In Afghanistan, It’s About Air Power, Too
I dig Arkin’s blog, even if I’m not so keen on Arkin:
As The Post reports today, President Bush is facing pressure to increase the number of troops in Afghanistan. The military is undertaking a strategic review similar to the review that resulted in the “surge” in Iraq, and commanders in Afghanistan are calling for more resources to fight increased violence and Taliban resurgence.
While the public debate is fixated on boots on the ground — how many, how active, rotations and tour lengths — jets in the sky are just as important. Yet as I wrote last week, there is a lack of understanding and appreciation of air power’s role in Afghanistan, even by its top (Army) commander.
The U.S. currently has some 28,000 troops in Afghanistan and NATO also has 28,000. This number is insufficient, and as violence has increased and the Kabul-based government has been challenged along the edges of the country, the pace of activity for those troops has increased. Missing in this ground-war-centric analysis is the role of air power.
According to a new study by Anthony Cordesman at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, close-air support sorties by aircraft from Bagram air base have doubled to 12,775 in 2007 from 6,495 in 2004. The number of sorties where weapons have been dropped has increased 30 times, to 2,926 so far in 2007 from 86 in 2004. August 2007 was the busiest month since 2003 for air strikes where munitions were dropped, and the monthly activity through 2007 exceeded the totals for any month in 2004 or 2005.
(In the second half of 2007, aircraft have been flying about 1,200 sorties monthly in response to requests for support from commanders on the ground. About half of those missions resulted in attacks in August; in the other half, pilots did not drop bombs, either because they did not find a suitable target or because a mission was aborted because of the threat of collateral damage. In a typical month since mid-2006, about 20 percent of sorties flown results in an air strike.)
“We don’t drop bombs or commit ordnance unless we know what it is we’re dropping on or firing on,” Air Force chief of staff Gen. T. Michael “Buzz” Moseley told Inside the Air Force in an interview in November.
As A-10 and F-15E air strikes have increased, U.S. forces have undertaken a variety of innovative efforts to reduce collateral damage and civilian casualties. Three less destructive weapons are now regularly being employed by U.S. forces: a new 250-lb. “small diameter bomb,” the smallest bomb in the U.S. arsenal in the last three decades; a cleverly designed 500-lb. precision bomb; and a concrete-filled bomb — called a 500-lb. “rock” — that does not explode but can destroy structures. Pilots have also learned a variety of techniques for attacks around villages and urban areas, including ways to “fuse” the bombs to detonate inside structures to reduce the radius of blast.
The increase in Afghanistan, according to U.S. Central Command air power specialists, began in June 2006, when Taliban fighters and local warlords began challenging NATO troops in southern and central Afghanistan. Given the distances involved and the often slow movements of enemy forces, air power is particularly effective in mounting distant strikes.
In short, the war in Afghanistan has largely returned to its 2001 origins, when a combination of special operations forces on the ground calling in air power quickly defeated the Taliban armies. This doesn’t mean ground forces are less important; the most effective combination is to have “eyes on the ground” making U.S. air power more effective. Yet despite the strategic review and the call for more troops, nothing dramatic is likely to happen “on the ground” in Afghanistan before the Bush administration leaves office. That is because the drama is not on the ground. To understand the war in Afghanistan, look up in skies.