Shock and Awe the Islamic State | The Diplomat

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One imagines the ghosts of Lord Cornwallis,

the Marquis de Lafayette, and the Duke of
Wellington are frowning at the slow-motion air
campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and
Syria. Not because airplanes and precision-guided munitions are engines of war beyond the ken
of 18th- and 19th-century soldiery. Hardly. Cornwallis, Lafayette, and Wellington were
steely-eyed field commanders, possessed of minds supple enough to adapt to newfangled
gadgetry and warmaking methods.
Masters of land warfare would intuitively grasp this novel form of long-range fire support. And
indeed, despite what its most ardent champions claim, air power did not usher in some novus
ordo seclorum. Successfully executed, air strategy helps commanders mass superior might at
crucial places and times, advancing the strategic and political aims for which societies undertake
martial endeavors. Despite todays gee-whiz weaponry, theres nothing especially new-age or
incomprehensible about that. Its Strategy 101 and timeless.
No. What these fighters from a bygone age would find objectionable is the slow, intermittent
character of this air war that (apparently) dare not speak its name. They would upbraid its
overseers for neglecting tactical and operational principles at which European armies of their day
excelled. Victorious hosts outmatched their antagonists when and where it mattered. In the days
of musketry of wildly inaccurate, muzzle-loaded, smoothbore weaponry that meant lining
up, synchronizing fire at close range, and thereby transmitting a sudden pulse of combat power.
Or rather, delivering as many successive pulses as their fire discipline and enemy counterfire
permitted. That gave linear tactics their shock effect. An armed forces strength derives both from
physical capacity numbers and quality of armaments, and so forth and from resolve.
Disciplined volleys struck at both elements of strength simultaneously. Or as the crusty army
colonel who acted as cruise director for our faculty outing to the Saratoga battlefield bellowed
stated meekly, linear tactics were not stupid!!!
And indeed, whittling down enemy manpower while sapping enemy morale is no small
achievement. Ultimately, once orderly fusillades became ragged, commanders ordered soldiers to
fix bayonets and charge. Neat ranks gave way to hand-to-hand combat. How the ensuing mle

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Shock and Awe the Islamic State | The Diplomat

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unfolded determined who won the field and the day.

Coupla takeaways from those thrilling days of yesteryear for strategy vis--vis ISIS. One, strive for
that thunderclap of force and the shock effect it imparts. Field commanders of the Revolutionary
and Napoleonic age concentrated firepower in space, sure. Grouping men-at-arms on the
battlefield was their only way to wring serious value from rudimentary firearms. But the
Napoleons bestriding Europe also concentrated firepower in time. They unleashed hails of bullets
as close to the same instant as their troopers could manage.
Unlike armies of old, air forces can disperse in space to pummel an array of targets. Yet the
principle stands. The coalition must mete out heavy blows near-simultaneously to stun ISIS
fighters while demolishing ISIS materiel. Its doubtful coalition warplanes are inflicting that
shock effect given the desultory pace of air strikes. Disperse across the map by all means, but lets
bombard lots of targets, hard, and at the same time.
And two, Revolutionary- and Napoleonic-age tactics embodied the principle of continuity.
Clausewitz, who drew insight from those battlegrounds, instructs commanders to rain blow after
blow, all in the same direction on an adversary once they knock him off balance. European
armies cut loose with as many disciplined barrages as possible, then fixed bayonets and charged.
Triumphant forces pursued a broken enemy as he fled the battlefield crumpling not just his
military machine but his willpower.
Continuity is how you consummate a victory. To win, in other words, be a bulldog. Sink your
teeth into the enemy and refuse to let go. Its far from obvious that air power is capable of that
sort of constant, inescapable presence. Admiral Wylie doubts it is. Wylie insists that you can
destroy from the air, but not control from the air. To control demands men on the scene with a
gun, able to outface the men with guns the enemy deploys to impose control. Without a robust
ground component, the coalitions prospects for doing more than delaying ISIS and denying it
victory appear dubious at best.
Wheres our Lafayette?

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