A Tribute to Pete “Dude” Donnelly – by Lt. Col. (Ret.) Steve Call, Ph.D.

America lost a great hero.  Colonel, USAF, (Ret.) Peter “Dude” Donnelly went to Valhalla on 23 April to rejoin and meet many American heroes who preceded him.  You can read his obituary, as well as the many tributes to him, especially from those who had the honor to serve under his command, but none of them do justice to his greatest contribution.  Pete held many positions and filled many roles; many communities within the Air Force will claim him as their own – one of the greatest tributes any member of the U.S. military can ever hope to earn – but I think the TACP community has the strongest claim because that’s where he made his greatest contribution.

Pete Donnelly was my friend.  He joined us at the 20^th ASOS about a year before I retired in 2001.  While many within the Pentagon and Air Combat Command Headquarters will stoutly deny this, a telling fact of the worth the Air Force saw in him when he joined us is that, like me, he was sent to the 20^th because, and Air Force “officialdom” will deny this too, Air Support Operations Squadrons were so undervalued by the Air Force before 9/11 that they were seen as convenient “dumping grounds” for washed up officers and NCOs while they marked time until their retirement.  Thousands, nay, many thousands, will back me up on this; in fact, if anyone wants to officially challenge this assessment, well, all I can say is, “Let the food fight begin!”  There are so many glaring examples of this that the Air Force would be better to just let the matter rest.  The more that gets said the worse the Air Force looks.

So, as you read all those tributes to the many accomplishments Pete Donnelly rightfully earned, remember that he came to the 20^th as a “Passed-Over Major.”  This is military speak meaning he had been found unworthy of promotion to lieutenant colonel.

What changed the Air Force’s mind about Pete’s capabilities?  What led them to see his value?  Well, as too many in the TACP community know all too well, it came only after the Air Force’s “ground troops” – Combat Controllers, Pararescue teams, TACPs, and other specialized teams – overwhelmingly demonstrated the style of air-to-ground warfare the USAF, along with the British RAF, had developed in World War II.  Unfortunately, that capability was continually forgotten and mothballed till it was suddenly needed again in 1950, 1965, 1991, and again in 2001.  This meant that each time the capability was needed the Air Force had to essentially “reinvent the wheel.”

Pete was instrumental in not only helping to resurrect that capability, but in updating it to modern circumstances.  A few of us at the 20^th, George “Shack” Bochain, too many NCOs to even begin trying to give adequate credit to, I humbly count myself among them, but so too was Pete.  I also need to point out that we were all in constant contact with our colleagues at other ASOS units, and we all had the same gripe: “Nobody has any idea what we are capable of.”

That all changed, of course, after 9/11, when America needed a way to strike back quickly and effectively.  The quickest response was to send airplanes, but the Air Force just as quickly learned we needed “boots on the ground” to find and designate the right targets, and then direct airstrikes against them; enter the Air Force’s close air support experts.  Combat Controllers and TACPs were literally thrown into the fight, many often handed fantastic weapons and equipment we had never seen nor trained with.  Remember those pictures of the “Horse Soldiers” of 2001?  Look closely and notice how many were wearing Air Force stripes on their sleeves.  The results left the world in awe.

Many of them came from the 20^th ASOS, and Pete had helped shape them, mold them, and hone a style of warfare that soon every service in every country wanted a piece of.  Moreover, other ASOS units and Air Force Special Warfare operators were just as ready when they were sent into the fight; read the record: we couldn’t send enough, nor fast enough, so ask yourself, “How was the Air Force ready to do all that so quickly?”  Pete was part of the answer.  Though no one was paying attention, Pete and many others across the Air Force’s CAS-minded community made sure we knew what we would need to do and how to do it, and when these teams were called on and found to be ready, boy, was America grateful!

So why highlight Pete for special recognition when so many were part of making sure we were ready?  There are too many to name, some in sensitive positions, and many were my friends.  But two officers from the 20^th ASOS were thrown early into the maelstrom and in very critical positions.  One was “Shack” Bochain.  A lieutenant colonel and commander of the 20^th, he was seen as the best person to go over within weeks of 9/11 to coordinate all Air Force integration into allied ground forces’ and U.S. Army’s scheme of maneuver throughout Afghanistan.  When one Pentagon official, commenting on how effective that air-to-ground team was, asked rhetorically, “In October, who thought we’d be in Kandahar in January?”  While no one can claim full credit for that amazing accomplishment, many in the TACP community – who themselves would not ever have dreamed of it – could have explained.  And one of the key architects in making it happen was “Shack” Bochain.  Afterwards he told me, “It worked just like we knew it would!”

