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Cut along dotted line 

The Long Search for Met

a Surgical Strike

Precision Munitions and the

Revolution in Military Affairs
COLLEGE OF AEROSPACE DOCTRINE,

RESEARCH AND EDUCATION

AIR UNIVERSITY

The Long Search for

a Surgical Strike

Precision Munitions and the

Revolution in Military Affairs 

DAVID R. METS, PhD

School of Advanced Airpower Studies

CADRE Paper No. 12

Air University Press

Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama 36112-6615

October 2001
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Mets, David R.

The long search for a surgical strike : precision munitions and the revolution i

military affairs / David R. Mets.

p. cm. -- (CADRE paper ; no. 12) — ISSN 1537-3371

At head of title: College of Aerospace Doctrine, Research and Education, Ai

University.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 1-58566-096-5

1. Air power--History. 2. Air power--United States. 3. Precision guided munitions-

History. 4. Precision guided munitions--United States. I. Title. II. CADRE paper ; 12

UG630 .M37823 2001

359'00973--dc21 200104598

ii

This CADRE Paper and others in the series are available

electronically at the Air University Research Web site

http://research.maxwell.af.mil under “Research Papers”

then “Special Collections.”

Disclaimer

Opinions, conclusions, and recommendations expressed or implied within are solely those o

the author and do not necessarily represent the views of Air University, the United States A

Force, the Department of Defense, or any other US government agency. Cleared for publi

release: distribution unlimited.
CADRE Papers

CADRE Papers are occasional publications sponsored by

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Dedicated to promoting understanding of air and space powe

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All military members and civilian employees assigned to Ai

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iii

Please send inquiries or comments to:

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Contents

Pag

DISCLAIMER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i

FOREWORD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vi

ABOUT THE AUTHOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix

PREFACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . x

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

WHAT IS A REVOLUTION IN

MILITARY AFFAIRS (RMA)? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

WHAT WERE THE NOTIONS OF THE

FIRST AIRPOWER ADVOCATES OF RMA? . . . . . . . . . . 94

HOW DID RMA WORK OUT IN

WARS FROM 1939 TO 1972?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98

KOREA. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

VIETNAM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

CHANGE AFTER VIETNAM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

YOM KIPPUR WAR, 1973. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

WAR AND TECHNOLOGY IN THE 1990s:

HAS THE LAST SANCTUARY BEEN CLOSED? . . . . . . . 34

THE REMAINING HUMANITARIAN SANCTUARY

AND DOCTRINAL IMPLICATIONS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

ORGANIZATIONAL IMPLICATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

NOTES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

v
Illustrations

Pag

Artist Drawing of the B-17G Flying Fortress . . . . 96

Artist Drawing of the M-61 Gatling Gun . . . . . . 2

Artist Drawing of the F-22 Raptor . . . . . . . . . . . 47

Photographs

Maj Gen Mason Patrick . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92

Boeing P-26 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98

B-29 Enola Gay. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Gen Carl A. “Tooey” Spaatz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Gen Curtis E. LeMay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Me 262. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

USS Forrestal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

F-14 Phantom. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

B-2 Spirit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

Joint Standoff Weapon. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile. . . . . 46

vi
Foreword

Dr. David R. Mets’s The Long Search for a Surgical Strike

Precision Munitions and the Revolution in Military Affairs is a

broad, thought-provoking examination of the relationship

between the advancement in conventional weapons guid

ance technology and the “revolution in military affairs

(RMA). He defines an RMA as a rapid change in military tech

nology, doctrine, and organization leading to a sweeping new

way that wars are fought. Dr. Mets then considers whethe

the improvement in conventional air weapons accuracy

since World War II is the foundation, the main pillar, one o

the principal supports, or is irrelevant to the RMA—which is

said to be afoot. Clearly, the air theorists of the 1920s were

fully persuaded that indeed a revolution was afoot. Equally

clearly, the visions of Giulio Douhet, William “Billy

Mitchell, and the Air Corps Tactical School were no more

than partially fulfilled in World War II. Dr. Mets also

explores the degree to which the shortcomings of aeria

weapons were responsible for the denial of their visions and

the degree to which those inadequacies were overcome in

the conflicts that followed. He closes with an estimate as to

whether their dreams of a revolution are about to be ful

filled.

The Long Search for a Surgical Strike: Precision Munitions

and the Revolution in Military Affairs is based on research

conducted for a presentation at the Society of Military

History, Calgary, Canada, May 2001. Some of the research

was supported by a generous grant from the Center fo

Strategy and Technology, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama

This work was also facilitated by an equally generous six

month sabbatical from Dr. Mets’s teaching duties at Ai

University’s School of Advanced Airpower Studies.

The College of Aerospace Doctrine, Research and

Education (CADRE) is pleased to publish Dr. Mets’s timely

vii
study as a CADRE Paper, thereby making it available to the

Air Force and beyond.

viii

LON O. NORDEEN JR.

Boeing Company

JAMES R. W. TITUS

Dean of Research

Air University
Dr. David R. Mets (BS, US Naval Academy; MA, Columbia

University; PhD, University of Denver) is a professor of tech

nology and innovation at the School of Advanced Airpowe

Studies, Maxwell Air Force Base (AFB), Alabama. Prior to this

position, he served six years as a civilian historian in the

Armament Division at Eglin AFB, Florida. During his 30-yea

career in the United States (US) Navy and the US Air Force

(USAF), he served tours as a navigator in strategic airlift, an

aircraft commander in Strategic Air Command tankers, as a

tactical airlift pilot in Vietnam, and served as the editor of the

Air University Review—then professional journal of the Ai

Force. His last flying tour was as the commander of an over

seas AC-130 squadron. Dr. Mets has taught at the USAF

Academy at Colorado Springs and the US Military Academy a

West Point and was a flight instructor in the USAF pilo

school. He has published four books on national security

studies and airpower and is the author of a 150-page CHECO

Study on tactical airlift in Vietnam. 

ix

Dr. David R. Mets

About the

Author

Preface

What is a revolution in military affairs (RMA)? What did the

classical airpower theorists think? How did the revolution suc

ceed in combat up to 1975? How did the improvement o

armament technology since then affect the RMA? 

These are intriguing questions. As I use RMA in this paper

it is usually founded upon a rapid military technical revolution

(MTR). But very often added to that are substantial changes in

doctrine and the required modifications of organization to

implement that doctrine. 

The classical airpower theorists—Giulio Douhet, William

“Billy” Mitchell, and the teachers at the Air Corps Tactica

School—believed that an RMA was indeed afoot. To consum

mate it, they held that engine and aircraft technology had to

be further developed, that the doctrine of strategic attack

against the vital centers in the enemy heartland had to be

adopted, and that an autonomous organization under a cen

tralized department of defense was needed to implement the

doctrine. In general, they did not give very much attention to

the needs for associated intelligence, fire control, and arma

ment technology and may have underestimated the notion

that MTRs are most often the result of new combinations o

several matured technologies rather than single new inven

tions.

