Overcast skies in the War on Terror
By Greg Rosen, International Affairs Editor  

Winston Churchill

Back in 1986, the movie “Top Gun” was a box office hit and clearly the cream of the crop of action movies – displaying tough men fiercely attacking the Evil Empire in glistening, sturdy F-14 Tomcats. But was it more than just a movie? A classic on the activities of the elite pilots of the Navy, “Top Gun” made the characters Maverick and Iceman an instant phenomenon. They beckoned a nation to revitalize the malaise of the Vietnam era. From motorcycle rides along the coast to trapping Russian MiGs in formation, the top gun fighter pilots and their antics solidified and developed the real-life sentiment that air power, in all its technological majesty, was a panacea for the modern world. The employment of a super-equipped jet and a cache of smart weaponry ushered in an ideology of precision and rapidity; the two pilots made people believe that this was the way to fight any war. This military philosophy, however, is misguided and does not fully explain what air power does or has done for American warfare, especially in the current war on terror.

Prior to the creation of the military aircraft, the correct way to fight was through ground-bound tactics: a massive army equipped with leadership and guns. What Otto von Bismarck referred to as “iron and blood” became the proper strategy. [1] But by the early twentieth century, the United States military had billowed into a vast organization of soldiers, weapons, and vehicles, all ready at a moment’s notice. Air Power, from WWII forward, became the decisive way to win battles. Michael Sherry describes our use of air power in WWII as spectacularly destructive and ultimately victorious: “the bonfire of all bonfires.” [2]

By 1946, the communist threat forced Harry Truman and the Post-War administrations to reanalyze and shift the national security strategies for the U.S. With the advent of a global Cold War, the need for a blue ocean navy and blue sky air force became essential. The ability to export violence and security transformed into the mantra of the armed forces. Now, the United States could police the Western world through planes that could deliver destruction on total levels, diminishing casualties on the ground while concealing themselves in the overcast skies. Air Power was the ideal, the ‘be all end all,’ for preventing Soviet hegemony.

However, how effective is this philosophy? One of the most modern philosophers on military stratagems, John Boyd, certainly believes that air power is a fine mechanism. His comprehensive and expansive principle, known widely as the OODA (observe-orient-decide-act) Loop, is a conceptual way of looking at Iceman in his cockpit. [3] Essentially, one can derive from his philosophy that the platforms (or the types of aircrafts used) do not matter, and neither do the munitions tacked on. Rather, the anticipation and mental vigor of the pilot makes the difference between life and death. In essence, by the pilot simply being more capable and ready, demonstrating his abilities prior to engagement, the other pilot will often flinch or hesitate as a natural reaction. The decision cycle of a pilot enables adaptation and thus survival. This theory, substantially researched, has widespread acceptance in the military community and is a fan favorite of President George W. Bush and his former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. But on applying this concept to the war on terror (that is, using airplanes against cloaked civilians), it is ultimately flawed.

The Osamas Rear their Ugly Heads
Since the end of the Cold War, air power has remained on top and proved mostly effective. From Gulf War I onwards, our planes and Patriot Missiles annihilated Saddam’s tank divisions, but only in the open, vulnerable desert. [4] However, since 9/11 and the appearance of a stronger form of stateless terrorism, the religion of air power has been promulgated too many times with too little successes. Post 9/11, the air force became the go-to branch, chosen often too impulsively. Thomas Donnelly of the American Enterprise Institute captures the situation perfectly in the days after 9/11:

Rather than the high-tech, target-rich enemy of the future that the Pentagon was gearing to fight, the US military has instead been confronted by fluid, stateless networks of guerrilla fighters, who lack the fixed infrastructure—the ‘central nervous system’…that precision-guided munitions are so adept at paralyzing. [5]

