Air Power, Beyond 'Shock and Awe'

LIANE HANSEN, host:

With the war in Iraq entering its fourth year, the U.S.-led forces there are in the midst of a large offensive against suspected guerrilla targets. Some 1,500 Iraqi and coalition troops are participating. And with more than 50 aircraft involved, U.S. military officials are describing Operation Swarmer in Northern Iraq as the biggest air assault since the invasion in 2003.

U.S. officials also say the operation marks a change in the fight against insurgents and shows that Iraq's army is now more effective. Any reduction of U.S. troops in Iraq depends on the capabilities of the Iraqi army. However, even if American ground forces are reduced, the U.S. Air Force is still expected to dominate the Iraqi skies for years to come.

So far the Air Force has been mostly involved in surveillance, as well as supporting and supplying the troops. But now defense officials say this branch of the American military will be taking on new tasks.

NPR Pentagon Correspondent John Hendren recently spent several weeks in Iraq at a regional air command center on the Persian Gulf and sent this report.

JOHN HENDREN reporting:

Mike Foser(ph) closes the cockpit of his F-16 fighter jet, starts the engine...

(Soundbite of F-16 engine)

HENDREN: ...and heads for Western Iraq, where he'll be hovering over Fallujah eight minutes after leaving the U.S. military's busiest air base in the northern Iraqi city of Bilat(ph). They fly in teams of two so when you hear one F-16, there's always another close behind.

These days, there are few calls for air strikes for a jet designed for air-to-air and air-to-ground combat. So, Foser is carrying out a new mission for the F-16: instead of dropping bombs, he's using the fighter jet as a surveillance plane, sending video from his targeting pod back to an air command center on the Persian Gulf and to soldiers and Marines on the ground.

Mr. MIKE FOSER (U.S. Air Force): There's not the glorious dog fights you see in Top Gun, but there is the glory that I'm going to make someone at least feel better and keep some guys out of trouble, hopefully.

HENDREN: Foser still carries 300-pound, laser-guided bomb in his right wing, a 500-pound, satellite-guided bomb on his left, and a missile on each wing tip, just in case.

But his commander, Lieutenant Colonel Pete Girston(ph), of the Fourth Fighter Squadron, says fighter jocks are adapting their macho culture to new missions.

Lieutenant Colonel PETE GIRSTON (U.S. Air Force): I like to think of the American fighter pilot as a heavily armed seven-year-old, but this new mission that we have is directly supporting the ground troops here in Iraq and their mission to stabilize the country. And it's been a mechanism that we've used to get closer to our Army brothers and sisters.

Oftentimes, these guys will be talking to the ground forces and we've had instances where you know they're in trouble. You can hear them on the radio, their voices are excited, they're hyperventilating, they're breathing, they're running sometimes, we've actually had guys running, and they're calling in for support, for people that are chasing them down.

HENDREN: It's one of several jobs in Iraq, along with transporting cargo and troops, that pilots will have to get used to, says Brigadier General Frank Gorents(ph), commander of the 332nd Air Expeditionary Wing at Bilat.

Brigadier General FRANK GORENTS (Commander, 332nd Air Expeditionary Wing, Bilat): And so as we transition and the forces get small, if we assume that the Air Force presence will stay the same proportionately, we'll have a larger role. What that role is I think really remains to be seen.

HENDREN: What is certain is that it will last for years. The 2003 invasion left Iraq without a single working plane. Some were flown to Iran during the 1991 war. Others were buried, which it turns out is a pretty effective way of rendering sensitive avionics useless. The Pentagon has a plan to rebuild Iraq's Air Force of a little more than 30 planes and helicopters now to three of four times that number, but it is expected to take a decade to do it.

The increased responsibility of air power worries Erik Gustafson, a veteran of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, who is now the executive director of the Education for Peace in Iraq Center, or EPIC.

Mr. ERIK GUSTAFSON (Executive Director, Education for Peace in Iraq Center): Lawrence of Arabia talks about how the best way to wage counter-insurgency is with a knife and not with a bomb. With every civilian death, that's a huge strategic setback to counter-insurgency operations. When there was a lot of air operations, you had a lot more civilian casualties. So there is a relationship between killing the wrong the people and a reliance on air power.

HENDREN: Especially when you add the concern that some Iraqi officials on the ground might try to use the U.S. Air Force to settle old scores. General Gorents says avoiding problems like that will require rigorous rules on the use of air strikes and good intelligence, which hasn't always come easy.

Brig. Gen. GORENTS: The problem with the precision that we're carrying now is you've got to have very good intel, because if you drop a weapon on a target, most likely it's going to get destroyed. And I would anticipate whether that ground force is American, Iraqi, the rules are all going to have to be the same.

HENDREN: To oversee this effort, the Pentagon spent millions moving its regional air command from Saudi Arabia.

Every air strike in Iraq or Afghanistan, every medical evacuation, and every Predator surveillance flight is overseen here at the combined air operations center. The host nation doesn't want to advertise where it is, but it's an open secret that it's in a small country jutting out into the Persian Gulf. The operation's room is a cavernous, dark war room with a 70 foot screen that displays maps of every aircraft in Iraq and Afghanistan and live feeds from the cameras of Predator surveillance planes.

Two or three times a week, there's a flash beneath the camera and an explosion on the ground, a visible demonstration of air power. Increasingly, military officials say, the burden of the war in Iraq will be in the air.

John Hendren, NPR News.

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