Still, Round 1 in Fallujah left questions about use of airpower in urban operations. “There were a lot of enemy that died there,” he said. Myers, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said AC-130 gunships and fixed-wing aircraft went on attacking targets. Rumsfeld said marines were “systematically moving through the city, looking for targets that are identified, that they have photographs of,” and that “they know who they want and what they want and why they want that person.”Įven after coalition ground forces pulled back, air operations continued. The key to the strategy lay in isolating insurgent leaders and strong points inside the city. This was no pitched battle of army on army. This abortive April foray demonstrated an emerging set of goals for operations against insurgents in the urban environment. Iraqi forces were formed into the Fallujah Brigade, which was to take control of the city while the marines remained outside. They were responding to political pressure brought to bear by Iraq’s interim governing council and to the problem of deaths of Fallujan civilians. Joshua Jamison, who was among the first to go in, told the North County (Calif.) Times.Īfter a few days, however, US Central Command commanders halted the operation. “I never thought I’d be calling for mortars and air strikes and all that,” Marine Corps 2nd Lt. Air Force AC-130 gunships targeted specific sites, and marines called in precision air strikes against buildings harboring terrorists or Sunni insurgents. The marines surrounded the city, and then teams made forays into it in an attempt to locate those responsible for the slayings and draw out other insurgents.įrom the start, the hunt for the ringleaders featured airpower. Operation Vigilant Resolve featured 1,300 marines from I MEF, along with some Iraqi participants. In US Central Command’s judgment, the killings demanded a response.įallujah was located in the easternmost region of the Marine Corps sector of Iraq, and thus responsibility for taking action fell to the I Marine Expeditionary Force commander, Lt. Later that same day, five soldiers were killed by a roadside blast a few miles north of the city. On that day, Iraqi gunmen ambushed and killed four American contract workers, whose bodies were subsequently burned, mutilated, dragged through the streets, and hanged from a bridge. It was not until March 31, 2004, however, that Fallujah became notorious as the focal point of the insurgency. In Fallujah, the “insurgency” comprised not only hard-line Baathists but also foreign jihadists such as the Jordanian-born terrorist leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Army planning put Phase IV, Stability Operations, right after Phase III, Decisive Combat Operations. Stability operations joined offensive operations, defensive operations, and support operations as major parts of combined-arms doctrine. Operations in Panama and Bosnia convinced the Army that contending with conflict after a regime change would be an important part of future military missions. It was derived from an Army doctrine change in the mid-1990s. The term “stability operations” was relatively new when Iraqi Freedom began on March 20, 2003. When President Bush declared that the major combat operations phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom was at an end on May 1, 2003, he was announcing the start of one of the most difficult and uncertain transitions in warfare: the switch from battle to stability operations. Together, these factors took urban operations to a new and higher level. In fact, the November 2004 sweep of the Iraqi town of Fallujah has become the benchmark for airpower in urban joint force warfare.įallujah marked the unveiling of an urban-warfare model based on persistent air surveillance, precision air strikes, and swift airlift support. Yet behind the scenes, coalition air forces have been deeply involved in urban “stability” operations. With more than 150,000 US soldiers and marines on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, the public focus understandably has been on land war.
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