{"id":6221,"date":"2015-06-25T07:00:42","date_gmt":"2015-06-25T12:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hcstx.org\/?p=6221"},"modified":"2015-06-25T07:00:42","modified_gmt":"2015-06-25T12:00:42","slug":"historic-parallels-you-can-never-dominate-from-the-air-alone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/2015\/06\/25\/historic-parallels-you-can-never-dominate-from-the-air-alone\/","title":{"rendered":"Military History Parallels: You Can Never Dominate from the Air Alone"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\"16908600218_f748f6ecdb_b\"<\/a><\/h1>\n

Doomed: Saudi Arabia Will Fail in Yemen<\/h1>\n

By\u00a0Asher Orkaby<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

As the warring Yemeni parties gather for preliminary peace talks in Geneva, Saudi Arabia continues its unrelenting bombing campaign against the tribes of the Houthi movement. For two and a half months, the air forces of the Saudi coalition have targeted military sites, homes and businesses affiliated with the Houthi movement, as well as the palaces and residences of former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh and his political allies. Yet, as the Houthis sit down at the negotiating table<\/u><\/a> this week, their domestic political and strategic position has not been greatly affected by this extensive bombing. Saudi Arabia\u2019s futile air campaign is a further demonstration of the limits of airpower in general, and in South Arabia specifically.<\/p>\n

Saudi Arabia did not pioneer the use of airpower to exercise regional power, which originated with the British imperial policy of \u201cair control\u201d in post-WWI Iraq. Winston Churchill, the postwar Secretary of War and Secretary of State for Air championed the use of air force<\/u><\/a> to maintain British control over Iraq while expending the least amount of military force on the ground. Inaccurate intelligence, inadequate navigation equipment and pilot errors led many bombs astray, often hitting the wrong target and with little distinction<\/u><\/a> between civilians and militants. Attacks and patrols by the British Royal Air Force were guided by sparse local intelligence networks and were intended more for the psychological impact of unfamiliar aerial bombardment rather than the ability to achieve a military objective.<\/p>\n

This model of British imperial power and control was used in other colonial arenas, including South Yemen, then the British Aden Protectorate. A decade of British aerial patrols and attacks during the 1960s failed to stem the tide of a Yemeni nationalist movement that supplanted British colonial rule in South Yemen. The success of Britain\u2019s air control in Arabia was limited by two main factors. The mountainous terrain of Yemen provided the guerilla opposition with an impervious natural cover from bombs within a cave system that pockmarks the landscape. International media was stacked against the remnants of the British Empire and bombs that found civilian targets were met with a great deal of negative press.<\/p>\n

Read the Remainder at National Interest<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Stay Informed, Stay Alert, Stay Armed and Stay Dangerous!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Doomed: Saudi Arabia Will Fail in Yemen By\u00a0Asher Orkaby   As the warring Yemeni parties gather for preliminary peace talks in Geneva, Saudi Arabia continues its unrelenting bombing campaign against the tribes of the Houthi movement. For two and a half months, the air forces of the Saudi coalition have targeted military sites, homes and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[74,1286,1489],"tags":[1614,1615,1616,1284,1617,1618,1619,1620,1621,1622,1623],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6221"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6221\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}