Insurgency is defined as an organised, prolonged political and military struggle by a non-state group to overthrow a sitting government or occupying power. Through irregular warfare and asymmetric tactics, it progressively erodes state authority. Local population support is vital to the insurgents’ efforts, as it provides shelter, funding, recruits, intelligence, and legitimacy. Without popular support, the insurgents become isolated, and the consequent vulnerability to law enforcement agencies (LEAs) renders a sustained military effort increasingly difficult. A state’s effort to defeat an insurgency is called counterinsurgency (COIN), which includes socioeconomic activities and military strategy. In the military domain, COIN protects the population, denies insurgents shelter, and targets their logistics, communications, and leadership through precise intelligence-based operations (IBOs). While attempting to situate the military prong within the overall COIN effort, the article explores the relevance of air power to COIN and its military strategy.

In an insurgency, the state and the insurgents compete at two levels: political and military. For ultimate victory, the state must win both, whereas the insurgents only need to win at either level. Most experts agree that the local population is the centre of gravity for an insurgency, where both insurgents and the state compete to win the soft sentiment. The side winning the hearts and minds of the people achieves ultimate victory. For insurgents, popular support, providing shelter, concealment, intelligence, recruits, and funding, helps survival and growth. Soft sentiment among the local population also provides the essentially required legitimacy, and a weak moral narrative leads to isolation, in turn necessitating highly undesirable coercion of the local population. For the state undertaking COIN, soft sentiment provides legitimacy and public confidence. When citizens trust state institutions for security and justice, they resist insurgents' influence. While responsive governance through aggressive socioeconomic activity dents the insurgents' narrative and recruitment, positive public support progressively improves the quality of IBOs, helping to achieve military victory. For an effective COIN effort, it is therefore essential to separate the insurgents from the local population.

The separation between the insurgents and the population has two levels: soft and hard. Soft separation occurs when the insurgents and the population are physically together, but the population is politically and psychologically independent of insurgent influence. As the state wins hearts and minds through good governance and socioeconomic activities, the population withdraws its support, refuses cooperation, and may even provide intelligence against insurgents, in essence isolating them without physical displacement. Hard separation requires physically moving the population or insurgents apart by enforcing relocation measures. While hard separation proves more effective by denying the insurgents an essential requirement, it carries very high political, social, and economic costs. Forced separation, if perceived as coercive, alienates the population, which can then be exploited by the insurgents. Given the pros and cons of both approaches, the ultimate goal for COIN should be to ensure that the population, regardless of its physical proximity to insurgents, aligns with the state.

With soft separation, the military strategy can shift from wide-ranging coercive operations to precise IBOs with minimal collateral damage based on the intelligence provided by the local population. Given community cooperation for accurate targeting, kinetic application can now be more discriminating and effective. Air power should, however, remain in indirect roles rather than coercive kinetic applications. Intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance platforms should monitor insurgent activities, identify targets, and continuously update the situational awareness of the ground forces. Transport platforms should support troop deployment, logistical sustainment, and casualty evacuation to maintain a security presence and also restore public confidence. Selective precision strikes should be employed only against confirmed high-value targets, with very high sensitivity to collateral damage. A visible but restrained application of air power should deter insurgent regrouping without frightening civilians. The key priority should be a measured, intelligence-based, controlled application that reinforces legitimacy while avoiding actions that could undermine the gains of soft separation.

With hard separation, insurgents physically isolated from the population allow air power employment to become more assertive. While maintaining focus on the indirect role, kinetic application can be increased within isolated zones. Intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets can be utilised to prevent insurgent regrouping, external support, and extrication. Kinetic operations can be employed with greater freedom, targeting insurgent leadership, training and logistic set-ups, and hideouts without any risk to the local population. Air power can be especially effective in assisting ground forces in clearance operations. The objective in this phase should be the decisive degradation of insurgents’ capabilities while consolidating territorial and psychological control.

Air power application for COIN should always be precise, restrained, and population-centric. Meticulously planned and cautiously executed IBOs, along with indirect application, offer much greater dividends than an overwhelming use of kinetic force. Carefully calibrated employment aligned with political objectives can decisively strike insurgents and establish the writ of the state.

Air Marshal Irfan Ahmad (Retd)The writer is the Director at the Centre for Aerospace and Security Studies (CASS), Lahore, Pakistan. He can be reached at info@casslhr.com

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