The first, and arguably most fundamental, issue tackled by both analysts is that the Obama Administration, the Pentagon and CENTCOM wrongly characterised the conflict against ISIS as being an insurgency as opposed to a ‘state in being’ with all of the trappings of such entity. This meant that air power was restricted in its strategic application to counter-insurgency close air support. Deptula, in particular, is scathing in his remarks about the US Army planning assumptions (and Army generals presuming to command an air war) and the failure of the USAF to challenge these.

The fact that the Obama team severely restricted the rules of engagement to ensure no civilian casualties served to exacerbate the limits placed on the coalition air component. Lambeth portrays the Obama Administration in a definitely unfavourable light, frequently making parallels with civilian-dominated leaders deciding on targets as occurred during the Vietnam conflict. Beyond these constraints, both men lament the complete absence of analysis of ISIS centres of gravity (such as cash reserves and oil).

Lambeth gives an excellent overview of allied air power from the first Gulf War, through the period of the No-Fly Zones and the second Gulf War and then into the counter insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. The nature of the latter conflicts was heavily concentrated on direct support to the ‘boots on the ground’. As one senior USAF interviewee drily remarked that they had ‘lost the muscle memory’ for the higher level and, by implication, war-winning, application of air power. As the narrative unwinds through Syria and Iraq, the restraints were gradually lifted with a willingness to accept civilian casualties and a willingness to strike strategic assets such as cash reserves, oil supplies (destined for the black market and ISIS coffers) and senior leadership. It is abundantly clear from the narrative that the unwillingness to engage had allowed ISIS to take full advantage of allied squeamishness on collateral damage and gave them space to inflict appalling damage on their fellow countrymen.

As American politics made the transition from Obama to the new Trump Administration the constraints were lifted further along the high-level intent moving from defeating ISIS to annihilating it as an organisation and caliphate. The targeting clearance process was delegated to much lower levels (from four star down to colonel) and less emphasis on collateral. As the allied ground troops fought the street-by-street battles through major towns the ever-present surveillance and reconnaissance, along with a strike capability was undeniably important. The Russian intervention in Syria is handled in considerable detail from the potentially damaging unco-ordinated sharing of air space through to the intelligence implications of each side having a close view of the other’s weaponry and tactics.

Lambeth’s reflections on US strategy and leadership sum up an all too familiar litany of doctrinal conflict between air and land, the oft demonstrated maxim that air power is best commanded by airmen in a truly jointly planned campaign. Calling something ‘joint’ when the air component is totally subjugated to the ground component does not win campaigns. This book fills a very useful gap in the historiography but must be tackled critically!

Professor Peter Gray
FRAeS
University of Wolverhampton 

Space Electronic Warfare

By David L Adamy

Artech House, 2021, 230pp, £112.

Lockheed Martin

I recently had the great pleasure of being the Moderator for the NATO Joint Air Power Competence Centre’s 2021 Conference in Essen, Germany. Attended by (among others) NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe – General Tod Wolters; Commander of Allied Air Command – General Jeff Harrigian; US Chief of Space Operations – General Jay Raymond; and the UK’s Director Space – Air Vice Marshal Harvey Smyth, one of the five panel discussions was on the subject of NATO Space and its resiliency.

The point was made (very firmly) that it is not just the military that relies on space-related data, products and services (DPS) but also much of civilian life as we know it. The precision, navigation and timing (the timing, in particular) that is derived from space-based global navigation systems (principally GPS and Galileo, but also the Russian system GLONASS) is of vital importance to our power supply, banking systems and logistics chains (to name but three). Although not space-related, we have recently had just a small taste of what can happen when logistics chains suffer even minor disruption.

​While some might view the preceding paragraph as a lot of gratuitous name-dropping (they may well be right), it also serves to make the point of how seriously the subject of space-resiliency is viewed by NATO. Space-related DPS represents a critical capability (or collection of capabilities) for our societies; and our enemies and potential adversaries know it. Because of this, these capabilities are also critical vulnerabilities to be defended and protected. The fact that, for our near-peer adversaries at least, space-related DPS is just as important to the way they do business is, perhaps, a small grain of comfort and means, one would hope, that ‘war in space’ (satellites being destroyed etc) is the least likely scenario. The resulting debris from satellite destructions (either accidental or deliberate) creates long-term orbital chaos for all space users.

Much of our communications network and much of our entertainment (think satellite TV) is enabled and provided via space. Using satellite TV as an example, how many of us have suffered ‘temporary loss of signal’ as a thunderstorm and its associated cumulonimbus (CB) cloud moves through our local area? And if a space-based system can be disrupted (however temporarily) by a thunderstorm, have we ever wondered how easy it might be for someone with hostile intent to deny, disrupt or destroy space-based systems? Starting from first principles, and steadily building on the mathematics of the electromagnetic spectrum and orbital mechanics, this is exactly what David Adamy’s EW 105: Space Electronic Warfare sets out to do.

With chapters on spherical trigonometry; orbital mechanics; radio propagation in space; satellite links (and how vulnerable they might be to jamming) along with the interception and jamming of ground targets from space, Adamy’s book – the fifth in the series of EW books published by Artech House – is nothing if not comprehensive.

The book is (not surprisingly) heavily weighted towards mathematics and the equations that govern the subjects mentioned above. However, the mathematics is introduced and built on incrementally so that even those whose maths is a bit rusty (and I count myself among them) can, with a bit of judicious re-reading and head scratching, understand the concepts.

In terms of the power required and the vicinity to ground stations that successful sustained jamming would require, I found it quite comforting to discover that disrupting satellite links is not quite as easy as we might imagine. Going back to the satellite TV and thunderstorm example in paragraph 3, the energy contained in a single CB cloud is (according to the Met Office) roughly equivalent to ten times what was released by the Hiroshima atom bomb and it is not until the CB is almost directly overhead that Sky Sports cricket goes off the air in the Hargrave household. Outside of the natural phenomena of a thunderstorm, the deliberate jamming of satellite links is a major undertaking and not something that can easily be done from a back bedroom. This book is essential reading and a useful reference for all those who have an interest in this subject – Space EW (not cricket).

Bruce Hargrave
Air and Space Power Educational Consultant