On the other end of the spectrum, unfortunately, was one of the most controversial parts of America’s efforts to crush al-Qaeda and its Taliban sponsors: Operation Anaconda.  Drawing forces from a wide array of allies, including Afghan militia and units from the 101^st Airborne and 10^th Mountain divisions, Anaconda became the largest battle waged during the twenty-year war in Afghanistan.  The whole operation was under the overall command of Major General Franklin L. Hagenbeck, division commander of the 10^th Mountain Division. 

As a major, Pete Donnelly was assigned to be the lead airman advising General Hagenbeck.  In an unfortunate, but all too familiar, situation, Pete faced two problems.  First, he was, in the Army’s eyes, and especially to many of the key figures in 10^th Mountain Division’s staff, not only “Air Force,” but a “washed-up” Air Force officer.  Remember, I had been basically in the same position as the squadron’s main liaison with the division staff only a few months earlier before I retired.  Therefore, I was quite familiar with most of those division staff individuals; I had earned some measure of respect with most of them by the time I retired, but Pete, taking my place, had not had the time to accomplish that critical feat.  

One of the perennial obstacles to achieving true air-ground cooperation – and therefore, effective employment – since the early days of the Korean War was the Army’s fundamental and deep-seated distrust of the Air Force’s commitment to providing effective close air support.  Trust had been the key to the Anglo-American version of “blitzkrieg” created in 1942-43 in North Africa and Italy. 

Trust is a very hard thing to build, especially between proud nations and service rivals, but there is no better motivation to overcome such rivalries and suspicions than starring down the barrel of not only total defeat, but subjugation to Nazi tyranny. This is what the American and British armies and air forces faced in North Africa and Italy, and it was in that dire atmosphere that trust was created, and the world’s most effective air-ground operational concept was created.  Unfortunately, after 1945, that trust quickly eroded, especially in the early months of the Korean War.

This was the challenge Pete faced.  Building that trust has always been a TACP’s greatest challenge and it had to be done on an individual basis.  When the “dire need” of 1942-43 didn’t exist it was especially hard, and by early 2002 American and Coalition military leaders were confident al-Qaeda and the Taliban were on the ropes; Anaconda was going to be the knock-out blow.  Victory seemed virtually certain, and this cock-sure attitude added even greater difficulty to Pete’s efforts to build the atmosphere of trust so essential to making our air-ground operational concept work.  The fact that he was a “passed-over” major facing much higher-ranking Army officers, most of whom saw Pete as someone even the Air Force didn’t take seriously, only made matters worse.  That toxic attitude made his an almost impossible task.  After all, under normal circumstances, who was ever going to take him seriously?  Some will feel I’m being too harsh on America’s military establishment, but if you truly want to appreciate Major Pete Donnelly’s most important contribution to America and its security in the modern world you need to face the fact that prior to Anaconda most people, outside of a few specialized communities, interpreted what we had done up to that point as merely a tactical approach.  Even worse, by the mid-point of the Global War on Terror, most military and political leaders had come to see what we brought to the fight as a strategy. 

Again, to truly appreciate how important Pete was, you have to understand the distinctions between the three levels of warfare: tactics, operations, and strategy.  Please bear with me as I explain.  The heart of what was created in the deserts of North Africa and what worked so well after 9/11 is a distinctive American air-ground operational concept.  The annals of military history are littered with examples of armies that took tactics to mean the same as operational doctrines and coherent concepts; even worse are the many examples of nations that mistook successful operational concepts to be strategy – this has led many regimes to grief, and unfortunately, too many of those examples come from America’s military history.

My point is that Pete was one of the very few who understood that what we had created was an operational concept, and that it must be understood as such and adapted to each unique situation at the operational level.  Moreover, the Air Force’s TACPs were the critical linchpin that made it work so well.  While Pete was fighting for the proper employment of this operational concept in Operation Anaconda most of America’s military leaders were more focused on the tactical aspects of it and building their own training regimens so they could slap “JTAC” patches on their own people and get them into what they saw as the latest “sexy” trend in warfare and the darling of media coverage and increased budget allocations.  I’m sorry because I truly do consider every man and woman who wears the uniform to be America’s heroes: like our first responders here at home: they all are part of that “thin line” between the forces of evil, both at home and abroad, and those whom we strive to protect.  But some of our military capabilities need to be understood as something that cannot and should not be dumbed down so everyone can get in on the action.

