![]() After years of deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, de-emphasizing close air support is warranted to reallocate some of its finite resources to strengthen other competencies. The Navy has an incentive to adjust its training priorities. Training should also include anti-radiation missile and stand-off weapon employment and deconfliction, anti-jam waveforms, and digital close air support system utilization. military is prepared for any contingency, relevant close air support training should incorporate contemporary threats, enemy electronic surveillance counter-targeting capability, and effective command and control to practice allocating platforms and weapons. The Navy should provide resources for an integrated training venue for close air support within its Strike Fighter Advanced Readiness Program or the Carrier Air Wing Integrated Training Program Air Wing Fallon exercise. The risk is that leadership will face an unexpected crisis that demands close integration between air and ground forces, and that the captured lessons of close air support will have atrophied. Navy leadership should be wary about deprioritizing close air support. However, our observations indicate that integration between air and ground forces is in a state of decline. ![]() ![]() While the Navy can claim they are training for the mission, a more accurate barometer for the health of the close air support competency is the opportunities for integrated training with ground forces. Like the Air Force, the Navy is reprioritizing and focusing on missions other than close air support. Naval aviation has turned its focus to the Indo-Pacific theater and could undermine hard-earned competencies in ground force integration. These challenges underscored the faults in prevailing assumptions regarding the nature of warfare, equipment, and the level of training required for air-ground integration.Īfter the end of the U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the risk is that the United States military will make the same choices and critical skills learned in the last two decades will atrophy. However, lessons in the requirements for interoperable communications, unified command and control, and the need for integrated training identified from the Pacific campaigns of World War II were relearned. Close air support proved instrumental in breaking the assault and helped forces to reclaim territory from a determined enemy. Caught flat-footed and on the defensive, the United States and its allies were nearly pushed off the Korean peninsula in 1950. Instead, the service chiefs prioritized air superiority, strategic bombing, and sea control. With post-World War military budgets constricting, airpower services made choices about where to allocate increasingly scarce resources, and deprioritized close air support. During the Korean War, the atrophy of close air support skills following World War II undermined the war effort.
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