for history buffs&grognards: WHY is airpower insufficient to win a war?

[jinchoung]

this is a tangential question while we eagerly await the release of PCO:

why is airpower insufficient to win a war?

now i'm familiar with the fact, i've heard this maxim over and over... that you need "boots on the ground" to "hold ground"... i know the assertion... but what i don't understand is the mechanics, the actual workings of this truism.

is airpower THAT inaccurate? is airpower THAT expensive? i know that russia and england's warpower was not bombed into oblivion by german efforts but what accounts for this? in my mind, if you take out a factory, that's a PRETTY BIG DEAL! how can the people on the ground just pick up and throw another one up in a day?

is it the cost/benefit analysis (with a huuuuuuge cost per bomb/missile) that makes this untenable?

cuz in my mind, territory doesn't need to be "held" if there's nobody around on the other side to take it back. so again, in my mind, it seems like you COULD win a war just by annihilating the other side.

bomb their C&C. bomb their men. bomb their equipment. bomb their supplies. until there's nothing left.

for instance, why couldn't we just annihilate the libyan government forces by air. such that the rebels on the ground simply had nothing left to fight?

-----------------------------

i FULLY expect to hear that my confusion is due to my ignorance. what i'd really love is to be educated and illuminated.

thanks much.

jin

(p.s. this is a direct result of the new news stories about how "air power is insufficient" as it pertains to nato's efforts in libya)

[CheerfullyInsane]

Whoa, that's a lot of questions. *LOL*

I'm no expert on the intricacies of aerial warfare, but here's my two cents.
First, let's split it into two parts, a modern and a WWII issue, since there are differences.

Taking the modern, and looking at Libya (and Iraq/Afghanistan) you run into the problem of lack of targets.
While Iraq was paralyzed by the initial bombardments taking out C&C, bridges, power-stations etc. there's a certain lack of targets for aerial bombardment when fighting insurgents. This goes double if you're trying to rebuild the country, and can't bomb just anything that moves.
One reason for ground-pounders is to have spotters. It's kinda hard to spot infantry when flying at 300mph, hence the use of laser-designators e.g.
Second, targets move (damn inconsiderate of them,but there you go). While modern jets are very good at what they do, they're also damn expensive and hard to train pilots for, so this is not like 1944 France with hordes of fighter-bombers freely roaming the skies looking for anything that might be a target. Modern jets rarely hover over a target area looking for targets of opportunity.
Third, there's the human shield buggers. Either through mixing with the population (Afghanistan), or parking your armed forces in urban areas (Libya). Again, while modern jets *are* very good, there are limits to how much they can reduce collateral damage.
Fourth, modern AAA is friggin' lethal. Especially in rough terrain where every shrub can contain some bastard with a SA-7. Modern fire-and-forget AA missiles are not to be trifled with.
So while airpower is important, and a huge boon to the forces employing them, they can't do it alone.
If for no other reason that you need troops to guard the airfield while the planes are flying. [:D]

As to WWII, and the failure of strategic bombing, there's the issue of accuracy.
If memory serves, the initial bombing runs the British made in '42 had something like 5 bombs out of 100 land within 5 *miles* of the target. While accuracy did improve as the technology advanced, it was still saturation bombing instead of pinpoint strikes.
And as hard as it may be to imagine, it takes ridiculous amounts of high-explosive to do serious damage.
Think of the preparatory shelling on the trench-lines in WWI. 3 *hours* of constant bombardment, and yet the advance was met with bitter resistance.
The only thing I've experienced myself was being at the wrong end of a mortar-shelling, and you'd be amazed at how little cover you actually need to be safe.
Suffice it to say that killing someone who is doing their best to avoid it is not an easy task.
It gets even harder if there's protection available, such as cellars, bunkers or the like.

