Air Farce

Like the chairman of the high school Audio Visual club who's pissed off because the the jocks are getting all the press in the school newspaper, the USAF has published their own COIN manual.

And boy do they feel under-appreciated.

From the Danger Room we get these insights from various proponents of "airpower"

In March, Air Force Magazine executive editor John Tirpak spoke for many under the Air Force's aegis when he wrote:

In a counterinsurgency, airpower is mostly useful as a means of hauling around ground forces while keeping an eye on the bad guys. Air strikes are probably too blunt an instrument to be of much value, and ground commanders should think twice before asking for them. If air strikes are used, though, a ground forces commander definitely should control them.

Quaint musings from a dusty, pre-“joint” Army field manual? Nope. Fresh ink from Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, tapped by President Bush to be the new commander of Multinational Force-Iraq...

Petraeus... damn[s] airpower with the faintest of faint praise, cautioning that, aside from the purely supportive functions of battlefield mobility and persistent ISR [intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance], airpower can be too heavy-handed to be of much use...

The views... reflect a limited knowledge of airpower’s true role in the current operation and suspicion that airpower can all too easily prove counterproductive. This is all the more distressing in light of the view that Petraeus will set direction for the ongoing fight in Iraq.


Months earlier, in Armed Forces Journal, Major General Charles Dunlap railed against "boots-on-the-ground zealots" and "neo-Luddites" who "quot[e] counterinsurgency manuals from the horse cavalry era." Instead, Dunlap insisted, we should be pouring money into "air power — our most effective national security component."

Along those lines, the Air Force manual has a message for the ground-pounders: We're just as -- if not more -- important than you grunts...

Oh yeah, sing it brother...let me tell you, the AIF are scared shitless of you guys flying around at the speed of heat at eighty gazillion thousand feet. If we'd just get out of the way the good ole USAF could have this Iraq thing wrapped up in no time.

Yeah, let me tell you the only way the USAF could wrap this thing up in Iraq is by dropping a nuke on the place...and that isn't going to happen.

Both side have a point...but it is hard to take the USAF serious about COIN when they only have a handful of AC-130s, the C-17 production line is closing down and they are spending all the money they have on JSF and F-22s. Actions speak louder than words. SO put up or shut up, you son's of Billy Mitchell.