The RMA proved disappointing in practically all the wars up

to 1975, and the explanations are widely varied. The airpowe

advocates usually blamed the failure to adopt the doctrine and

to perfect the required organization. Their opponents often

argued that the basic theory was fatally flawed and tha

autonomous airpower could not work whatever the organiza

tion and technology. For the entire period from 1903 to 1975

aerodynamic and engine technologies were on the steep parts

of their development curves, whereas conventional armamen

technology was much more matured and—in most areas—

beyond the point of diminishing returns. 

Many things changed between 1945 and 1975. Among them

were some advances in relatively new component technologies

xi
that founded rapid advance in conventional armament tech

nologies along with their fire control. These included the

miniaturization of electronics, development of solid-state com

ponents, and radical improvements in computational capabil

ities. Also included was the maturation of radio frequency

infrared, and electro-optical sensing, as well as the discovery

of laser light and its application to seekers. These advances

and others ended the stagnation of conventional armamen

technology. Meanwhile, aircraft and engine developmen

slowed down. The addition of new armament, command and

control, and intelligence technologies to matured aviation

technology resulted in a combination that yielded a grea

improvement in the cost-effectiveness of the aerial offensive—

notwithstanding the maturation of air defense systems during

the same period. The combination produced a synergy tha

changed the calculus of conventional war; and it was demon

strated in the Israeli operations in the Bekáa Valley, the

Persian Gulf War, and the air war over Serbia. Enthusiasts

called it an RMA, others called it a transformation, and stil

others called it a pipe dream.

The advances in the technology, the doctrine, and the

organization for air offensives have caused some advocates to

argue that the day of the “air alone” campaign in some cir

cumstances has arrived. The many disappointments in the

past—in addition to the usual parochial considerations—have

caused many analysts to oppose the idea. My conclusion is

that because of the long time involved, Benjamin Lambeth is

probably correct in arguing that airpower has been trans

formed (rather than revolutionized) since Vietnam; and even i

it cannot carry the day alone, we would be derelict in our duty

as citizens not to consider the possibility of increasing use o

airpower as the supported force and ground and sea power as

the supporting forces. As those ideas must be a concern of the

Saddam Husseins of the world, we must expect that they wil

attempt to avoid meeting us in conventional combat and wil

seek asymmetrical means to overcome us. We should also con

sider whether it is wise to voluntarily leave the conventiona

battlefield where we seem to hold a huge advantage in ou

xii
favor and weaponize space because we may find this a new

playing field harder to dominate. 

I express my appreciation for the support and encourage

ment of the men and women of the Air Armament Center a

Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. I am indebted to B-2 pilot Lt Co

A. Colella, F-16 pilot Maj Scott C. Long, space officer Ma

Michael Smith, Col (Dr.) Thomas Keaney of Johns Hopkins

University, Col Brooks Bash of the National Security Council

and Mr. Lon O. Nordeen Jr., of the Boeing Company for thei

excellent advice on improving this work; all its remaining flaws

are my own responsibility.

xiii
Introduction

This research paper explores the relationship between the

advancement in conventional weapons guidance technology

and the “revolution in military affairs” (RMA) said to be afoot

It also explores whether the improvement in conventional ai

weapons accuracy since World War II is the foundation, the

main pillar, one of the principal supports, or is irrelevant to

the RMA. Clearly, the air theorists of the 1920s were fully per

suaded that indeed a revolution was afoot. Equally clear, the

visions of Guilio Douhet, William “Billy” Mitchell, and the Ai

Corps Tactical School (ACTS) were no more than partially ful

filled in World War II. This research paper explores the degree

to which the shortcomings of aerial weapons were responsible

for the denial of their visions and the degree to which those in

adequacies were overcome in the conflicts that followed. I

closes with an estimate as to whether those dreams of a revo

lution are about to be fulfilled.

Bernard Brodie concluded that World War II had been as

complete a test of the theories as Douhet could have desired.

Yet, the argument goes on as to the effectiveness of the bomb

ing campaigns of that conflict.2 Consequently, none of the

subsequent air wars has approached the completeness of the

tests over Japan and Germany in the 1940s. Therefore, the

concluding estimate cannot be much more than a guess.

What Is a Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA)? 

There can be no doubt that Douhet and Mitchell perceived

the coming of airpower as a revolutionary event. They asserted

that the ultimate objective of wars had never been the defea

of the enemy armed forces but rather the destruction of the

adversary’s will or capability to resist our will. Although the

enemy armies and navies had been the primary targets in al

the centuries that had passed, they no longer were barriers

blocking the route to the really vital targets of the enemy

heartland. In the future the surface battle could be ignored fo

the first time, and aircraft could directly deliver their destruc

tive power on the vital targets in the sanctuary of the enemy

1
CADRE PAPER

2

Maj Gen Mason Patrick

General Patrick, commander of the Air Service in the American Expeditionar

Force overseas in World War I, was appointed by Gen John Pershing.Three year

after the First World War, General Pershing had become chief of staff of the Arm

and was again concerned with the turbulence in the Air Service. He recalled

General Patrick from engineering work in New Orleans to once more take charg

of the airmen. General Patrick then completed flight training, including the solo

requirement, and successfully established his credibility with Mitchell and th

rest of the airmen—his ideas were indeed quite similar to theirs.
interior. There was a little uncertainty about what were those

vital targets. Air war in the new era was to be much more vio

lent and visited upon civilians no longer perceived as non

combatants; the horror would be so much shorter than World

War I had been that the total human suffering would certainly

be less.3

Neither Douhet, Mitchell, nor ACTS were much concerned

with the possibilities of air defenses nor with the technology

and techniques of identifying, finding, hitting, and destroying

the vital targets.4 To them there were three main impediments

to the fulfillment of the revolution. First, there was the need

for further development of aircraft engine and airframe tech

nology. Second, the acceptance of a doctrine of independen

strategic bombing must be at least one of the main roles of ai

forces. Third, the creation of autonomous air organizations

should be under the auspices of a centralized department o

defense.5

The term revolution in military affairs is a mental construct

an abstraction. It is a simplification of reality, largely intended

to help explain the way that change comes about and to pro

vide something of a common vocabulary to facilitate commu

nication among scholars and decision makers. It has spawned

a huge literature in the last 20 years or so.6 But the RMA is

not reality. It is no more than an approximate depiction of it

Thus, that huge literature contains a wide variety of defini

tions of the term. Many of those definitions have much in com

mon with the visions of Douhet, Mitchell, and the ACTS7 (no

to mention many others in Britain’s Royal Air Force [RAF]8 and

in Germany9). Many suggest that the usual stimulant of an RMA

is a rapid and extensive change in the technology of combat

But those changes themselves are not enough for an RMA. Fo

example, the French military technology was equal to that o

the Germans in 1940, but they were defeated nonetheless. The

Germans had developed a new doctrine for that technology

and had built new organizations to implement those ideas ef

fectively for the employment of the new weapons.10

Although there are several other possibilities, this research

paper discusses that conceptual framework. The usual foun

dation suggests that the coming of the airplane provided the

MET

3
massive technological change in a short time. The need fo

new doctrines was seen first in the form of the theories of the

airmen, though they were not transformed into new doctrine

as rapidly as had been the case with the Germans in the

1920s and 1930s. 

