Lieutenant Colonel Usmc Todd G Kemper

Aviation Urban Operations: Are We Training Like We Fight?: Maxwell Paper No. 33 Lieutenant Colonel Usmc Todd G Kemper

Publisher Marketing: Doctrine for joint urban operations, which include aviation urban operations, combined with revised tactics, techniques, and procedures for joint close air support, offers the combined/joint force air component commander a set of best practices for conducting counterland operations on urban terrain. In this study, Lt Col Todd Kemper, USMC, argues that aviation urban operations, particularly urban close air support, are no longer high-risk, low-probability missions left to academic discussions, but are proving to be high-risk, high-probability missions, as witnessed during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Furthermore, the author contends that urban terrain has become the preferred battlespace of US adversaries in the early twenty-first century. This environment poses unique challenges, especially to air and space warfare. The difficulty of sorting friendlies from enemy combatants, the latter intermingled with large numbers of noncombatants in very confined spaces, creates serious dilemmas for maneuver and aviation forces. Colonel Kemper believes that this mission, though well documented, has received neither the priority nor the resources necessary to ensure operational excellence and success on the modern battlefield. Thus, he not only inquires about whether we are training like we fight, but also seeks to determine what makes aviation urban operations so complicated and unique that they require stand-alone doctrine, tactics, techniques, and procedures. Colonel Kemper examines aviation urban operations during Operations Allied Force, Enduring Freedom, and Iraqi Freedom, demonstrating the use of airpower and space power as a force multiplier and enabler in the urban environment. During those operations, tactical jets, bombers, AC-130 gunships, and unmanned aerial vehicles provided precision fires as well as command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) support to the joint fight. Although each conflict is different, recent combat in Iraqi cities such as Fallujah and An Najaf indicates the enemy's willingness to drag US and coalition forces into urban warfare. In view of the possibility of collateral damage and with the world media watching, air and space forces can ill afford to get it wrong in urban fights. Colonel Kemper believes that the US Air Force, Navy, Special Operations Command, and Marine Corps should redouble their efforts from a doctrinal, organizational, training, material, leadership, personnel, and facilities perspective on the important mission area of aviation urban operations. His study concludes with recommendations for US Joint Forces Command and the military services. Contributor Bio:  Press, Air University Walter Gary Sharp Sr. serves as a senior associate deputy general counsel for intelligence at the US Department of Defense, where he advises on legal issues related to intelligence, covert action, intelligence and counterintelligence policy, intelligence oversight, information security, information sharing, security classification policy, information operations, and computer network operations. Prior to his appointment, Dr. Sharp served as an associate deputy general counsel for international affairs at the Department of Defense; the director of legal research for international, comparative, and foreign law at the Law Library of Congress; the director of global and functional affairs within the Bureau of Legislative Affairs at the State Department; and a principal information security engineer at The MITRE Corporation. A veteran with 25 years of service, Dr. Sharp retired as a decorated US Marine Corps lieutenant colonel with prior enlisted service. His military assignments include commanding officer of a field artillery battery, senior prosecutor, deputy legal counsel to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and international law adviser for the commanding general of the Unified Task Force in Somalia during Operation Restore Hope. Dr. Sharp's military decorations include the Defense Superior Service Medal, and his many awards for writing excellence and academic achievement include the Judge Advocate General's School Alumni Association Annual Professional Writing Award and an American Bar Association Award for Professional Merit. Dr. Sharp is the author of numerous articles and three books: UN Peace Operations (1995), CyberSpace and the Use of Force (1999), and Jus Paciarii (1999). He serves as an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center where he currently teaches a counterterrorism course, The Law of 24. He has also taught graduate-level seminars on United Nations peace operations and international peace and security. He lectures internationally in universities and other diverse public forums on wide-ranging topics of international law and national security law, such as international peace and security, conflict management, and peacekeeping operations.