Initially, especially in the Afghanistan war of 2002, our B-2s, F-117 Stealth fighters, and F-16s performed admirably, destroying many targets out in the open desert. But when those once described ‘freedom fighters’ began their trek into the urban landscape, the efficacy of our weapons and airplanes plummeted. Precision guided munitions simply do not do the intended trick. A very important thing to understand about precision guided munitions is that, one, you do not always hit your target, and, two, even when you do, there is often collateral damage. According to Former State Department Chief of Staff under Colin Powell and Honors Professor at The George Washington University, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, air power and its subsequent artillery have been “over sold since the beginning. These things [weapons] don’t necessarily pack a lot of punch and do not destroy things really well.” [6] Concerning the US Attack on Afghanistan and the Taliban, Wilkerson expresses his belief that in good conventional conditions where terrain is open, such as the Persian Gulf War or in the open spaces of Afghanistan, air power is extremely profitable.

Once the terrorists move to a more urbanized environment, air power’s efficiency drops tremendously. In fact, in places such as Masar i Sharif, Baghdad, or Fallujah, the guided munitions only hit their targets approximately half the time! Bombing a city of 8 million people with a population density of 30,000 for every kilometer is a tremendous risk to take in a limited, public war. [7] A recent Le Monde article suggests that an important component of air strikes nowadays centers on the limitations of collateral damage. [8] Wilkerson compares it “to almost using it like a surgeon’s knife” where it is virtually impossible to restrict collateral damage, which often destroys our public image. And in a world dominated by media, even “a single Iraqi mother holding her lifeless infant can be alarming”. [9] In March of 2003, the first shot of the Iraqi war against Saddam in the Dora Farms complex killed no such leaders, but rather destroyed innocent civilians. Iraqi Doctors remarked that at the beginning of the air war, they were receiving no soldiers, only civilians, and they were plain angry. [10] Public opinion does not only have a negative effect domestically, but internationally, where the US becomes the embodiment of terror, the exact opposite of what we would like to achieve. Leaders such as Afghan President Hamid Karzai or Nouri Al-Maliki in Iraq have no other option than to condemn the US for its injudicious application of air power. No rightful head of state will ever concede to the world that “it’s okay if you killed my citizens, just as long as you also killed the bad guy.” When all has been said and done, our international respectability, from which we derive power, is compromised.

Using the air force in highly urbanized terrain is at times plainly foolish. The enemy undoubtedly understands our tactics and will no longer make themselves a target. In applying air power to the current war on terror, especially in developed cities in Iraq, you run the risk of extensive blowback - the intelligence community’s equivalent of the aphorism ‘what goes around comes around.’ This could simply engender more hatred toward the US, fueling the terrorists’ propaganda. Tom Englehart describes the ‘barbarism’ of an air-power mentality: “From the lofty, godlike vantage point of the strategic as well as the literal heavens, the military and the civilian began to blur on the ground. Soldiers and citizens, conscripts and refugees alike, became nothing but tiny, indistinguishable hordes of ants, or nothing at all but the structures that housed them.” [11] Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker recalls a military planner of DoD who purported: “there is no sense of an air campaign, or a strategic vision. We are just whacking targets—it’s a reversion to the Stone Age.” [12] The problem is…there are no targets to hit! The stateless terrorist works within no such infrastructure as an operations center. He is a moving evil.

Many people would argue that precision guided munitions change the face of urban combat, such as in Fallujah in the fall of 2004. While such operations certainly aided the boots on the ground, often miscommunication or electronic failures caused huge mishaps in attacks. While 64% of the bombs dropped in Iraq were precision guided with accuracies within 10-20 feet, such success is nevertheless negated by external damage. [13] Moreover, once again, collateral damage becomes a fundamental issue.

