Page 16 - Airpower in 20th Century - Doctrines and Employment

16 airpower in 20 Century doCtrines and employment - national experienCes
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after the sudden initial success and the obliteration, without great effort, of Mullah
Omar’s government, things got worse as time went by. Operations, at first strictly
within the framework of Operation Enduring Freedom, followed by NATO interven-
tion and ISAF, developed mainly, not to say almost exclusively, as land operations,
limiting the role of air force to logistic transport, surveillance and close air support,
implemented by means that were not designed for those purposes (the B1-B, for ex-
ample), and often only in a “show the presence” mode, in order to minimize the risk
of harming innocent civilians. Someone inferred that, in the current strategic scenario
characterized mainly by peace keeping/enforcement operations, land forces have as-
sumed a predominant position, with the other components playing merely a support-
ing role. This point of view, however, does not take into consideration the fact that, in
Afghanistan as in other areas, freedom of movement of the land forces is provided by
the Coalition’s absolute air supremacy, obtained and maintained thanks to the avail-
ability of appropriate, in terms of both quality and quantity, air capabilities.
And now, Libya. From the very beginning the Coalition decided to intervene only
with air assets, and that there would be no “boots on the ground”, in the conviction
that it was possible to re-enact the initial phase of the Kosovo operation, in the belief
that the rebels would effortlessly play the same role as the Kosovo-Albanian Militia
and that, based on the developments of the almost concurrent events in Egypt and
Tunisia, the whole operation would only take a short time. It is now clear that this
was a mistaken evaluation, both as regards the peculiarities of the Libyan situation as
compared to its neighboring countries, and the real capabilities of the insurgents. The
latter, far from representing an actual threat for the loyalists, proved to have no op-
erational capabilities. As a consequence the air campaign, never a relentless one, had
to be extended in order to give them time to set up, organize and train their forces
and be effective in their action.
Which conclusions can we draw out of all these events? Very simply, that no po-
litical aim can be reached by military action, regardless of the strategic framework
under consideration, if no coordinated and balanced capabilities are available in all
operational dimensions. Moreover, a vast variety of situations can occur that may
require the prompt and effective presence of units able to cover the full spectrum of
operations: for example, as regards land operations, no one should linger under the
delusion that we could give up our armored and heavy artillery components without
running the unacceptable risk to witness our own lack of power when confronted
with situations that require their employment.

This volume can therefore serve as a useful encouragement to analyze the evolu-
tion of Air Force military thinking, from the very beginning to the current time. Its
variety of registers and visions makes us fully aware of the multiple implications of
this vital theme, which none of us can afford to neglect, especially now, when the
horizon is all but cloudless, in a world where emerging powers do not hide their ambi-
tions, military ones included.