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Document Published Aerospace Power Journal - Fall 2000
We encourage your comments via letters to the editor or comment cards. All correspondence should be addressed to the Editor, Aerospace Power Journal, 401 Chennault Circle, Maxwell AFB AL 36112--6428. You can also send your comments by Email the Editor We reserve the right to edit the material for overall length.
My retirement in September makes this the last issue in which I will be identified as APJ’s senior editor. To mark the occasion, the editor, Lt Col Eric Ash, has granted me the space to share some final thoughts on my two-and-a-half years with APJ.
I won’t bore you with the usual platitudes: “It’s been a challenging and rewarding experience” (it was); “I was privileged to work with some great people” (I was); and “The editor’s a great boss” (I had the privilege of working for three editors, and all were outstanding officers and exceptional choices to protect and nurture the Air Force’s professional dialogue). Nor will I extol the changes we have made to improve the publication’s content and visibility (even though I am particularly proud of our recent accomplishments).
Instead, I wanted to leave you with a few observations concerning the nature of the journal and its future. For, in spite of the self-congratulatory tone above, I fear that future is by no means assured to be a long or prosperous one. Does that sound alarmist? And, you may ask, how can it be so when I have just said that APJ is currently in good hands with positive trends?
I believe that the success of this professional journal results from a balance—perhaps healthy tension is a better term—between three major stakeholding groups: the editorial staff, senior leadership, and readers and contributors (with the officer corps as the main focus). Tension conveys the right image, as all the interested parties try to pull APJ in their direction. As long as these groups exert more-or-less equal forces in opposing directions, a rough— but hopefully intellectually stimulating—form of equilibrium is maintained. However, if someone pulls too hard or gives up—and if the resulting distortion is large or lasting—then the results can be catastrophic. This is no mere conjecture, as demonstrated by the demise of Air University Review.
What would cause the imbalance? Given competing and conflicting demands for time, it is easy to see how officers may come to believe that supporting or even monitoring the profession’s dialogue is a luxury they cannot afford. More than this, both human nature and military culture foster the view that debate is often inefficient and inconvenient. Certainly for those charged with implementing plans, programs, or policies, some debate will hit too close to home. Finally, a few people, through ignorance or partisanship, even question the reason for having a professional journal—why nurture dissent in the service or make counterarguments or vulnerabilities available to the opposition?
While it is easy to see how apathy or, worse, outright hostility to APJ or its mission can arise, less obvious—but, I believe, just as important—is the notion that people or groups can “care too much” and that this too can be harmful. This is the equivalent to “pulling too hard” in my analogy because the group taking such a superproprietary interest will invariably act to the detriment of the other stakeholders. If, for example, the editor or someone else up the chain of command comes to see it as “his or her journal,” others will lose interest if they feel their needs are not being served. Useful debate will shift elsewhere, and APJ will lose respect and support. (It is important to note here that a belief that certain opinions are being promoted or suppressed can be as much a matter of perception as reality. I am dismayed, but no longer surprised, at accusations that we would refuse to publish people or opinions based on anything other than the quality of their ideas and arguments.) Like Caesar’s wife, APJ strives to be above reproach, but reputation is a fragile thing—easy to damage, slow to mend, and it can only be protected one day at a time.
So what does this mean? As a soon-to-be outsider, let me suggest some “checkpoints” I will look for—and you may wish to as well—in assessing the future course of this journal:
It’s important to remember that each edition is the result of a dynamic process, subject to influences both internal and external to the service as well as an ever-changing cast of principal players. Like golf, it’s not a game of perfect. Readers should take the long view and look for the trends.
Just as I did not want to end my tour with a false note of optimism, so do I not wish to make an exit sounding like Chicken Little—the sky is no more falling than it is nailed in place. A little healthy doubt about this publication’s future may even be a good thing if it leads each of us to pay a little more attention to our professional journal. Right now, I think the jury is still out as to what kind of journal the stakeholders are willing to support. Over the long run, however, I have no doubt that we will get the journal we deserve.
