By FLTLT Byron Reynolds
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THERE
is a standing joke about lessons learnt from any exercise or operation:
the first lesson learnt should be “read the lessons learnt
from the last time we did this!”
How often have you been involved in an exercise or operation where
problems have arisen that should have been solved before?
The problem with lessons learnt is that they rarely live up to
their name – sure, there are plenty of lessons, but have
we learnt them? Have we improved the way we do business from our
experience of the past?
It seems that for the most part we have not learnt many of these
lessons and we are not the only ones.
The US has talked a lot about Iraqi Freedom having been a “new
way of war”, yet many of the fundamental principles put forward
as representing this dramatic shift in the conduct of operations
are not new at all– they can be found in ancient Chinese
philosophy on the subject.
Of course, Sun Tzu didn’t have air power, modern high-speed
communications, aircraft carriers, cruise missiles or Abrams tanks.
But the concept of using good intelligence and flexible forces
to strike directly at the enemy’s pillars of power –
well, that could have come straight from The Art of War, penned
almost 2500 years ago.
Many of the initial “lessons” offered by US political
and military officials do not represent anything concrete about
the way the war was conducted, rather they are purely publicity
for the transformation the military is undergoing. And yet there
are plenty of examples of ways this war differed from any other
previously fought.
Army re-established itself as a credible option for use in major
theatre war where recent history had suggested that the more politically
palatable air campaign would become the standard, leaving conventional
ground forces to run police actions and peacekeeping in failed
states. Indeed, army operations began before the air campaign
had started in earnest.
Another dramatic departure from previous coalition conflicts was
the fielding of fully evolved UAVs and UCAVs.
While these first appeared in Operation Enduring Freedom, over
the skies of Afghanistan, and it was a CIA Predator that struck
a car carrying terrorist operatives in Yemen last year, they were
rushed into service largely untested.
In Iraq, the Predator formed an integral part of the campaign
planning from the start.
Unprecedented freedom of action over the battlespace was another
hallmark of the operation.
The ability to strike targets of opportunity existed because the
coalition was able to fly over the battlespace 24 hours a day.
This was thanks to the overwhelming force of coalition air power,
and the underwhelming ability of Iraqi forces to counter it.
Despite the might of the USAF, we are unlikely to see such an
imbalance of air supremacy again until the F/A-22 enters service
later this decade.
The Aerospace Centre is looking at “lessons learnt”
from Operations Bastille, Falconer and Catalyst and these are
just some of the areas that we will be examining.
Other areas include:
Planning;
Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR);
Command, Control and Communications (C3); Information Operations
(IO);
Special operations; air lift and Air-to-Air Refuelling
(AAR);
Logistics and combat support; legal;
Combat Search and Rescue (CSAR); and the role of air power
in post-conflict reconstruction.
Findings
are expected early next year and should stimulate debate on the
use of air power in the modern context and how these experiences
should shape the way we operate in the future.
As air power practitioners, I encourage you to take part in this
project. If you have any questions or comments, or if you feel
you are able to provide insight, call me on (02) 6287 6259 or
e-mail me at byron.reynolds@defence.gov.au
FLTLT Byron Reynolds is a Special Projects
Officer at the Aerospace Centre.
