Category Air Warfare

The Dupuy Institute’s work on insurgencies was all based upon post-WWII cases. This was a marketing decision, because it is hard to sell history to some people, and the older the history, the less relevant it appears to them. But, some of the comments to my previous postings caused me to look back at the early British air operations after World War I. I ran across this 1983 article in the Air University Review:

http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1983/jul-aug/dean.html

The article states:

“The first indication that the British Air Force could deal effectively with a colonial disturbance was the successful operation of “Z” unit in British Somaliland in 1920. This was a campaign against Mohammed bin Abdullah Hassan, the Mad Mullah, who had been pillaging the eastern tip of Africa since 1899; and who had been evading punitive operations by regular British army units and the Anglo-Egyptian Sudanese Army for more than 15 years. The inability of ground forces to stop the Mullah and his dervishes from overrunning the country led to a cabinet decision to use air power against the brigand and his large following.”

“A self-contained RAF expedition, code-named Unit Z, was organized and equipped for a six-month-long campaign. The unit had 12 de Havilland 9a aircraft, ten Ford trucks, two Ford ambulances, six trailers, two motorcycles, two Crosley light trucks, 36 officers and 183 men. By New Year’s Day of 1920, Z Force had built a temporary airdrome at Berbera and were assembling their aircraft, which had been delivered by ship. By 19 January all aircraft had been assembled and flight tested. The RAF’s plan was simple: bomb the Mullah’s forts and pursue his bands wherever they could be found, driving them toward the resident ground forces stationed in the area.”

“The first raid, carried out by six aircraft, almost ended the war. A bomb blast nearly killed the Mullah, but he was saved by a fortuitously placed camel. Further raids, resulting in heavy casualties, took place over the next two days and caused the dervishes to retreat. Somaliland Field Forces were positioned to block the retreat while the Royal Air Force switched to a supporting role of maintaining communications between the various ground force detachments, providing air cover, and evacuating the wounded. The aircraft proved eminently successful in dislodging the Mullah and his followers from their forts and driving them toward the ground forces which were able to neutralize the Mullah and his band of men The campaign against the Mullah lasted only three weeks and cost about 77,000 pounds, a considerable saving over the campaign proposed by the Chief of the Imperial General Staff. He had estimated that it would take 12 months and two divisions to do the job plus an additional expenditure running into millions of pounds to build the railways, roads, and garrison bases necessary to maintain the peace.”

So was this a case where a dozen aircraft were able to end an insurgency that thousands of troops had not been able to? This air contingent (called the “Z Force”) was led by Royal Air Force (RAF) “Group Captain” Gordon (equivalent to an O-5 or Colonel). The commander of the campaign was the civilian governor general of Somaliland. The ground element included: the battalion-sized Somaliland Camel Corps (700 rifles), a composite battalion of the 2nd (Nyasaland) Battalion and the 6th (British Somalia) Battalion of the King’s African Rifles (700 rifles), a half battalion of an Indian grenadier battalion (400 rifles), and irregular Somali tribal levee (1,500 rifles), 300 “Illaloes,” and naval landing forces from the Royal Navy. So a brigade size force (at least 3,600) with air support.

Now, the Mohammed bin Abdullah Hassan has been fighting the British, the Italians and the Ethiopians since 1899 when he declared his first “jihad” (or holy war) against the colonial powers. This was already a 20-year old contest. This was the addition of airpower to what had been a very extended and extensive campaign. It was the British who gave him the nick-name the “Mad Mullah.” He is considered to be the national hero of Somalia. He does have a facebook page.

His hey-day had been around 1900-1904 when he had thousands of “Darvish” (or Dervishes) under his command and British sent four major expeditions against his Islamic Dervish state. By 1905, he was forced into a truce, where his followers constructed a theocratic state in the Italian protectorate. In 1908, he again initiated his holy war, and 1913 Hassan was able to bloodily defeat the British 110-man Somali Camel Constabulary at Dul Madoba. But, his territory remained limited to a collection of forts in the Ogaden and his fortified capital which he had occupied since 1907. Over time, his strength had declined from 6,000 fighting men in 1913 to less than a thousand in 1919.

