Opinion: Close Air Support Debate Needs Strategic Context
Aug 25, 2016
Richard Aboulafia | Aviation Week & Space Technology
Critics of counterinsurgency say it represents the triumph of tactics over strategy. Looking at the Air Force’s mooted OA-X and A-X2 procurement programs, and the A-10 retirement debate, one can see exactly the same issues in play.
For close air support (CAS), there is no denying that a dedicated platform such as the A-10, or its proposed replacement, the AX-2, is best. Best in battlefield terms, that is. If a ground force is taking heavy fire from an enemy (one that has no air cover and minimal surface-to-air weaponry), you cannot beat a low- and slow-flying aircraft with a heavy ordnance load and a rapid-fire gun. That’s a tactic.
Credit: Ethan Miller GettyImages
But consider the bigger picture. How often would this situation take place? How many more Iraqs, Afghanistans and Libyas does the U.S. body politic really want? Is “boots on the ground” for counterinsurgency, nation-building and peacekeeping really still a politically popular option? Or does the future of the U.S.’s strategic posture actually involve the use of forces to confront and contain peer and near-peer rivals such as China or Russia? This is strategy.
The U.S.’s military engagement against Middle East guerrillas has gone on for 15 years. If this really is the future, then by all means, the U.S. military may require more low-flying, slow attack planes. At the very least, keeping the A-10 around for another decade or two may be useful if the U.S. intends to remain engaged in this conflict and in other actions that fall somewhat short of traditional all-out warfare.
But A-X2/OA-X supporters need to be clear: By advocating for these aircraft, they also expect more similar conflicts and are less concerned about the U.S. finding itself in a serious confrontation in the South China Sea or Eastern Europe. They believe single-mission platforms for specific tactical uses will not drain resources from equipment with broader strategic utility.
It’s also important to remember more-capable weapons can be used for CAS, but dedicated CAS aircraft have no place outside a permissive air environment. Precision-guided munitions (PGM) are becoming more versatile, smaller and cheaper every year, enabling even B-1s to be used for CAS. But when U.S. politicians advocate sending A-10s to confront Russia’s military in Eastern Europe, presumably they know the A-10s would be destroyed in the first few minutes of an actual full-blown war. In a superpower standoff, low, slow attack planes have no use. It would be the aeronautical equivalent of sending MRAPs into an intense tank battle.
One CAS debate narrative holds that the U.S. Air Force is the problem. That is, in the service’s pursuit of high-altitude fast fighters and bombers, it has neglected direct support of troops on the ground, and really is just using the OA-X/AX-2 discussion to justify its decision to retire the A-10 (that second part may well be the case).
Believers of this story claim the U.S. Army, prohibited by the 1948 Key West Agreement from operating fixed-wing combat aircraft, has been forced to field a large attack helicopter force as an alternative. They also believe this reliance on attack helicopters was a mistake, pointing to the use of propeller aircraft such as the Douglas A-1 Skyraider in the Vietnam War. Of course, propeller planes and their pilots were lost in disproportionately large numbers in the Vietnam War. And ground-based air defenses have grown much more lethal in the decades since.
Yet the U.S. Marines, the Israel Defense Forces and most other first-tier military services face no such obstacles. They can deploy dedicated fixed-wing attack planes. But none uses them. The Marines and the Israelis gave up this mission when they retired the A-4. The Marines are transitioning from the subsonic AV-8B to the fast, multi-role
F-35B. They know slower, lower aircraft are just not survivable in today’s environment.
If the Marines or the Israelis, or any other First World military such as the U.K.’s or France’s were offered dedicated attack aircraft, even A-10s, they would not take them. Given the strategic threats they face, the current CAS workshare split between PGM-firing fast-attack jets and attack helicopters works just fine, and they know that slow conventional aircraft do not last long against a conventional adversary.
Instead, slow, dedicated fixed-wing attack aircraft are operated by economically undeveloped countries that face very low-level threats such as Mali or the Dominican Republic. And unless the Air Force imagines a future like that, it would be wise to forget their OA-X/A-X2 acquisition ideas and get back to buying aircraft that would be useful in a realistic strategic context.
Contributing columnist Richard Aboulafia is vice president of analysis at Teal Group. His views are not necessarily those of Aviation Week.
This column was first published on August 18, 2016.
http://aviationweek.com/defense/opinion-close-air-support-debate-needs-strategic-context