You'd think it would be easy to destroy a country's production-abilities, but looking at the '43-'44 period (arguably the time of the heaviest strategic bombing) the German production of fighter-aircraft actually *increased*. I'm not sure why this is, but I would think that blowing the walls and roof off a production building doesn't necessarily mean it is out of order. And this is assuming you have intelligence to actually find the bloody thing in the first place.
Not to mention that every important target is bound to be ringed with AAA. Or failing that, heavily protected in other ways. If you ever get the chance to visit the U-boat docks at La Rochelle, they're a sight to see.
Something like 20ft of steel-reinforced concrete, and here 60 years later they're still completely intact.
(I suspect mainly because nobody knows how to get rid of them.)
Same thing with modern bunkers for that matter. The first Iraq war (Desert Storm) saw some embarrassing moments when US ordnance was unable to penetrate the underground bunkers of the Iraqi C&C.
That is, until some bright spark thought of filling a 155mm shell-casing with HE and use that.......
When in doubt, use a bigger hammer. [:D]

So those are at least some of the reasons why you need boots on the ground.
I'm sure brighter people than me in here can give you plenty more, but the conclusion is that infantry isn't going anywhere anytime soon, despite what the fly-boys may try to convince you of. ;o)

[Mad Russian]

ORIGINAL: jinchoung

is airpower THAT inaccurate?

In WWII yes.

is airpower THAT expensive?

Even today, yes.

i know that russia and england's warpower was not bombed into oblivion by german efforts but what accounts for this?

The Germans never built a strategic airforce. The Luftwaffe was designed to support the troops on the ground not bomb industries out of existence.

in my mind, if you take out a factory, that's a PRETTY BIG DEAL! how can the people on the ground just pick up and throw another one up in a day?

Not in a day. But it's hard to "take out a factory" as both the German's and Allies found out. Post war studies of German industry showed just how ineffective the bombing campaign was for the most part.

is it the cost/benefit analysis (with a huuuuuuge cost per bomb/missile) that makes this untenable?

Casualties is a big part of the equation. The 8th AF had the highest casualty rate of any US military unit of the war. They took 50% casualties. Couple that with the cost of very expensive airplanes and the bang for the buck starts going down.

cuz in my mind, territory doesn't need to be "held" if there's nobody around on the other side to take it back. so again, in my mind, it seems like you COULD win a war just by annihilating the other side.

Territory only needs to be held if you want to win the war. If you don't put guys on the ground that shoot his guys he will have lot's of his guys standing there on the ground he wants to defend. You have to take the fight to the enemy. The only way to win that is to take what your enemy considers valuable.

bomb their C&C. bomb their men. bomb their equipment. bomb their supplies. until there's nothing left.

Doesn't work. You can't get to the point where there's "nothing left".

for instance, why couldn't we just annihilate the libyan government forces by air. such that the rebels on the ground simply had nothing left to fight?

Good idea. Annihilate the Libyan government forces. How has that been working out for everybody? That's a great idea when the balance of forces are so tipped in one sides favor not such a good idea when the other guy can defend himself. If you don't want a WWII strategic bombing campaign to prove it doesn't work look up Operation Rolling Thunder in the Vietnam War and see how it didn't work 30 years later either.

What does work is when a strategic air offensive is used in conjunction with a ground campaign. Iraq's Shock and Awe is not a strategic campaign. That's a tactical support mission. The two are very different.

Good Hunting.

MR

[jinchoung]

thanks guys! such a wealth of information! thanks for contributing to my education.

some of the answers are confirming those things that i suspected but couldn't quite get myself to believe. like the inaccuracy of the bombs in WW2. so i guess combining that hardened structures and the unexpectedly large amount of explosive power to do real damage, that accounts for this lesson being learned in ww2.

(from a wargaming standpoint, i understood through gaming rules that things like mortar fire have much more effect as psychological weapons than casualty generators. kinda like archery or ranged weapons in ancients... it's not really a decisive instrument. you use them as harassment and then you have to close to assault to bring about decision.)