The vision for a new organization was most nearly fulfilled

in the creation of the RAF in 1918 and then its Bombe

Command in 1935. The organizational changes in the United

States (US) were much more hesitant. The creation of the Ai

Corps in 1926 and the General Headquarters (GHQ) Air Force

in 1935 were seen as partial advances, as was the develop

ment of the US Army Air Forces (USAAF) after World War I

had begun. In Britain the impediment was the slow develop

ment of aircraft technology. The first US four-engine bombers

came out of the Boeing plants in 1935, but the RAF did not ge

its Sterlings, Halifaxes, and Lancasters until 1942—three

years after the war had begun. The working definition of an

RMA in this discussion is a rapid change in military technol

ogy, doctrine, and organization leading to a sweeping new way

that wars are fought.

What Were the Notions of the First 

Airpower Advocates of RMA?

As noted, in all the centuries past, enemies had found a

sanctuary behind their armies and navies. As with Cza

Alexander I and his armies before Napoléon in 1812, they

could retreat into the sanctuary of the interior. 

Douhet, Mitchell, and the Removal of Sanctuaries? 

Douhet and Mitchell and others thought a revolution had

come—that the sanctuary of distance was no longer there

Aircraft could leap right over the armies and navies and go

right to the vital targets in the enemy heartland. They could go

there so rapidly and put bombs on their targets so quickly tha

the surface forces could be hardly anything more than on

lookers. This was to be achieved with bigger and bette

bombers—a doctrine of strategic bombing directed against the

vital centers in the enemy homeland and with an organization

CADRE PAPER

4
of large bombers commanded by an airman autonomous from

the surface forces. 

Munitions Technology Implications of Their Theories

The visionaries of the interwar period did not entirely ignore

the development of munitions or that of fire control. Douhe

made some inferential leaps in his writings, especially laying

out the bomb patterns in neat geometrical arrangements. This

founded his estimate of the number of bombs and bombers

that would be needed to bring an enemy down—but it was ful

of assumptions: 

• Vital targets could be identified and then found.

• They could be hit from altitude.

• The bombs would have deadly effects on most of them.11

It is probably fair to say that Mitchell gave a little more at

tention to the munitions than did Douhet. He was instrumen

tal in the development of a 2,000-pound (lb) bomb that worked

well against the Ostfriesland in 1921, and even a 4,000

pounder that was ready for testing three or four months

later.12 But the largest bomb in the RAF inventory in 1939 was

a 500 pounder.13 The USAAF had standard bombs up to 4,000

lbs when it went to war in 1941, but they would not fit into the

bomb bays of the standard bomber, the B-17. No more than

two 2,000 pounders could be crammed in, and far more usu

ally the load carried to Germany consisted of eight 500 lb

weapons.14 Their bodies had been redesigned since World Wa

I to make them more compact for internal carriage; but the

fuses, detonation chains, and explosive fillers were about the

same.15

One of the reasons the B-17s going to Germany filled thei

bomb bays with 500 lb shotgun pellets rather than 2,000 lb

rifle slugs was that their fire control did not turn out to have

rifle accuracy.16 Much was made of the USAAF’s possession o

the supersecret and precision Norden bombsight during World

War II, but it seems clear that the concern had not been tha

great in the days of Mitchell and beyond. The Norden sight had

been developed by the US Navy (USN ) because of its concern

with the difficulty of hitting a maneuvering ship. However, the

MET

5
USN decided that it would have to use dive bombing to achieve

that; and the USAAF took over the Norden sight almost as an

afterthought to facilitate hitting the stationary vital centers o

the ACTS industrial web.17

The way that ACTS built upon the Mitchell theories almos

inevitably contained another flaw—the failure to develop a sys

tem of identifying just what those vital targets were, even i

they could be hit. Those were the days of the Neutrality Acts

and the Merchants of Death legislation in Congress. It would

have been highly impolitic for a service trying to get increased

appropriations and greater autonomy to have suggested the

possibility of going back to Europe for another war. Thus, pub

lic discussion of the vital targets in Germany (or Japan) was

not politically correct. This statement is not meant at all to

CADRE PAPER

6

Artist Drawing of the B-17G Flying Fortress

The final World War II version of the B-17 was the G model shown here. It had

a redesigned tail section, an upper and lower power turret with two .50-calibe

guns in each, and a chin turret mounting two more such guns. About 12,000 B

17Gs were produced in World War II.
imply that there was no public discussion of what came to be

known as strategic bombing. Again building upon the Mitchel

theories, the school put a defensive cast on its musings

Instead of using the German system as its model industria

web, it used the American infrastructure.18 The scenario often

put forth was that of an enemy established on a base in the

Ontario peninsula. From that base, it could reach out and

touch the vast majority of nodal points in the American in

dustrial web. Thus, the USAAF needed the B-17 Flying

Fortress to enable it to go out to sea to help destroy an invad

ing enemy before it could establish an Ontario base.19 Or, i

that base were established, then the USAAF would have to

have the heavy bomb loads of the B-17 for missions we now

call offensive counterair.20 The result was that we studied the

vital targets in the US northeastern industrial heartland bu

accumulated very little intelligence on what might have been

the nodal points in the German and Japanese webs. But then

what would have been the sense in building the intelligence

picture of the nodal points if you did not have the following:

• the bombs that would destroy them, 

• the bombardier school that could teach our flyers to hi

them, 

• the navigator schools to train people who could bring

them to the target, 

• the airplanes that could carry them thence, and

• the pilot schools that would develop the people to ge

them off the ground in the first place?

The Organizational Implications of Their Theories 

The foregoing list might also have included the notion tha

the whole thing would have been futile in the absence of com

manders who could admit the possibility of defeating the

Germans without an invasion of France. But even with the re

organization of the Army ground forces, the Army air forces

and the Army service forces, at the head of things was the

chief of staff—sympathetic to the airmen, but still a ground

soldier for his entire adult life.21 All of the plans always in

cluded the notion that the bombing should include features

that would weaken the enemy’s resistance significantly in case

MET

7
an invasion was necessary. George C. Marshall based his “90

Division Gamble,” not on the idea that airpower would make

the invasion unnecessary, but rather that the landing could be

safely done with limited numbers partly because airpower was

to have an equalizing effect.22 At the other end of the world by

the summer of 1945, Douglas MacArthur agreed with

Marshall that if an invasion of Japan were required, it should

be an Army operation and the former should command it

Here, too, air superiority was a prerequisite; and the whole

purpose of starting with Kyushu instead of Honshu was to fa

cilitate that.23

How Did RMA Work Out in Wars

from 1939 to 1972?

