Land Vs Air Force

While a commander’s staff conducts planning at any level, whether it is strategic, operational, or tactical, the importance of identifying both theirs and the adversary’s center of gravity (COG) is a critical part of the planning process. Three factors should be carefully analyzed in order to gain a full understanding of the COG; they are critical capabilities, critical requirements and critical vulnerabilities (U.S. Office of the CJCS 11 August 2011, III-24). Although a COG can be attacked directly, the indirect approach which seeks to destroy or neutralize the COG by attacking an adversary’s critical vulnerabilities can be a more efficient use of available resources. The United States Marine Corps’ Warfighting publication MCDP 1 draws a direct correlation between a COG and its critical vulnerability by stating, “we should focus our efforts against a critical vulnerability, a vulnerability that, if exploited, will do the most significant damage to the enemy 's ability to resist us” (United States Marine Corps 1997, 47). The Marine Corps favors the indirect approach to defeating an adversary’s COG because the functions assigned to them by the Department of Defense (DoD) require expeditionary operations and expeditionary forces typically are limited in size, assets, and resources driving them to target an adversary’s critical vulnerabilities.

During this type of warfare, the enemy may have already infiltrated, destroyed, or damaged a foreign nation’s government, essential services or infrastructure vital to the indigenous populace for survival and governance. Aviation elements accomplish the transport and swift insertion of personnel, supplies, and materials to assist our forces and to help maintain or rebuild infrastructure. These activities achieve the overarching effects of building trust and confidence within the local populace to foster support for our efforts. Additionally, air assets bring tremendous combat power to the irregular warfare fight. An assortment of ordnance i.e.; precision guided munitions, rapid insertion and extraction methods, and troop and equipment transport enable our forces to quickly strike, maneuver and gain the advantage in an irregular warfare engagement. The Aviation Combat Element also allows both the Ground and Logistic Combat elements to rapidly deploy anywhere in the world. More specifically the Marine Expeditionary Unit provides a mobile sea based warfighting unit capable of deploying on short notice. The Aviation Combat Element has the ability to move those combat forces from ship to shore with an over horizon capability. The ability to quickly move forces around the battlespace provides opportunities for United States forces to influence the population by conducting meetings with local leaders and proving our commitment to the people of the affected country. This capability not only enhances but solidifies the Marine Corps ability to utilize maneuver warfare principles while engaging in an irregular

To fully identify how counterintelligence supports the maneuver commander an understanding of the operational framework that the maneuver units operate in must be understood. The Army’s overall conceptual framework has changed over time due to the Army’s participation in conflicts. To appreciate the current mission of maneuver forces a quick glance of recent history must be accomplished. In 1982 the Army’s capstone doctrine focus was AirLand Battle. This primarily

In chapter eight of Sherry’s novel “The Rise of American Air Power.” Sherry writes about the obsession war generals had with air warfare during the 20th century. He brings up the time Roosevelt decided to use atomic bombs in World War II against Japan and how he wanted to drop these bombs over Japan by aircraft carrier. The technological aspect behind this mission is complicated and made Roosevelt ‘fantasize’ about becoming more advanced in technological warfare. However, some of these improvements left others up in arms, the use of telegraphs left war generals upset about how they were always being interrupted by their superiors during missions. Another advancement that led soldiers up in arms was the operational commands. Operational Commands were in charge of running the airways and pilots would always complain about how they would interfere air battles and cause a distraction. However, Operational Commands had their perks like the use of radar to detect any

Conventional warfare follows the single battle concept, where two or more well defined forces using weapons that target the opposing force. The contiguous battle-space is well defined with a deep, close and rear area allowing the force commander to array forces that can be visually displayed in a linear graphic. This does not hold true in an unconventional warfare, where the rear area may also be the close and deep fight and forces may target the civilian population either through direct, indirect or propaganda attacks. The will of the people play an important part in unconventional warfare and their support to either force is equally important. The Marine Air-Ground Task Force (MAGTF), the Marine Corps force in readiness is capable

Most military members agree that being a leader means being “in charge” regardless of the situation. While this axiom may hold true during the joint operation phases of “Seize the Initiative” or “Dominate”, it is not the case for steady state operations with the IA. This axiom has become a caricature of the DoD mindset in the minds of many civilian leaders. If military service members are to become more effective with IA coordination, they must understand and appreciate three dynamics to steady state operations. First, the value that our partners bring to the fight . Second, that in the steady state, DoD is not the lead agency. Third, with the overabundant emphasis of the topic in joint doctrine, most leaders

The United States Military faces many challenges engaging in conflicts around the world. Stretched thin, the elements of war evolves from AirLand Battle to Unified Land Operations. From the Cold war to Operation Iraqi Freedom the way of the military is winning on offense, winning decisively, while maintaining the initiative.

