Author: Peter Bernard Layton
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780642188397
Category : Air power
Languages : en
Pages : 25
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Book Description
The end of the Cold War requires that strategic air operation concepts be re-examined, and improved doctrines be developed to guide the future application of strategic air power. These new doctrines must be appropriate to the changed international cirumstances, but should be based upon the current theories, and the recent operational experience, of strategic air operations. An evolutionary rather than revolutionary process is needed to determine the strategic application of air power in the new world order.
Author: General Giulio Douhet
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
ISBN: 1782898522
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 327
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Book Description
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progressive development of air power to the point where, today, it is more correct to refer to aerospace power has not outdated the notions of Douhet in the slightest In fact, in many ways, the kinds of technological capabilities that we enjoy as a global air power provider attest to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.
Author: Robert A. Pape
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801471508
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 547
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Book Description
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.
Author: Robert L. Pfaltzgraff
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
ISBN: 1428992812
Category : Air power
Languages : en
Pages : 387
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Book Description
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.
Author: Colin S. Gray
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 130005185X
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 52
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Book Description
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)
Author: Harry R. Yarger
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
ISBN: 1428916229
Category : Military doctrine
Languages : en
Pages : 93
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Book Description
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
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.
Author: Mark Clodfelter
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803264540
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 338
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Book Description
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.
Author: John Andreas Olsen
Publisher: Potomac Books, Inc.
ISBN: 1597973238
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 603
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Book Description
Dr. John Andreas Olsen has written an insightful, compelling biography of retired U.S. Air Force colonel John A. Warden III, the brilliant but controversial air warfare theorist and architect of Operation Desert Storm s air campaign. Warden s radical ideas about air power s purposes and applications, promulgated at the expense of his own career, sparked the ongoing revolution in military affairs. Legendary in defense circles, Warden is also the author of "The Air Campaign: Planning for Combat" (republished by Brassey s, Inc. in 1989). Presenting both the positives and negatives of Warden s personality and impact in this objective portrait, Olsen offers a trenchant analysis of his revolutionary ideas and great accomplishments. "
Author: Colin S. Gray
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781463790998
Category : Air power
Languages : en
Pages : 39
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Book Description
The United States has long suffered from a serious strategy deficit. For so long as Americans short change the strategic function, the leverage of US airpower must be much less than its potential. The study argues strongly for the rigorous application of strategic discipline to all airpower activity, not only the kinetic. Even today, more than 100 years into the air age, many people are inappropriately committed to the view that either landpower or airpower must be the dominant force in warfare. In fact, extensive historical experience demonstrates that the relative utility of airpower is powerfully situational. Futurology is a necessary art, not science, but its record of prescience is poor. With respect to science and technology and to politics, our ability to see into the future is completely unreliable. Technical innovation lies at the heart of the case for privileging airpower in the American way of war, but such innovation comprises only one of warfare's seven vital contexts. The sheer complexity of war and warfare renders prediction, technological and other, a high-risk activity. The contexts of war and warfare are (1) political, (2) societal-cultural, (3) economic, (4) technological, (5) military-strategic, (6) geographical, and (7) historical. The major purpose of the study is to contribute to some reduction in America's strategy deficit. A common and serious error is the belief that airpower theory is uniquely immature and contested. Currently, it so happens, literally every dimension of US military power is fraught with conceptual uncertainty. Specifically, landpower knows it is challenged by a transforming airpower; seapower is suffering from a conceptual and strategic crisis as it strives, in part, to reinvent itself for a world wherein it faces no first-class naval enemies, but in which it will have to devise effective answers to anti-access tactics by littoral states; spacepower and cyberwar are utterly bereft of strategic theory tailored for their realms of behavior; and nuclear weapons are almost in conceptual limbo, challenged by the radical improvements in precision conventional weapons. Airpower is in no better or worse condition than the others. 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. Looking to the future, it would be an error to assume that the United States will enjoy the benefits of air dominance as of right. Capable enemies who have studied the US style in warfare would be hugely motivated to reduce the American airpower advantage. Such a reduction might be achieved not only by air defense but also by contesting the uses of space or cyberspace. Near exclusive focus upon the contributions airpower can make to warfare is a mistake. Airpower will generate strategic effect in time of peace and crisis also. We should not forget the continuing relevance of the concept and attempted practice of deterrence. The study advises frank recognition of airpower's situational limitations. Those limitations are less than they used to be, but some remain simply as a consequence of the physical realities of flight with reference to a conflict that must relate, ultimately, to decisions and behavior on land. It is necessary to acknowledge and exploit the technological, tactical, and operational fact that the balance of relative influence, at least in regular warfare, has shifted very noticeably in favor of airpower.