The summary report—United States Strategic Bombing

Surveys (USSBS)—concluded that airpower, not strategic air

power, had been a decisive factor (not the decisive factor) in

CADRE PAPER

8

Boeing P-26

The Air Corps and its tactical school have often been accused of being ob

sessed with strategic bombing; but the first monoplane, all-metal fighter in th

world (in line service) was the Boeing P-26. It came on line in 1932, the sam

year as the B-10.
the defeat of Germany. The counterpart report for Japan as

serted that the combination of blockade and strategic bomb

ing had been decisive against Japan.24

Why were the qualifications—published in a report—often

said to be stacked in favor of strategic airpower? Other USSBS

reports showed that the bombs had almost always been too

small. They argued that only a very tiny fraction, much

smaller than prewar estimates, actually hit the targets. The

summary reports and the supporting documents both argued

that very often the wrong targets were attacked, and the righ

ones were sometimes not reattacked often enough. It was also

quite clear that air defense radar so changed the equation tha

the bomber did not always get through with acceptable

losses.25 The defenses were much more effective than Mitchell

Douhet, and the ACTS anticipated; and the effects achieved

were far from commensurate with the resulting losses of air

craft and airmen. Another major factor USSBS identified was

that the weather had been a far greater inhibitor than antici

pated.26

The summary reports and their supporting reports both as

serted that the nighttime area attacks of the RAF had been

less effective than the daytime precision attacks of the USAAF

The RAF had begun night bombing because of the huge losses

Bomber Command suffered in the opening rounds. However

the German night defenses improved more rapidly than did

the RAF night navigation and bomb aiming. The initial diffi

culty was in finding the target areas and then hitting the tar

gets within them. Ultimately, this drove Bomber Command to

attacking area targets, often cities, rather than trying to take

out the nodal points. Although the nighttime accuracy im

proved, the defenses improved more rapidly until the Bombe

Command was suffering more losses at night than the USAAF

was in the daylight. The official RAF history agreed that the ef

fects of RAF night bombing were even less commensurate with

its losses than was the case with the USAAF.27

The interwar vision went wrong in part because of not know

ing what the truly vital targets were. It was also due to the in

ability to find even the known targets—due to the darkness

weather, and the primitive navigation methods and training

MET

9
employed. Even when the vital targets were known and found

they were very seldom hit effectively. That was partly because

of the unanticipated resilience of the German economy and

the targets themselves. The bombs used were almost always

too small to be effective. The failure of the vision was also be

cause the defenses were often effective in disrupting the aim

The weather often drove the USAAF over to radar fire control

which at that stage was hardly better than area bombing. Al

of those things also proved deficient because the peacetime

professional crews had established standards of proficiency

impossible to duplicate with people brought in for the duration

from civilian life—the press of time was simply too great.28

Some of the most avid strategic bombing airmen also com

plained that the theory had not really been implemented

According to them, the power of the strategic offensive was

much diminished by the competing requirements of the sur

face battles. They were distraught at having to gut the Eighth

Air Force in England to send its best units as the cadre o

Twelfth Air Force for the invasion of Africa.29 The airmen com

plained often about the diversion away from the vital centers

in the German heartland against the submarine at sea or in

the pens. They also argued that the diversion of four-engine

bombers to the Navy in the Pacific diluted the power of the of

fensive.30 They lamented the decision to waste the strategic

bombers against the French rail yards in April 1944 when they

should have continued the attack on the synthetic oil plants

which was a further weakening. The airmen continued to com

plain that summer when the heavy bombers were again di

verted to do tactical bombing, even close air support, to facili

tate the Saint Lô breakout. They again lamented the diversion

against the V-1 launching sites that same summer.31

All of this was not lost on the wartime leadership. The com

manding general, Henry H. “Hap” Arnold, directed that the B

29s would not be so diverted from the assault on the Japanese

home islands (though in the end considerable effort was in

deed given to the mining campaign against shipping). Genera

Arnold enthusiastically pressed the development of bomb aim

ing radar for that airplane which made the Superfortress more

accurate through the weather than the bombers had been ove

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Germany.32 The German V-1 cruise missile was captured and

copied in record time. It was deployed to the Philippines and

was ready to go into combat even as the atomic bombs were

dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The V-1 certainly was

not a precision weapon—rather its guidance was very simila

to that of the Kettering Bug that had been conceived in World

War I.33 All of the operational seeker systems that have come

into use (except lasers) were conceived and under developmen

in the USAAF and USN before the war ended. Some of them—

such as the USN autonomous radar-guided Bat glide bomb

and the visual-radio guided AZimuth ONly (AZON) free-fal

bomb—actually entered into combat with some modestly en

couraging results.34

Although the people in the Japanese and German heart

lands could find no place to hide, the weather and the dark

ness provided them some sanctuary. German troops a

Normandy had suffered mayhem along the roads in daylight

but at least they found some refuge in darkness. Months later

at the Battle of the Bulge, the Wehrmacht found some

weather-related safety for the first six days. But when the

weather cleared, that sanctuary was removed and the tide o

battle reversed. Similarly, the Japanese armies found protec

tion under the jungle canopies of the Solomons and the

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B-29 Enola Gay

The B-29 is returning from the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, August 1945.
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Gen Carl A. “Tooey” Spaatz

General Spaatz commanded the strategic air forces in the Pacific when the firs

atomic bomb was dropped. He became the last commanding general of the US

Army Air Forces and the first chief of staff of the USAF. General Spaat

presided over the transition to a separate service and a nuclear-armed world
Philippines and underground in Okinawa. All this had little

impact on the final outcome, but the belief of the interwar the

orists that the sanctuaries were gone was shown optimistic o

at least premature.

Nonetheless, the ambiguous results of air combat and the

conclusions in the USSBS were not enough to make the com

pletion of the Mitchell RMA with reorganization a cakewalk

Notwithstanding the stalwart support of Harry S. Truman

George C. Marshall, and Dwight D. Eisenhower for an inde

pendent USAF, the interservice battle of the late 1940s was as

fierce as any in our history. But in the end, the RMA was

partly fulfilled with an autonomous air force (though the othe

services retained their own air forces) and with a national mil

itary establishment (which was far weaker than the one envi

sioned by Mitchell). Earlier, the USAAF had been reorganized

along functional lines to include a dedicated strategic bomb

ing organization, long known as the Strategic Air Command

(SAC).35

Korea

The hostile nature of the unification fight and the weariness

of the Berlin blockade had not at all subsided when the North

Koreans invaded the South. The new autonomous air force or

ganization was still getting its bearings, and many of its peo

ple had still not acquired new USAF uniforms. The new SAC

had gotten off to a shaky beginning under the leadership o

Gen George C. Kenney, and successor Gen Curtis E. LeMay

was just getting its reform rolling when the Communists

marched southward.36 The USAF had not yet written its basic

doctrine nor had it much adjusted its founding theories to ac

count for the coming of the nuclear weapons, still less to re

spond to the early Soviet explosion of a nuclear device. The

USAF was in the midst of a number of simultaneous techno

logical revolutions that included the following:

• transitioning from reciprocating engines to jets, 

• adjusting to and perfecting nuclear weapons and delivery

methods,

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• developing aerial refueling techniques to permit the use o

jets on long-range bombers, and

• developing missile technology.

Those revolutions were being done in the wake of a demobi

lization—more like an implosion—that the political leadership

had demanded in order to balance the budget and begin pay

ing down the national debt that was run up during World Wa

II.37 The notions were strong that the United Nations (UN

would prevent future wars or that American nuclear weapons

would end them in a trice—all of which would make conven

tional weapons (and armies and navies) irrelevant. Thus, in

the five years between wars, it is not at all remarkable that lit

tle money and attention were applied to the development o

conventional guided weapons. So practically all of the

weapons and many of the airplanes used in Korea were lef

over from World War II.

