Volume 3 No 4 - Air Power Studies

Foreword
The Royal Air Force Strategic Plan, launched by the Chief of the Air Staff earlier this year, tasked the Director of Defence Studies (RAF)
with, amongst other things, ‘leading in the development of air power doctrine within the military and academic communities’. With air
power increasingly taking centre stage in modern conflict, it is essential that our doctrine is up to date, relevant and understood by all
our people; it is also vital that it is situated within the joint and multinational arena. Yet doctrine inevitably means different things to
different people. In the first article, therefore, I have sought to explain the nature of doctrine and examine the methodology used in the
UK to produce joint doctrine. I then look at the unique features of air power in contemporary warfare before suggesting a more radical
critique of how the doctrinal process may be seen to work.
One doctrinal lesson that can be drawn from any conflict is that we ignore or under-resource Sustainability at our peril. In the second
article, the last in a trilogy of pieces commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, Air Commodore Peter Dye graphically
illustrates the part played by logistics in the Battle of Britain and how it shaped the outcome. He contends that the Battle was
essentially an attritional struggle that tested the logistic systems of the RAF and the Luftwaffe as much as it tested their aircrew, aircraft
and tactics. Production, storage, repair and salvage may not be as glamorous in the public eye as the heroism shown by ‘the Few’,
but they were just as important.
The third article has been contributed by the eminent aviation historian Dr Alfred Price. His subject is the Junkers Ju 87 Stuka, the
legendary German dive-bomber famous for its gull-winged profile and screaming siren. The Stuka has come to epitomise the
operational doctrine of Blitzkrieg employed so successfully by German forces early in the Second World War. Dr Price examines the
aircraft’s service record in detail: its stunning impact in Poland and France; its limitations exposed during the Battle of Britain; its
success against shipping in the Mediterranean; its role on the Eastern Front and the countermeasures devised by the Red Army; and
finally its reinvention as a tank-buster. As one of the few aircraft types in action from the first day of the War to the last, the Stuka has
earned its place in history.
If the advocates of Information Warfare (IW) had their way, history is where weapons such as ships, tanks and aircraft would be
consigned; to them, modern warfare has become a conflict of ‘systems’. In the next article, Squadron Leader Andrew Coller
discusses the developments in both the philosophy and technology of IW and one of its major components, Electronic Warfare
(EW). He argues that control of the electromagnetic spectrum is essential for modern forces, and that the utility of conventional
weapons is being challenged by new EW systems such as Directed Energy Weapons (DEWS). He concludes that, in order to exploit
these new developments, the RAF must adopt a radically different approach to EW to produce an offensive doctrine of ‘electronic
fire’.