![]() With the expectation that the fight against violent extremists will continue for a generation, the United States continues to rely heavily on airpower to provide an asymmetric advantage. While the Department of Defense highlighted the many mistakes that led up to this tragic result, the lack of airpower is addressed only in the context of what those forces had available, not what they could have had. Tragically, a similar scenario resulted in the loss of four American soldiers, killed in Niger in 2017. Now the troops are in a fight for their lives, without air cover, against a numerically superior force. Unfortunately, their adversaries have their own agenda and opportunities, and this routine patrol escalates to combat operations in the blink of an eye. This is hardly unusual - these missions are replicated globally thousands of times a year, in furtherance of building international partnership capacity to counter violent extremist organizations. Consider another day under the hot sun as a four-man team in some distant land goes out on patrol on an “advise and assist” mission.
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