A senior Air Force official said last week that planning had begun over the summer for the so-called joint doctrine on insurgency -- policy for all three services and the Marine Corps.

"In order to have a voice at that table," Maj. Gen Allen Peck told the Air Force Association conference in Washington, "We had to have doctrine written down �� so we fast-tracked (it)."

The Air Force wants a voice because the way the joint doctrine is written "appears likely to affect service budgets, programs, and more," observed Robert Dudney, editor in chief of the association's magazine.

The new Air Force policy document was published in August. Peck, who runs the Air Force Doctrine Center at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., said it aimed to leverage the "asymmetric advantages" that U.S. airpower produced.

Insurgents have "dedicated and experienced ground forces," but "they don't have our access to air and space," he said.

U.S. air dominance gave its forces strategic advantages that were "almost like cheating," he said.

The doctrine defines irregular warfare as "a violent struggle among state and non-state actors for legitimacy and influence over the relevant populations."

But Peck cautioned this was not necessarily the same as a battle for hearts and minds.

"It doesn't have to be kinder and gentler," he said, citing the Viet Cong, who he charged had "won influence over the population how? Not by going in and immunizing the kids and building schools. �� They'd go in and they'd grab a couple of the tribal elders and hang them."

The doctrine also emphasized that counterinsurgency could not be won with military power alone, said Peck, enumerating the so-called DIME concept -- Diplomacy, Information operations, Military force and Economic power -- of a four-pronged approach to the problem.

Critics in Afghanistan have charged that increasing U.S. reliance on airpower has led to a growing number of civilian casualties -- and increasing alienation of the local population from the international military presence in the country -- undermining the U.S. mission.

Peck acknowledged that the Air Force was now much more active in Afghanistan. "It's become much more kinetic over there," he said. But he added that airpower often got the rap unfairly, when it was essentially acting in a support role to the ground forces.

"Rarely does the ground commander ask for a weapon to be delivered and then we miss. Normally the weapon goes there and then due to poor intelligence or something else" it turns out the target was wrong.

Nonetheless, "We end up reading about 'airstrike kills'" in such situations, Peck said. "The airman takes the blame."

He rejected criticism that the new doctrine took too little account of the potentially negative effects of employing powerful explosives from the air.

"If there's a troop in a contact event �� that's where you gotta do what you gotta do to save (the personnel) on the ground."

But for operations that don't involve immediate danger to U.S. forces, he said, "We have a pretty strict matrix that we have to run through" before the use of certain kinds of weapons is approved. "We're restricting ourselves."

It was "flat not true" that lawyers were in the decision-making process, he said, but they were advising the commanders who were.

"The bottom line is," he said earlier, "I don't think airpower is being used to its full potential capabilities in either Iraq or Afghanistan."

A longtime critic of U.S. strategy, retired Air Force Col. Chester Richards told UPI that airpower was inherently unsuited to counterinsurgency.

"When you blow things up from the air, there's a good chance that you'll kill civilians," he said. "Almost any kinetic application of airpower is bound to be counterproductive" in counterinsurgency conflicts.

"Shooting at people from airplanes (makes) you look like a physical and moral coward," he said, adding that he was not impugning the character of any U.S. personnel, but rather emphasizing the propaganda value of an enemy narrative about U.S. airpower.

The storyline that "They are afraid to fight us face-to-face but not to bomb us from the air and kill our women and children" is "a good recruiting tool for the enemy," he said.

"I don't even know how to respond to that," said Peck, when a reporter put Richards' views to him.

"I take great pride in the fact that we can do these things without putting our forces at risk -- to me that's the goal. We don't want to fight a fair fight."

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