The Great Myth of Airpower

Hey readers,

Look I hate to break it to you like this but, you're being lied to. You've been lied to for a long time and repeatedly. By your governments. I know; absolutely shocking right? But I'm not talking about expenses scandals or tax havens or grand conspiracies involving architectural choices at Denver airport (no really, there's a conspiracy theory about that). No instead i'm talking about the great myth; airpower.

 Regular readers will know that I'm likely not talking about the construction of wind farms, but just in case someone new stumbles upon this little read slice of the information superhighway, I should clarify. I'm talking about airpower in the military sense. The use of manned aircraft and other airborne assets in military operations. Military aviation is a relatively new phenomenon in the history of the world, having only really been cemented as viable around a century ago during that little spat between the European Great Powers we now all know as World War I. Of course this isn't to say that the air had never been used in warfare before, far from it, carrier pigeons have been utilised for almost a thousand years and observation balloons were used as early as the French Revolutionary War. But it wasn't until the early 20th century that engineering had progressed far enough to create aircraft that could fly fast enough and carry enough fuel and equipment to be viable in combat. Of course I'm speaking relatively, WWI era military aircraft were incredibly crude, bombs were often delivered by hand and early examples of armed aircraft used to shoot their own propellers off but regardless, a new dimension of warfare was born, one that would never go away.

From this...

to this in  less than a century

The purpose of this piece isn't to dismiss the usefulness of airpower out of hand, it is an incredibly  useful tool in a commander's toolbox. In fact, in any potential peer-state conflict (fight against another country with similar technology to yourself), air power is essential. Without sufficient air cover and support, ground troops would be at the mercy of the opposing side's own air assets and fire support would be limited to artillery (again another useful/essential tool, much older than airpower, but suffers from limitations of its own - maybe i'll write about it another time) and of course that artillery would also be vulnerable to enemy aircraft. Air parity, i.e. control of the air over your own forces, is the absolute minimum any modern state needs to prosecute a war against a peer effectively.

But herein lies a major problem, peer state conflicts have been increasingly thin on the ground in recent decades. That's not to say they don't happen, they do, but the largest air campaign fought between modern forces since World War II was the Falklands war, 34 years ago. More recent conflicts have been characterised by a more asymmetrical nature with conventional forces engaging in warfare among a population as opposed to on a battlefield with well defined lines, Airpower is undoubtedly still useful in these instances, particularly in a close-in support role as the irregular forces currently faced by the armies of the world rarely have an effective answer to modern aircraft. However it is here that we get to the true topic of this piece: the myth, the lie, the ultimate falsehood that is the recent reliance on airpower in post Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts.

Ultimately the use of air assets in a conflict zone by western powers is a ploy. A trick. It's a way for our governments to seem like they're doing more than they actually are. Something bad happens? Airstrikes, airstrikes, airstrikes. Our foes can't do the same thing to us, they're accurate,* they're relatively inexpensive and ultimately... strategically useless. It has been the dream of military planners the world over since the dawn of military aviation to win wars solely from the air. From the Zeppelin bombings of Britain in WWI, to the saturation bombing of WWII, to the carpet bombing campaigns of Vietnam... none have succeeded in completely winning or even entirely turning the tide of a war. In order to win a war, one side has to be put in such a position that the continuation of hostilities is no longer feasible for them. In order to do that, their very ability to operate must be stripped from them, their supply lines cut, territory taken etc etc. Aircraft alone cannot do that, particularly the latter. In order to stop a force from operating, taking and holding territory is essential as it limits the foe's ability to manoeuvre his forces, thus restricting his ability to effectively mount offensives. But in order to hold territory, you need men on the ground. People sat in trenches and bunkers, stood on street corners, holding what they have; this is notoriously difficult to do when fighting an insurgency but not impossible. Unfortunately this is costly and risky, it would involve considerable amounts of materiel and men and people would undoubtedly die. Western governments by and large no longer have the stomach for this kind of thing after two ponderous, bloody, and seemingly inconclusive wars in the last decade and a half. Thus, airstrikes are an easy fallback solution, a veneer, the appearance of action when in fact very little is being achieved in the long term.

*Accuracy of airstrikes among a civilian population is a tricky thing and targets are only as good as the intelligence gathered...from the ground.

This is not to say that the air campaigns in Syria, Iraq, and Libya have been entirely ineffective. Of course not, allies on the ground in these theatres were, and undoubtedly still are, incredibly grateful for this support. In the case against the fight against IS/Daesh, it has dealt some serious body blows to their oil operations, but such things can be rebuilt. Until those refineries and fuel dumps are captured and held by people - the fighting shall grind on.

Wars cannot be won by air alone.

Thanks for reading,

Wheelchairman2


All images belong to their respective authors and are used under fair use.

Opinions are changeable things.

Hello readers,

Once again I turn to this web based software to inflict my thoughts upon you poor unfortunate souls. Today i'm going to discuss a somewhat uncomfortable topic with you all, but you may be surprised at my conclusions so stick with me. But it might be a long one so go brew yourself a cup of tea or coffee or vodka or something and then pop back. I'll wait.

A UGM-133 Trident II or Trident D5 SLBM test

Alright you comfortable? Good stuff. Today i'm going to be talking about something near but not particularly dear to my heart, nuclear weapons.

Yup those bastard things. Those expensive relics of the cold war (well actually World war II but more on that later) that seem to cause endless pointless debate in parliament for some reason or another. No one can seem to agree on whether or not it's a good idea for us i.e. the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, to maintain in independent nuclear deterrence. My opinions on nukes was originally detailed some time ago in my twin piece regarding Iran's nuclear program several years ago wherein I reluctantly expressed support for their continued existence. But today i'm going to tell you something different. I want the bloody things gone. Not just ours, but everybody's USA, UK, RUS, FRA, PRC, IND, PAK, DPRK and of course let us not forget ISR (yes, we know, we've always known.)

