Airpower can hold Land.

Alright, since you know my argument inside and out, I will jump straight into rebuttals. To begin, "Lexington, Concrod, and Bunker Hill are interesting examples.. I think the smoothbore muzzleloader might be a little overmatched though when met with laser guided munitions dropped from a high." It might be, but then again, I don't remember us having technology that advanced in 1949,1965, and arguably 1991. So I really don't understand why you would be willing to throw away 3/5 of your arguments to try and combat mine. Likewise, this claim is irrelevant. It does not matter how they would be when matched because they were not in the same time period. Next, "As for CON's last point, I do not dispute that ground forces are sometimes more effective at occupying land than Airpower; however Airpower today is so advanced and so fundamentally lethal, it can in fact prevent land from being captured by enemy ground forces. " Sometimes? Try all the time. Airpower is great for when we need help, but our first go to weapon should not be laser guided missiles. They are simply too inefficient. While they certainly get the job done, a Tomahawk Crew Missile costs roughly $1.5 million. http://www.economist.com... I agree that the programs are advanced, but it can't capture enemy ground. A missile has a hard time taking out entire cities, especially if we want to keep someone alive, or just don't want to cause as much destruction as possible, which we typically try to do. "Massive ordnance delivered accurately and on location -no matter the weapon system used- can rout away any army; which is why a continental army from the revolutionary era would lose in one single arclight bombing run." Can it really rout away an enemy? When our missiles have advanced so much, you better believe our enemies defenses have as well. Armored tanks and armored planes line the sky, filled with troops ready to jump, and all you want to have is a missile. Simply ineffective. "I appreciate CON trying, but I don't think there is still yet any reason to doubt why a continuous no-fly zone over a given area of land cannot permanently deny its capture by enemy ground forces. In order to continue this discussion, one must provide evidence that proves modern day examples like The Battle of Ia Drang or the Siege of Khe Shah are the exception and not the rule to Airpower theory, and that large deployments of ground troops are still needed to maintain territory in today's wars." Boy, do you appreciate the value of the comma. I had to break this up in my head into different sentences because this jumped around so much and it was so long. I will give you the topic, "Airpower can hold Land." No where in that topic does it say capture land. All I have to do is prove that airpower can't hold land. It can't, only ground units can. Also, the Vietnam war is not a very good war to cite in any type of debate, mainly because the majority of Americans hated it, which is why we pulled out of Vietnam, and effectively lost. Ultimately though, I'm not saying that airpower isn't good, in fact, it's great! But it simply cannot 'hold' land. For that, we would actually need to have troops their. You have to have an influence on an area so people don't revolt. To properly hold land, you simply cannot just have missiles pointed at a body of people. What if our government today removed the police force, and just pointed laser guided missiles at us. I could guarantee there would be civil unrest. Thanks for this debate! Great rounds!