Lieutenant Colonel Usaf Craig D Wills

Airpower, Afghanistan, and the Future of Warfare: an Alternative View: a Cadre Paper Lieutenant Colonel Usaf Craig D Wills

Publisher Marketing: It is helpful to view current applications of American airpower in two operational mediums. On the one hand, aircraft and tactics have provided high certainty of air superiority against enemy fighters. On the other hand, American airpower has reached new levels of effectiveness with night-and-day, all-weather, stealth, and precision bombing sustained with surprisingly sensitive surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities for target identification and battle damage assessment. The enforcement of the "no-fly zones" over Iraq, known as Operations Northern and Southern Watch, during the 1990s - as well as the wars in Bosnia, Operation Allied Force in 1999; in Afghanistan, Operation Enduring Freedom in 2001; and in Iraq, Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 - highlighted the singular effectiveness of airpower to predominate in some joint and combined forms of war. Lt. Col. Craig D. Wills examines this rather new application of airpower in the long-running history of direct support of ground combat operations - an activity long declared by thoughtful Airmen as doctrinally unsuitable for airpower. Now it seems that this air support to the ground forces can be considered a core mission function. How times have changes. Wills argues that the twentieth-century argument between air and ground proponents has changed significantly since the Gulf War, and it comes down to the relative importance of the ground or air in the mix. It is more than just using air as a supporting component to the ground forces - if this is true, current force organization and employment is adequate. However, if the air predominates in combat operations, then, as Wills puts it in his first chapter, joint operations doctrine need to be rethought. A changed balance "will affect the military at every level ... force structure organization, weapons, doctrine, and training" (p. 3). Notwithstanding the blunt commentary from ground proponents, Wills offers that airpower has come to dominate air/ground relations. This is demonstrated, he says, by three factors. First, no adversary can mass without great destruction by precision-strike airpower; second, this lethality is the most politically attractive weapon in America's arsenal because it is discriminate; and third, this is doubly attractive because it is so inexpensive, especially for political leadership. In several chapters, the author explains why airpower is so different in the twenty-first century, showing how airpower has changed land combat. The most dramatic illustration is the new combination of air, special forces, and local or indigenous troops that can, in many instances, defeat larger and better-equipped forces. This kind of "force intensification" preserves combat power and American lives. Such a remarkable increase in the capability of airpower changes the dynamics of American warfare and therefore needs to be recognized in doctrine and force structure. Contributor Bio:  Air University Press Walter Gary Sharp Sr. serves as a senior associate deputy general counsel for intelligence at the US Department of Defense, where he advises on legal issues related to intelligence, covert action, intelligence and counterintelligence policy, intelligence oversight, information security, information sharing, security classification policy, information operations, and computer network operations. Prior to his appointment, Dr. Sharp served as an associate deputy general counsel for international affairs at the Department of Defense; the director of legal research for international, comparative, and foreign law at the Law Library of Congress; the director of global and functional affairs within the Bureau of Legislative Affairs at the State Department; and a principal information security engineer at The MITRE Corporation. A veteran with 25 years of service, Dr. Sharp retired as a decorated US Marine Corps lieutenant colonel with prior enlisted service. His military assignments include commanding officer of a field artillery battery, senior prosecutor, deputy legal counsel to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and international law adviser for the commanding general of the Unified Task Force in Somalia during Operation Restore Hope. Dr. Sharp's military decorations include the Defense Superior Service Medal, and his many awards for writing excellence and academic achievement include the Judge Advocate General's School Alumni Association Annual Professional Writing Award and an American Bar Association Award for Professional Merit. Dr. Sharp is the author of numerous articles and three books: UN Peace Operations (1995), CyberSpace and the Use of Force (1999), and Jus Paciarii (1999). He serves as an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center where he currently teaches a counterterrorism course, The Law of 24. He has also taught graduate-level seminars on United Nations peace operations and international peace and security. He lectures internationally in universities and other diverse public forums on wide-ranging topics of international law and national security law, such as international peace and security, conflict management, and peacekeeping operations.