The British began a new campaign in January 1920 supported by air forces operating from Berbera. On 21 January and subsequent days the RAF repeatedly bombed Hassan’s camp and followers, almost killing him. Meanwhile the ground forces advanced against the various Dervish forts, with the air planes conducting aerial bombardment for some of those attacks. The ground forces took the capital Taleh on 9 February. Hassan and some of his followers retreated into the Ogaden desert. Hassan later died of the flu, on 21 December 1920, at the age of 64. This was the end of the revolt.

This was a twenty year effort that only included air power at the last year, and it included significant ground forces in an offensive role (contrary to the Air University Review article). Still the British were able to defeat this Islamic state in a 21-day campaign. It was a clear demonstration of the value of air support, but it was essentially a conventional campaign against an already weakened opponent that had a clear objective in taking his forts and his fortified capital. It is not a good example of defeating an insurgency by air.

It is clear that this was primarily a ground campaign, supported by air. For a detailed description of the military operations see pages 262-284 (it can be converted to a PDF file): http://archive.org/stream/TheMadMullahOfSomaliland/214616_The_Madmullah_Of_Somaliland_1916_1921_djvu.txt

It states on page 278 that: “It is unfortunate that no very definite conclusions can probably be drawn from the results achieved, and that consequently the most extravagant claims in regard to the efficacy of aircraft under such conditions have been preferred.” This is followed by a detailed discussion of the value of air in this campaign. It is an account worth reading, especially when compared to some accounts that seem to over-value the air contribution to this campaign.

 

Well, my post on this subject did stir up some conversation. My statement was that “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.”

This is, of course, not to say that air power has not been very important in fighting insurgencies, it is just too simply point out that air power does not seem to be able to do the job on its own.

Did I overstate my case? Are there a couple cases when this is not true? Perhaps there is a case I am missing. Let’s look at some of the other cases that people have suggested we look at.

1. Chasing the Mad Mullah in 1920
2. The Iraq Revolt 1920
3. Kosovo 1999
4. Italian Operations against the Senussi in Libya
5. Habbaniya campaign and the defeat of Rashid Ali in May 1941

Perhaps some people were confused by the sentence “The airplane was first extensively used as a counterinsurgent tool by the United States in Nicaragua in 1927-1933…” which probably should have been written as “The airplane was first extensively used by the United States as a counterinsurgent tool in Nicaragua in 1927-1933…” I am going to edit the original post accordingly, so there is no confusion.

Anyhow, we will examine these five cases over the next couple of days. They are all pretty interesting. If there are any other examples we should look at, please let me know.

 

Does bombing create insurgents? This is an issue we have never examined. We did examine whether rules of engagements influenced the outcome of insurgencies, and we have a chapter on it in my book (Chapter 9: “Rules of Engagement and Measurements of Brutality,” America’s Modern Wars: Understanding Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam, pages 83-95). What we ended up with was a series of charts, not quite statistically significant, that showed that as rules of engagement became stricter the chance of a counterinsurgent victory (blue win) increased, rising from around 40% for “unrestricted” rules of engagements to around 75% for “strict” rules of engagement. While this was a pattern, we are not sure there is direct cause-and-effect here, although we suspect so. It also showed that the “brutal” approach also generated counterinsurgent victory around 75% of the time. A sample chart from the book is shown below:

But probably more immediately relevant to the discussion is the work we did on “General Level of Brutality” (pages 92-95). In that analysis, we compared the outcome, a counterinsurgent victory (blue win) vice an insurgent victory (red win), to civilians killed per 100,000 population. We examined this for 40 insurgencies from 1948 to the present (at the time it was 2009). What we showed was:

1. Low civilian loss rates (less than 8.00 killed) results in 14% red wins (14 cases)
2. Medium civilian loss rates (8.91 – 56.54) results in 38% red wins (21 cases)
3. High civilian loss rates (115.54 – 624.16) results in 60% red wins (5 cases)

Or conversely:

1. Low civilian loss rates (less than 8.00 killed) results in 79% blue wins (14 cases)
2. Medium civilian loss rates (8.91 – 56.54) results in 43% blue wins (21 cases)
3. High civilian loss rates (115.54 – 624.16) results in 20% blue wins (5 cases)

For the total of 40 cases, 33% result in red wins, 15% in “gray” outcome (ongoing or drawn), and 52% in a blue win. We put the data into a three-by-three matrix and tested it to Fisher’s exact test and obtained a two-sided p-value of 0.1135. For the non-statisticians, what this means is that there is an 89% chance that this relationship is not due to chance. When we remove the “gray” results from the table, then the two-sided p-value is 0.0576. This is even more significant. The data used is in the book if anyone wishes to go back and re-test or re-categorize it.

Our conclusions were:

“Therefore, we tentatively conclude that increased levels of brutality favor the insurgency when the number of civilians killed each year averages more than 9 per 100,000 in the population.”

We then expanded that conclusion:

“The inverse is that it is to the long-term advantage of counterinsurgent forces to limit damage to civilian populations, whether caused by their own or by insurgent actions. This means tightly controlled rules of engagement and probably requires a strictly limited use of artillery and airpower. It also means properly protecting the host population, which would probably require the deployment of significant security forces as part of a total counterinsurgent force.”

When one compares these results to the desire to add more ordnance to the effort to defeat ISIL, and the stated opinion by some that we should also target their families, then one wonders how effective such an air campaign will be. Will it really attrite and reduce an insurgency, or will the insurgency grow at the same or faster rate than they are attrited? This is clearly something that needs to be studied further (and analytically) before we make it a matter of policy. This is assuming that one is comfortable with the moral implications of such a policy.

In the past couple of party nomination debates of 2015, the subject of bombing ISIL has come up several times. It seems that the candidates are determined to outdo each other in tonnage dropped and destruction wrought. I am not aware of any systematic analysis of the effects of airpower on an insurgency (which in itself is a significant observation). My gut reaction is that air power is just part of the equation.

The airplane was first invented in 1903. They were first used in war in 1911 and starting in 1915, the airplane went through an incredible development as a weapon of war. World War I (1914-1918) established the airplane as a weapon in war and World War II (1939-1945) showed just how much death and destruction it could produce.

The airplane was first extensively used as a counterinsurgent tool by the United States in Nicaragua in 1927-1933, where it played a major role. Using de Havilland DH-4 biplanes, they provided reconnaissance against the insurgency led by Augusto Sandino and provided air support for the U.S. Marines. Augusto Sandino actually declared war against the United States in June 1927, an early case of an individual or head of a revolutionary movement declaring war on a country. Sandino served as the inspiration for the Sandinistas of the 1970s and 1980s, a Nicaraguan insurgency movement that is still a major political party in Nicaragua. At the Battle of Ocotal on 16 July 1927, the Sandinistas suffered over 150 people killed and wounded. This fight included five DH-4s armed with machineguns and four 25-pound bombs conducting dive bombing attacks in support of ground troops. As a result of this slaughter from the air and ground, the Sandinistas never did massed attacks again.

Since that time, there have certainly been well over 100 insurgencies that involved air power (we have not put together a master list). I am struggling to try to think of a single insurgency that was defeated by airpower, primarily defeated by airpower, or even seriously undermined by airpower.

Two cases do come to mind. First is Vietnam, which has the distinction of being the perhaps the bloodiest guerilla war ever. It also has the distinction of being the counterinsurgency effort that used the most airpower and dropped the most bombs. Certainly airpower played a major part in the war, with the helicopter almost becoming the symbol for the war (like in the opening scene of the movie Apocalypse Now). Clearly airpower played a big part in halting the 1972 offensive by the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and the Viet Cong (VC). Still, we all know the final results of the Vietnam War. It is certainly not a case of an insurgency being defeated by airpower.

The second case was the initial U.S. intervention in Afghanistan in 2001, where we provided airpower to an insurgency. I would have to think long and hard to find another case of an insurgency having any significant air power. In this case, we started bombing government targets in Afghanistan on 7 October 2001. This process continued for almost four weeks, resulting in the quote from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on 9 October 2001 “We’re not running out of targets, Afghanistan is!” We then switched our air support in early November to providing more direct support for the tens of thousands of allied insurgent forces in the north, with the Afghani Army collapsing quickly. On 14 November, the “Northern Alliance” marched into Kabul and by the middle of December they had effective control of the entire country. Although the Taliban dominated government had folded and the Taliban was on the run, they have since returned to carry on an insurgency in Afghanistan. Again, this is certainly not a case of an insurgency being defeated by airpower, as the airpower actually supported the insurgency. It also shows the limitation of a pure air campaign vice one in support of ground troops.

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.