Making Revolutionary Change: Airpower in COIN Today

Abstract

This article examines why airpower became critical to COIN operations in 2007, a trend continuing today and one with huge implications for the future. Among other things, it will discuss the revolutions in precision and persistence that have so radically enhanced airpower's value in COIN warfare. It will also outline the strengths and weaknesses of the Air Force's new doctrine on irregular warfare which seeks to capture the service's COIN approach. The author argues that while FM 3-24's surface-force-centric approach to COIN can work, recent experience in Iraq demonstrates that leaders of all services want a more joint and interdependent concept that exploits airpower in all its dimensions. Such an approach can reduce the need for the enormous numbers of US ground forces FM 3-24 entails, freeing them to prepare for other kinds of conflicts. Airpower can help, this article contends, to provide options for decisionmakers faced with a COIN challenge that capitalize on systems which are also useful in other kinds of conflicts.