From Redlegs to Airmen

The Department of Defense is transforming to enable the US Army to deploy faster into non-linear battlefields without fully addressing the costs of such a change. To facilitate this agility, the Army will be more reliant on fires in general and fixed-wing fires in particular. Departmental and service doctrine and discussion underemphasize major lessons about conducting ground operations reliant on fixed-wing firepower demonstrated in Dien Bien Phu, Operation Anaconda, and Operation Iraqi Freedom. These lessons include the need for air superiority, the ability to target and prioritize fires at all ground command echelons, and the need to accommodate qualitatively different effects from aircraft than from traditional ground fires. Before leaping into an interdependent future, department strategists must first contend with the implications of such a future. Leaders must address the fact that the costs of distributed battlespace operations go beyond increased close air support sortie allocation and an expanded pool of joint terminal attack controllers. Air superiority over and around the battlespace must provide security for not only close fires platforms, but also enable shaping fires, airlift, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions. The services must define the requirements for modular air support operations centers across a distributed battlefield. Airmen must be realistic advocates educating ground commanders about the effects aircraft can reasonably generate to facilitate maneuver. The commanders of tomorrow's distributed battlespace operations depend on current doctrine writers to include the lessons from the past in order to ensure their success.