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Attacking ISIS: History points to a need for ground support to make air strikes effective

Debate continues to rage around Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s commitment to pull out of the bombing campaign against Islamic State in Iraq despite its recent terror attacks in Paris and polling that suggests most Canadians are OK with the mission.

The discussion, though, has focused on the politics of the decision and not whether it makes sense from a military standpoint. And there’s no historical context to help Canadians understand how air power fits into broader war-winning strategy.

Trudeau has reaffirmed his campaign pledge to withdraw the RCAF contribution to the U.S.-led coalition attacking Islamic State (also known as ISIS, ISIL or Daesh) in northern Iraq and Syria. Ottawa plans instead to expand the 69-member contingent from the army’s Special Operations Regiment involved in training local Kurdish forces and also ramp up efforts to aid civilians displaced after ISIS broke out of its Syrian enclave last year.

We don’t yet know the new Liberal government’s final plan or timetable to withdraw. A spokeswoman for the Department of National Defence told Yahoo Canada via email the air force mission, dubbed Operation Impact, continues for the time being. Canadian jets continue to fly regular bombing sorties.

“The Canadian Armed Forces stands ready to implement Government of Canada direction when it comes and will liaise with coalition partners to investigate options, and transition our military operations in the region,” Ashley Lemaire said.

A fresh poll by the Angus Reid Institute taken after the deadly Paris attacks suggests a majority of those surveyed want the air mission to continue or perhaps even increase.

It’s not clear whether the withdrawal will cover only the six CF-18 fighters or include two sophisticated four-engine Aurora surveillance aircraft that gather intelligence and identify ISIS targets for allied bombers and an aerial tanker that refuels coalition aircraft headed to and from their targets.

Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan hinted in an interview with the Globe and Mail this week that the government might be open to keeping the Auroras and the tanker in place when the fighters are sent home.

The voted in favour of the combat mission in October of last year. It’s not clear whether the new Liberal government intends to debate the withdrawal when it recalls Parliament in December.


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Whether or not MPs get to debate the government’s decision, Canadians probably could benefit from a better understanding of what an air campaign means, when one works and when it doesn’t. Some in the military community are also frustrated by a lack of facts in the public discussion.

Air warfare dates back more than a century

The first reported aerial bombing took place in 1911, just eight years after the Wright brothers’ first powered flight. An Italian army officer flying a German-built Taube monoplane tossed several grenades into a Turkish military camp during Italy’s campaign to wrest control of Libya from the Ottoman Empire.

The First World War confirmed the role of air power and revulsion over the unprecedented slaughter in the trenches of the Western Front led theorists to embrace it as a war-winning weapon.

In 1921, Italian military aviation pioneer Gulio Douhet published “The Command of the Air,“ which influenced strategic thinking and public fearfulness well into the Second World War.

Douhet envisioned vast fleets of aircraft cruising high above stalemated land armies. They would attack enemy cities with explosives, incendiaries and even poison gas, quickly ending a war.

The air power prophet’s claim that the bomber would always get through created the kind of doomsday outlook among ordinary people not equaled until the nuclear age. Air power’s acolytes included British Air Marshall Sir Hugh Trenchard and U.S. Army General Billy Mitchell.

Douhet was among the first to promote air power as a strategic, war-winning weapon, a concept that survives to this day despite evidence to the contrary.

“Historically there’s never been a case where an air campaign by itself wins a war,” Randall Wakelam, assistant professor of war studies at Royal Military College in Kingston, Ont., told Yahoo Canada. “There’s always boots on the ground or boots available to be put on the ground.”

A famous Canadian air ace played a small, early part in promoting the value of air power. Billy Barker, who shot down 52 enemy aircraft and was Canada’s most decorated soldier of the First World War, went on a mission to British-controlled Iraq for its Air Ministry in 1925 to report on the effectiveness of the aerial campaign against tribal insurgents.

Barker’s analysis, along with appended reports from local British commanders, outlined the advantages of using aircraft to respond rapidly to uprisings. They can quickly ferry in troops instead of spending days or weeks deploying them overland and even the RAF’s fleet of Great War-era bombers were capable of cowing rebels.

“Air action is the ideal way of dealing with those offenders,” Barker wrote. “It is swift and sure. Not only can the tribes be quickly punished, but their camels and livestock are easily destroyed from the air.”

Air attack intimidated normally courageous Arab fighters, said one post-combat report attached to Barker’s analysis.

“Prisoners state that they do not mind rifle fire and would have advanced against the armoured cars, but that they are terrified of bombs, which they do not understand.”