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Gen Curtis E. LeMay

In 1962 General LeMay was the first bomber pilot to become chief of staff o

the USAF.
The First Experimental Guided Missiles Group was estab

lished at Eglin Field immediately following the war; and some

of the remnants of the cadre of that great installation were stil

there to toy a bit with the AZON, and especially the Range and

AZimuth ONly (RAZON), but little significant work was done

One of the reasons that the AZON had not been pursued more

vigorously was that the developers had felt that the RAZON

would be much better and was right around the corner

However, the war ended, and the funds had dried up before

the latter could achieve combat ready status.38

Little appreciated at the time was that the cost-effectiveness

calculations of World War II were rapidly becoming obsolete

The implication that the Berlin blockade was an early sign tha

the coming of the UN and atomic bombs did not portend eter

nal peace and brotherhood was not fully recognized.39 It was

still less appreciated that the nuclear weapons had done little

or nothing to resolve the problems of Berlin with the USSR

President Eisenhower asserted later that his atomic threats

had something to do with the satisfactory ending of the Korean

War, but there is room to doubt that effect and that the out

come was indeed satisfactory. The marked unhappiness

among Reserve air crews not wishing to return to combat so

soon after Schweinfurt was another indication that the attri

tion rates of World War II were no longer acceptable—at leas

not for the limited interests that seemed engaged in Korea.40

The air superiority battle was handily won in Korea, but the

attrition of ground attack aircraft to the surface defenses was

very substantial given the limited stakes involved. The re

silience of the North Korean and Chinese Communist armies

under massive interdiction attacks greatly diminished the

worth of the outcomes from the American point of view.41

The United States had harvested some of the advanced

German weapons technology at the end of World War II. It had

also undertaken the development of some air-to-air guided

weapons research before Korea, but that had not yet reached

fruition. The basic weapon of the air battle was the same old

M-3 .50-caliber machine gun, albeit that it was now mounted

in jets like the F-86 Sabre and the F-84 Thunderstreak.42 The

MiGs and the Sabres that the Americans encountered in the

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north had 23 millimeter (mm) cannons, but their rates of fire

were so low and muzzle velocities so poor that it did not yield

an advantage for the North Koreans. By a very large majority

the air-to-ground weapons were leftovers from World War II as

well. Most of them were the standard 500 lb high explosive

(HE) bombs, but huge numbers of the unguided rockets tha

were developed late in World War II were also fired. The accu

racy and ranges of those weapons were so poor that the US

aircraft had to come so close to the ground defenses that ou

losses were too great for the effects achieved. Having been de

signed for compact internal carriage and now delivered from

the external stations on jets, the bombs were no longer ade

quate. The aerodynamic drag, which increased with the

square of the airspeed, reduced the range of the aircraft and

slowed its passage through the danger zones on low-altitude

deliveries.43 The bombs’ compactness was still a virtue in the

bomb bays of the B-29s.

The RAZON was brought forth for a combat test, even

though it had not yet been made a standard item in the in

ventory. It achieved some good results, though by the 1990s i

was still far from the precision and reliability standard. One o

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Me 262

The first jet in line service (shown above) was brought into the Luftwaffe nea

the end of World War II. Had it appeared earlier in greater numbers, it migh

have defeated the strategic bombing campaign.The Messerschmitt 262 started

a revolution in air superiority fighting that progressed very rapidly until Korea

when practically all of the air-to-air battle was among jets.
the big difficulties was that the guidance kits still used vac

uum tube electronics, and thus the reliability was low. Often

the guidance would not take hold, and the wild rounds would

go off in unanticipated directions. That made them too unreli

able to be used in close air support (CAS) operations in the

vicinity of friendly troops. The kits also required that the bom

bardier keep both bomb and target in sight during the fall, and

that could have dangerous results for the aircrews. This radio

visual guidance through a data link required some specialized

training. Before the end of the war, the guidance was adapted

to some British 12,000 lb TALLBOY bombs in order to guar

antee that a direct hit on a robust target would ensure its de

struction.44 However, that required special modifications to B

29s and the building of specialized loading facilities. Two

airplanes were lost to what were deemed technical deficiencies

in the weapon, so the tests were discontinued notwithstanding

that some bridges were destroyed with many fewer sorties

than would have been required with unguided weapons.45

At the end of the day in Korea, the enemy found a renewed

sanctuary in distance—though the aircraft could have reached

them anywhere in the distant sanctuary beyond the Yalu, the

refuge was maintained by political factors. As with the

Germans in World War II, the darkness enabled the

Communists to get some sustainment forward—in their case

enough to at least mount a successful defense. They were also

able to find sanctuary beneath the ground on the battlefield

and in railroad tunnels and elsewhere. At first, their ground

defenses provided little protection; but they soon learned to

disperse and to mount ground fires that gave them some relie

from air attack.46 As with Germany, the American air forces

still had limited capability to attack effectively through the

clouds; but the weather was somewhat less of an aid to the

Communists than it had been on the northern European plain

for the Germans. 

Because the outcomes were so conditioned by various polit

ical factors and because the nodal points in the enemy indus

trial web were held to be beyond the Yalu River and out of lim

its, the doctrinal implications of the conflict were ambiguous

Airmen then almost universally argued that no strategic

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bombing had been done in Korea because the vital centers in

the USSR and Communist China had not been attacked.47

The implications for tactical doctrine were only a little less

ambiguous. General of the Army Omar Bradley, chairman o

the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS), asserted that it had been a

war against the wrong enemy, at the wrong place, at the wrong

time. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and Commande

in Chief (CINC) Eisenhower spoke forcefully for a New Look in

defense policy. It came to be known as Massive Retaliation—a

nuclear response against the Soviet and Chinese heartlands

even in reaction to limited challenges—strategic bombing

They hoped this would result in balancing the suffering federa

budget and at the same time preserve peace and security. The

result in doctrinal terms was that strategic bombing was the

main mission in the future and that the tactical air forces, the

USN, and the US Army would have to play a secondary role.4

At that time the other services accused the USAF of being ob

sessed with strategic nuclear bombing to the exclusion of tac

tical considerations (and continue to make this accusation

today); yet they did everything they could to acquire a nuclea

capability of their own. 

Not much was done in organizational terms in the years tha

followed Korea. The powers of the secretary of defense were

strengthened some in 1949, and then again in the late 1950s

but they remained limited. In the USAF, the organization o

the operational commands remained stable throughout the

Eisenhower years though the functions of research and devel

opment (R&D) were divorced from procurement when the Ai

Research and Development Command (later the Air Force

Systems Command) and Air Force Logistics Command were

established in the early 1950s.49

A dedicated conventional munitions R&D organization ex

isted briefly at Eglin AFB in the wake of Korea. Known as the

Air Armament Center, it disappeared soon after the Sovie

launch of sputnik in 1957, which returned the focus to strate

gic nuclear warfare.50 The forced draft application of the US

scientific and technical capability to field an intercontinenta

ballistic missile (ICBM) capability at an early time left little fo

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the development of conventional doctrine and associated

weapons.

