Helicopters in COIN: Quality versus Quantity



MAJ Crispin Burke.
He wants YOU to help rewrite the COIN manual.

Carl Prine penned a missive called A Strategy for the Birds back in November of 2011, and it’s been stuck in my craw ever since. It also got me involved (albeit, inadvertently) with the counterinsurgency crowd, even though I have my doubts about aviation’s positive impacts on COIN, especially in Afghanistan. But, whatevs. Strategy is not my bag. I leave that up to much smarter men than I.

Aviation tactics and techniques? Now those are my bag.

There is no doubt that helicopters are a critical tool for the ground force commander. This is doubly so in a nation where vast stretches of land have little or no infrastructure to aid in the penetration of what would typically be seen as insurmountable terrain. Afghanistan needs helicopter support to advance the efforts of ground tactical commanders in securing both physical and human terrain in the fight against Taliban insurgency.

Unfortunately, it’s not a panacea like some might have you believe.  Some… like most aviation battalion, squadron and brigade commanders. Now I love me some CAB and BN task force commanders, don’t get me wrong. My heart is wedded to the idea that commanders must advance the efforts of their formations, especially when that formation is part of the Movement and Maneuver Warfighting Function.

But when it comes to the assessment of our effects on battlefield, ADP 5-0, The Operations Process, should have us taking a step back and considering how we, in aviation, measure our effects when it comes to nesting our aviation tactics with the national strategy of winning a nearly unwinnable conflict.

I know. I knoooooow. Today, as I write doctrine, I feel impotent and not important. But my goal is to get planning staffs to make their assessments of their success more important… and less impotent.

Flaccid?

Flat?

Yeah. Flat. Sounds less smutty that way. 

So, anyway, back to the aviation doctrine stuff.

The American military loves technology. The way the ground force commanders fetishize (great word, Carl) aviation technology is unparalleled in today’s fight. Unmanned aircraft, attack helicopters, air assaults… we rely on rotary and fixed wing aircraft to do nearly everything that we once relied on pack animals, 5-tons and tanks to do in previous wars. We use Whackhawks to keep guys off roads that are riddled with ambushes and improvised explosive devices, but why? It comes back to the idea of helicopter-as-tactical-panacea when we should be addressing the strategy of breaking the IED network to make the roads safer for travel and transport. When we fly over the terrain, we miss the fights that we should be getting into: those critical counterinsurgent activities that connect the coalition to the weapon system of choice in a COIN-centric fight, the civilian population.

At best Army Aviation is a pusher to addicts, junkies strung out on the use of rotary wing to accomplish the missions that haven’t been enabled by political and national strategy to accomplish. Strategy has created a dependence on the helicopter, and then hamstrung the ways that we can use it. I’m not talking about the rules of engagement, which already embed multiple (and sometimes unnecessary) control steps in the process of engaging enemy targets during troops-in-contact, but use of modularity: the plug-and-play nature of aviation into the brigade combat team fight.

Yeah, it’s an Air Ground Integration b*tch-fest again.

Carl is right about application of air power as a curative to the ills of a gapping strategy, void of good assessment tools that are both qualitative and quantitative in nature. Since modularity cuts us off from the ground forces that we could organically deploy with, we don’t get the chance to develop the shared understanding of capabilities, limitations, and mission as an air and ground team. We can’t reach the point where our shared understanding of using helicopters transcends the simple application of technology in a fight. This leaves aviation leadership wondering what metrics are critical to assessing their battlefield successes. They ultimately go back to the old reliable ones: number of missions flown, people and cargo transported, air assaults completed, hellfire missiles launched, and bad guys killed.

In ADP 5-0 we see that “effective assessment incorporates both quantitative (observation-based) and qualitative (opinion-based) indicators. Human judgment is integral to the assessment.” It also concludes that “a key aspect of any assessment is the degree to which it relies upon human judgment and the degree which it relies upon direct observation and mathematical rigor.” Rigors offsets bias. Human judgment helps us to reach past mathematics of success and see that intangibles factor in the situation, especially in the highly fluid nature of COIN. There is a balance between quantity and quality of results. This is why Vietnam’s focus on the body counts failed its leadership as a good metric for success. It’s why we should avoid defining our success metrics in aviation by the same measure.

So, back to Carl. Whole fleets today can’t make Karzai’s regime more legitimate or puissant. I agree with that. Don’t you? But I want to take another approach at this statement and thought process. Negativity does not educate. 

Army Aviation cannot legitimize governments. Bombers in WW2 could not legitimize the allied efforts against the nationalist socialist party. Linebacker II was never going to succeed in giving the government in South Vietnam the legitimacy it deserved. Aviation cannot legitimize things. We delegitimize efforts through the failure of development of good success metrics and mission assessment tools that nest with the ground force commander’s intent.

Carl was right. Strategy of the ground force mission isn’t for the Birds after all. But the ground force’s tactics are. Let’s recage our instruments, get back to good air ground integration, and prove him wrong.