Allies, airpower, and modern warfare: The Afghan model in Afghanistan and Iraq

International Security

Volumn 30, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 161-176

  Biddle, Stephen D ^a  

^a US Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33645731968     PISSN: 01622889     EISSN: 15314804     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/016228805775969555     Document Type: Review

References (56)

1. See, for example, Michael Gordon, "'New' U.S. War: Commandos, Airstrikes, and Allies on the Ground," New York Times, December 29, 2001;
2. Thorn Shanker, "Conduct of War Is Redefined by Success of Special Forces," New York Times, January 21, 2002;
3. John Hendren, "Afghanistan Yields Lessons for Pentagon's Next Targets," Los Angeles Times, January 21, 2002;
4. Dave Moniz, "Afghanistan's Lessons Shaping New Military," USA Today, October 8, 2002;
5. Rowan Scarborough, "Pentagon Uses Afghan War as Model for Iraq," Washington Times, December 4, 2001;
6. Fareed Zakaria, "Face the Facts: Bombing Works," Newsweek, December 3, 2001, p. 53;
7. James Webb, "A New Doctrine for New Wars," Wall Street Journal, November 30, 2001;
8. and Michael Kelly, "The Air-Power Revolution," Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 289, No. 4 (April 2002), pp. 18ff.
9. See, for example, Alan Sipress and Peter Slevin, "Powell Wary of Iraq Move," Washington Post, December 21, 2001;
10. Donald Rumsfeld, "Transforming the Military," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 81, No. 3 (May/June 2002), pp. 20-32, at p. 22;
11. Tony Capaccio, "Afghan Lessons Don't Apply to 'Axis,' Generals Say," Bloomberg.com, February 20, 2002;
12. Kim Burger and Andrew Koch, "Afghanistan: The Key Lessons," Jane's Defence Weekly, January 2, 2002;
13. and Tom Bowman, "Studying Lessons of Battle Success," Baltimore Sun, December 17, 2001.
14. Stephen Biddle, "Afghanistan and the Future of Warfare," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 82, No. 2 (March/April 2003), pp. 31-46;
15. Stephen Biddle, Afghanistan and the Future, of Warfare: Implications for Army and Defense. Policy (Carlisle, Pa.: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, November 2002) (henceforth Biddle, Afghanistan).
16. Richard B. Andres, Craig Wills, and Thomas Griffith Jr., "Winning with Allies: The Strategic Value of the Afghan Model," International Security, Vol. 30, No. 3 (Winter 2005/06), pp. 124-160, at p. 159.
17. Andres, Wills, and Griffith, "Winning with Allies."
18. Biddle, Afghanistan, pp. 6, 49.
19. See, for example, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, testimony before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, 108th Cong., 1st sess., May 14, 2003, p. 3;
20. U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, testimony on Iraq Reconstruction, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 108th Cong., 1st sess., May 22, 2003, pp. 2, 7;
21. U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, testimony on U.S. Military Presence in Iraq: Implications for Global Defense Posture, House Armed Services Committee, 108th Cong., 1st sess., June 18, 2003, pp. 4-6;
22. Rowan Scarborough, "Decisive Force Now Measured by Speed," Washington Times, May 7, 2003;
23. Usha Lee McFarling, "The Eyes and Ears of War," Los Angeles Times, April 24, 2003;
24. and Max Boot, "The New American Way of War," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 82, No. 4 (July/August 2003), pp. 41-58.
25. See, for example, Hans Binnendijk and Stuart Johnson, Transforming for Stabilization and Reconstruction Operations (Washington, D.C.: National Defense University Center for Technology and National Security Policy, 2003);
26. and Andrew Krepinevich, Operation Iraqi Freedom: A First-Blush Assessment (Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2003), p. 28.
27. This is not to say that restructuring for counterinsurgency is necessarily ill advised - this depends on one's views on U.S. grand strategy and the relative importance of counterinsurgency and other contingencies. But Andres, Wills, and Griffith imply that such a restructuring is essentially risk free: today's close combat capability is surplus given the lethality of Afghan model airpower. If I am right, there is no risk-free opportunity to transform.