Theories of air power’s decisive role proved to be weak

That awe, of course, did not last, and neither did Douhet’s claim that massive air bombardment could decide the outcome of a war. Despite their fear, people learned to live with daily air raids.

The German Luftwaffe’s campaign failed to bring Britain to her knees in 1940, The much more massive Allied campaign of round-the-clock bombing did not subdue Nazi Germany, which dispersed its key industries and managed actually to increase production during the final two years of the war.

It took millions of Red Army and Allied troops attacking from the east and west to finally defeat the Third Reich.

“You can scare, degrade and bomb people with air power,” said Wakelam, a specialist in air warfare. “But unless the threat of a column of troops coming over the hill to actually occupy your territory is there, you’ll find ways to deal with the air power.”

During the Vietnam War, the U.S. reportedly dropped more than three times as much tonnage as in all of the Second World War without defeating North Vietnam or Viet Cong guerrillas in the South. However, its Christmas 1972 bombing campaign of Hanoi may have sped up stalled peace talks that allowed for an American withdrawal.

Despite these failures, military thinkers have persisted in finding ways to make strategic bombing decisive. Wakelam points to John Warden, a former USAF pilot who revised it in the post-Vietnam era with what he dubbed the five-ring model.

Warden believed the emerging technologies of precision-guided weapons (smart bombs) and stealthy aircraft would finally provide the striking power needed to decide the outcome of a campaign. He advocated targeting not the tough outer ring of an enemies armed forces but more vulnerable inner elements such as communications systems, economic levers and especially command and control functions, including the leadership.

Aspects of the five-ring approach were tested in the first Gulf War in 1991 when Saddam Hussain’s Iraq was systematically attacked with laser-guided bombs and cruise missiles. It helped paralyze the regime long enough for Gen. Norman Swartzkopf’s massive ground offensive, the famous “left hook,” that finally forced the dictator to capitulate.

“Was Saddam about to give up?” Wakelam said. “We don’t know because all of a sudden there is an invasion. It’s that ground presence that tends to seal the deal.”

Some proponents point to the NATO campaign against Serbia during the 1999 Kosovo crisis as a successful use of strategic air power. Air strikes, including those by CF-18s, against a variety of Serbian military and infrastructure targets forced Slobodan Milosevic to cede control of the province to its ethnic Albanian majority.

“Was it decisive? Yes,” said Wakelam. “Was it the only military factor in play? No, because there was in fact a land force ready to cross the border and occupy Kosovo. In this case, yeah, somebody did blink.”

Kosovo and NATO’s 2011 campaign that helped topple Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi helped cement the idea in some circles that air power alone could produce victories without the risk of putting “boots on the ground.”

Expert says Canada still a needed force in attacks

If viewed through that lens, it may explain the obsession with whether the anti-ISIS air campaign is valuable or not.

The multinational coalition’s effort began in 2014 after ISIS broke out of its enclave and overran much of northern and central Iraq. It has both strategic and tactical goals. The first object was to blunt the jihadi army’s advance and contain the so-called caliphate’s expansion.

That appears to have been accomplished. The effort now involves tactical missions that take out strongpoints to aid local anti-ISIS forces trying to retake territory and attacking ISIS convoys whenever they’re spotted.

Unlike strategic bombing, tactical air warfare has proven effective since the First World War in aiding armies to advance or to blunt an enemy’s offensive.

The idea that the air campaign is not making a difference is foolish, a former senior RCAF general who did not want to be identified told Yahoo Canada. Without it, ISIS would have a free rein, he said. The constant threat of air attack forces ISIS fighters to keep their heads down and change the way they operate.

The general also does not buy one rationale put forward to excuse the planned CF-18 withdrawal; claims that the massive allied air contingent will not miss Canada’s half-dozen aging fighters.

It’s not only the planes, he said, but the quality and versatility of its highly trained pilots, who bring skills few of the other coalition partners’ flyers possess. Not all, for instance, are trained to use precision-guided munitions. Senior Canadian officers also offer more experience at the command level, some of it gained quarterbacking the Libyan campaign.

Canada’s air-to-air refueling tanker is an important resource, he said, but the Auroras’ cutting edge sensors, which are better at identifying and discriminating between targets than some of the other coalition members’ equipment, especially will be missed.

It’s those value-added elements that lift Canada’s contribution beyond just the CF-18s, the general said.

While Canada’s allies might say in public they are fine with the planned withdrawal, the general said he suspects there will be back-channel conversations below the political level asking for an explanation.

The general said he understands the prime minister and defence minister were briefed “relatively recently” on the pros and cons of withdrawing from the air campaign.

The government now is in a position to reconsider what he called an ill-informed campaign promise.