Airpower in Libya

I was wondering whether my latest column on airpower and Libya amounted to strawman burning, but it turns out not. Michael Auslin, in the WSJ:

Moammar Gadhafi was killed last week by Libyan rebel forces on the ground, but his regime would never have met its end if not for the Western air power that targeted his troops from the skies. As Washington considers slashing $500 billion from the defense budget over the next decade, the lessons of Libya should give pause to anyone whose plans will reduce the U.S. military's ability to control the air. The United States cannot fight in the future with a hollow Air Force.

Allied air power saved the Libyan revolt from being crushed at least once, if not twice, this past summer. Nearly 8,000 allied strike sorties kept Gadhafi's forces on the defensive, destroyed their command-and-control network, and eliminated much of their supply infrastructure. Much of the direct air-combat activity was borne by the British and French but, as then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates noted, without U.S. air-refueling tankers, and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) assets, the NATO missions would have been severely hampered and largely ineffective.

Considering the broad range of U.S. interests and commitments around the globe, the capabilities offered by the U.S. Air Force will remain essential national assets. As Mr. Gates argued shortly before leaving office, in the post-Iraq/Afghanistan future, the U.S. is more likely than not to be unable or unwilling to commit large numbers of ground forces to overseas campaigns.

Note the two-step; in a conflict where the contribution of the USAF was important but far from the central, the chief lesson learned is that the United States needs to invest more heavily in Air Force modernization, implicitly at the expense of the other two services. As I argue in my column, the Libya intervention shouldn't be understood as a victory for the institutional interest of any branch, although it will inevitably be interpreted as such:

Moreover, the actual use of airpower in Libya highlights the fact that “airpower” is not necessarily the same thing as a country’s air force. Tomahawk missiles launched by American and British submarines “broke open the door” to the air campaign over Libya with a barrage on the first day of the war. The French aircraft carrier Charles De Gaulle subsequently proved instrumental for carrying out much of the campaign, launching a significant percentage of French strike sorties. U.S. Marine Corps Harriers undertook strikes from the amphibious assault ship USS Kearsarge. Finally, in order to carry out close air support missions, attack helicopters flew from the decks of the British assault carrier HMS Ocean and the French Tonnerre. Meanwhile, British and French special forces supplied expert advice to Libyan rebel commanders and targeting intelligence to NATO strike planners, allowing bombs to find their mark and facilitating combined arms offensives. Finally, American Predator drones scoured the country searching for targets of military and political importance. The NATO operation in Libya was very much a joint undertaking, both in terms of its multinational character and its organizational diversity.