Counterinsurgency, the Nonlethal Imperative and Airpower's Role

On 1 July 2002, an AC-130 supporting Operation Full Throttle in southern Afghanistan suppressed surface to air weapons that threatened coalition helicopter and ground forces conducting a security sweep. This lethal force engagement eliminated the threat but also killed significant numbers of civilians. The US Central Command (USCENTCOM) investigation concluded the following. "...the responsibility for that loss rests with those that knowingly directed hostile fire at coalition forces. The operators of those weapons elected to place them in civilian communities and elected to fire them at coalition forces at a time when they knew there were a significant number of civilians present" "The dead and wounded later observed by coalition forces were mostly women and children. ...Villagers had initially claimed 250 dead and 600 injured, but a village elder later admitted that the real numbers were only about 25% of those figures..." By the time this finding was released, 3 months after the incident, the role enemy tactics had played in creating the tragedy was not widely reported.