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In this magisterial tour d'horizon of the air weapon's steady rise in effectiveness since its fledgling days, Colin Gray, a prolific strate gist of long-standing scholarly achievement and international repute, has rightly taken a long view of today's pattern of regional conflict by appraising airpower in the broader context in which its operational payoff will ultimately be registered. His careful development of airpower's “strategic narrative,” as he calls it, shows convincingly how the relative criticality of the air weapon in joint warfare is neither universal nor unchanging but rather is crucially dependent on the particular circumstances of a confrontation. More to the point, viewed situationally, airpower can be everything from single-handedly decisive to largely irrelevant to a combatant commander's needs, depending on his most pressing challenges of the moment. Because its relative import, like that of all other force elements, hinges directly on how its comparative advantages relate to a commander's most immediate here-and-now concerns, airpower does not disappoint when it is not the main producer of desired outcomes. Indeed, the idea that airpower should be able to perform effectively in all forms of combat unaided by other force elements is both an absurd measure of its operational merit and a baseless arguing point that its most outspoken advocates, from Giulio Douhet and Billy Mitchell onward, have done their cause a major disservice by misguidedly espousing over many decades. Although the air weapon today may have been temporarily overshadowed by more land-centric forms of force employment, given the kinds of lower-intensity conflicts that the United States and its allies have been obliged to contend with in recent years, there will most assuredly be future times when new challenges yet to arise will again test America's air posture to the fullest extent of its deterrent and combat potential. Professor Gray's central theme is that airpower generates strategic effect. More specifically, he maintains, airpower is a tactical equity that operates—ideally—with strategic consequences. To him, “strategic” does not inhere in the equity's physical characteristics, such as an aircraft's range or payload, but rather in what it can do by way of producing desired results. From his perspective, a strategic effect is, first and foremost, that which enables outcome-determining results. And producing such results is quintessentially the stock in trade of American airpower as it has progressively evolved since Vietnam. Airpower for Strategic Effect offers an uncommonly thoughtful application of informed intellect to an explanation of how modern air warfare capabilities should be understood. Along the way, it puts forward a roster of observations about the air weapon that warrant careful reflection by all who would presume to find it wanting. Among the most notable of those observations are that context rules in every case and that whether airpower should be regarded as supported by or supporting of other force elements is not a question that can ever have a single answer for all time. Rather, as noted above, the answer will hinge invariably on the unique conditions of any given conflict.
In the pantheon of air power spokesmen, Giulio Douhet holds center stage. His writings, more often cited than perhaps actually read, appear as excerpts and aphorisms in the writings of numerous other air power spokesmen, advocates-and critics. Though a highly controversial figure, the very controversy that surrounds him offers to us a testimonial of the value and depth of his work, and the need for airmen today to become familiar with his thought. The progressive development of air power to the point where, today, it is more correct to refer to aerospace power has not outdated the notions of Douhet in the slightest In fact, in many ways, the kinds of technological capabilities that we enjoy as a global air power provider attest to the breadth of his vision. Douhet, together with Hugh “Boom” Trenchard of Great Britain and William “Billy” Mitchell of the United States, is justly recognized as one of the three great spokesmen of the early air power era. This reprint is offered in the spirit of continuing the dialogue that Douhet himself so perceptively began with the first edition of this book, published in 1921. Readers may well find much that they disagree with in this book, but also much that is of enduring value. The vital necessity of Douhet’s central vision-that command of the air is all important in modern warfare-has been proven throughout the history of wars in this century, from the fighting over the Somme to the air war over Kuwait and Iraq.
This second edition of Military Strategy, Joint Operations, and Airpower introduces contemporary strategy at the operational level of war. Developed as foundational reading for all US Air Force Academy cadets, this textbook is designed to close the gap between military theory and practice.
From Iraq to Bosnia to North Korea, the first question in American foreign policy debates is increasingly: Can air power alone do the job? Robert A. Pape provides a systematic answer. Analyzing the results of over thirty air campaigns, including a detailed reconstruction of the Gulf War, he argues that the key to success is attacking the enemy's military strategy, not its economy, people, or leaders. Coercive air power can succeed, but not as cheaply as air enthusiasts would like to believe.Pape examines the air raids on Germany, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq as well as those of Israel versus Egypt, providing details of bombing and governmental decision making. His detailed narratives of the strategic effectiveness of bombing range from the classical cases of World War II to an extraordinary reconstruction of airpower use in the Gulf War, based on recently declassified documents. In this now-classic work of the theory and practice of airpower and its political effects, Robert A. Pape helps military strategists and policy makers judge the purpose of various air strategies, and helps general readers understand the policy debates.