@CI, right, i can totally understand why airpower is extremely hampered when trying to fight "unconventional forces". that's why my question was inspired by the current situation with the libyan army which i understand to be a uniformed, conventional military. i would imagine you could see their bases, depots and troop/equipment concentrations from satellite or even better, predator fly over. have that same drone light up those targets with lasers and just have b52s drop death from the stratosphere? is the civilian population still that close to military concentrations?

@MR, so i guess the inability to get to "nothing left" is because of what has been discussed, not being that accurate, expense, efficacy of hardened structures, surprising ineffectiveness of bombs and the ability of the enemy to move and hide....

hmmm... i guess i need to play more wargames but so far in my gaming career, i have not been properly demonstrated the ineffectiveness of air power through games. i wish i could see the mechanics of how this works (or in this case does not work) on the game table.

i think modern wargames have taught me pretty well how shockingly ineffective firearms and mortars are which built nicely on articles that i've read that revealed how many tens of thousands of rounds a u.s. serviceman had to fire in order to inflict a single kill in afghanistan! so gaming mechanics were illuminating on such things and how gunplay is not as lethal as i imagined.

hmmm... but i guess i can think about airpower in the same way then? like with all ranged weapons, it's not as effective as you imagine?

thanks again guys.

jin

[Pillar]

Counter to the thesis I think it's actually not insufficient at all.  Until humans turn into molemen and live underground, any country can be brought to terms with airpower.  People have to live their lives.

What you cannot do with airpower alone in WW2 is defeat an army.  (Navies - yes) 

What you cannot do with modern airpower alone is defeat an army without incurring any collateral damage.

imo.

What is more useful to consider is that it may not in fact cost less than using a ground army (in men and material), and may take considerably longer than using ground forces. (Or both.)

And it is uncertain whether airpower for any country can keep up with anti-air in that time frame. So it isn't risk free either.

[CheerfullyInsane]

ORIGINAL: Pillar

Counter to the thesis I think it's actually not insufficient at all.  Until humans turn into molemen and live underground, any country can be brought to terms with airpower.  People have to live their lives.

Nope.
Look at the strategic bombings of WWII.
Even after Dresden was leveled in a 3 day round-the-clock bombardment, people still lived there, going about their lives. Same thing with Berlin (and London for that matter).
And even after the razing of several major cities in Germany, the resistance continued unabated.
Japan had just about every major settlement firebombed into the ground, and even the first nuke wasn't enough to make them rethink things. A second one had to be employed to get the point across.
If there's one single thing humans are good at, it's enduring.

Look at it this way, terror-activities are basically the poor mans version of strategic bombings.
Hit civilians, infrastructure, and economic targets, to bend a people to a certain idea.
Guess what, that isn't working either.

There's a reason the armed forces of the world no longer employ strategic bombers.
They don't work. )

[CheerfullyInsane]

ORIGINAL: jinchoung

@CI, right, i can totally understand why airpower is extremely hampered when trying to fight "unconventional forces". that's why my question was inspired by the current situation with the libyan army which i understand to be a uniformed, conventional military. i would imagine you could see their bases, depots and troop/equipment concentrations from satellite or even better, predator fly over. have that same drone light up those targets with lasers and just have b52s drop death from the stratosphere? is the civilian population still that close to military concentrations?

Right. When it comes to modern warfare, the main problem is political, not military.
Which also explains the Western armies fascination with high-tech gadgets. It keeps the friendly losses down, making a war more palatable to the voters, but that's a whole 'nother kettle of fish.

While the Libyan bases may be valid targets, I'd suspect the forces have long since left. *LOL*
And while the army itself may be a 'conventional' army, they can still take up positions in urban areas making bombing them almost impossible. The urban areas are after all the places both sides are trying to control.
Even if you were able to hit a single tank with pinpoint accuracy (which you can't despite what Hollywood tries to tell us) the bloody thing is liable to explode when hit.
And a tank going up is.....kinda spectacular. Though not really something you'd want to happen when it's parked in your back-yard. [:D]

Besides, even if you could keep the collateral damage to an 'acceptable level' (whatever that means), actually finding targets in an urban area using only drones and satellites would be a cast-iron bitch to do.

