Ability and limits

President Obama’s war against the Islamic State will represent, by a rough count, the eighth time the U.S. air-power lobby has promised to crush a foe without setting boot or foot on the ground. Yet from World War II to Yemen, the record is clear: such promises have invariably been proven empty and worthless. Most recently, the drone campaign against the Yemeni jihadists has functioned mainly as an effective recruiting tool for the other side, now rapidly growing in strength (and pledging loyalty to the Islamic State).

The men were part of a team of U.S. and Afghan soldiers assigned to “disrupt insurgent activity and improve security for local polling stations” in advance of the Afghan presidential runoff elections. Throughout the day, as they moved through the valley and searched farm compounds, they were intermittently sniped at without effect. By 7:00 p.m., the men moved to their helicopter pick-up points. Twelve thousand feet above, a B-1 with a load of satellite-guided bombs was flying five-mile circles: if the team encountered any difficulty, it was ready to provide support.

At about ten minutes before eight, in the gathering dusk, one or two people began shooting at them. The Special Forces soldier assigned to coordinate air support, a so-called Joint Terminal Attack Controller (JTAC), contacted the B-1 and reported the skirmish. Meanwhile, six members of the team climbed to a nearby ridgeline to outflank the enemy and began returning fire. Just over twenty minutes later, two 500-pound JDAM bombs launched from the B-1 landed in the midst of the little group. Five of the men were killed instantly, their bodies ripped apart by the blasts. The sixth died from his wounds shortly afterwards.

This disaster occurred just as the fight in Congress over the plan to discard the A-10 was peaking, so the Air Force was bound to handle the mandatory investigation with the most delicate sensitivity. Just to make sure that the enquiry did not yield any unhelpful conclusions, it was assigned to a senior Air Force officer, Major General Jeffrey L. Harrigian. His report, largely declassified and released on September 4, did not disappoint, neatly apportioning blame among all involved—the B-1 crew, the JTAC, and the ground-force commander—for displaying “poor situational awareness” and “improper target identification.” With everyone blamed, the predictable consequence was that no one need take responsibility.

Yet a close examination of Harrigian’s report reveals that these young men (the oldest was 28, the youngest 19) died because the Air Force insisted on entrusting their safety to a weapon system and crew unsuited for the task, yet cherished by the generals for their own peculiar ideological and political reasons. Most importantly: no one had bothered to inform the B-1 crew that their means for distinguishing friendly troops from enemies did not and could not work.

Matters got worse when the B-1’s weapons officer, who sits in a metal box with no view of the outside world whatsoever, attempted to load the target location information into the computer. The effort failed and the bombs did not drop. The pilot brought the plane around for a second pass, and again the system failed. The weapons officer now laboriously reprogrammed the computer to “bomb on target,” which meant that he would manually aim the bombs by clicking the cursor on a video screen. This attempt failed as well. Finally, twenty-one minutes after the effort had begun, two bombs dropped, heading unerringly toward their unwitting victims.

Four minutes after the explosion, the JTAC on the ground called anxiously to the B-1. “That grid [target location] you passed me did not have any IR strobes at it, is that correct?”

“Affirm,” replied one of the pilots.

“And your sensor can pick up IR strobes?”

“Affirm.”

When other members of the team reached the ridgeline, they found one badly wounded man who murmured, “I can’t breathe,” and then died. The dismembered corpses of the others were littered over a wide area. All that could be located of one soldier, a 22-year-old corporal, was a small portion of a leg.

Apart from shipping the bodies home and commissioning an enquiry, the most immediate response from the Air Force was to take a New York Times reporter for a joyride on a B-1. Helene Cooper duly turned in an upbeat dispatch, noting that the “cockpit of a B-1 bomber in the middle of a fight—even a practice one—is a thing to behold.” She described the “expansive” view from the pilot’s seat as “nothing but sky.” Civilians in targeted areas of Iraq and Syria, not to mention any U.S. personnel assigned to guide the bombing, must wish the pilots, and the Washington officials who send them, had an equally expansive view of the ground.