The rivalry among the US services abated slightly in the

1950s. President Eisenhower appointed Adm Arthur Radford

as CJCS immediately after the Korean War. As Eisenhowe

and Admiral Radford had been principal antagonists during

the unification debate, that appointment can be deemed as the

making of peace.51 Four great Forrestal-class conventional air

craft carriers were built in the 1950s, and they were the same

size as the cancelled USS United States was to have been

Moreover, the even larger nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the

USS Enterprise, was also brought into the fleet. Unlike the

planned United States, they all had the conventional islands

Unexpectedly, the nuclear weapons were miniaturized early

making it possible to launch nuclear-armed fighter-sized air

craft from carrier decks without the abandonment of an island

superstructure. These events were combined with the initia

development of nuclear submarines followed by the subma

rine-launched ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads, which

greatly enhanced the Navy’s role—all well before the coming o

flexible response and in the midst of the decade during which

the USAF and SAC were expected to have consumed a dispro

portionate share of the defense budget. Though none of those

five supercarriers could fit through the Panama Canal—which

worked to limit their role in Vietnam (though most of them

eventually got there through a long voyage around South

America)—they nonetheless were important factors in conven

tional war fighting, which diminishes the notion of a supposed

US obsession with strategic nuclear warfare. 

The Air Armament Center of the 1950s did not exist long

enough to do much with conventional weapons development

But under Army and Navy auspices, some work did continue

The Air Force developed the AIM-4 Falcon during the 1950s fo

air-to-air battle, but the most successful work in that realm

was done by the Navy at China Lake. That was to be expected

because the kamikazes at the end of World War II clearly

demonstrated the vulnerability of aircraft carriers and othe

surface ships. The imminent appearance of guided air-to-sur

face missiles and bombs portended the arrival of truly fearless

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kamikazes.52 Thus, the development of an effective fleet air de

fense was imperative. The result was the standardization o

the AIM-9 Sidewinder infrared (IR) and the AIM-7 Sparrow

semiactive radar missiles that are both—much improved—stil

in use by both the USAF and the USN as well as in air forces

of many other nations.53 Both those missiles received their ini

tial operational capability (IOC) in 1956, and the Sidewinde

scored the first missile kills in history in Chinese Nationalis

service aboard F-86s in the Quemoy–Matsu crisis of 1958.5

There was much talk of a revolution in the air superiority bat

tle during the late 1950s.

But the progress in conventional air-to-ground weaponry

was not remarkable in the 1950s. The standard HE bombs

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USS Forrestal

This ship came on line in 1955 and has a displacement of 60,000 tons empty

about the same as planned for the never constructed USS United States

Unlike the United States’s design, however, the Forrestal had an island instead

of a flush deck. In the interim, nuclear weapons had been so miniaturized and

catapults so improved that they could be carried off ships in smaller fighter

sized aircraft than in 1949.
were improved by giving them new shapes to reduce the drag

when externally carried.55 This work was done as per the

agreements made during the development of the Nationa

Security Act of 1947.56 General-purpose bombs remained in

the Army’s province and resulted in the M-117 750 lb bomb

and the M-118 3,000 lb weapons.57 The Navy also developed

low drag bombs (low compared to World War II weapons) fo

external carriage in various sizes up to 2,000 lbs, now known

as the Mark (Mk) series. All these bombs received their IOCs

about 1960. The Army’s Ordnance Department also remained

in charge of gun development, which resulted in one of the

greatest conventional weapons in history—the M-61 Gatling

gun. It continues in standard use throughout Air Force, Navy

and foreign air arms. A derivative is being included in the new

F-22 that differs only in the barrels, which have been made

lighter than those in the standard gun. The Gatling gun re

ceived its IOC in 1958 aboard the F-104 and the F-105.58

With the development of the Bullpup guided missile, the

USN responded to the losses suffered in ground attacks in

Korea. The Bullpup was made standard in both the Navy and

the Air Force before Vietnam. A rocket-powered weapon, the

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Artist Drawing of the M-61 Gatling Gun

GUN MECHANISM BARRELS

BARREL CLAMPS
Bullpup and its guidance were similar in principle to that o

the RAZON. The pilot visually tracked the weapon on its way

to the target by watching the flare in its tail and guided it into

its aim point with the controls in his cockpit. The warhead was

small, and it was not a launch-and-leave weapon. The crew

had to provide guidance the entire time until impact, which

meant that they had to steer the airplane on a steady course

toward the target throughout.59

In the end, the Korean War had not stimulated dramatic

changes in technology, doctrine, or organization. Bu

President Eisenhower recognized from the beginning that the

United States would not enjoy its nuclear monopoly—or even

hegemony—for long and that massive retaliation would be per

ishable. The USSR approached nuclear parity soon after the

decade ended. That meant that even if the United States could

have ever depended upon massive retaliation to deter limited

and unconventional wars, the reconstitution of a more bal

anced defense arrangement must come with that nuclear par

ity—unfortunately, ending US balanced budgets for many

years to come.

Vietnam

It has been a cottage industry among scholars to bash the

United States and the USAF for being unprepared for the guer

rilla war in Vietnam. To some extent, in the Air Force case

these critics have been bashing the USAF for doing what it was

told to do by a succession of American presidents; and the

criticism has been administered largely by the very elements

of the ideological spectrum most committed to civilian su

premacy over the military. Much of that criticism has been de

livered without any indication as to what might have been a

better policy, strategy, or weapons development program. Also

scarce is recognition of the fact that nuclear deterrence did no

fail. Equally rare is any recognition that throughout history

weapons have very often, if not usually, been used in ways no

at all envisioned by their developers. Our great battleship flee

of the 1930s did yeoman service as antiaircraft platforms and

in fire support for amphibious landings but never found the

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second Jutland or Trafalgar for which it had been designed.6

Our remarkable fleet boats of the 1930s submarine force had

been designed for battle fleet support, but they did their bes

work in unrestricted submarine warfare against Japanese

merchant shipping. Not only did their designers fail to envi

sion that but it actually was against the law as expressed in

the Washington treaties of 1922!61 The fact that the F-105 was

not optimal for fighting guerrillas or even for bombing North

Vietnam is not that remarkable. It is equally unsurprising tha

the Douglas Skyraider happened to be better suited for coun

terinsurgency operations, notwithstanding that it had been

originally designed for war at sea as a combination torpedo

bomber and dive bomber.62 Obviously, torpedoes have little

utility in guerrilla warfare in the jungles!

Arguably, the cost-effectiveness equation for the American

air forces had worsened even since Korea. The leadership had

informed us that Korea had been the wrong war against the

wrong enemy and that there would be no more Koreas. Ye

here was another enemy on the Asian mainland even more un

familiar to us. The Communist onslaught had obviously

slowed since Czechoslovakia had fallen in 1948. Deterrence

and containment seemed to be working, and the memories o

a total war world were fading. The political unity of the

Franklin D. Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower years was a

dim memory. A racial crisis had been approaching ever since

the desegregation of the armed forces in the late 1940s and o

the Little Rock, Arkansas, schools in the mid-1950s. The elec

tion of 1960 had been very close. President John F. Kennedy

had suffered a severe blow to his prestige (and reelection

prospects) with the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961, and it was no

altogether restored with the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.

Thus it can be argued that with only limited hope for firm

public support, the United States entered the Vietnam conflic

without having made any sweeping changes in its air doc

trines, technology, and organization. Though the jets were

more advanced than the Sabre, their armament had not kep

pace. The bombers were still controlled by SAC, as they had

been during Korea. The tactical forces consisting of fighters

tactical airlift, reconnaissance, and others were organized as

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they had been in the early 1950s. Those based in the United

States were still under the command of Tactical Air Command

(TAC), and the ones overseas reported to the area CINC—usu

ally a Navy admiral or an Army general. The tankers still be

longed to SAC; and even when tankers and bombers were de

ployed overseas to places such as Guam or Thailand, they stil

were under the operational control of the CINC in Omaha

Similarly, the intertheater airlifters remained under the con

trol of the commander of the Military Airlift Command (MAC)—

which had been named the Military Air Transport Service a

the time of Korea.