28. Even the Afghan model in Syria or Iran would strain the U.S. military, as the SOF required are themselves heavily committed in Iraq and Afghanistan. But to divert the needed SOF would be considerably less demanding than to divert the conventional forces required for an orthodox invasion - especially if the target regime could be toppled quickly, as in Afghanistan.
29. This is not to suggest that states such as Syria or Iran are immune from U.S. military action until the Iraqi insurgency ends. Many possibilities remain, from punitive air strikes to modifications in rotation schedules to free U.S. ground forces for use elsewhere. But such actions' costs would be higher, their effects less decisive, and their risks much greater, than if the Afghan model could take down such regimes without spurring a subsequent insurgency, as Andres, Wills, and Griffith imply.
30. By "skill," I mean the ability to reduce exposure to hostile fire via a specific set of techniques I have described elsewhere as the "modern system" of force employment. See Stephen Biddle, Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004). This volume presents a theory relating these specific techniques to combat outcomes as a function of technology and numerical preponderance. For brevity, and given its use in my ear lier analysis of Afghanistan, I use "skilled" here as a summary indicator of the capacity to employ the modern system as presented in Military Power (especially the ability to use terrain for cover and concealment and the ability to coordinate movement with suppressive fire). But the case discussions below specify the particular techniques the combatants used, and the analysis turns on these observed specifics. Periodic reference to the summary assessment of "skill" is needed to present the argument in a compact manner, but my findings thus rest on specific observational evidence, not aggregate subjective judgments.
31. Andres, Wills, and Griffith, "Winning with Allies," p. 145
32. For a more extended discussion of the logic below, see Biddle, Military Power, chap. 3.
33. Andres, Wills, and Griffith also claim that airpower compelled the Taliban to disperse, thereby undermining their defense against ground attack. Yet dispersion as such does not undermine conventional defense. On the contrary, it is essential for exploiting natural cover and reducing exposure to fire, and has been integral to all successful tactical systems since World War I. See Biddle, Military Power, chap. 3. Of course dispersion can be overdone. But cover from air attack need not require unmanageable dispersion. Indeed, the dispersion required to find cover against air attack is not radically greater than that needed for cover against ground attack: al-Qaida's "dispersed" positions in the Shah-i-kot valley in March 2002, for example, proved sufficient both to degrade U.S. air strike effectiveness and to defeat the advance of the United States' Afghan allies on the opening day of Operation Anaconda (see below). The commonplace notion that a ground threat compels concentration, which creates targets for air attack, is thus unsound. Ground threats do enhance airpower's effectiveness, but by compelling movement that airpower can interdict, not by compelling enemies to fight in the open (which would create suicidal exposure to ground fire as well as air attack). Note also that the differential concentration that theater invaders use to create local numerical advantages at a chosen point of attack does not require high troop densities on the ground (which would deny troops cover and create fatal exposure) - it is typically achieved by echeloning multiple waves of attackers that strike defenses sequentially, affording each the maneuver room needed to find covered approach routes.
34. For a more detailed analysis, see Stephen Biddle, David Gray, Stuart Kaufman, and Dennis DeRiggi, Defense at Low Force Levels: The Effect of Force to Space Ratios on Conventional Combat Dynamics, IDA P-2380 (Alexandria, Va.: Institute for Defense Analyses, 1991).
35. In principle, interdiction can also prevent resupply, starving defenders even without ground invasions. Yet humanitarian concerns will likely limit U.S. willingness to slowly starve the civilians who will inevitably be intermingled with urban defenders, as in Iraq. And in practice, interdiction has rarely sufficed to starve defenders without consumption pressure from a competent ground offensive: in Afghanistan, for example, interdiction had little success before ground forces threatened Mazar-e-Sharif. Biddle, Afghanistan, pp. 21-23, 34-35.