Pete understood that and fought for it in Anaconda.  Just to cite two examples, Pete put together a comprehensive plan of carefully chosen and accurately targeted known enemy strongholds before the infantry moved in.  This is one of the most basic fundamentals of successful air-ground warfare; Hagenbeck refused to allow it.  He sought the element of surprise and believed such strikes would warn the enemy we were coming.  Ahem, well, the enemy held the high ground and we were massing thousands of troops in the valley below – how he thought the enemy wouldn’t see that and suspect what was coming is a mystery many are still trying to comprehend.  And then there was the fact that thousands of those troops were Afghan militia, many of whom had men with family and clan connections to the very enemy we thought we could surprise – do you think they might have spread the word?

The other example was a product of a brand-new “wonder weapon”: the drone.  In my last few years in the Air Force I participated in many joint war games, and of course I worked closely with 10^th Mountain Division’s staff; I early on got the impression that the Army was so fixated on drones, in part, because they thought drones would give them all the benefits of American air power without that pesky and untrustworthy Air Force.  There were a number of instances where Pete was trying to wage an effective air-ground campaign only to be interrupted by some senior 10^th Mountain staffer who “saw something suspicious” in a drone’s camera feed; they wanted close air support sorties diverted from “troops in contact” situations to have that “something suspicious” struck.  In one observer’s words, that drone feed had so mesmerized the Army high command that some started referring to the phenomenon as “Predator crack” – references to the most common drone at the time and the highly addictive narcotic.

This all might have gone down as a footnote in history, but for what many saw as Hagenbeck trying to shift blame for the debacle that Anaconda represented onto the Army’s favorite scapegoat: the Air Force.  And because Pete was at the center of the Air Force’s efforts, much of the blame focused on him in the eyes of Hagenbeck’s early supporters.  This ended up as Pete’s finest hour.  Forced to defend himself, he laid out in great detail how he had put together and tried to implement a textbook example of the operational art of effective air-ground warfare.  Others in the CAS community soon joined Pete, and the Army soon found it hard to sustain Hagenbeck’s accusations. 

Okay, so is this just another example of an interservice spat with both sides pointing blame at each other?  Hardly.  By understanding the uniqueness of the air-ground campaign in Afghanistan as a highly effective operational concept, Pete designed his plans accordingly.  When Hagenbeck’s accusations were exposed as Army interference with Pete trying to employ this operational concept for tactical (and some, highly questionable) reasons, it focused more attention on the fact that that effective employment of air and ground forces was based on much, much more than just tactics.  This helped many to see it as a concept highly effective only if employed at the operational level. 

The importance of this distinction can be seen in one critical example.  In the early days of planning for the invasion of Iraq, the Army’s 3^rd Infantry Division was designated to be the head of the Army’s part in the overall invasion scheme – the tip of the spear.  Supporting 3^rd ID was the 15^th ASOS, commanded by another candidate for the TACP Hall of Honor, (then) Lieutenant Colonel Byron Risner.  The early planning was being conducted under the cloud of Hagenbeck’s accusations, and Risner found himself facing great hostility from the 3^rd ID’s staff and key commanders.  Risner, who would be expected to employ effective air power to support that division, needed to build trust between those soldiers and his TACPs.  He did so by explaining to 3^rd ID’s leaders and key staffers just how important it was to employ air-ground warfare as an operational concept, and that Hagenbeck’s interference with Pete’s efforts to do just that for tactical reasons brought many of Hagenbeck’s problems on himself.

 One of my last conversations with Pete came several years after that debacle while he was working at ACC headquarters.  I was calling him to get his thoughts on an operational air power piece I was working on.  I’ll never forget his enthusiastic response, “Ah, operational air power – my favorite subject!”

We lost one of our best.  “The world will little note nor long remember” Pete’s contributions, but no TACP should ever forget.  We must never forget. 

Steve Call, Lt. Col. (Ret.) USAF, Ph.D.  E-mail: sccall321@gmail.com 

Active Duty: 1981-2001, B-52 Pilot and ALO, wrote Danger Close: Air Force Tactical Air Controllers in Afghanistan and Iraq, and is currently active in writing articles and speaking in various forums all focused on TACP history.  He hopes to get another book on TACP history and heritage published soon.