April 09, 2015
Airpower sounds swift and surgical, but sometimes it’s really closer to trench warfare with wings. Earlier this week, with the smoke still rising from the retaken Iraqi city of Tikrit, Central Command released detailed data on air strikes against the self-proclaimed Islamic State. We’ve crunched the numbers, and it’s clear the eight-month-old campaign is becoming a war of attrition.
The airstrikes are grinding away ISIL one truck or frontline unit at a time, focusing on close support to Iraqi forces. (Although Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh was careful to tell my colleague Colin yesterday that the F-22s operating in the region have not executed any Close Air Support missions. For that matter, no one has referred to any strikes in either Iraq or Syria as CAS missions.)
Meanwhile, compared to figures released just on February 4th, there’s a decreasing emphasis on more strategic targets such as enemy leadership or oil revenue. In fact, oil infrastructure represents just 151 of 5,457 targets reported hit, less than 3 percent.
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