36. On the skills of Afghan combatants, see ibid., pp. 13-16, 19-21, 26-43.
37. U.S. Army Military History Institute Operation Enduring Freedom Research Collection (henceforth MHI/OEF), tape 032802a, Maj. D. interview; tape 032702a, Capt. T. et al. interview; tape 032602p, Capt. M. interview; and tape 032802p, Capt. D. interview. (For security reasons, SOF personnel are identified by rank and first initial only; full identification is available in the archived source.)
38. MHI/OEF, tape 032602p, Capt. M. interview; and tape 032802p, Capt. D. interview.
39. MHI/OEF, tape 032602p, Capt. M. interview; tape 032802a, Maj. D. interview; tape 032602a, Capt. H. et al. interview; tape 032602p, Maj. M., Maj. K. interview; AFZS-LF-B, memo, FOB 3/3 SSE support intelligence summary, March 25-29, 2002; tape 041902p, Lt. Col. Briley interview; tape 041902p, Col. Clarke interview; tape 041802a, Col. Smith interview; and tape 100702p, Lt. Col. Townsend interview.
40. MHI/OEF, tape 032602p, Capt. M. interview; and tape 032602p, Maj. M., Maj. K. interview.
41. MHI/OEF, memorandum for the record, Col. J. interview, July 2, 2002. Compare Andres, Wills, and Griffith, "Winning with Allies," p. 140 n. 67, who assert, without evidence, that Konduz was taken without close combat.
42. MHI/OEF, tape 032602a, Capt. H. et al. interview.
43. MHI/OEF, tape 032802a, Maj. D. interview.
44. MHI/OEF, tape 041902p, Lt. Col. Briley interview; tape 042002p, Lt. Col. Gray interview; tape 041802p, Lt. Col. Lundy interview; tape 041802p, Lt. Col. Preysler interview; tape 041902a, Maj. Busko interview; tape 041902a, Capt. Murphy interview; and tape 041902a, Capt. Lecklenburg interview.
45. MHI/OEF, tape 042002p, Lt. Col. Gray interview; and memorandum for the record, Col. J. interview, 2 July 2002.
46. MHI/OEF, tape 032602a, Capt. H. et al. interview; and memorandum for the record, Capt. H. interview, July 2, 2002.
47. U.S. Army Military History Institute Operation Iraqi Freedom Research Collection (henceforth MHI/OIF), tape 062403p1sb, Lt. Col. K interview; tape 062503a1sb, Lt. Col. B interview; memorandum for the record, Lt. Col. R interview, June 25, 2003; memorandum for the record, Lt. Col. C interview, May 12, 2003; tape 062503p1sb, Maj. P interview; and tape 062503p3sb, Col. C interview.
48. MHI/OIF, tape 062503a1sb, Lt. Col. B interview; tape 050403p1io Lt. Col. Sterling interview; memorandum for the record, Lt. Col. Rodgers, Lt. Col. Marcoz. interview, April 22, 2003; and tape 050203p1sb, Col. Perkins et al. interview.
49. MHI/OIF, tape 062503a1sb, Lt. Col. B interview.
50. MHI/OIF, tape 062503p1sb, Maj. P interview; tape 062503a1sb, Lt. Col. B interview; tape 062403p1sb Lt. Col. K interview; and memorandum for the record, Lt. Col. C interview, May 12, 2003.
51. Note that at Tora Bora, al-Qaida fighters sought to flee, not to hold ground (as they tried to do at Anaconda in 2002); most of them apparently succeeded in escaping. Andres, Wills, and Griffith, "Winning with Allies," p. 149, see their flight as evidence that even ill-motivated allies can take ground given Afghan model firepower. It is far from dear, however, that Tora Bora constitutes an assault on a defender who was trying to hold its positions. Either way, as Andres, Wills, and Griffith agree, the U.S. mission of preventing al-Qaida's escape was not accomplished.
52. Andres, Wills, and Griffith present a second case, Debecka Pass, but without claiming any skill asymmetry, rendering it indeterminate for their argument.
53. MHI/OIF, tape 062503a1sb, Lt. Col. B interview.
54. MHI/OIF, tape 062403p1sb, Lt. Col. K interview.
55. MHI/OIF, tape 062503p1sb, Maj. P interview; tape 062403p1sb, Lt. Col. K interview; tape 062503a1sb, Lt. Col. B interview; and memorandum for the record, Lt. Col. C. interview, May 12, 2003.
56. However, their assertion that the United States' conventional invasion caused a major insurgency in Iraq whereas the Afghan model averted such an outcome in Afghanistan is surely facile. The Afghan insurgency continues; its ultimate scope is unknown; and the cases differ in many ways other than just U.S. troop counts. Moreover, many analysts believe the Iraqi insurgency would be less virulent today if more Americans had been committed in 2003, not fewer. Either way, Andres, Wills, and Griffith's analysis falls far short of establishing that the difference between Iraq and Afghanistan in 2005 is attributable to the Afghan model and its absence.