Indeed you read that right, I want nuclear weapons to be consigned to the dustbin of history, thrown out and treated with the same attitude as one might treat the trebuchet or the catapult. A historical curiosity relevant in a specific period but now no longer needed. In order to understand why one must consider the context in which nuclear weapons were first built. They were built as we all know during the second world war. During this little bump in history's road everyone was blowing a lot of stuff up from the air and that took a lot of bombs and a lot of planes to carry those bombs. Because they could only fall from the sky unguided and in order to ensure you hit something worthwhile you had to throw a lot of crap in the target's general direction. So scientists around the world were approached by strategists and were asked "is there any way we can blow as much or more stuff up... with less bombs?" and the scientists were like "funny you should ask...' and 'lo the Manhattan project and its contemporaries came into being. America won that race of course, owing to various factors, not least of which being the extremely effective allied sabotage campaign against German and Japanese efforts to do the same.  Then of course Little Boy and Fat man went boom and everyone went 'woah that shit works!' and of course instead of being utterly terrified at what they'd wrought all of the major powers du jour made it their one goal to get their own super explode-y bomb or two (or several thousand.) Now in its own way, the nuclear standoff that followed for the next forty or so years was oddly good, the world was knackered from the big scrap of 1939-45 and all these shiny new super scary super boomy bombs held everyone in check mostly. Although admittedly it was much more luck than judgement that the world didn't die screaming in a series of nuclear fireballs (case in point Vasili Arkhiopov, cheers pal. You did us all a solid.)

So why you may ask, should we get rid of them now? After all the world is probably at it's most unstable point in several decades, the Middle East has been in a near permanent state of turmoil for the past decade and a half and relations with Russia are at their lowest point since the mid-eighties! You're right of course and that is precisely why they should go.

Nuclear weapons are at best a bargaining chip and at worse a collectors item. A toy never to be taken out the box because once that seal is breached, all of its value is lost. The world is kept in check on this exact principle, deterrence theory relies on non use to work. Once a nuke is fired (and presumably detonated on a target) deterrence is done, it's failed, the thousands of equally deadly weapons held by other nations no longer hold any fear at that point because whomever pressed the button clearly no longer cares.

I've been doing a master's degree in International Security since September of last year and I've picked up a few things along the way. This is one of them, what really drove this opinion home however wasn't anything gleaned from the reading that I've done or discussions that I've had, but instead from a BBC television programme aired a few months ago. An episode of BBC2's This World entitled Inside the War Room: World War Three. Unfortunately it's no longer available on iPlayer but you're all a tech savvy bunch so i'm sure if you want to watch it you can find a way to do so. Long story short the episode had various experts (former government officials and the like) from across the political spectrum of the UK  take part in a scripted exercise that detailed a diplomatic crisis escalate in a former Soviet satellite state turned NATO member. To put none too fine a point on it things do not turn out well. I don't want to spoil the end but i'll tell you this much, it made me feel physically nauseous and I've watched the uncensored version of Threads. 

So why should the UK disarm? Well i'm not suggesting we do it immediately and all at once, there are enormous practicalities to consider. A great deal of our military-industrial infrastructure is given over to the maintenance of our deterrent and it would take more than a night or two to dismantle that. Ideally we should gradually step down the size of our nuclear force, first reduce the number of warheads on each sub, then the number of subs until slowly but surely we reach zero. But why us? Well, despite the news media's attempts to convince us otherwise the UK is still a world power, its up to somebody to set an example. Trident is up for renewal anyway, there's probably not going to be a better window for disarmament for some time. Also, as loath as I am to say this we are quite well covered by the American nuclear 'umbrella' the loss of our subs and warheads would not be too big of a body blow to the NATO strategic position. Also, these things are bloody expensive, in a time of 'austerity' why the hell are we spending so much cash maintaining and probably replacing a weapons system that is essentially useless? That money could be used to much greater effect bolstering our beleaguered and underfunded conventional forces. I know the old maxim goes 'prepare for the next war, not the one you're currently fighting'. But if the next war goes nuclear, we're all dead anyway.

Another argument against disarmament, especially global disarmament, is that it prevents great power conflict. I.E. no major wars have taken place between two great powers since 1945 largely thanks to the nuke. This is partially true, the threat of nuclear annihilation has undoubtedly played a role in keeping the peace, but not necessarily in high command or at the top levels of government, as demonstrated by the example above. There are many others too, when the world has teetered on the nuclear knife edge, it's often been a lower ranking member of the military or government that's stopped everything from being turned into glowing glass. Prior to the release of the movie The Day After the Reagan administration considered a nuclear war to be potentially winnable! This is not to suggest that a made for TV movie about nuclear war highhandedly changed the administrations' minds but it did allegedly leave ol' Ron feeling 'greatly depressed' and doctrine was in fact altered.

Even major scholars in the field contend that nuclear weapons don't necessarily prevent great power conflict, most famously Neorealist John Mearshimer who believes that they merely make it 'less likely'. (As a positivist he would of course largely ignore the impact that individuals making decisions might have on such things of course but that's going into really complex realms of theory.)  Would we see an upswing in major conflicts between large nations if nukes were eliminated as a factor? Almost certainly, but modern conventional weaponry is so effective and so expensive to maintain that any such conflict would likely not last long. As grim a portent as that may be it's still better than the current potential outcome.    

Will I live to see global zero? Probably not, will anyone? Who knows. But one can hope.

Thanks for reading,

Wheelchairman2