The Quest for Relevant Air Power

GERMAN Air Force │ 189
is in general not studied. 244 This omission was confirmed by an
RAF officer attending the national general staff course at the FüAk
in the first half of the 1990s. Nevertheless, this RAF officer argued
that the great advantage of the FüAk was that original, even maverick,
thought was not obstructed. For instance, he was free to
choose his own air power subject for study in-depth—in his case
the “fallacy of the strategic air campaign,” for which he received
the Clausewitz Medal. 245 In the course from September 2006 to
September 2008, a week’s seminar on air campaigns was introduced.
Students primarily studied six case studies—ranging from
the Cuban missile crisis, the Vietnam War, the Soviet-Afghan
War, and the Falklands War to Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom.
While this seems to be an improvement, there was—in the view of
an international course participant—still no adequate treatment
of the theoretical aspects of air power. American air power theorists
such as John Warden or Robert Pape were used as a point of
reference, yet on a very superficial level. 246
Nevertheless, depending upon personalities, the FüAk curriculum
is flexible enough to allocate time for air power history and
theory. Col John Olsen, a well-known European air power theorist
from the Royal Norwegian Air Force, experienced a four-week
air power theory and history seminar series when attending the
FüAk from August 2003 to September 2005. His tutor had a keen
interest in air power doctrine, theory, and history and asked Olsen
to co-organise the seminar series. Various schools of thought
ranging from Douhet, Marshal of the RAF Hugh Trenchard, and
Mitchell to Warden and Pape were discussed, and air campaigns
were accordingly examined. Yet, Olsen added a caveat, arguing
that his course might rather represent an exception. 247 Hence, it
can be concluded that while personal attempts succeed in boosting
air power history and theory in the air power studies curriculum,
they have so far failed to be properly institutionalised.
The overall rather operational and technical approach to air
power is also reflected in the general staff course dissertations and
in other course writings. In 2005–6, dissertation topics ranged
from European missile defence and intelligence gathering in the
theatre of operations to multinational logistics in out-of-area operations
and military use of the national airspace. Against this