The Bitter Argument and the Irrefutable Truth

The reasons I hate Close Air Support are varied. In all truth, I don’t hate it. I just don’t do it. As Army rotary wing attack aircraft, we do Close Combat Attack. We’ve always done it that way. The only rotary wing attack aircraft that actually do full-on, no-joke, to-the-flipping-mind-numbing-letter rotary wing CAS is the Marine Corps. While they look dashing in their uniforms, have yet to change their infantry squad tactics in 50 years (because they’ve stumbled on something that works), they refuse to budge in their belief that rotary wing CAS is the only method of controlling aerial fires. When you talk to them, it’s like talking to a wall. A well-dressed, sharply-pressed wall. With a high and tight. The Wall nods at you, a slightly vacant and uncaring look in their eyes, as if to say, “whatevs.” Then they go run eight miles with a ruck sack while carrying a telephone pole. Whack jobs.

  

The CAS vs. CCA debate comes at me from all angles, even the places where I least expect to hear argument. Last week, following a truly frustrating debate with the Fires Center of Excrement, I fielded eleven emails in one morning all regarding why the Fires Center thinks we (the pilots) should do CAS training. I think the Air Force was some how involved in all this, but I can't be certain. Sneaky zoomies. By the time I was done with the email run-around, the C-letter of my keyboard was embedded in my desktop. The warrant officers who work with me actually avoided laughing at me for once, and they crept away before my head popped off, spun 360 degrees, and began shooting pea soup. I can neither confirm, nor deny, that the walls of the Penthouse may have started to bleed.

So, by now I’m sure you’re all, “Doctrinatrix, this isn’t funny or gross and has nothing to do with deployment gnomes or your old troop commander’s squirrel-sized bladder.” I know.  Sometimes I’m not witty. Sometimes I’m just a cranky doctrine writer with the C-key lodged in her desk. *le sigh*

The ultimate issue becomes figuring out how to deal with this secret war on our flexibility as a maneuver platform on the battlefield. The average Infantryman thinks that any munitions that are launched from the sky to reign doom down on the doomed heads of the doomed terrorists is CAS. It’s not, but the name isn’t important to them. It’s the concept of what is happening that makes them happy. You could call it whatever you like, and so long as there is bullets and rockets and the occasional AGM-114K2A being launched, they’re happy as clams in mud. Stinky, dirty clams, but whatevs. It’s part of their charm. They’ll clean up nicely when they go home. The most important part is that they WILL go home because we, their aviation support, were there for them with accurate and timely fires. Who cares what it’s called, right?

Except words have meaning.

*facepalm*

So here beginth (and endth) the lesson: you reap what you sew.

I know, you’re all like, “but what does that all mean, Doctrinatrix?” It comes down to examining how you interact with the forces you support, whether staffer or pilot or commander. If the tenants of unified land operations include “synchronization,” and we pilots are part of the Movement and Maneuver Warfighting Function which demands that we pay homage to combined arms maneuver as part of full spectrum operations, is that not complete and total clearance to go waypoint-direct and talk with the guys we support?  This is like the Chief of Staff of the Army’s written way of saying GO FORTH AND DO AIR GROUND INTEGRATION… and make sure you do it well because the lives of the guys on the ground depend upon it! In the age of the Command Post of Right Now (CPORN?) and MiRC chatting and COIN blogging and Powerpoint, we have ceded ground to the enemy by giving up the vital skill of talking simply, plainly with ground guys about what we can do for them. We have forgotten that it's important to know how they fight, and we rarely care about their unit specific TTPs because “we’ll figure that sh*t out when we get on station.” That’s kinda-sorta the wrong answer.

The last time it all worked well? Divisional Cavalry Squadrons. 

It worked because we, the pilots, were obligated to play second fiddle to the ground guys. But is that so wrong? I don’t think it was. I think my squadron commander was on to something. I’d like to think he knew what he was doing with all of us unruly pilots all along, but I’m pretty sure he didn’t realize that he was doing anything special. He was more concerned with getting his tankers, scouts, and mortarmen through another day in Samarra. He excepted that we, his aerial maneuver force, would adapt to his cavalrymen. He was right to expect that from us.

The reason why CCA and CAS will continue to be debated on today’s battlefield is because we don’t take the time to understand our ground forces and really, really tell them what we do for them.

As a very smart man once queried in the Penthouse, “Who supports whom here?” We should constantly be asking ourselves that question every day.

Okay, tomorrow… Funny Army stuff. I promise.

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