The comments by Senator Linday Graham on CNN video, to the effect that air power without U.S. ground troops cannot defeat ISIS, may be true. But since the media, in their typical muddled fashion, have provided little useful info on how modern air power works, this is just to get you started.

The terms “strategic bombing”, and “tactical bombing”, have been part of the historical lexicon for many years now, so it’s pretty well understood that strategic bombing is a nuclear activity, while tactical bombing involves airplanes flying low, and tipping their bombs into small areas.

But this isn’t correct. The above  image of tactical bombing comes straight from the Vietnam War, when gravity bombs, unguided after release, were dropped by aligning the flight path of the airplane with optical sights, not unlike gun sights, with respect to targets that the pilot could actually see.  This old image of tactical bombing also includes detailed aerial reconnaissance, visual examination of maps, and correlation with other intelligence information, now modernized with  GPS coordinates. But this is not “real time.” We see the target; it moves; we bomb; it wasn’t there. The BBC article, “Why UK warplanes have a ‘difficult’ Iraq mission”, continues in some detail with this, and alludes to the newer, “smart bomb” model that has completely revolutionized tactical bombing since the 1991 Gulf War.

 The power of the new smart weaponry was comprehensively demonstrated when a motley alliance of pro-Western elements defeated the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001. The pro-Western elements were arguably more competent than the Shiites of southern Iraq, but not so compared to the Kurds, whose Afghan analogy was the  Northern Alliance.

Gary C. Schroen’s book, First In, provides an invaluable picture of how that air war was conducted, which will serve you well to interpret future events of the current conflict. You’ll understand that

• The “bomb truck”, which, when extreme intensity is required, may be a B-52, can fly so high, the bombardier can’t see the target, and the target can’t see the plane.
• The accuracy of these weapons is stunning, but requires “target designation.”
• Some of the best weapons to support a firefight require real time target designation by a laser beam.
• Target designation, in real time or otherwise, is provided by a United States Air Force Tactical Air Control Party, a group of specialists possessed of advanced and prolonged training in a highly technical field, where a single slip can destroy a platoon. It is not feasible to train indigenous troops in the entire scope of competence of this specialty. If you’d like to train, go here: 6th Combat Training Squadron (Nellis AFB).
  

Unless or until these teams are in place, or indigenous elements acquire the rudiments, the tactical air actions reported in the media will have the elements of “throwbacks” of military technology. This is why the casual observer may have the impression of futility. Given the caliber of Iraqi troops, this may be so, but neither have we seen a full deployment of U.S. air power.

In Vietnam, ARVN, the army of South Vietnam, sold ammunition to the North Vietnamese. This activity has been supported in Iraq also. Full deployment of U.S. ground air controllers requires conditions on the ground that ensure that these specialists won’t be sold to the highest bidder.

Now you, the open source intelligence analyst, can use reports of highly successful airstrikes, bearing the fingerprints of precision guided munitions, to infer a political map of U.S. alliances (or the absence thereof) on the ground.