Some Please Drug-Test the Entire USAF

The fact that they have the gall to foist this load of tripe on us after the repeated failures of bombing campaigns in Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq (1990 and 2003), Afganistan, and Vietnam should be dowright embarassing for the boys in blue. Instead, they think this is the right way to operate? Look, y'all are artillery with wings. That's it. You don't shoot unless someone on the ground tells you to shoot, and even then, it's in support of the mission of the guys on the ground. No one ever successfully surrendered to a jet flying overhead.

Since the Cold War’s end, the classic roles of airpower and land power have changed places in major combat against modern mechanized opponents. In this role reversal, ground forces have come to do most of the shaping and fixing of enemy forces, while airpower now does most of the actual killing.

Operation Desert Storm in 1991 showcased, for the first time, this departure from past practice between air- and ground-delivered firepower. During the Battle of Khafji in January of that year, coalition air assets singlehandedly shredded two advancing Iraqi armored columns through precision night standoff attacks.

This role shift repeated itself with even greater effectiveness in 2003 during the three-week major combat phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom that ended Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s rule.

Modern airpower’s achievements in these two high-intensity wars demonstrated that precision air attacks now offer the promise of being the swing factor for victory in an ever-widening variety of theater war scenarios. The primary role of US land power may now be increasingly to secure a win against organized enemy forces rather than to achieve it.

In organizing their response to Hussein’s forceful seizure of Kuwait in 1990, the leaders of US Central Command aimed to destroy as many of Iraq’s armored forces from the air as possible before launching any land invasion to drive out the occupying enemy troops. It remained unclear, however, how effective allied airpower would be under this approach until they actually executed the air campaign.

What do you think? Can you make a legitimate case for air power becoming the dominant arm of decision on the battlefield?

By: Brant