Airpower in Small Wars: Fighting Insurgents and Terrorists

Modern War Studies

by James S. Corum, Wray R. Johnson

The history of airpower in small wars examines conflicts from the Greek Civil War, Philippine Anti-Huk campaign, French and British colonies, South Vietnam pre-Americans, southern Africa, Latin America, and counterinsurgency and counterterrorist campaigns in the Middle East over the last four decades.

Genres: Military Fiction, History, Military History, Aviation, Nonfiction, Africa

507 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2003

Reviews

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

It would help if you are pretty interested in the history of counterinsurgency/irregular warfare (COIN/IW) before you pick up this book. I am both personally and professionally, so it was nice to combine work and pleasure for this interesting 4 Star book. Airpower in Small Wars: Fighting Insurgents and Terrorists is not exactly riveting but it is comprehensive. The authors begin with the use of airpower to track Pancho Villa and carry forward the theme of small wars and how airpower was used/misused. Airpower is the theme but the authors place it in context. If ground forces were predominant (and they normally were), how the air forces fulfilled the support role is explained. Some of the conflicts include:

-Haiti, Dominican Republic and Nicaragua in the '20s and '30s
-Colonial Air Control (British, Spanish, French) during the interwar period
-Greek Civil War and Phillipine Huk Rebellion after WWII
-French colonial Wars in Algeria and Indochina
-British colonial wars in Malaya, South Arabia and Oman
-Airpower in South Vietnam
-Airpower in Africa (Portuguese colonies, Rhodesia, SW Africa)
-Latin America Insurgencies
-Mideast COIN/IW campaigns

After describing how airpower was used, the authors end each chapter with the lessons learned (or unlearned) with success (e.g. British in Malaya) or failure. Finally, the authors list the major themes over the conflicts and lessons to take away.

The book was published in 2003 and only covers up to the year 2000. Obviously, this was a timely reference as we saw the rise of COIN/IW in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past 12 years. Did we use our airpower smartly? I expect the authors will update us on that one sometime soon.

[Roger Burk · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book does well simply as an introduction to post-WWI insugencies, never mind the air power focus. It's concise, clear, readable, informative, cogent, and evenhanded (except for some forceful criticism of the double standard used to criticize Israel in its wars to suppress murderous terrorists). The air power lessons are pretty much what you'd expect: Air power can't do it on its own, but it's a great force multiplier for the ground forces. The greatest benefit is from support roles, such as surveillance and transport. Air mobility is a great way to counter the guerilla's traditional advantage in flexibility of operations; it allows the counter-insurgent to quickly concentrate wherever the fight is. On-call air support also counters the guerrilla tactic of massing to attack small outposts and quickly dispersing. On the other hand, any sort of indiscrimate bombing that hurts noncombatants is likely to do more harm than good.

The book was written before the rise of unmanned aircraft to prominence. I suspect they will make the book's conclusions even more true.

[Norman Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

The authors have produced a survey of airpower used in a dozen or so "small wars" (from hunting Pancho Villa to fighting Hizbullah in Lebanon). I'm not an expert in this field by any means, but it does seem to be well researched and since the authors show that about half of the uses of airpower were failures, I am supposing the analysis is reasonably well-balanced as well.

They conclude with 11 principles that make a lot of sense, given the analysis in the preceding 400+ pages. The authors are American, so the 11th principle, that the USA should study airpower in small wars more closely, is particular to that country, but the other 10 would make sense to any country. And the 11th as well, mutatis mutandis.

The authors' analysis of why the Soviets failed in Afghanistan makes for dreary reading. The book was written in 2002 and since then NATO has repeated the whole sorry mess.

I was particularly attracted to this book due to my interest in early aviation (up to, say, the 1930s). The insurgencies in Africa and other places are not well documented elsewhere and I was pleased to learn some more about what went on then. As it happens, the authors have also provided good, concise overviews for many of the other small wars that often get little mention.

In short, I found the book worth reading and fairly interesting to read.

I do have a bone to pick with the editors, though. The book has some inconsistent spelling and outright errors, especially with foreign terms or names. That happens. In addition, I found the maps accompanying the various chapters to be very poor quality, basically outline maps with one or two places marked approximately. There is repetition of text between footnotes and the body of the book in a few places, which makes me think that this arose when the book was being revised, and should have been caught. And, for Pete's sake! The book deserves a better index! Deducting 1/4 star for each of these.

But it's still very much worth reading.

[Jonathan Z. · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book that offers 11 principles of airpower in small conflicts and historical examples which spawned these lessons.