Special Operations, Intelligence, and Airpower: A Lethal Triumvirate
While the long list of recent U.S. military operations involving airpower was impressive, the real insight in a widely read article on the virtues of airpower by Colonels Pietrucha and Renken did not land until their conclusion. In their last paragraph, they state:
In the irregular wars America has actually fought, and remains likely to fight, a combined effort of airpower, special operations forces, and the intelligence community is simply a better instrument for American policymakers than conventional landpower.
They focused on why airpower offers the best options in warfare, but for irregular warfare operations cited the need for special operations forces (SOF) and intelligence. Could such a triumvirate actually bring a conflict to a victory without a significant conventional landpower component? There have been examples of successful irregular warfare campaigns waged with forces like those they propose.
The role of the British Special Air Service (SAS) in Kenya against the Mau Mau from 1952-1960 is known, but the Royal Air Force (RAF) also played an important part, as did intelligence. The RAF bombed forests where insurgent leaders hid and where civilians were banned from going. This avoided civilian casualties and eliminated several leaders and many fighters. Captured leaders described losses of followers to airstrikes as lowering morale to the point survivors gave up. These airpower operations were based predominately on information gathered by patrols or intelligence from prisoners. With this triumvirate of force, the British successfully quelled the insurgency.
From 1962 to 1976, the British assisted Oman in Dhofar. After rebels had large gains, the new Sultan brought in the SAS to conduct patrols and train irregulars. However, airpower, in the form of close air support by aircraft and resupply and medevac by helicopters, was key to the success of ground operations. Again, without a significant deployment of landpower, airpower combined with SOF and intelligence proved successful.
Airpower today includes unmanned aircraft, whether for strike or intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) missions. The degrading of core al-Qaeda has been achieved chiefly by U.S. airpower supported by intelligence and SOF such as the now famous raid into Pakistan in 2011 that killed Osama bin Laden.
The same triumvirate worked against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in Yemen without U.S. landpower. Airpower eliminated AQAP leader Anwar al-Awlaki in 2011 and a successor leader, Nasir al-Wuhayshi in 2015. Concurrently, SOF trained and equipped Yemeni forces and while raids by SOF in 2014 were unsuccessful in saving Western hostages, they were able to conduct operations deep in AQAP territory.
U.S. airpower combined with SOF and intelligence has improved the situation significantly in Somalia. Key events include the killing in 2008 of Al Qaeda-affiliated insurgent commander Aden Hashi Farah Ayro. In 2013, U.S. SOF raided a compound near Baraawe, and while they missed their target, it disrupted Al-Shabaab operations and forced them to guard against future such raids. In September 2014 Al-Shabaab leader Ahmed Abdi Godane was killed in a drone strike and al-Shabaab’s intelligence and security wing chief, Adan Garaar, was killed by another drone strike in March 2015. These efforts have allowed Somalia and African Union Mission in Somalia to secure Mogadishu and further liberate the countryside.
The authors stated that airpower alone does not win wars, but in irregular warfare campaigns, when combined with SOF and intelligence, airpower has repeatedly succeeded. Given the successful record laid out above, I agree with the authors that airpower should be well resourced so when these sorts of conflicts occur, policymakers will have the option to again employ this strategy as an alternative course of action to large deployments of conventional landpower.
Brent Bahl is a Department of State Foreign Service Officer currently studying at the U.S. Army War College. Most recently served in U.S. Embassy Sana, Yemen. Previously served in New York, Kabul, Singapore, Addis Ababa, Tbilisi, Seoul and Berlin. Before entering the Foreign Service Bahl was an infantry Captain, graduated from USMA in 1985. The views expressed are his alone and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of State, USAWC or U.S. government
Image: U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Stephen Collier
Tom 
Bruce 
Will Wallace 
I know virtually nothing about the Mau Mau Rebellion, but as an expert with one publication on the Dhofar War to my name and another in progress, I can say with some authority that the author’s description of that campaign is simply incorrect. Intelligence (mostly human intelligence, with some additional signals intelligence and airborne observation), air power (primarily close air support by BAC Strikemaster and Hawker Hunter aircraft; and air mobility support from Short Skyvans and Bell 214s), and SOF (the Special Air Service, employed primarily in traditional unconventional warfare operations) certainly played prominent roles in the campaign. However, the campaign also relied upon tens of thousands of troops packed into an area roughly the size of West Virginia and populated by, at most, about fifty thousand people. While it is true that the British MoD only deployed a relatively small contingent of regular officers and non-commissioned officers at any given time, those personnel were acting as platoon, company, and battalion commanders and regimental sergeants major in charge of formations of non-Dhofari Omani troops, Baluchi mercenaries, and additional personnel recruited from other Arab and South Asian countries. These troops were later supplemented by at least a brigade of troops from Imperial Iran, as well as rotational contingents of Jordanians in support roles. The author also omits mention of important role played by the construction, maintenance, and manning of multiple cordons sanitaires, notably the Hornbeam, Leopard, Hammer, Damavand, and Simba lines, which consisted of lines of what we would now call FOBs or COPs manned by platoon- and company-sized elements. These cordons sanitaires typically consisted of barbed wire strung across the watershed/high ground and supplemented with land mines, to disrupt “adoo” (Arabic for “enemy”) maneuver and logistics. The Dhofar War is a case study in counterinsurgency done right, and certainly not an example of this lean trifecta of SOF, air power, and intelligence that the author and others seem to espouse.
I also question the author’s use of Yemen and Somalia as additional examples. President Obama used both of these as examples of success in the type of operational model for which the author advocates. At present, Yemen is a failed state whose president has only recently returned to the country, and not to its capital, after six months in exile; after years of American SOF/air/intelligence operations, the Saudis and their GCC and Egyptian allies have been engaged in a simultaneous SOF/air/intelligence campaign, to little strategic effect. Somalia may be in a slightly more stable position, but only by way of regular deployments of African Union peacekeepers, and at the cost of occasional terrorist attacks by Somalis into neighboring Kenya (which provides many of those aforementioned peacekeepers). The best example to support the author’s advocacy is probably Afghanistan in late 2001, and that SOF/air/intelligence operation failed to secure long-term strategic goals, either.
Agreed. The best that can be said for the thesis that SOF, Int and air power wins small wars is that this approach might provide essential missing capabilities to an indigenous force, such that it gains a winning edge; for the American observer who is parochial enough to ignore allies, this might appear to be all that is required.
I should add that this might suffice in certain limited counter-terrorist or counter-bandit operations (think the LRA) when there is no requirement for a population-centric approach. These scenarios are certainly not an appropriate basis for future force modelling.
Same old snake oil air power advocates have been peddling for a century. They remind me of old communists claiming Lenin’s perfect system failed because Stalin perverted it. The truth is that air power theory, like communism, is based on theories that don’t work in the real world. Both were, and are, nothing but propaganda.