Air-minded considerations for joint counterinsurgency doctrine

Air & Space Power Journal, Winter, 2007 by Charles J. Dunlap, Jr.

Moreover, it did so with minimal risk to US personnel. One discouraged Afghani told the New York Times that "we pray to allah that we have American soldiers to kill" but added gloomily that "these bombs from the sky we cannot fight." (11) The Taliban found the precision fire of AC-130 gunships--another weapon the Soviets did not possess--equally dispiriting. An Afghan ally related to General Franks that this "famous airplane ... [has] destroyed the spirit of the Taliban and the Arabs." (12)

These capabilities capture one of the foremost features of contemporary American airpower in COIN situations: its ability to impose the psychology of "engagement dominance" on otherwise dogged adversaries. (13) Death per se does not extinguish the will to fight in such opponents; rather, it is the hopelessness that arises from the inevitability of death from a source they cannot fight.

Sheer impotence in the face of superior weaponry and the denial of a meaningful death will crush war-fighting instincts. Essentially, this amounts to exploitation of an inherent fear of soldiers of all cultures: confronting technology against which they cannot fight. Even experienced soldiers can be driven to near panic, as happened when British soldiers faced German tanks during World War II with inadequate weaponry. (14)

The psychological effect of air attack's infliction of helplessness may exceed the physical effects. Commenting on British use of airpower to suppress insurgencies in Arab territories during the 1920s and 1930s, Sir John Bagot Glubb concluded that although aircraft do not generally inflict heavy casualties, "their tremendous moral effect is largely due to the demoralization engendered in the tribesman by his feelings of helplessness and his inability to reply effectively to the attack" (emphasis added). (15)

One might say that American precision airpower is analogous (on a much larger and effective scale) to the effect that insurgents try to imposeonus and other friendly forces through the use of improvised explosive devices, the most deadly weapon faced by COIN forces. (16) The seeming randomness, unpredictability, and persistence of these attacks are just as effective at destroying morale as causing casualties. Airpower, though, uses what might be called "devised" explosive devices that nevertheless share many of the same morale-destroying and stress-inducing qualities. The air Force, however, uses these devices against legitimate military targets and can employ them in vastly greater numbers.

Properly employed, the air weapon can impose friction and extreme psychological stress on insurgents. (17) Airmen may soon have a new weapon to carry out such devastating attacks--the MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial vehicle. (18) With a weapons load equivalent to that of the F-16, the Reaper represents a new generation of "hunter/killer" aircraft that can relentlessly pursue insurgents at zero risk of losing an American.

None of this suggests that Airmen believe they should resolve COIN operations in the twenty-first century exclusively through the use of force. It does say that there is still a place for its aggressive, offensive use as an important part of a holistic COIN doctrine, even in today's highly scrutinized operations. Nor does it mean that one should use only airpower when force is required. As Operation Enduring Freedom has demonstrated, airpower--along with allied forces on the ground and enhanced by tiny numbers of US special forces--can produce results that minimize risk to Americans.