This book contains the proceedings of a conference held by the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) in Canberra in 1994. Since its publication by the RAAF's Air Power Studies Center in that year, the book has become a widely used reference at universities, military academies, and other educational institutions around the world. The application of aerospace power has seen significant developments since 1994, most notably through American-led operations in Central Europe and continuing technological advances with weapons, uninhabited vehicles, space-based systems, and information systems. But notwithstanding those developments and the passing of six years, the value of this anthology of airpower in the twentieth century seems undiminished.
Except in a few instances, since World War II no American soldier or sailor has been attacked by enemy air power. Conversely, no enemy soldier orsailor has acted in combat without being attacked or at least threatened by American air power. Aviators have brought the air weapon to bear against enemies while denying them the same prerogative. This is the legacy of the U.S. AirForce, purchased at great cost in both human and material resources.More often than not, aerial pioneers had to fight technological ignorance, bureaucratic opposition, public apathy, and disagreement over purpose.Every step in the evolution of air power led into new and untrodden territory, driven by humanitarian impulses; by the search for higher, faster, and farther flight; or by the conviction that the air way was the best way. Warriors have always coveted the high ground. If technology permitted them to reach it, men, women andan air force held and exploited it-from Thomas Selfridge, first among so many who gave that "last full measure of devotion"; to Women's Airforce Service Pilot Ann Baumgartner, who broke social barriers to become the first Americanwoman to pilot a jet; to Benjamin Davis, who broke racial barriers to become the first African American to command a flying group; to Chuck Yeager, a one-time non-commissioned flight officer who was the first to exceed the speed of sound; to John Levitow, who earned the Medal of Honor by throwing himself over a live flare to save his gunship crew; to John Warden, who began a revolution in air power thought and strategy that was put to spectacular use in the Gulf War.Industrialization has brought total war and air power has brought the means to overfly an enemy's defenses and attack its sources of power directly. Americans have perceived air power from the start as a more efficient means of waging war and as a symbol of the nation's commitment to technology to master challenges, minimize casualties, and defeat adversaries.
For nearly two decades the United States Air Force (USAF) oriented the bulk of its thinking, acquisition, planning, and training on the threat of a Soviet blitzkrieg across the inter German border. The Air Force fielded a powerful conventional arm well rehearsed in the tactics required to operate over a central European battlefield. Then, in a matter of days, the 1990 invasion of Kuwait altered key assumptions that had been developed over the previous decade and a half. The USAF faced a different foe employing a different military doctrine in an unexpected environment. Instead of disrupting a fast paced land offensive, the combat wings of the United States Central Command Air Forces (CENTAF) were ordered to attack a large, well fortified, and dispersed Iraqi ground force. The heart of that ground force was the Republican Guard Forces Command (RGFC). CENTAF's mission dictated the need to develop an unfamiliar repertoire of tactics and procedures to meet theater objectives. How effectively did CENTAF adjust air operations against the Republican Guard to the changing realities of combat? Answering that question is central to this study, and the answer resides in evaluation of the innovations developed by CENTAF to improve its operational and tactical performance against the Republican Guard. Effectiveness and timeliness are the primary criteria used for evaluating innovations.
An essential part of the Air War College curriculum consists of the study of military history and specific campaigns. Part 1 of this manuscript presents an attempt to clarify the relationship between air power and maneuver warfare since 1939, a subject that derives its importance from the fact that maneuver warfare has been the U.S. Army's official doctrine since the early eighties and remains so to the present day. Part 2 contains the collective wisdom of the military doctrine analysis of the Air University on the same subjects, as well as the way in which we have presented them.
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.
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.
American air power is a dominant force in today's world. Its ascendancy, evolving in the half century since the end of World War II, became evident during the first Gulf War. Although a great deal has been written about military operations in Desert Shield and Desert Storm, this deeply researched volume by Dr. Diane Putney probes the little-known story of how the Gulf War air campaign plan came to fruition. Based on archival documentation and interviews with USAF planners, this work takes the reader into the planning cells where the difficult work of building an air campaign plan was accomplished on an around-the-clock basis. The tension among air planners is palpable as Dr. Putney traces the incremental progress and friction along the way. The author places the complexities of the planning process within the con- text of coalition objectives. All the major players are here: President George H. W. Bush, General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, General Colin Powell, General Chuck Horner, and Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney. The air planning process generated much debate and friction, but resulted in great success - a 43-day conflict with minimum casualties. Dr. Putney's rendering of this behind-the-scenes evolution of the planning process, in its complexity and even suspense, provides a fascinating window into how wars are planned and fought today and what might be the implications for the future.
This is a long-overdue study of Sir Frederick H. Sykes, Chief of the Air Staff of Britain's Royal Air Force (RAF) during the First World War. Historians, for the most part, have either overlooked Sykes or misinterpreted him, leaving a gap in the story of British flying. Contrary to previous images of Sykes, we now see that he was not a secretive intriguer or a tangential subject in RAF history. Rather, he played a fundamental part in organizing and leading British aviation from 1912 to the end of 1918. He provided organization, visionary guidance and efficient administrative control for the fledgling service that tried to survive infancy in the heat of battle.