“Sustained,” in this sense, requires the endurance to continue operations over a long period of time. In addition to long-term operations, the Army operates in the only domain that humans permanently inhabit. Constant interaction with and control over large human populations are therefore key elements in how the Army understands the use and purpose of landpower. Doctrinally, landpower is the ability “to gain, sustain, and exploit control over land, resources, and people.” The Army understands the application of landpower to mean that “winning battles and engagements is important but alone is usually insufficient to produce lasting change in the conditions that spawned conflict.” Success often depends on the “ability to manage populations and civilian authorities.” Due to the Army’s role of deploying rapidly and sustaining operations abroad, combined with the nature of the land domain as the domain in which humans live, the Army views the exercise of landpower as a long-term commitment that involves significant face-to-face contact with enemies and civilians alike. As a result, Army core capabilities emphasize close combat and

It is the Army’s primary mission to organize, train, and equip forces to conduct prompt and sustained land combat operations (ADRP 6-0, 1-1). To accomplish its mission, the Army utilizes its concept of unified land operations. Unified Land Operations, applicable to all Army operations is the seizing, retaining, and exploiting the initiative to gain and maintain a position of relative advantage. Such advantage provides a structure to prevent or deter conflict, prevail in war, and create the conditions for a favorable conflict resolution (ADP 3-0, p. 9). Critical thinking

From the early age of airpower development in the United States, airpower theorists, and advocates believed and prophesized, that airpower can win the war by itself. Turning back to the age prior to the independence of the United States Air Force (USAF) as a service, airpower advocates emphasized that bomber will always get through and that it will produce decisive blow to the enemy and win the war. Moreover, they argued that airpower alone could win the war quickly without the need to employ other services, that it is cheaper because bombers replace large force employment costs and precisely hitting only important targets avoids collateral damage. That promise of the early airpower advocates continued to be the core belief of the new independent United States Air Force after 1947. Looking its promise over the past 70 years the airpower gradually advanced toward its fulfillment and with rapid technology advances, that the USAF is highly dependent on, airpower finally achieved its promise. The airpower proved to end wars more quickly and save lives of solders, to cost less in order to achieve military and political objectives, and to avoid collateral damage with its precision capabilities. Nevertheless, implications of achievement of promise can be that airpower can be used as a mean of political objectives that can severely limit or misuse airpower’s capabilities.

The world has been reached almost to the space age, but how we behave as a human being is not contemporary enough that the time requires. Terrorist trends, countries’ hostile behaviors have been caused the world in a worse environment. It is so important as a nation to be able protect himself against all of those threats. You cannot resist such complex issues. You will need to embody a strong company to be able successful. The United States Air Force is very reliable and efficient tool against such threats. He has very vulnerable and unique capabilities to be successful, and also issues related those abilities. In my paper, I will write about three key capabilities of The United States Air Force; Global Attack, Precision Engagement, Information

During the course of this training period, both units were to conduct training that would prepare them for the upcoming operation. While both units conducted rigorous training independent of one another, instances of combined Airborne and Air training was extremely limited. Coordinated training between the two units was limited because there was no higher command linking the two units together. Within the article titled “Report of Airborne Operations- Husky and Bigot”, the author stated that “the lack of a supreme command over the Airborne and Air Units, who actually are but one force, complicated combined training and made extremely difficult the fixing of responsibility for shortcomings in training and

“Army Aviation conducts air-ground operations as the aerial maneuver force of the combined arms team, or as an independent maneuver force in support of ground forces conducting offensive, defensive, stability, and defense support of civil authorities operations. Regardless of the type of mission performed by the ground force, most aviation operations are offensive in nature and designed to provide an asymmetric advantage. This enables the combined arms team to gain and maintain situational understanding, control operational tempo, achieve the element of surprise, seize, retain, and exploit the initiative, present the enemy with multiple dilemmas, gain positions of relative advantage over an enemy force, and/or to prevent an enemy force from gaining a position of relative advantage” (FM 3-04). Army Aviation conducts these operations through movement to contact, attack, recon, security, air assault, air movement, and aeromedical

Close Air Support (CAS) is a complex mission due to the interaction of ground forces and airpower in short distance from the enemy. Historical examples evidenced that cultural differences and service rivalry affected the efficiency of CAS after World War II; while on the other hand, having a joint force with proper training improved its performance. The US Air Force and US Army argued about the property of the assets as the main factor limiting efficiency, conversely the Marine Corps exploited the strength of having CAS as the rationale for their air assets to optimize its procedures. However, beyond the issue of who owns the planes, the real difference is the use of proper training to integrate air and ground forces, assimilate doctrines, and exploit the new technologies. This paper presents a review of historical examples of CAS training, the problems of current training and future challenges to enable joint training under current restrictions of budgets and availability of forces.

In order to ascertain how air power can be most effectively employed, it is first necessary to analyse its evolution in the strategic context. This section aims to identify why the strategic uses of air power are still in their infancy, and therefore what type of strategic effects must be considered in response to future regional military modernisation. This will enable future strategic directions to be forecast, and subsequently matched against effective response options.