New U.S. air strategy in Afghanistan: First, do no harm

NANGARHAR PROVINCE, Afghanistan — As his commander greeted a local leader in a district government building recently, Air Force Technical Sgt. Tyler Woodson, 20, scurried past them and ran up three flights of stairs to the roof.

There, Woodson, of Macon, Ga., surveyed the town. He saw children playing soccer in an adjacent field, trucks traveling on the main highway and, several hundred yards away, a glorious range of mountains.

He was looking for the best place to drop a bomb from an F-16, where there was no chance of striking anyone or anything.

"See over there," he said, pointing. "It's flat, so there's no chance of debris falling on anyone."

This is the new U.S. air campaign in much of Afghanistan.

Six months after Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S commander in Afghanistan, issued a directive urging troops to walk away from a fight rather than risk killing civilians, the Air Force is engaging in a campaign of restraint.

Instead of airstrikes, airmen increasingly are searching for places they can drop bombs that can be heard and felt, but where they're unlikely to damage buildings or hurt people.

It isn't a universal effort. In Afghanistan's Khost and Helmand provinces, Afghanistan's most violent, U.S. jets more frequently drop bombs that are intended to maim and kill.

In less-conflicted areas such as Nangarhar, however, soldiers are increasingly seeking tactics other than air attacks to get them out of hairy situations. Among the alternative uses of air power: buzzing enemy positions in a show of force and shooting flares or dropping warning bombs instead of directly engaging the enemy.

Privately, ground troops see that the restraint is putting them in greater danger, and they aren't seeing results.

Afghans seem no more willing to provide information to U.S. forces, the troops say, despite U.S. efforts to minimize civilian casualties, even in a province such as Nangarhar, where education levels are relatively high.

A senior military officer acknowledged in a December briefing that the Taliban have expanded their shadow government to nearly every Afghan province, a sign of complicity and fear among law-abiding Afghans.

Afghans say they appreciate the Americans' more cautious approach, but they continue to fear the Taliban's return to power.

"The directive ... it's nice. I read it, but I am going to make sure my guys come back. Period," said one platoon sergeant who requested anonymity.

Air Force Maj. Gen. Stephen Mueller, the director of coordinating air resources in Afghanistan and a McChrystal adviser on Air Force matters, said he's aware that troops feel less safe and is trying to address that by stressing that they'll get air support when they need it.

"All we are asking is for the pilot and crew to be a little more judgmental," Mueller said.

The adjustment is part of the Air Force effort to find a place for jet fighters in a counterinsurgency campaign. Even precision-guided munitions are best for killing hundreds of enemy troops clustered on a battlefield, not for one or two insurgents running away from a housing compound, Air Force commanders concede. Dropped on buildings to kill a handful of enemy fighters, bombs almost certainly also claim the lives of civilians.

Air Force statistics show that nonlethal shows of force have become more common in the months since McChrystal's directive.

Those statistics show, for example, that U.S. troops came into contact with an enemy 590 times in July, the month McChrystal issued the directive. In 33 percent, or 198 of those cases, they responded with a nonlethal aerial show of force. By November, nonlethal shows of force made up 88 percent of the responses, 110 of 139 instances of troops facing enemy fire.

Woodson's rooftop surveillance in Nangarhar province is part of a program designed to provide a bridge between ground forces and pilots in the air. Several hundred Air Force joint terminal attack controllers, or JTACs, are assigned to Army units in Afghanistan to help determine whether to drop a bomb, and if so, what kind.

The JTACs also are responsible for knowing where aircraft are and how long it will take them to arrive at a battle. Once they've arrived, the JTACs help negotiate the best use of the aircraft.

The ground commander is often just thinking "I don't want my guys to be shot anymore," said Air Force Maj. Jayson Schmiedt, an F15C pilot from Colorado Springs, Colo. "So we tell them, 'Tell us the effects you want, and we will provide it.' "

There are limits to warning shots, said Capt. Roger Brooks, 36, of Dallas, Ga., and who commands the JTACs supporting Simmons' regiment as part of the 165th Air Support Operations Squadron of the Georgia Air National Guard.

The Taliban are smart and adaptable. If they see only warning shots and flares, they'll eventually figure out "it's just an air show," he said.

For now, however, it still works, largely because 30 years of war have taught Afghans to fear death from the sky.