[pad152]

In most wars/battles the objective is to take & hold something (country/city/town/highway/etc.), you can't take and hold something with air power. You may be able to prevent an enemy from taking an objective with airpower but, that's not the same thing. You still need boots on the ground to take an objective and the logistics to back them up to hold it.

[junk2drive]

There was a really good post recently about the inaccurate numbers of kills by air forces in WWII. I wish I could find it. Maybe it was at BFC forums. Bottom line was that hardly any armour was taken out by air. Mostly rail cars and supply trucks.

[Mad Russian]

I've seen all those after the fact studies done that denigrate the value of airpower and I can only add that the Germans did not think the effect the Allied Air Forces had on their armored forces was negligible.  So, I don't either.

I could care less what some clerk from a US Army fact finding mission had to say months after the fighting was over. If you read German accounts of Normandy you find lots of examples of just how successful the tactical air forces were at knocking out tanks. What made the Army upset was that almost none of that happened in an "On Call" situation.

If you want to know how effective those weapons were ask the ones that had them used on them. Don't ask the ones using them.

Good Hunting.

MR

[pad152]

When the panzer reserves were finally released after the Normandy invasion, a little more than a third of the armor ever made it to the front due to allied air power.

On the eastern front, tons of tanks were destroy by aircraft by both sides. The Russian IIyushin II-2 was a flying tank destroyer and several pilots were credited with over a hundred tank kills.

[CheerfullyInsane]

ORIGINAL: Mad Russian

I could care less what some clerk from a US Army fact finding mission had to say months after the fighting was over. If you read German accounts of Normandy you find lots of examples of just how successful the tactical air forces were at knocking out tanks. What made the Army upset was that almost none of that happened in an "On Call" situation.

+1.

While I'm sure the fly-boys exaggerated their claims (pretty much standard), the fighter-bombers hovering over France in '44 meant that the Wehrmacht was almost exclusively limited to the night when moving larger forces.
Again, a well-camouflaged vehicle in a frontline position is a lot harder to take out than spotting 6 MkIVs trundling down the road.
Besides, even if they only damage the tank (engine, tracks or the like) it still stops it from getting to the front, meaning it's a mission-kill.

On a side-note, I love the pictures from Normandy showing German tanks sporting all kinds of improvised camouflage sticking out at absurd angles, while they're moving happily along a road........
Exactly who are they fooling here?

"Uh skipper........We seem to have a small shrubbery moving down the road. Should we investigate?" [:D]

(I know, I know....It's meant for when they get a little warning and can pull off the road....)

[jinchoung]

"Uh skipper........We seem to have a small shrubbery moving down the road. Should we investigate?" [:D]

haha... reminds me of a joke from when the stealth bomber was first announced and reported that its radar signature was that of a bird.

"sir... we have a flock of 20 inbound birds, in formation, doing mach 2.... orders?"

jin

[Pillar]

Any specific source you want me to look at? (I can get anything almost - as long as it's English) I'll review it for sure.

There has to be a big difference between a single bombing op and sustained bombing. Not only do people lose almost everything, they lose even the ability to rebuild. That's not even counting the psychiatric (and psychological if you want) and health effects. You must have read about how utterly unhealthy cities become after being bombed.

In addition, bombing capabilities expand. The difference between Dresden or Hamburg and the London "Blitz" is sufficient enough.

imo the will to fight must be sustained by a belief in one's ability to carry the fight to the enemy. (Or fend him off)

Here you might be interested to know that the academic side of criticism against airpower stems mostly from the thesis that only effects on the enemy military forces matter, rather than any objection about bombing having the ability to hurt the population or even economy of an opponent.