The theory and doctrine conditioning the organization and

employment of airpower had remained fairly stable since

World War II. If the United States became involved in a genera

war, then SAC would conduct attacks on the vital centers in

the industrial web of the enemy heartland—increasingly with

nuclear weapons. At lower levels of war, the tactical air forces

should be operating under a centralized command at the the

ater level and their priorities normally should be air superior

ity, interdiction, CAS, reconnaissance, and tactical airlift. Tha

operational control was the same as it had been since 1943.6

The Cold War was at its height, but the USSR was ap

proaching nuclear parity; and that was an even greater con

cern than it had been in President Truman’s day. The ground

based air defenses on the Communist side had been improved

significantly, but that had not yet been demonstrated in full

blooded combat. However, in 1960 the downing of Francis

Gary Powers’s U-2 over Russia by a surface-to-air missile

(SAM) had been a portent of things to come. Communications

had improved some since Korea, but the greatest advances

were still ahead. The US population had gained almost uni

versal access to television, which greatly vivified and acceler

ated its acquisition of news about the war. 

The air war in Vietnam was a disappointment to the airmen

and their countrymen alike. Clearly, our military effort did no

coerce the enemy into doing our will—to permit the existence

of an independent and noncommunist South Vietnam. There

is still not much of a consensus as to why the military forces

in general and the air forces in particular failed to bring this

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about.64 Though the enemy losses were far greater than those

of the United States, the Communists proved much better able

to sustain them. There are a host of hypotheses that attemp

to explain the outcome.65 Many of them have nothing to do

with airpower.

• Some say the United States was attempting the impossi

ble, as Vietnamese nationalism and xenophobia could

never have been overcome. 

• Others argue that external support from the USSR and

China was decisive.

• Still others assert that America was never defeated on the

battlefield, but rather some combination of effective

Communist propaganda, weakness of US civilian morale

and journalistic sensationalism undermined the effort. 

Even those factors related to airpower are ambiguous in

their significance, and little consensus has developed. There is

alleged to be a rather widespread belief inside the military tha

the gradual application of airpower was to blame. It deprived

the air instrument of some of its chief virtues: shocking power

surprise, speed, and flexibility. It gave the enemy the time they

needed to import and develop an integrated air defense system

(IADS) when, instead, a sudden and sustained massive attack

would have coerced them before they could have reacted. The

cautious way that the administration of President Lyndon B

Johnson approached the application of airpower is variously

described as necessary to avoid World War III or foolish by de

priving airpower of the revolutionary potential that Mitchel

and Douhet anticipated. The vital nodes in the industrial web

were not beyond the physical reach of airpower; rather, they

were placed in a Soviet and Chinese sanctuary by political fac

tors, rightly or wrongly. Those ideas were not universally held

by those in uniform, but they were popular. Certainly, there

was a case for constraint in a nuclear-armed world. But the

Cuban missile crisis of that era seemed to suggest some value

in a gradual escalation; and, more recently, the Kosovo cam

paign suggests that coalition warfare may now be the wave o

the future and a gradualist approach may be inevitable

there.66

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At a lower level of concern, the Vietnam War suggested the

following as possible lessons for the future of air war:

• The air superiority battle remains paramount but has

grown to be more complicated now, and the ground ele

ments must be taken more seriously than they were by

Mitchell and Douhet.

• The new complexity of the air superiority battle has in

creased the requirement for support aircraft like fighte

escort and suppression of enemy air defenses airplanes.

• The need for support aircraft increasingly diminishes the

number of shooters available to deliver ordnance, reduc

ing airpower’s virtue of being able to quickly bring mass

to bear anywhere in the theater.

• There is a synergy among the air-to-air, SAM, antiaircraft

and command and control (C2) elements of the IADS.

• Low-altitude delivery of nonprecision bombs increases ac

curacy and losses as well.

• Delivery of nonprecision ordnance at night or in bad

weather is difficult and not very accurate for fighter air

craft.

• Darkness and weather do not do much to protect striking

forces against the radar-aimed parts of the IADS.

• The performance of air-to-air missiles was disappointing

and the gun was proven still necessary in the air battle fo

close-in combat.

• The radar-guided air-to-air missile was particularly dis

appointing—partly because of its complexity of use, partly

because of its mechanical unreliability, and partly be

cause of restrictive rules of engagement.

• Aircraft and weapons are often used for purposes othe

than those intended during their design.

• Multimission platforms or weapons are unlikely to be op

timal in any of their missions.

• Bombing accuracy from long-range platforms is much im

proved over Korea, even in weather and at night, but stil

suffers from occasional stray rounds. 

• Precision-guided munitions (PGM) may increase shoote

effectiveness so as to compensate to some degree for in

creased resources devoted to support aircraft.

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26
• PGMs are not effective in adverse weather with restricted

visibility.

• Designators with an IR or low-light level television capa

bility can give laser-guided bombs (LGB) a night capabil

ity.

• The long-held airmen’s ideal of centralized control of air

power at the theater level by a coequal airman had been

a part of doctrine since 1943 and was still far from real

ization.

• The way that the bombers and tankers were retained

under SAC control contradicted USAF doctrine for cen

tralization and tended to undermine its arguments with

the other services.

• The doctrine for strategic attack was widely condemned

by Vietnam specialists, but its defenders claim that it was

not at all tested as with the Korean experience—the true

industrial web nodes were off limits for attack in the

USSR and China.

• Airpower began to undermine the enemy sanctuary o

darkness; but the sanctuaries of jungle cover, weather

and political-cultural restraints remained significant.

Change after Vietnam

At the end of the day, though, the technical, doctrinal, and

organizational lessons of the war in Southeast Asia remained

ambiguous.67 The outcomes were affected by so many politi

cal, cultural, and fortuitous factors besides airpower that the

lessons were not all that clear. However, defeat usually is more

of a stimulus for change than is victory.68 In the decade or so

after the war, major attempts to change were made in all the

services. Additionally, there was a general aversion to any no

tion of any more Vietnams; and the military began to refocus

its attention on a possible North Atlantic Treaty Organization

(NATO) war in Europe between massed armed forces.

For airpower, little change came to its published doctrine in

the years after Vietnam.69 The need to be prepared for uncon

ventional war was clear enough, and that was reflected in the

evolution first of Twenty-Third Air Force and its later transfor

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mation into Air Force Special Operations Command. Its head

quarters was built at Hurlburt Field, Florida; and a joint or

ganization dedicated to the work—the US Special Operations

Command—was founded at MacDill AFB, Florida. Generally

special operations forces in Vietnam had adapted old weapons

and technologies to their mission, and that tradition contin

ued after the war. Helicopters and several variants of the C

130 were employed and developed, and some unique smalle

items of equipment were also acquired. 

