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Analysis: USAF counterinsurgency, Part 3

For critics of the Air Force, one example of those "old ways" has been the service's attitude to the new generation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, or UAVs, remotely piloted aircraft like the Predator. Gates said the service was slow to embrace UAVs, but the Air Force's defenders say that reluctance is gone.
by Shaun Waterman
Washington (UPI) Jun 23, 2008
U.S. Air Force policy states, and experts agree, that two of the most important ways in which the service can contribute to the military's new mission in irregular warfare are through surveillance and partnership -- building the air power of U.S. allies.

"Using a forest fire analogy," Lt. Col. Michael Pietrucha told United Press International, "our allies can be the smoke-jumpers" who can more quickly be mobilized to react to emerging insurgent threats in the regions where they are based.

Pietrucha, a specialist in irregular combat who until recently worked at the Air Force Warfare Center, and stressed he did not speak for the service, added the U.S. Air Force needed to be a "big brother to other, smaller air forces" as a way of "helping other (allied) nations threatened by irregular warfare problems."

In both Iraq and Afghanistan, military officials say, the USAF is working to train and help equip air forces, and is making good progress.

According to Col. Maryellen Jadick, a spokeswoman for the air component of U.S. Central Command which is prosecuting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Iraqi air force's "operational capabilities" currently comprise pilot training, battlefield mobility, surveillance and reconnaissance, and command and control.

Figures from the U.S. military's Combined Air Forces Training Team show that, in April, the Iraqi air force flew a record 383 sorties in one week and that, during the continuing Iraqi-led operations in Basra that began in March this year, the force airlifted 287 tons of cargo, transported 3,449 passengers, evacuated 111 patients and flew 76 surveillance missions for a total of 136 hours on-station, all with what the team called "minimal coalition support."

But the figures also note the force's 60-odd helicopters and fixed-wing planes include no ground attack or air combat craft.

And Jadick acknowledged the Iraqis' ability to use their own air power directly to strike insurgent forces was still some way off, since they "just began their initial development of ... ground attack and counter-terrorism capabilities, which will advance over the next two years."

She gave no dates as to when the Iraqi air force would be able to operate independently, controlling and defending its own airspace. "The ability to provide airspace control and air defense will follow in subsequent years," she told UPI in an e-mailed statement.

Similarly, the Afghan National Army Air Corps includes just four ground attack helicopters and no air combat planes in its roster of 26 aircraft, according to figures from the U.S. Combined Air Power Transition Force in Kabul. The transition force says an "ambitious expansion program" the Afghans have embarked upon will see that number grow to 67 by 2011 -- but the 40-odd new aircraft include just six more helicopter gunships and no combat airplanes.

On the surveillance front, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced earlier this year he had set up a special Pentagon task force to increase the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance -- ISR in military parlance -- capabilities available to U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"My concern is that our services are still not moving aggressively," he said, adding he had "been wrestling for months to get more intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets into the theater."

"Because people were stuck in old ways of doing business, it's been like pulling teeth," he concluded.

For critics of the Air Force, one example of those "old ways" has been the service's attitude to the new generation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, or UAVs, remotely piloted aircraft like the Predator.

Gates said the service was slow to embrace UAVs, but the Air Force's defenders say that reluctance is gone.

"It is unfair to say we have not embraced UAVs," said Pietrucha, noting the Air Force recently announced it had already exceeded its target of having 21 Predator combat air patrols by 2010.

"We're at 25 (combat air patrols) now and growing to over 30 by year's end," said Air Force spokeswoman Maj. Olivia Nelson, adding the service was also maximizing its use of the high-altitude Global Hawk UAV. "We are flying our Global Hawks at maximum capacity, and buying them as fast as they can be built," she said.

Nelson also defended the service's practice of allowing only fully qualified pilots to fly some of its UAVs, which critics have compared unfavorably with the practice of other services, such as the Army, which allow trained operators who are not pilots to fly them.

A PowerPoint presentation she e-mailed to UPI argued the level of responsibility and difficulty in operating medium- or high-altitude UAVs like as the Predator, Reaper and Global Hawk -- especially when armed with missiles and laser-guided bombs and operating alongside manned aircraft -- was little different than that for regular combat aircraft.

"It is backwards thinking to suggest that we provide a less-skilled operator to employ those systems as we place more and more responsibility upon them," says the presentation, adding that Army and other non-pilot operators generally are only allowed to operate in certain restricted areas. "This prohibits the employment of airpower's greatest tenet: flexibility," concludes the presentation.

Nelson also noted smaller Air Force UAVs, without the large weapons payload of the Predator, for instance, often are flown by non-pilot Air Force personnel.

However, Gates has said maximizing the potential of UAVs "may require rethinking long-standing service assumptions and priorities about which missions require certified pilots and which do not."

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Security gains in Iraq are fragile, reversible: Pentagon
Washington (AFP) June 23, 2008
Security continued to improve in Iraq from March to May, with violence at its lowest level in four years, but the gains are "fragile, reversible and uneven," a quarterly Pentagon report said Monday.







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