Make no mistake; COIN is not an aerial campaign. Air supports COIN by being the combat multiplier when a small team makes contact with nasty bad guys. Period. The extra bombs would not drop without the calls for air. No aerial campaign is “classic COIN.”

The above being said with all due love for the zoomitroids. Especially the A-10 guys and the F-15E that escorted my convoy up the Tag Ab Valley when all the SIGINT said they were set to hit us at Landokheyl. The Strike Eagle convinced them that discretion was the better part of valor that day. We were the small team that needed that combat multiplier. We were the COIN operators and he was the BFH (Big Freakin Hammer) that we would use to smash the tough nuts.

BTW, it was the zoomie’s idea to escort us. They do good things to bad people, and they give us disproportionately large cajones for our small team size.

You cannot separate the HUMINT from the BOG. People talk because they trust that you will be there. The surge brought the HUMINT and the eyes-on to drop the extra bombs that show up on some general’s spreadsheet. But that spreadsheet or the F-15E didn’t establish the relationships with the locals; the good guys on the ground in that neighborhood did.

People will not tell you anything when they doubt you’ve got their back and the night letters are delivered with ease.

HUMINT is all about the warm and fuzzy. Jets are not warm and fuzzy like grunts are.