The Airpower Advantage in Future Warfare

exploited to the fullest for all the leverage it can deliver. As other
concluding points indicate, this will only be possible in the
context of a sound theory of warfare overall, which is to say
sound for the particular war in question, and an effective joint/
integrated strategy, military and nonmilitary. Defenders of the
airpower contribution to future warfare, faced with heavy criticism
and other doubts deriving from elsewhere in the armed
forces, should not be moved to compromise their basic stance.
That stance is to insist upon the objective claim that the relative
leverage of airpower is recognized to be highly situational. The
issue, hence the subject of this study, is the airpower “advantage,”
not the ability of airpower to deliver decisive military, possibly
strategic, and hopefully political victory in all cases. Such
an imperial claim does untold harm to the sensible case for airpower’s
significance. In war and warfare, to the degree feasible,
a belligerent should always strive to fight on the most favorable
terms it can impose on the enemy. Given America’s lead in, indeed
identification with, high technology, it would be bizarre,
actually impossible, as well as foolish for the country’s military
planners and strategists not to look for every effective way in
which airpower can deliver advantage. Plausible situational objections
to some uses of airpower should be acknowledged, and
their implications, when practicable, noted, assessed, and employed
to modify military behavior.
Second, many people, including scholars and military professionals,
appear to be genuinely confused about the distinction
between airpower as a “war winner” and airpower as a “war
decider.” Even at the high end of the airpower leverage scale,
the distinction matters. In Gulf Wars I and II, in Bosnia, in
Kosovo, and in the regular war to depose the Taliban from Kabul,
US airpower either decided which side would win or apparently
independently provided the leverage for victory. Of course,
there are always multiple reasons for success and failure in war,
and all claims for relative advantage that strongly privilege one
military element—airpower in this case—will be contested.
In some historical cases, certainly in the five recent ones just
cited, a key role for airpower was not the only approach that
could have been adopted. US and allied landpower, with much
less airpower support, could have won or delivered the advantage
required in all five conflicts. This is an important but not
31