One of my earliest blog posts, done in December 2015 was on “Defeating an Insurgency by Air.” It was in part inspired by the Republican debate at the time and people talking about “carpet bombing” ISIL.
The post is here: https://dupuyinstitute.dreamhosters.com/2015/12/29/defeating-an-insurgency-by-air/
The same article is was posted on the History News Network: http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/161601
An expanded article was posted on the Small War Journal: http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/airpower-just-part-of-the-counterinsurgency-equation
I gather the part of the article that gives people heartburn is: “So, we are left to state that we cannot think of a single insurgency that was defeated by airpower, primarily defeated by airpower, or even seriously undermined by airpower. Perhaps there is a case we are missing. It is probably safe to say that if it has never successfully been done in over a hundred insurgencies over the last hundred years, then it is something not likely to occur now.”
Now, we do go on a hunt for other cases. This led to the follow-up blog posts:
This last post was actually not tagged as an “air power” subject, but I felt it was particularly relevant….and yes, we do have two blog posts with the same title. But this second one has this cool graph: