An enduring blitzkrieg?

The Daily Telegraph had a commentary recently by Andrew Gilligan which complained that despite claims that the UK would ‘blitz’ targets in Syria, there is no sign of it actually occurring, and thus the UK isn’t a major military player in the campaign. These sort of articles are frustrating because they fundamentally ignore the realities of modern war. While its easy to want to imagine that the moment an operation is approved, the sky should darken with the weight of airpower descending to flatten the opposition, things aren’t really as easy as that in reality.

The perception during the World War Two and the Cold War was that airpower was something that could provide quick responses, wiping out armour and infantry with ease, and smashing enemy command posts with little difficulty. The first Gulf War did little to counter this impression, and if anything highlighted how easy it can be in benign environments with control of the air all but assured and no real air defence threat present to dominate the land environment. In those circumstances, where you have a clearly defined threat and set of targets, it is easy to employ airpower with significant effect.

The problem we face today is that the enemy is one who we cannot compile an ORBAT for in the same way as volumes were done for the Russians or Iraqis. This is primarily an intelligence gathering battle, slowly but surely understanding the war we are fighting, the way our enemy works and trying to understand his pattern of life and activities.

There is no point in expending vast amounts of expensive ordnance wiping out abandoned buildings or empty positions. The media often think war is like a video game where one enemy after another runs at you and needs to be shot or else. In fact modern war is a far more complex and challenging business – its often slow, with little discernible action occurring, interspersed with occasional outbreaks of sheer terror.

The difficulty for any aerial intervention is that it needs to know what to target, when and why. In a warzone where there are flexible front lines, and fighters who resemble civilians, and civilians who resemble fighters, trying to build up this understanding takes time. It also takes time to work out where to strike, which facilities are used, what are actually schools or hospitals and what the pattern of life is. Some may expect UK jets to roar into action and drop bombs as they wish, but in fact weapons release is the exception rather than the rule – why expend ordnance for no reason, or worse on targets that perhaps are not what you think they are?

The air war in Syria will be slow, it needs time to establish a routine and work out what to strike and when. We cannot assume it will be over by Christmas – to do that means working out what victory looks like and what it is we want to deal with when the war is over. Instead this is a slowly burning campaign, a missile here, a bomb there. It relies on our opponents to provide us with credible targets, not bombing indiscriminately in the hope of hitting something useful. In many ways it resembles the No Fly Zones over Iraq in the early 1990s, where for over a decade the UK and US fought a practically undeclared war against Iraqi air defences, often releasing weapons when required; this quickly became a forgotten campaign.

As the campaign progresses targets may become clearer, or they may become more fleeting as the enemy lurks away from the reach of the air. It is telling that even the US armed forces, who make up nearly 80% of the airpower in the region are operating at a relatively low tempo of strikes – this isn’t because of a lack of airpower, but because this is a campaign that is slow and effective. This will probably not be a war of dambusters and sweeping strikes, but a methodical approach which delivers results with minimal collateral damage and maximum effect on our enemies.

There is always a natural desire to want to do as much as possible as quickly as possible – the so-called ‘shock and awe’ approach – witness for instance the sight of Charles De Gaulle, the sole French aircraft carrier deploying to conduct strikes in Syria, in part as a response to the Paris attacks. In the short term, she adds considerable power and capability, but at the cost of  tying up the sole French carrier as part of a wider campaign, and needing to come off station at some point soon for repairs and refit, without a French replacement.

The UK approach, of keeping a numerically small but sustainable and enormously capable force deployed to the Middle East seems eminently sensible. It provides enough mass to deal with most credible threats that are likely to be faced (essentially an insurgent force with limited capability), but can be kept there for the enduring future. To deploy a larger multi-squadron force would be feasible, but would place strain on long term sustainment, and cause personnel disruption that could be difficult downstream – too many long deployments will always test the goodwill of people, who may easily be tempted elsewhere for the benefits of a family life.

We also forget just how capable modern aircraft are – focusing on numbers is but one part of the problem. The modern Typhoon and Tornado combination provide an astounding level of air defence, air to ground and ISTAR capability, and can quickly be retasked – for instance in Libya the Typhoons there were flying air defence and ground attack missions within the same sortie. You don’t need 100 aircraft to have an effect now when the modern missiles can easily hit the precise target they’re aiming at with little risk of missing. Previously you’d have had to drop ‘dumb bombs’ which would miss, or go back so many times that you’d need multiples of aircraft to achieve the same effect as one can do now.

We’re in this for the long term and unlike many of our NATO allies and coalition partners, we have sufficient mass and capability to deploy a sustainable and credible long term presence in the region. So while the initial numbers may seem small to some, don’t forget that this is an enduring commitment and that it will be there for quite some time to come in addition to a wide range of other operations going on around the world at any one time. For many nations, this sort of deployment is the one thing that they can do, instead of other deployments.

So for me at least, I’m not worried about the idea that somehow our contribution is worthless because I don’t think that’s the case at all. We’re pulling our weight here and around the world, and helping in a measured sustainable way.