1. The views expressed in this paper are personal, based on recent operational experience and significant debate with colleagues within and outside the Royal Air Force. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions and policies of the UK Ministry of Defence.

2. William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, Act II Scene 2

3. ‘Future Air and Space Operational Concept – White Paper’ (London: HMSO, 2005); and ‘British Air Power Doctrine: AP3000’ 3rd Edition (London: HMSO, 1991), online at: <http://www.raf.mod.uk/downloads/ap3000.html>.

4. These were the UK contributions to the US-led Operations Enduring Freedom (OEF) and Iraqi Freedom (OIF) respectively.

5. Contemporary UK doctrine and concept development has proposed a general definition of non-conventional or irregular warfare, encompassing activities to counter disorder, insurgency, criminality, and terrorism. This paper will focus on COIN as representative of all these. Whilst very conscious that there are clear distinctions to be made, in the case of air power's utility, the similarities are deemed sufficient by the author to be able to generalise its role across the non-conventional spectrum for the purposes of this short paper.

6. Throughout this paper the words ‘kinetic’ and ‘non-kinetic’ are used to denote the active use of all forms of lethal and non-lethal force or ‘fires’ respectively. ‘Engagement’ is the term used to encompass traditional ‘fires’ (both kinetic and non-kinetic) and ‘Information Activity’.

7. For example, the manner in which an action is publicised through information and media operations is a vital aspect here. A case in point is the use of the phrase ‘collateral damage’, which has often been misunderstood and construed as merely a morally questionable euphemism, without understanding what the collateral damage estimation process actually involves or represents.

8. UK Joint Vision (Shrivenham: UK Joint Doctrine and Concepts Centre, 2005), online at: <http://www.mod.uk/jdcc/concepts.html>.

9. Giulio Douhet, The Command of the Air (Washington DC: Office of Air Force History, 1983); Andrew Boyle, Trenchard (London: Collins, 1962); John Warden, The Air Campaign: Planning for Combat (Washington DC: National Defense University Press, 1988).

10. Douhet, Command of the Air, p.58.

11. Although not directly comparable to Douhet's hypothesis perhaps, two examples might be the American national resolve following the attack on Pearl Harbor, or the British population in the face of the Blitz.

12. Gp. Capt. (ret.) A. P. N. Lambert, The Psychology of Air Power, (London: RUSI Whitehall Paper Series, No.30, 1994).

13. See, for example Col. (ret.) Thomas X. Hammes, The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century (St Paul, MN: Zenith Press, 2004) where the concept of ‘Fourth Generation Warfare’ is discussed around the pre-eminence of information and the perceptions of events.

14. Simon Jenkins, ‘They Opted to Bomb, it had better work’, The Times, (10 October 2001), p.22.

15. From Peter Almond, ‘Air Power and the Media: A Personal View from the Media World’, Chapter 3 of Peter Gray (ed.), British Air Power (London: HMSO, 2003).

16. High Commissioner Sir Horace Dobbs to Air Officer Commanding, 1924, Public Records Office, Kew, London, Air 5/338, (emphasis added).

17. Nils Naastad, ‘RAF, Prudent Air Power and the Fear of History’, Chapter 10 of Gray, British Air Power.

18. Ibid.

19. John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the End of the Cold War: Implications, Reconstructions, Provocations (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992) p.3.

20. For a fuller historical analysis, see for example, James Corum and Wray Johnson, Air Power in Small Wars: Fighting Insurgents and Terrorists (Lawrence, KA: University of Kansas Press, 2003).

21. David Syrett, The Defeat of the German U-Boats: The Battle of the Atlantic (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1994); and Gp. Capt. Chris Finn, Effects Based Warfare (London: HMSO, 2004).

22. Air Marshal Christopher Foxley-Norris, A Lighter Shade of Blue (London: Ian Allen, 1978) pp.47–50.

23. Air Vice-Marshal B. A. Casey, Commanding Royal Air Force in Iraq, ‘Report of Operations in Baghdad Area – 2 May to 31 May 1941’, online at RAF History website <http://www.raf.mod.uk/history/opsrep.html>.

24. Here, an air presence profile is made more aggressive, overt, and thereby more threatening, through the use of fast jets.

25. Statement by Officer Commanding No.3 (Fighter) Squadron, RAF, quoted on MoD Operations Web Service, online at <http://news.mod.uk/news>.

26. Unclassified ‘Lesson Identified’ made in unpublished US Army paper synthesising observations made by senior officers in the Combined Joint Task Force (CJTF) 76, Spring 2005.

27. US Joint Forces Command, Operational Implications of Effects-Based Operations (Shrivenham: Joint Doctrine Series, Pamphlet 7, November 2004), online at <http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/other_pubs/jwfcpam7.pdf>.

28. Defence White Paper, Delivering Security in a Changing World, Cm 6041-I (London, HMSO, 2003).

29. Institute for Defense Analysis Joint Advanced Warfighting Program/J-7 (IDA/JWAP), ‘New Perspectives on Effects-Based Operations’, briefing/unpublished paper, pp.15–18.

30. A statement made on the basis of the author's anecdotal evidence from recent operational experience.

31. Carl von Clausewitz, On War. Trans. and ed. Michael Howard and Peter Paret, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976) p.579.

32. Phil Sabin, ‘Western Strategy in the New Era: the Apotheosis of Air Power’, in Andrew Dorman, Steve Smith and Matthew Uttley (eds), The Changing Face of Military Power (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002).

33. Joint Warfare Publication 3.80, ‘Information Operations’ (Shrivenham: Joint Doctrine and Concepts Centre, 2002).

34. Ibid., Annex 2A, para 2A3.

35. Notably, the real-time modulation of air activity has been achieved on the strength of the on-scene, land commanders' perceptions of the situation or dynamic, local advice.

36. Col. Phillip Meillinger, USAF (ret.), ‘Winged Defence: Answering the Critics of Air Power’, Air Power Review, Vol.5, No.4 (Winter 2002), online at <http://www.raf.mod.uk/downloads/>.

37. Ibid.

38. Kathleen M. Carley, ‘Estimating Vulnerabilities in Large Covert Networks Using Multi-Level Data’, ISRI, Carnegie Mellon University, 2003, online at <http://www.casos.cs.cmu.edu/events/conferences/2004/2004_proceedings/Carley,Kathleen.doc>.

39. Ibid.

40. Col. Robyn Read, USAF (ret.), ‘Effects-Based Airpower for Small Wars: Iraq after Major Combat’, Air and Space Power Journal, Vol.19, No.2 (Spring 2005).

41. Ibid.

42. Seymour Hersh, ‘Up in the Air: Where is the War in Iraq Headed Next?’, New Yorker Magazine, (December 2005), online at: <http://www.newyorker.com/printables/fact/05/205fa_fact> .

43. The author is grateful to a colleague, Wing Commander Ash Mitchell, RAF for this insightful analogy.