Big Faults in Flight
The unmistakable example of air power’s inapplicability in our modern war on terror and its public repercussions is the 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. On July 12, 2006, Hezbollah on the southern Lebanese border launched diversionary rocket attacks on Israel and sent a small contingent force to capture Israeli soldiers in order to swap them for imprisoned Hezbollah members. In retaliation, Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and the air force commissioned over 12,000 air combat missions and killed over 1,183 Lebanese (most of them civilians), displacing more than half a million inhabitants. [14] Israel was condemned the world over. While Hezbollah’s actions certainly were no less shocking, Charles Heyman hits the nail on the head when he exclaims: “Using the civilian population as cover is an integral aspect of asymmetrical warfare, and it follows that innocent civilians will die in large numbers in air attacks. The attacker, in this case Israel, subsequently loses the all-important international public relations battle.” [15]

Our over-emphasis on air power can appear cowardly and only embolden our enemies. Not to mention, the budget for the air force is now a whopping 105 billion dollars, almost 1/5 of the Pentagon’s discretionary budget. [16] With the army stretched thin and the Marines in need of serious ammunition and supplies, the air force is gobbling away at its resources. This is not to say, however, that air power never works. While over-advertised by the defense industries, the creation and usage of new airplanes and drones is a wonderful asset for open battles and non-discriminatory aggression, such as our march to Baghdad in 2002 or an air raid in Dresden sixty years prior. Even in Iraq today, there are certainly improvements; laser guided munitions are rapidly changing and becoming more efficient. Still, In the opening salvo of the Iraqi War, out of 50 initial precision strikes on Saddam and other leadership, none of them hit their target. [17] Civilians died instead. The Mavericks and the Icemans have helped us in various times, but now, the ideologies they embody can stand no more. We must not become arrogant in our scientific ways. Fighting these brutes is going to be a difficult, drawn out battle necessitating the intelligence and ingenuity of the modern American soldier. The Eisenhower notion of air power as a substitution for boots on the ground (bang for your buck!) severely restricts the mission of the military. As General Barry McCaffrey once said, “we’ve created a beast” with air power expansion. [18] In the war on terror, air power’s transformation is vital to our national security, but it must be handled and administered properly. Now, it is truly time to rethink our strategies.

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[1] “ Otto von Bismarck - The Iron Chancellor of Germany,” available at http://www.germanculture.com.ua/library/weekly/aa092000a.htm (accessed March 30, 2007).

[2] Michael Sherry, The Rise of American Air Power: The Creation of Armageddon (Yale University Press, 1989).

[3] Osinga Frans. Science, Strategy and War: The Strategic Theory of John Boyd. (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2007).

[4] “The Gulf War,” available at http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Air_Power/gulf_war/AP44.htm (accessed April 12, 2007).

[5] Thomas Donnelly, “Strategy and Air Power,” American Enterprise Institute Short Publications (March 2005).

[6] Greg Rosen (2007, April 10). [Interview with Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson].

[7] Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection, “Iraq Maps,” University of Texas at Austin, available at http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/iraq.html (accessed April 20, 2007).

[8] Tom Englehart, “The Contemporary Barbarism of Air Power: Collateral Damage,” Le Monde Diplomatique (Aug 2006).

[9] Op Cit.

[10] Why We Fight, DVD, Eugene Jarecki, 2005, US: Sony Pictures Classics, 2005.

[11] Englehardt.

[12] Seymour Hersh, “Up in the Air: Where is the Iraq War Headed Next?” The New Yorker (November 28, 2005).

[13] Donnelly.

[14] “ Israel/Lebanon: Deliberate destruction or "collateral damage"? Israeli attacks on civilian infrastructure,” Amnesty International, available at http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/ENGMDE180072006 (accessed April 24, 2007).

[15] Charles Heyman, “Might in the air will not defeat guerillas in this bitter conflict,” Times Online, available at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article697176.ece (accessed April 20, 2007).

[16] “Air Force Budget Boosts Unmanned Aircraft” Military.com, available at http://www.military.com/features/0,15240,87204,00.html (accessed April 20, 2007).

[17] Why We Fight, DVD, Eugene Jarecki, 2005, US: Sony Pictures Classics, 2005.

[18] Interview.