REVIEW - Royal Air Force Centre for Air Power Studies

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76 USAF personnel oversee electronic warfare mission data flight testing Letter from America By Gp Capt Carl Scott
We depend on our allies in the United States to deliver the influence we, as a Service, as a Nation, currently achieve on the global stage. Their arguments are, largely, our arguments; their perceptions, perhaps too frequently, foreshadow our own. It is my hope in this series of articles, to offer an insight, personal and flawed as it may be, into the debates which are shaping thinking in the United States. An occasional letter from America. In this first note, writeen in the summer of 2008, two key areas have dominated thinking in the United States: The contribution of the Air Force to current operations, and the balance between the capability required to meet that challenge and that of future wars, the second, related issue, was the implication of Russia moving forces into Georgia. A reminder that states will still play on the global stage, seizing advantage of perceived weakness or distraction. Air power & counterinsurgency (COIN) ‘…any major weapons program, in order to remain viable, will have to show some utility and relevance to the kind of irregular campaigns that, as I mentioned, are most likely to engage America’s military in the coming decades … the perennial procurement cycle – going back many decades – of adding layer upon layer of cost and complexity onto fewer and fewer platforms that take longer and longer to build must come to an end.’ Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, May 13, 2008 (Remarks to the Heritage Foundation, Colorado Springs) ‘…Our troops are taking a hammering. The current operational environment, counterinsurgency, irregular warfare against nonstate actors, ‘war amongst the people’, is likely to prevail for the next twenty years. This is the infantry war. We should change the basis against which we resource and train, from large-scale interstate conflict to peace-enforcement, with a consequent change in balance of resource between the land, air and maritime environments. We need high calibre, well motivated and led soldiers, who can serve as social workers, medics and policemen, building infrastructure and intelligence networks, training the host nation, and we need a great many more of them. Our troops are taking casualties, too many casualties. They need protected mobility. They need counter IED capability, as an absolute priority. Resources need to be directed to meet their needs, not legacy cold war projects with no relevance in the current operating environment. We need to change with the challenge of the times. It is our moral responsibility in Defence to deliver a responsive, adaptable capability, or more soldiers will be lost, unnecessarily…’ How very true. But if you want the troops to take a greater hammering, if you want to lose more bodies: withdraw airpower. Take the resource out of space and cyberspace. Counter-intuitive as it may seem at first glance to the armchair warriors, it is space, cyber space, and air that is delivering success, that is allowing a small number of highly trained personnel to have a disproportionate effect on the battlefield, that is preventing the mass of deployed forces from becoming targets, hostages in their own sprawling encampments. It is these domains of warfare that deliver situational awareness, power projection, reliable communication nets, secure mobility, logistic resupply, and timely, accurate targeting. The persistence, 77
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Royal Air Force AIR POWER REVIEW Vo
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The Royal Air Force Air Power Revie
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Royal Air Force AIR POWER REVIEW Vo
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As a consequence, governments and t
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Introduction The Twentieth Century
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China may be developing as many as
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capability. 92 However this assessm
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Page 44 and 45: 34 A Royal Norweign Air Force F-16
Page 46 and 47: 36 The term Air Power Leadership in
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Page 52 and 53: 42 One may ask how such leadership
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