Maj Pete Osika, USAF
Senior Editor, APJ
Maxwell AFB, Alabama
The article “Don’t Go Downtown without Us: The Role of Aerospace Power in Joint Urban Operations” by Lt Gen Norton A. Schwartz and Col Robert B. Stephan (Spring 2000) is based on some very optimistic assumptions. The authors’ conception of future urban operations is that such operations will be similar to past actions, such as those over Belgrade and Baghdad. These actions greatly resemble conventional air warfare against fixed targets in relatively industrial nations, without participation by ground forces.
Other military commentators hold a different view of future urban actions. Their view of future warfare in cities anticipates actions in Third World “nations” with heavy involvement by American ground troops. In this scenario, it will be difficult to distinguish friends from foes from neutrals. Confusion will reign. Enemy forces will not be intimidated by US aircraft flying overhead. Bombing from 10,000 feet, even with precision weapons, will have little or no impact on the outcome of the action. The enemy will use asymmetric means to counter American aerospace power, including concealment among the population, constant movement, and portable ground-to-air weapons. This environment will be lethal to low-flying aircraft, especially helicopters. Tactical insertion of troops by helicopters or V-22 aircraft will be hazardous at best. Such actions will more resemble the American experience in Mogadishu than that in Belgrade.
Schwartz and Stephan have a vision of aerospace power attacking key “adversary nodes” in the urban environment with precision weapons. Unfortunately, mobs such as those encountered in Somalia will have few, if any, such key targets or centers of gravity. What critical targets would aerospace power have attacked in Somalia? The offensive capabilities of aerospace power will be ineffective in many urban situations, short of an all-out leveling of urban areas similar to that performed by the Russians in Chechnya. Such operations by US forces would obviously be politically unacceptable.
It is true that all previous actions in metropolitan areas have not been the same as those experienced in Mogadishu. However, an urban concept of operations that ignores the American experience in Somalia is unrealistic.
Aerospace power will be a part of the joint team in urban operations. The combat impact of such power on many future actions in Third World cities may be minimal.
Robert R. Colot Jr.
Gloucester, New Jersey
In “Don’t Go Downtown without Us,” Lt Gen Norton Schwartz and I champion the idea that aerospace power has many valuable applications in the urban operational environment across the conflict spectrum. Mr. Robert Colot Jr.’s conclusion in his letter to the editor (see above) that our conception of future urban operations takes place exclusively in aerospace-power-intense environments such as we encountered in Operations Desert Storm and Allied Force is completely inaccurate. Although the “Baghdad” and “Belgrade” examples may well repeat themselves in future conflict scenarios, the armed forces of the United States must be prepared to engage in urban operations across the spectrum, from humanitarian relief and peace-support operations to major theater war.
In so doing, we continue to emphasize the fact that aerospace systems and capabilities may offer solutions to many of the unique challenges faced by the joint force commander in the urban operational environment. This is just as true in operations such as Allied Force, in which aerospace power was the predominant instrument of power employed, as it is in other scenarios in which aerospace power may act in support of ground forces engaged in urban combat. Our basic argument, simply restated, is that aerospace power—through precision strike; overhead command and control; overhead intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance; and rapid mobility—may help the joint force achieve its objectives better and more efficiently, while minimizing risk to forces committed in this most challenging of all operating environments.
