A View of The Air War In Afghanistan

U.S. Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcons conduct operations over eastern Afghanistan, Nov. 26, 2009. The aircraft crews are assigned to the 79th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron on Bagram Airfield. U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Michael B. Keller

Colonel: U.S. Failed to Get Best Planes, Best Bombs, and Best Plans into Afghan Fight -- The Danger Room

How did the air war in Afghanistan get stuck in the sky? It’s not just the often-unproductive rules and policies for allocating air power (although that certainly plays a role). Nor is it simply the Taliban’s ability to spin every off-kilter bomb into a propaganda win (although that’s important, too). According to Colonel Gary Crowder, who spent from 2006 to 2008 helping direct that air war from its headquarters, the U.S. military has had all sorts of problems getting the air component of the Afghanistan conflict right. Not only was the U.S. Air Force slow to get new, safer weapons into the fight. Not only did American troops lag in their training and nurturing of a home-grown Afghan air force. But strategically, the current American model of counterinsurgency may be ”flawed” — focusing “far too much on U.S. forces doing the fighting.” Now, Crowder argues, the American military is “in the worst of all possible situations (just as we were in Iraq in 2006 and Vietnam in 1965): we ousted the government; failed in the occupation to impose capacity and sufficient power and authority in local government; and allowed an insurgency to develop.”

Read more ....

My Comment: After 8 years .... they are having this conversation now?!?!?!?

How the War In Iraq And Afghanistan Is Fought -- A Look Inside The Air Force's Control Center For Iraq And Afghanistan

From U.S. News And World Report:

Far from the physical battlefields, analysts and targeters hunt the enemy and initiate airstrikes

COMBINED AIR AND SPACE OPERATIONS CENTER, MIDDLE EAST—As the grainy intelligence video unfolds, one of Iraq's many jauntily decorated trucks rolls to a stop carrying passengers who are, according to U.S. military officials, insurgents from outside of Baghdad. An unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV, has detected infrared signals—traces of heat—on the antiaircraft artillery gun mounted on the flatbed, which suggests that it has been recently fired.

Read more ....

My Comment: Predators, satellites, GPS, laser guided missiles, etc. .... the future battlefield will be done by people who cannot be shot at, wounded, or kill. For Islamic militants in Iraq or Afghanistan, I am sure that the thought that is going through their minds right now is ..... how can you fight an enemy like that.