Air Power, Insurgency and the “War on Terror” - Prof. Joel Hayward's ...

Starting with a Blank Sheet: Principles of War for a New Century
victory was incomplete. For sound political reasons <strong>the</strong> Coalition had not moved north to
take Baghdad. For unsound military reasons <strong>the</strong> bulk of Iraq’s elite forces, <strong>the</strong> Republican
Guard divisions that had been positioned well behind <strong>the</strong> frontline conscripts, escaped
largely unsca<strong>the</strong>d. To a great extent, <strong>the</strong> failure to neutralise <strong>the</strong>se Republican Guards
assured Saddam Hussein a Praetorian Guard for suppressing <strong>the</strong> dissident elements
within Iraq, giving him ano<strong>the</strong>r decade in power, <strong>and</strong> also serving as a nucleus for a
rebuilt military.
Desert Storm was an important precursor of a new type of war; <strong>the</strong> first of <strong>the</strong> new wars
while simultaneously, <strong>and</strong> paradoxically, being <strong>the</strong> last of <strong>the</strong> old wars. A large groundforce
contingent of over 500,000 troops supplied by <strong>the</strong> US, Britain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia,
France <strong>and</strong> o<strong>the</strong>r countries, served as a blocking <strong>and</strong> pinning force – both physically <strong>and</strong>
psychologically – to ensure Saddam’s own ground forces remained firmly anchored in
place along <strong>the</strong> sou<strong>the</strong>rn Kuwait border. Robbed of mobility, <strong>the</strong> Iraqis were easy prey for
<strong>the</strong> around-<strong>the</strong>-clock Coalition air strikes that rendered <strong>the</strong>m “combat ineffective.” When
<strong>the</strong> Iraqis attempted to move, as <strong>the</strong>y did at Khafji in late January 1991, air power simply
killed <strong>the</strong>m quickly. Over a two-day period <strong>the</strong> Iraqi III Corps <strong>and</strong> over 300 armoured
vehicles were destroyed from <strong>the</strong> air. 428 Khafji was <strong>the</strong> one <strong>and</strong> only attempt by Iraq to take
<strong>the</strong> initiative. When <strong>the</strong> Coalition ground offensive finally occurred, it faced a broken army
primed for a massive retreat. As <strong>the</strong> US <strong>Air</strong> Force chief of staff stated bluntly, this was <strong>the</strong>
first time in history that an army had been defeated by air power. 429
There was an important lesson here regarding <strong>the</strong> revolution taking place in war. The
combination of precision weapons, stealth airframe technology, <strong>and</strong> increasingly effective
<strong>and</strong> ubiquitous intelligence sensors <strong>and</strong> disseminators made air power dramatically more
effective than at any time in <strong>the</strong> past. A metric once used by air planners was: “How
many aircraft <strong>and</strong> sorties are necessary to neutralize a given target?” In World War II <strong>the</strong>
answer would generally have been thous<strong>and</strong>s of aircraft <strong>and</strong> sorties. Those numbers
steadily dropped with <strong>the</strong> introduction of laser-guided bombs first used in Vietnam. 430 By
1991 <strong>the</strong> number had dropped even fur<strong>the</strong>r. Indeed, with <strong>the</strong> development of increasingly
sophisticated <strong>and</strong> accurate laser bombs, radar guidance systems, <strong>and</strong> satellite-guided
weapons like <strong>the</strong> JDAM first used in combat in <strong>the</strong> Serbian air war of 1999, air planners
now had a new metric: “How many targets can one aircraft neutralize on a single sortie?” 431
The issue of collateral damage <strong>and</strong> civilian casualties is ano<strong>the</strong>r reason why precisionguided
munitions (PGMs) have become so crucial to <strong>the</strong> way <strong>the</strong> US fights. Modern
western societies now seem to require that war be bloodless not only to ourselves but
to our enemies. We must minimise casualties to both sides in conflict. Limiting NATO
casualties was a major concern to General Wesley Clark during <strong>the</strong> air war against Serbia
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<strong>Air</strong> <strong>Power</strong>, <strong>Insurgency</strong> <strong>and</strong> <strong>the</strong> “War on Terror”