Air Force strategists redefined counterinsurgency around airpower and drones.

Evidence

A few strategists set about theorizing this silent changeover: their aim was to make military practice self-aware, whatever the cost of a major doctrinal upset. … Deploring the time lag between theory and practice, Air Force strategists began to call for the explicit adoption of a doctrine of aerial counterinsurgency. These supporters of airpower clashed head-on with the orthodox theorists of ground-centered counterinsurgency, “an outworn paradigm … too narrowly focused,” which “relegates airpower to the support role while the ground forces do the real work.” In opposition to that archaic world, it would be necessary to accept the evidence and fully come to terms with the new air-centered strategy in which drones have already become the foremost instrument. However much certain insurgents remained, as Carl Schmitt put it, essentially “telluric,” contemporary counterinsurgents had become “stratospheric.” — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 257

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in how drones transformed the space and time of modern warfare. — connects to: Counterinsurgency doctrine marginalized airpower for strategic rather than moral reasons. — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 256; Drone doctrine replaces counterinsurgency’s population politics with terror-and-eradication yield — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 286; Failed counterinsurgency forced Obama back to counterterrorism and drone warfare — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 432 (+1 more)

Related

• Counterinsurgency doctrine marginalized airpower for strategic rather than moral reasons. (similarity 0.91)
• Drone doctrine replaces counterinsurgency’s population politics with terror-and-eradication yield (similarity 0.89)
• Air Force pilots were drones’ most virulent early critics, not pacifists. (similarity 0.84)
• Failed counterinsurgency forced Obama back to counterterrorism and drone warfare (similarity 0.84)
• Drone strikes amount tactically to the state’s version of insurgent bomb attacks. (similarity 0.82)
• Counterinsurgency is politico-military while antiterrorism is policing-oriented. (similarity 0.81)
• Drones resolve the guerrilla problem by depriving insurgents of any target to attack. (similarity 0.81)
• The Afghanistan war instantly validated drones as central to future US military strategy. (similarity 0.80)
• Drone strikes constitute weapons of state terrorism (similarity 0.79)
• Modern air power paradoxically makes ground infantry resemble pre-industrial guerrilla fighters (similarity 0.79)
• Counterinsurgency expert Kilcullen called for a moratorium on drone strikes in Pakistan. (similarity 0.79)
• Armed drones reshape sovereignty over a state’s own subjects, not just enemies (similarity 0.79)
• Air Force pilots resisted drones partly because unmanning threatened their virility. (similarity 0.79)
• Drones transformed from surveillance eyes into weapons almost by chance. (similarity 0.79)
• Armed drones make killing a priori one-directional, converting combat into slaughter. (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Drone doctrine replaces counterinsurgency’s population politics with terror-and-eradication yield #expands (0.70) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 286
• Failed counterinsurgency forced Obama back to counterterrorism and drone warfare #corroborates (0.60) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 432
• Air Force pilots were drones’ most virulent early critics, not pacifists. #complicates (0.50) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 351