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

Chapter 12
this emphasis on <strong>the</strong> conventional state on state war. However, Iraq <strong>and</strong> Afghanistan are
not anomalies. The US is currently helping several nations to fight serious insurgencies
with Colombia <strong>and</strong> <strong>the</strong> Philippines being two of <strong>the</strong> larger advisory <strong>and</strong> training missions.
NATO is heavily involved in Afghanistan <strong>and</strong> helping that nation to establish a secure
<strong>and</strong> stable government is a long term operation. These missions are not going away, <strong>and</strong>
that means that we need a much more extensive doctrine to help guide our operations.
In looking at American air power doctrine, <strong>the</strong>re are currently two large gaps in our
strategy for employing air power in counter-insurgency: training allied air forces facing
insurgencies, <strong>and</strong> ensuring that <strong>the</strong>y are provided with adequate equipment. As a first
principle of counter-insurgency, we must remember that we cannot win ano<strong>the</strong>r nation’s
internal war for <strong>the</strong>m. We can provide aid, equipment, training <strong>and</strong> advice. We can by <strong>the</strong>m
time to build up <strong>the</strong>ir own forces <strong>and</strong> infrastructure. Yet, in <strong>the</strong> end, to defeat insurgents
<strong>the</strong> threatened nation has to field its own forces, develop its own strategy, <strong>and</strong> find its
own political solution.
Therefore, st<strong>and</strong>ing up capable indigenous forces ought to be <strong>the</strong> central focus of any
American counter-insurgency effort. Yet <strong>the</strong> cultural preference of <strong>the</strong> US military is to
view <strong>the</strong> US operations as <strong>the</strong> main effort <strong>and</strong> <strong>the</strong> training <strong>and</strong> equipping of foreign forces
as a very secondary mission. In Iraq, <strong>the</strong> US Army <strong>and</strong> Marines did not make building
<strong>the</strong> Iraqi army a priority mission until 2005. Little was done to begin building an Iraqi air
force until 2006. The US military culture has put us years behind where we ought to be in
helping Iraq <strong>and</strong> Afghanistan to establish capable air forces. The issue of time is especially
important for air forces, because it takes much more time to build an air force than it
does an army. This is due to <strong>the</strong> requirement for training a large number of technical
<strong>and</strong> specialist personnel, who require a far longer period of training than army infantry.
Building an appropriate infrastructure for an air force is also a far more complex <strong>and</strong> timeconsuming
process than building <strong>the</strong> physical infrastructure for an army.
Training foreign air forces is a skill that <strong>the</strong> US military has largely forgotten. Yet in
<strong>the</strong> past we had a strong record of building allied air forces. In <strong>the</strong> 1940s <strong>the</strong> US <strong>and</strong>
British stood up a Greek air force that helped defeat <strong>the</strong> insurgency in that country.
In <strong>the</strong> 1950s American personnel trained a Philippine air force that helped defeat <strong>the</strong>
Huk insurgency. In <strong>the</strong> 1960s, a small group of American advisors trained <strong>and</strong> equipped
<strong>the</strong> Laotian <strong>Air</strong> force, which by 1966-1967 was more successful at destroying North
Vietnamese vehicles <strong>and</strong> installations on <strong>the</strong> Ho Chi Minh trail than <strong>the</strong> USAF. 509 We
tend to forget that <strong>the</strong> US programme to train <strong>and</strong> advise <strong>the</strong> South Vietnamese <strong>Air</strong> Force
(VNAF) was one of <strong>the</strong> success stories of <strong>the</strong> Vietnam War. 510 Flying older US aircraft,
VNAF units provided effective air support for <strong>the</strong> US Army in <strong>the</strong> Mekong Delta in <strong>the</strong>
<strong>Air</strong> <strong>Power</strong>, <strong>Insurgency</strong> <strong>and</strong> <strong>the</strong> “War on Terror” 219