[Pillar]

Despite the subtitle, this is an excellent work on the general causes for the end of war, with differing regimes.  "War and Punishment: the causes of war termination and the First World War" by Hein Erich Goemans

Easily the best I've read, although my experience is by no means exhaustive

[CheerfullyInsane]

I'm unable to list sources per se, since I'm not as 'serious' a historian as a lot of other folks here.
I read a lot, yes, but it's basically about what catches my fancy that particular week.
I rarely delve in a subject reading scores of books covering every angle of it.
Too lazy, to be frank. [:D]
Besides, I'm merely stating my opinion, I'm not out to convert anyone to my way of thinking.
If you believe that I'm just plain wrong, then peace be unto you, my friend. [:)]

Having said that, I think you underestimate under what conditions people can live their lives, and indeed stay (relatively) healthy.
It is quite possible to hammer out an existence under conditions that would seem unlivable.
It is extremely hard (read: impossible) to break a nation/people from bombing alone. But even granting that it was somehow possible, so what?
What are the 'people' going to do? You think they'll somehow join up in an armed rebellion against the leaders, throw them out and install a new government that will sue for peace?

Let me put it this way: Assume for the moment that Al-Qaeda somehow overnight got the ability to stage a 9/11 scale attack each and every day for as long as it takes.
Do you think the US would meekly sue for peace after a certain period of time?
Personally I doubt it. There's a whole slew of psychological factors that step in when it comes to a people, and the ideas they believe in. This is doubly true of a totalitarian state where the government to some degree controls the flow of information (and just about everything else).

Besides, let's say that it was possible to somehow win a war by daily carpet-bombings of every urban, industrial and infrastructure center.
You'd then be talking about flat-out genocide instead of a war.
Aside from the fact that there would be easier ways to accomplish this (chemical warfare for instance), you would become a pariah on the world-stage, making the impact on your own economy far worse than what you may have inflicted on the enemy.
Not to mention you'd have to fight a number of new wars against more or less the rest of the world.

[Richie61]

You need both to win a war. Planes can't hold ground. Libya in 2011 shows that air power can only do so much without good "ground pounders" to follow up.

The German's used their "ground pounders" well during December 16, 1944 thru January 25, 1945. Well till the weather cleared and allied air attacks on their forces and supply lines, sealed the failure of the offensive.

More current air campaigns like this one show pros and cons. Later stats showed that the NATO air power didn't destroy as much as they thought.
1995
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1995_NATO_ ... erzegovina
1999
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_ ... Kosovo_War

[jinchoung]

Here you might be interested to know that the academic side of criticism against airpower stems mostly from the thesis that only effects on the enemy military forces matter, rather than any objection about bombing having the ability to hurt the population or even economy of an opponent.

really? cuz military forces don't, can't exist in a vacuum. if you cripple the economy it seems like you necessarily cripple the military. it's terrifying to imagine the rate at which a "marching army" burns through its supplies of bullets and beans not to mention gas and equipment.

so in this case, isn't that academic thesis nonsensical? acceding that airpower CAN knockout economic and production centers but then that that somehow has no effect on military forces?

i mean i am no grognard but just from playing starcraft, i know that if you knock out their ability to make war materiel, you've knocked out their ability to continue fighting for long.

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but back to the efficacy of bombing though, doesn't history argue that indeed, aerial bombing alone can't win war (not just because of inability to knockout military but also inability to knockout national infrastructure) in examples like stalingrad and the london blitz?

jin

[Pillar]

Whatever your thoughts are on it now, I think it's worth reading the book.  [:)]  All I'd be doing is paraphrasing things I've learned.  Check it out!

[Mobius]

ORIGINAL: jinchoung
but back to the efficacy of bombing though, doesn't history argue that indeed, aerial bombing alone can't win war (not just because of inability to knockout military but also inability to knockout national infrastructure) in examples like stalingrad and the london blitz?

You also need Ultra to win.