Airpower is not widely understood. Even though it has come to play an increasingly important role in both peace and war, the basic concepts that define and govern airpower remain obscure to many people, even to professional military officers. This fact is largely due to fundamental differences of opinion as to whether or not the aircraft has altered the strategies of war or merely its tactics. If the former, then one can see airpower as a revolutionary leap along the continuum of war; but if the latter, then airpower is simply another weapon that joins the arsenal along with the rifle, machine gun, tank, submarine, and radio. This book implicitly assumes that airpower has brought about a revolution in war. It has altered virtually all aspects of war: how it is fought, by whom, against whom, and with what weapons. Flowing from those factors have been changes in training, organization, administration, command and control, and doctrine. War has been fundamentally transformed by the advent of the airplane.
This collection of essays reflects the proceedings of a 1991 conference on "The United States Air Force: Aerospace Challenges and Missions in the 1990s," sponsored by the USAF and Tufts University. The 20 contributors comment on the pivotal role of airpower in the war with Iraq and address issues and choices facing the USAF, such as the factors that are reshaping strategies and missions, the future role and structure of airpower as an element of US power projection, and the aerospace industry's views on what the Air Force of the future will set as its acquisition priorities and strategies. The authors agree that aerospace forces will be an essential and formidable tool in US security policies into the next century. The contributors include academics, high-level military leaders, government officials, journalists, and top executives from aerospace and defense contractors.
The U.S. has long suffered from a serious strategy deficit. In short, there is a general crisis of strategic comprehension, a lack of agreement on the most effective organizing ideas. Airpower is by no means lonely in suffering from strategic theoretical uncertainty. The study argues that the United States needs a theory of war and warfare. It claims that future warfare will be diverse and that the tactical, operational, and strategic value of airpower must always be situational. A coherent theory of employment for all of airpower's capabilities, not only the kinetic, is needed. Airpower's potential utility lies within a spectrum of possibilities and is dependent on context. The study advises frank recognition of airpower's situational limitations. (Dr. Colin S. Gray is Professor of International Politics and Strategic Studies at the University of Reading in England. Originally published by the Airpower Research Institute)
Tracing the use of air power in World War II and the Korean War, Mark Clodfelter explains how U. S. Air Force doctrine evolved through the American experience in these conventional wars only to be thwarted in the context of a limited guerrilla struggle in Vietnam. Although a faith in bombing's sheer destructive power led air commanders to believe that extensive air assaults could win the war at any time, the Vietnam experience instead showed how even intense aerial attacks may not achieve military or political objectives in a limited war. Based on findings from previously classified documents in presidential libraries and air force archives as well as on interviews with civilian and military decision makers, The Limits of Air Power argues that reliance on air campaigns as a primary instrument of warfare could not have produced lasting victory in Vietnam. This Bison Books edition includes a new chapter that provides a framework for evaluating air power effectiveness in future conflicts.
Airpower in the War against ISIS chronicles the planning and conduct of Operation Inherent Resolve by U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) from August 2014 to mid-2018, with a principal focus on the contributions of U.S. Air Forces Central Command (AFCENT). Benjamin S. Lambeth contends that the war's costly and excessive duration resulted from CENTCOM's inaccurate assessment of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), determining it was simply a resurrected Iraqi insurgency rather than recognizing it as the emerging proto-state that it actually was. This erroneous decision, Lambeth argues, saw the application of an inappropriate counterinsurgency strategy and use of rules of engagement that imposed needless restrictions on the most effective use of the precision air assets at CENTCOM's disposal. The author, through expert analysis of recent history, forcefully argues that CENTCOM erred badly by not using its ample air assets at the outset not merely for supporting Iraq's initially noncombat-ready ground troops but also in an independent and uncompromising strategic interdiction campaign against ISIS's most vital center-of-gravity targets in Syria from the effort's first moments onward.