Observation on the Current State of Combined Air and Ground Forces.

I'm not as surprised by the quick use of ground forces. Here's why. After we loose 3000 citizens on our own soil we have a much greater appetite for action and greater tolerance for battlefield casualties. Before that attack in NY the political calculation was Air War only, casualties from ground war were not well accepted by the American voters. Further before Kosovo the old conventional wisdom was you can never win a war with AirPower alone. The air war against Serbia to drive Slobodon out of Kosavo was the first time AirPower alone won the battle on the ground. Serbian ground forces withdrew and only upon the retreat of those ground forces did the US and NATO introduce ground forces. So Kosavo illustrated that with precision weapons there exit cases that AirPower alone can win a war or affect change on the ground.

One account called Operation

Allied Force "one of history’s most impressive air campaigns."

5 Another suggested that if the cease-fire held, the United

States and its allies would have accomplished "what some military

experts had predicted was impossible: a victory achieved with air

power alone." (PDF)

Then the attacks on 9-11 lead to the the action in Afghanistan where we now had a need to take action. We tentatively introduced ground forces from the start now with much less fear of the political backlash of taking casualties on the ground. The stunning thing they discovered it that the combined force method of ww2 along with precision air weapons of Kosovo made it a completely different calculation. I read one account (can't find that page but here is a second) where three special forces helping a force of 200 Afghans came under attack from Talaban forces of larger size and bigger equipment. The Afghans on our side ran while the three special forces stayed now with new confidence that close air support with combined ground and air attack had an entirely new meaning. Watch this they said and convinced one of the Afghans to stay. These three guys could almost on their own defeat or drive back the superior Talaban force with the use of a hand held GPS and an Orbiting B52 they decimated the Talaban forces.

Now what if you have a true combined force the size of the 3rd Infantry Mechanized Division or 1st Marine Expeditionary Force along with orbiting b52s, b2s and maybe a few warthogs for good measure. . When you can call on and place combined are and ground forces the way we see happening today there is not the same need to soften the battle field that their once was. One thing we did learn was be very careful when reading the GPS to clearly know which part of the display gives your current position and which gives the numbers of your targets.