Not all terrorists are suicide bombers. Things would be a mite easier if all terrorists were suicide bombers, but it isn't.

Which is why I called it simplistic

Maybe if you could make all terrorists into suicide bombers just by writing it down in words, maybe it could become simplistic.

Somebody was running with an overgeneralization and I stepped in to correct it.

For someone that just made the specific issue of stopping suicide bombers into "stopping terrorists", you might not want to talk about how you are challenging "overgeneralizations".

Airpower can and does stop terrorists and suicide bombers.

And that came right after the previous sentence, so it is not as if you were clueless as to what was the original issue at stake. Over generalization, indeed.

It does happen

For somebody that likes to believe in purple, you sure like to gloss over all the foot work that had to be done before the air strikes are called in. Or do you think the SEALs going down south in Afghanistan are only looking for a good picnic spot?

Bogus is it? Perhaps I should remind you of the underlying reality that may have been conveniently forgotten here.

If I have an F-16/B-1/Armed drone team sitting on a pass in 24/7 all weather coverage that a terr must cross to teach, supply, drug, and then arm a suicide bomber and have thereby stopped the tango from going thru that pass or, when I blow said tango to smithereens as he tries to transit said pass, I've stopped said homicidal bomber cold, ain't I? -ry

What's bogus is that you have claimed these types of things happen because of air power.

You're missing the point, really. Using airpower, which, again, isn't just a means of delivering ordinance, but also a means of gathering and acting on information in real time, you *can* stop the terrorist cell from transiting to City X and then training a slue of suiciders.

The thesis that using air power allows a chain reaction that consists of acquiring good intel and acting upon that intel, then afterwards recycling the process, is false.

If you had included other elements to your thesis, then it may have been different, but you didn't include other elements in your thesis. Obviously because you had an inbuilt personal bias and wanted to slant the narrative towards the Air Force. That's the only reasonable explanation for why someone big on "purple" would refuse to ever mention the ground force elements when trying to make their point about the AF's coin support efforts.

If you still don't get it, allow me to rephrase.

Neither the article linked to from the Original Post nor your arguments have even hinted at whether such proof even exists, except as uncorrelated statistical inferences, that properly support the contention that the identification and nullification of terrorist forces can be done solely from the air using air power data gathering and reaction abilities. You've tried patching such things up with your recent comment, but that doesn't erase the fact that your previous comments were lacking in such evidenc

That first line is many things, but bogus ain't one of em.

Addendum, even if you retreat and say that AF isn't the "single" contributing factor to such ops, you are still left with the doggy bag thesis that essentially argues that the AF is the "primary causal\contributing" factor to the obtaining of the necessary intel background work that precedes the military's use of air strikes on terrorist forces in advance of terrorist attacks on Coalition assets.

I can think of three such convoys over the last 5 years that have been portrayed as 'massacres' by airpower which followed this template which have been shown in the media to be US bungling.

If you can prove that such enemy convoys were identified, marked as foes, and authorized to be destroyed solely with air assets and information, then go right ahead. Nobody's stopping you.

To say that there is 0 chance of info to act upon from air is false.

Concerning this issue, it is very easy to clarify and negate. Neither John, BillT, nor I, I would argue, would ever pretend that a ground force outnumbered 3 to 1 or 10 to 1 or 30 to 1 could ever hope to achieve victory with minimal casualties had they not had the benefit of air recon, indirect fire support via artillery, or close air support. I, personally, don't say that such forces won a great victory over AL Qaeda just by mentioning the discipline of the Marines, their firepower, or what not. I would be required to also mention the part air power had played, since without air power, it would be extremely hard for an outnumbered force to defeat a far larger force, if not impossible. It is not like I would believe that the enemies were all killed by rifle or support weapon fire, unless I was willing to pretend that bombs were magically conjured from the air to fall on enemy positions by Marine wizards.

And yet... if you look at your previous posts here talking about the Air Force's capabilities, you have never mentioned the part ground forces had to play in order to allow the AF to do their part. You didn't mention it, until people made you mention it recently.

Take that, as you will.

That C-3 is getting you actionable. That PRed is getting you actionable.

Be that as it may, it doesn't have much to do with the Original Post's topic concerning how the surge turned things around in Iraq solely due to some 11x up in munition usage and what not percentage increase in the use of air power post-surge.

The reality is that there are only so many C-3 and Predators around. To ignore the doctrine changes concerning COIN by Petraeus in favor of the Air Force as being the primary causal factor in the surge's success, is a bit more than about actionable intelligence from the air. You got a lot more soldiers than you have predators or airplanes. That's a simple quantitative difference, especially if the quality of intel gathered is so much superior or more refined in human to human contact situations.

If you want to turn an issue about defending the Army's use of airpower into a subject about how the Air Force is being unreasonably criticized, then be my guest, but it has nothing to do with me, since that's not the original topic I disagreed wth.

You may or may not be backing such an argument as was originally made in the link, but so long as you refuse to recognize some specific things explicitly in words here, I can't make a statement of agreement.

Again, I was countering the opinion that air has no means to counter terrs/homiciders.

i wrote that you can't stop suicide bombers with air strikes or air power, and I meant it. In this case "stopping suicide bombers" does not consist solely of killing them or what not.

Stopping them would essentially mean defeating them and preventing any future advantage from a future bombing.

In order to do that, you must protect the neighborhood that the bomber wants to target. You must ally with and train up local guards that will stop the bomber when you have to get some sleep or are going back to base to re-whatever.

