Air Force Counter-CBRN Ops

Via Dick Destiny, I found out that the Federation of American Scientists has pubished the Air Force's "Counter-CBRN Operations" document. I'm really not crazy about it. It's not that the doctrine is wrong - rather, it's how the Air Staff decides to take approved joint military strategy and twists the language to make it "service-specific." No one outside of the Air Force uses the terms "counter-CBRN" or "proliferation prevention."

During the Cold War, the Air Force used to use the term "counterforce" as the term for intercepting Soviet bombers and taking out Soviet missile sites. The term then was adapted into the Defense Counterproliferation Initiative, along with the term "passive defense" for NBC defense - mirroring the civil defense of the Cold War. Counterforce included special operations missions aimed at WMD production sites and storage bunkers as well as offensive air attacks.

Now - for reasons I don't know - the National Military Strategy to Combat WMD changed the term "counterforce" to "offensive operations," but I guess some in the Air Staff have trouble letting go. Same with "proliferation prevention." The Air Force has been trying to force the term "proliferation prevention" onto the other services for several years, pre-dating the NMS for CbtWMD. As far as I can tell, this is "nonproliferation" plus all steps in intelligence operations to identify and classify CBRN targets for later... interdiction. So everything the Air Force might do short of actual strikes is "preventing" proliferation.

I just don't like using the term "CBRN weapons" and especially not "counter-CBRN." The reason we started using the term CBRN was to describe how terrorist use of CBRN hazards was a much smaller and less consequential issue than a nation-state's NBC weapons. It's a mistake to use terms that suggest the two threats ought to be addressed as one issue. The Air Force, of all people, ought to retain the term NBC weapons within the context of an adversary's WMD program. That's their focus - taking the lead in counterproliferation concepts, not addressing terrorist CBRN threats with airpower.

I don't understand why the Air Force wants to use a special, unique vocabulary for an area that's supposed to be a well-defined joint capability area. In these days, we're supposed to be working together, in a joint force. The Air Force is just making it harder with this publication and these terms.