To bomb or not to bomb? Counterinsurgency, airpower, and dynamic targeting

Air & Space Power Journal, Winter, 2007 by Jason M. Brown

* Structure--centralized, decentralized, flat

* Nature/identity--kinship, ideological/religious, personal (based on an individual), party/faction, foreign/indigenous, composite (a blend of several identities)

* Purpose/function--operational, support, integrated

* Scope--narrow or broad relative to functions, geographic range, and/or goals

* Knowledge, skills, and abilities--held by group leaders and members

* Membership and recruitment base--kinship, other forms of association, local, foreign, indigenous

* Resources--arms, money, connectivity (to important social structures), status (within the social system)

* Adaptability--ability to learn, ability to change behavior based on learning, preadaptation (13)

Every insurgency places different importance on each of these traits. The ones that the insurgency values most are likely critical elements and nodes that offer the greatest potential for targeting. Valued, tangible traits offer the best opportunities for targeting with airpower. For example, if an insurgent group uses a centralized command structure, its leaders would serve as critical nodes--potentially ideal targets for air strikes.

The criticality of leadership nodes depends entirely on structural centralization--not standard for all insurgencies. We tend to assume the appropriateness of targeting an insurgent network's structure through a "leadership attrition" or "[high-value target] strategy." (14) Martin J. Muckian argues that the structure of the Iraqi insurgency differs from that of Maoist insurgencies, the former so disparate that targeting leadership would not have the same effect. Its critical nodes are function-rather than leadership-based. Individuals with the most importance and least amount of redundancy have rare skills, such as bomb making, or serve as the only links between insurgent organizations. (15) Their elimination would have a greater disruptive effect than the loss of a leader.

Counterinsurgency forces also need to assess the population's attitude toward the insurgency, which may prove hard to do. The bulk of a population falls somewhere along a spectrum defined by support for the insurgency at one end and support for the government at the other, with a neutral zone in between. (16) Military leaders should understand where the population falls on that spectrum. An insurgency receiving significant support from the population can disperse, duplicate, and potentially decentralize critical elements and nodes, thus making it more survivable. Hezbollah insurgents, for example, evolved in this manner and became integrated into the population.

Israel has experienced both success and failure in determining appropriate targets during its small wars with Hamas and Hezbollah. The Israelis succeeded in disrupting Hamas in the Palestinian territories from 2003 to 2004. Israel's high-tempo air campaign against Hamas leadership and other targets incapacitated the organization, but the Israelis learned the wrong lessons from their success when they decided to engage Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006. Hezbollah had spent the previous six years preparing, dispersing, and decentralizing its logistics and command and control (C2). Furthermore, Israel certainly did not have the same quality of human intelligence in southern Lebanon that it enjoyed in the Palestinian territories. Israel's limited capacity for assessing the effects of the air strikes impaired its ability to adapt to Hezbollah's countertargeting techniques.