Airpower in the War against ISIS chronicles the planning and conduct of Operation Inherent Resolve by U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) from August 2014 to mid-2018, with a principal focus on the contributions of U.S. Air Forces Central Command (AFCENT). Benjamin S. Lambeth contends that the war’s costly and excessive duration resulted from CENTCOM’s inaccurate assessment of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), determining it was simply a resurrected Iraqi insurgency rather than recognizing it as the emerging proto-state that it actually was. This erroneous decision, Lambeth argues, saw the application of an inappropriate counterinsurgency strategy and use of rules of engagement that imposed needless restrictions on the most effective use of the precision air assets at CENTCOM’s disposal. The author, through expert analysis of recent history, forcefully argues that CENTCOM erred badly by not using its ample air assets at the outset not merely for supporting Iraq’s initially noncombat-ready ground troops but also in an independent and uncompromising strategic interdiction campaign against ISIS’s most vital center-of-gravity targets in Syria from the effort’s first moments onward.
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Benjamin S. Lambeth is a nonresident Senior Fellow with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. He earned his doctorate in political science from Harvard University and served previously in the Central Intelligence Agency, followed thereafter by a 37-year career at the RAND Corporation. Among his many other publications, he is the author of
Russia’s Air Power in Crisis,
The Transformation of American Air Power, and
The Unseen War: Allied Air Power and the Takedown of Saddam Hussein.
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