Don't Shoot At The Skinny Helicopters, Either

A dispatch from the US Central Command (the four-star military command that is in charge of US Operations in the Middle East) informs us that hostile forces in Iraq are unfamiliar with the two cliches that make up the title and subtitle of this story -- the title, "Never Return To The Scene Of The Crime," is a hoary old bit of advice from detective stories, and TV shows in the same genre. And "Don't Shoot At The Skinny Helicopters," a bit of legendary North Vietnamese Army advice to newbies, actually was found on an instructional sign in an NVA training camp.

The poor terrorists apparently haven't been watching TV (it's "haram" in Wahhabi Islam, forbidden) or reading any books (apart from the Koran, they're probably haram too). And in warfare, you really need books because you don't always get a chance to live to learn from experience. So they make errors like those recounted by CENTCOM in dispatches about operations Saturday, October 16th.

Scene Of The Crime

"At approximately 1:25 p.m., Coalition forces conducted an air strike against a group of terrorists attempting to emplace an improvised explosive device east of Ramadi.

While conducting a combat air patrol, crewmembers from an F -15 observed 20 men arrive in four vehicles at the crater site of a previously-detonated IED which had killed five US and two Iraqi Soldiers on Oct. 15. The terrorists were in the process of emplacing another IED in the same spot when the F- 15 engaged them with a precision-guided bomb, resulting in the death of terrorists on the ground."

This attack, from an airplane that was far enough away and high enough up that the enemy never knew what hit him, killed most or all of these men. It is illustrative of the change in modern warfare that a plane such as an F-15E Strike Eagle can deliver a weapon with enough precision to kill specific individuals at a specific point on the ground without hazard to innocents in nearby structures.

Considering the high probability that these bomb-planters were the same gang that placed the earlier bomb (which killed seven friendly soldiers), it's quite likely that some specific US Marines will only come home to their families, thanks to the actions of this single air crew.

Don't Shoot At...

"At approximately 7:30 p.m., a UH-1N Huey and AH-1W Cobra helicopter team on patrol north of Ramadi had been observing a group of military age males gathered at a suspected terrorist safe house. After realizing their position had been compromised, the terrorists fled the scene and engaged the Cobra with small arms fire. The Cobra returned fire with 20 mm. munitions, resulting in the death of an estimated 10 terrorists. At approximately 7:50 p.m., a team of F/A-18’s resumed observation at the suspected safe house where they found an additional 35-40 terrorists loading their vehicles with weapons and driving to another location to unload the weapons. The F/A-18 targeted the terrorists with a precision-guided bomb, killing terrorists on the ground. The combined strikes resulted in approximately 50 terrorists killed."

"The strikes took place in the Abu Faraj region, north of Ramadi, where a large number of indirect fire and IED attacks against civilians, Iraqi infrastructure, Iraqi security forces and Coalition forces have originated."

As you can see, this was a double rules violation, because after they shot at the skinny helicopters, a number of bad guys, possibly including survivors of the helicopter fight returned to the scene of the crime that evening. This incident is also notable for the use of and armed/unarmed team of helicopters.

A half an hour after this incident, another element on the ground was attacked at the Government Center in Ramadi. Once again, an F/A-18 came to the rescue, delivering a Maverick missile into the building the enemy were firing from.

What's The Use Of...

People often ask, "what use are modern jet fighters in guerrilla war?" Well, here you have it. While the irregular fighter may blend into the populace from time to time to escape scrutiny, to take action he and his mates must assemble. And the air weapon of 2005 is not the indiscriminate city-busting bombing raid of the 1940s, or even the far less random Forward Air Controller-directed bombing of the 1960s, or the more precise yet laser-guided "precision" of the 1970s and 1980s.

Improvements in weapons guidance, navigation, and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance make the jet fighter-bomber a deadly threat even to a squad-sized element. And they do it with less hazard to innocents on the battlefield than ever before in history. This is no less than a revolution in the art and science of war.

Or, as the CENTCOM release puts it, "All the attacks were timed and executed in a manner to reduce the possibility of collateral damage. There were no reports of Coalition or civilian casualties." So by day's end, some 70 enemy combatants were slain, mostly by the fast jets that "experts" have gone on TV to say are no good in this type of fighting.

The beastly nature of war is such, that mothers will inevitably mourn their slain sons. Once the war is joined, what Air Power can do is this: lift the mantle of mourning from the shoulders of our nation's mothers, and lay it on the enemy's. The troops alive today who would have been the victims of that second IED would probably say that's a reasonable trade.

FMI: www.centcom.mil