On a final note, I would like Mr. Colot to know that I had the US experience in Somalia foremost in mind in “Don’t Go Downtown without Us.” I served as operations officer for an Air Force special tactics unit whose combat controllers and pararescuemen were chopped to support Task Force Ranger during the “Bloody Sunday” operation in Mogadishu. From the experiences related by these fine airmen and the ground-force commanders they supported on 3–4 October 1993, I must emphasize that aerospace power—in the form of four light attack-helicopters—truly saved the day after the operation turned sour. Everyone should clearly understand that, had it not been for the continuous and deadly accurate fire support provided by these overhead assets, the entire engaged ground force would have been completely overwhelmed and overrun by Somali militia. This would have amounted to the greatest American military debacle since Custer’s Last Stand. In fact, had additional aerospace power—in the form of the AC-130 gunship’s optical sensors and precision-strike capabilities—been available to the ground-force commander that fateful day, I would argue that American casualties would have been dramatically reduced during the Task Force Ranger search-and-rescue and extraction operation. In response to Mr. Colot’s query, enemy roadblocks, traffic choke points, sniper positions, and militia assembly areas affecting ground-force survival and relief convoy operations represent “critical targets” that could have been decisively engaged by the AC-130 that day.
In summation, the urban “fight” is, first and foremost, a joint fight. Recent operations in and over Somalia, Panama, Liberia, Albania, Bosnia, Iraq, and Serbia all point to this fact. Aerospace power has served the joint force and the nation extremely well in all these examples. To ignore this fact is an invitation to revisit the carnage of Stalingrad, Hue City, and Mogadishu in future urban operations.
Col Robert Stephan, USAF
Fort Lesley J. McNair, Washington, D.C.
Let me start by saying that I am not a rabid “United States Space Force (USSF) Now!” zealot. I’m also not dead set against it. In any case, I don’t think that Ralph Millsap and Dr. D. B. Posey’s article “Organizational Options for the Future Aerospace Force” (Summer 2000) advanced the argument for or against. The authors’ “facts” are opinions—narrow, not very imaginative, and circular!
I chortled at reading that “the US military mission in space has not sufficiently evolved to warrant the establishment of a separate military service for space operations” (48). I’m sure that many Army officers made similar statements about Gen Billy Mitchell’s efforts! One of the points made by those people in favor of a separate Space Force is that it won’t evolve until it is released from today’s “integrated aerospace force” fetters. The authors use the fact that space is an immature war-fighting arena as an argument for not giving it the freedom to mature. How clever!
Also, why do all four of their options assume that the Air Force is exclusively the progenitor of a USSF? Let’s see . . . which service has more than two hundred years of experience in spending long periods isolated in man-made vessels in an inhospitable environment whilst voyaging or patrolling between (uncertain) points of call? Or in operating, provisioning, building, supporting, acquiring, and crewing vessels?
Finally, I question the idea that “ ‘the environmental differences between air and space do not separate the employment of aerospace power within them’ ” (48). Really? My training, education, and experience in the 4th Space Operations Squadron tell me they do. Might not the sea be a more analogous operational medium?
Capt Mark M. Van Voorhis, USAF
Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio
I enjoyed your editorial “Casualty-Aversion Doctrine?” (Summer 2000) because it is a subject that has interested and intrigued me for many years. Not only has technology markedly decreased wartime casualties, but also advances in preventive and curative medicine and dentistry have reduced casualties tremendously.
But I am writing to take issue with one comment that you make: “lest we forget that the business of war is still killing” (page 2). I can’t agree; killing is (as yet) one means to decide the outcome of battles and wars. But the business of war is (or should be) to reach a desired end state (for the United States, that’s frequently the quintessential “better state of peace”). Therein, only the military instrument of national power deals in direct killing. And when the military instrument is used, as Sun Tzu admonishes military commanders, “Generally in war, the best policy is to take a state intact; to ruin it is inferior to this. . . . To capture the enemy’s army is better than to destroy it. . . . For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.”
We should continue to exploit the promise of technology and the lessons of history to organize, train, and equip so we may “subdue the enemy without fighting”; we have that option and must, as an advancing civilization, exploit it in the name of humanity. But we must also continue to develop appropriate, contemporary aerospace doctrine that is not casualty-averse; to do otherwise is to be rendered impotent through doctrinal paralysis.
Lt Col Michael P. Holway, USAF
Maxwell AFB, Alabama
Three hours' plundering is the shortest rule of war. The soldier must have something for all his toil and trouble.
Johann Tilly Sack of Magdeburg, 20 May 1631
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.
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