And your opinion concerning how air can counter suicide bombers was countered by my view that such actions are simply strategically defensive in nature, and not all that proactive with attacking and striking the enemy and making them react to us. That does not stop suicide bombers from defeating us. It slows them down, yes, but it does not stop them. It does not make a system like the US, where suicide bombers have almost no effect on national security, until the area defenses go unvigilant that is. It wasn't Air Force jets that prevented Flight 93 from crashing into the capitol. It was individual Americans, foot soldiers in the newest war of the 21st century that distributed the intel, received the intel, and used the intel to decide and act.

All of that leads to the conclusion that air power is not the decisive factor in the surge's success. It is, instead, more likely a "decisive result" of the surge's success. So long as you keep arguing against that point, you are also arguing against that contention/conclusion. And so long as you do that, I cannot agree with you.

If you don't want to argue against that point, then it might be wise for you to address your stance on the article's contention that the surge's success was primarily caused by increase in air power and usage of air dropped munitions first, rather than ignoring it in order to pursue your own issues.

That's in part why the argument is overly simplistic.

If you had properly understood what people were actually arguing, then it wouldn't have to be so simplistic, now would it.

Ymar, really, you're focusing over much on killing and body counts.

That's rather ironic when I have just wrote that I consider stopping suicide bombers to not be killing them with air strikes or anything else for that matter.

It is creating conditions that matter, not how many terrs we kill.

If that is the case, then it doesn't particularly matter how many targets you cook with a JDAM left of the Boom, now does it? If that is so, then why even mention such things in the first place, unless it is to boaster the AF's reputation?

I never said it was air alone when i actually did say that air alone cannot.

While you never said it was air alone, you mentioned nothing but air assets. So what you did was produce an indirect and implicit statement using the tool of omission. I cannot assume you were unaware of this, so I could only surmise that you knew what you were doing ahead of time and had good reason, to you, for doing so.

You're drilling way down, Chief, into one scenario and not admitting that another exists.

The battleground locale is the surge, specifically pre and post surge. That "one scenario" is particularly important to explaining the strategic differences between pre and post surge, which is the primary subject of contention here. Or at least, one primary subject of contention.

Another "may" exist, but "may" and the reality of the surge, are two different things. I had specifically directed my comments to the surge and the article's position on the Army's doctrines pre or post surge. For you to respond with some "general AF power thingie usage in Afghanistan or elsewhere" is a little bit too much, don't you think.

You and Unk never said air was useless in COIN, but someone did imply it.

I, or "we" if you prefer, were responding to criticism that the Army had a problem with the proper utilizatin of air power in Iraq. We were also responding to the argument that post-surge results were primarily because of increases in air power usage.

Now, you may have thought our responses were an "implication" that air was useless in COIN, but that was something in your subjective framework going on. It had nothing to do with reality or the context of the situation.

If your "belief" that "someone" implied that air power was useless in COIN caused you to imply and implicitly state that air power is only need for "good things" tm to happen, then that action is solely your responsibility. Not anyone else's.

We're mostly in violent agreement, but you chose to cherry-pick some examples of "Air can do it!" We never said "air couldn't do *anything,*" we said, air is usually not the best primary means of doing it in regards to your scenario choices.  Sometimes air leads, sometimes air follows.  The more people there are in the target area, the more ground eyes-on lead, and "pull" from the air assets.

And for face recognition to work, you have to know the face already.  And have an asset that can resolve sufficiently.   They exist, but they aren't ubiquitious.  Ground eyes on have a better chance in that regard.

And while I mentioned work, I didn't mention details.  This (and many other unposted comments and posts) would be much different if I could blog work. 

Though, I gotta wonder how such a gas chromotography apparatus would work.  With all the air turbulance and stuff(vapors, exhaust) from the helo that'd have to be accounted for somehow.  I wonder what the detection regime for Hoc Nam is?  was it like a paper for a specific molecule or was it more like a gas chromatograph that gave you a signal in the cockpit?   Sorry, chemistry flashback.    Was it in tight to the aircraft or towed?  That would indicate method of action and sate my curiosity quite a bit.  (oh, look, something bright and shiny)

Hope that clears up my comment for Mr. Ry........I didn't figure anybody but BillT would catch it anyway.

Which cuts to the heart of the matter.  When it's the Ho Chi Minh trail, where we've decided, supportably, that *all* traffic on that trail is targetable, then your premise is workable, Ry.  But for a guy who pushes the 3GW/4GW boulder around, you're thinking on this topic thus far is pretty retro.

One of the things I'm working on deals with the issues of ambiguity, which is at the core of this discussion.  Thus far, it's clear that ambiguity is most successfully reduced through HUMINT means, facilitated by TECHINT.  That is more in the realm of the guys on the ground, not the guys in the air.  The guys in the air provide a lot of TECHINT.  Which is targeted by, and provides targeting data to, the HUMINT side of things.  Together they acccomplish much more than either can alone, especially in terms of exploiting the knowledge gained.

 

<B>It isn't on paper either.  It's along the lines of the whole idea of cutting lines of comm.</b>

<B>but also a means of gathering and acting on information in real time</b>

<B>It's stopping him well to 'the left of boom' and reducing the overall threat to *all* forces thereby.  </b>

<B>Better not to have to kill them at target site by not having them to begin with. </b>

I’ve also seen great teamwork between the services in the field, but somewhere between Ramadi and the Puzzle Palace, it seems to always get parochial before the press releases…

The Air Force has good reason to feel proud of itself. They command the largest share among the services of the defense budget, at just under 30%, their capability is unmatched by any other nation, they are perhaps the most progressive of the services in soliciting new warfighting ideas from the civilian sector

Often their plans minimize its use, and their after action reports under report its effectiveness.