As for tactical airpower, the disappointments in the air bat

tle in Vietnam and Army complaints about the inutility o

high-performance fighters in the CAS role also led to change

More specialized platforms were developed for both roles. The

F-15 was optimized for air superiority, and the new A-10 was

dedicated almost wholly to the CAS role. The A-10 was de

signed for heavy loadouts, with great protection and a long loi

ter time. Its only air-to-air weapon was the short-range IR

Sidewinder. This meant that it would have little utility at all in

the air battle, and even its potential for deep attacks in inter

diction would be limited.70 At the same time, a third aircraf

was developed that had both air-to-air and air-to-ground

functions. That was the F-16; and its design certainly favored

the former role, which made it formidable in the air battle bu

limited its loadout in the ground attack role and even its range

for deep interdiction missions.71 A contemporary but secre

development was the design and building of the F-117. The

hope here was that it would be invisible or less visible to

enemy radar, and thus the need for supporting aircraft fo

strike packages would again be radically reduced. 

The A-10’s main weapon, the GAU-8 30 mm cannon with its

complementary tank-killing ammunition, was created first

and the airplane was developed around it—one of the rare

cases where the weapon drove the design of the platform.7

Electro-optical (EO) weapons had been employed in Vietnam

in the form of the Navy’s Walleye bomb and the Air Force’s

homing bomb system. Both had been effective under the righ

conditions but were difficult to use and expensive. Though the

LGBs did not get much media attention when they were firs

used inside South Vietnam nor even during Linebacker I, the

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earliest versions were cheap and very effective. From the be

ginning, they produced very good accuracy even from medium

altitudes—though the early versions were a bit cumbersome to

use in the delivery.73 They had to have either the service of a

target designator on the ground or the help of another airplane

orbiting the target with its onboard designator. Unfortunately

the designation had to be continued until the time of impact

and that could be dangerous whether the designator was on

the ground or in the air. In the air—though the shooter could

depart as soon as the bomb was released—the buddy or des

ignator aircraft would have to fly a predictable arc around the

target until the time of impact. On the ground, the man with

the designator would have to keep the target in his line of sigh

for the entire time of fall—which could mean keeping his head

in the line of sight of people at the target. Still, the results were

spectacular, especially in Linebacker I in “I” Corps;74 but they

were masked somewhat by the national trauma through which

we were passing at the time.

Though the public was relatively unaware of the potentia

huge economies entailed in even the earliest PGMs used in

Vietnam, those weapons made a substantial impression inside

the services.75 That led to two successive programs for the fur

ther improvement of the LGBs and the perfection of the EO

and IR seekers.76 The former were kits used to modify the

standard general purpose bombs, as were the television and

IR seekers used in the GBU-15 free-fall weapon and the air-to

ground missile (AGM) rocket-powered variant, AGM 130. Both

are mated with 2,000 lb bombs, as are some of the LGB seeke

kits—guided bomb units (GBU)—GBU-10/27. There are also

laser guidance kits for the standard 500 lb free-fall bomb

(GBU-12). Similar seeker technologies were also applied to a

launch-and-leave guided missile—the Maverick AGM-65—tha

had a wide application on A-10s, F-16s, and other platforms

with a ground attack role. The Maverick comes in an EO, an

IR, or a laser-guided variant; and though its warhead is

smaller than those of most guided bombs, it is optimized fo

armor penetration. It is a launch-and-forget weapon, and the

primary mode of operation for both the GBU-15 and the AGM

130 also permits a similar usage as well.77 The Maverick is

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rocket-powered and yields a modicum of standoff in low-altitude

attacks—as do the LGBs by virtue of the momentum of high

speed release and their airfoils.

The implications of these weapons’ technical advance fo

airpower doctrine and organization did not receive a great dea

of attention in the public media prior to the Persian Gulf War

But, in general, they portended great improvements in accu

racy and some gain in standoff delivery capability. That mean

fewer losses per target destroyed, perhaps far fewer—maybe o

revolutionary proportions. It also meant far fewer shooters

could achieve the same damage as larger non-PGM strike

forces, or the same number could do far more accurate dam

age. It also suggested that improved precision would fre

quently eliminate the need for reattack. Also, even at that early

day, airlift was often viewed as the limiting factor in distan

campaigns; and the perfection of PGMs suggested that there

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30

F-4 Phantom

The standard USAF fighter by the end of the Vietnam War was the

F-4 Phantom. It had originally been designed by the Navy as a fleet

defense fighter without a gun. In an effort to increase commonality among services, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara insisted that the USAF use it also; and he would not permit a redesign to include an internal gun. The combat results ultimately

established the necessity of the weapon; and by war’s end, the E

model was coming on line with an M-61 20 mm Gatling gun.
might be large economies ahead in the logistical system. Even

before the Gulf War, some airpower advocates, such as Co

John A. Warden III, thought the technological improvements

after Vietnam might portend the fulfillment of the visions o

Douhet and Mitchell—they might enable an “air only” cam

paign to succeed under certain circumstances.78

Yom Kippur War, 1973

The Arab–Israeli War of 1973 occurred just months after the

United States had agreed to remove its ground forces from

Vietnam and in return recovered its prisoners from the North

Vietnamese. The Israeli Air Force (IAF) had dominated its ene

mies in all the past wars, had recently been reequipped with

US aircraft, and had long been benefiting from technology

transfer from America.79 However, the results from the shor

war in October 1973 caused much hand-wringing everywhere

The Arabs, using an unfamiliar strategy and new missile tech

nologies for both antitank and air defense purposes, imposed

grave losses on the Israelis in the opening days. Though thei

US friends had been coping with SAMs for some years past

the IAF was nonetheless caught unprepared. 

The air battle was not the problem. Rather the losses fel

mostly to the ground-based defenses, especially the missiles

The SA-2s and SA-3s with which the IAF had been contending

for many months were responsible for many of the losses

However, the Arabs had received some additional assets from

their Soviet sponsors that were new to the Israelis: the hand

held SA-7 IR SAM and the SA-6 mobile system. Similarly, the

land battle featured wire-guided light antitank missiles tha

worked mayhem on the Israeli armored formations. 

Many of the analyses immediately following the war claimed

that it portended the end of the blitzkrieg, for the pendulum

had swung heavily in the direction of the defense both in the

air and on the ground. A single, half-trained infantryman

could now kill a multimillion dollar airplane or tank with im

punity with a cheap missile. But even at the time, there were

competing interpretations. Anwar Sadat lamented that he

would have won a great victory if the Israelis had not benefited

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from the import of Maverick missiles (the few that arrived

came too late to have any significant effect on the battle).80 In

the end, the Israeli combined arms offensive succeeded in sur

rounding the Egyptian Third Army; and it looked as though

that Arab force was about to be annihilated when the super

powers stepped in to shut down the war. 

At that point the lessons were uncertain, and most analyses

were biased by the prejudices of the analysts. But when the

Falklands War and the Israeli Bekáa Valley operations oc

curred nine years later, it appeared that the 1973 requiem fo

offensive airpower had been premature. The IAF had found

methods to suppress the Syrian ground defenses, and the ai

battle over Bekáa was a one-sided slaughter using mostly air

to-air missiles. The British surface naval forces suffered very

serious losses to Argentine airpower; and, but for the failure o

many bombs to explode on impact with the ships, they migh

well have been much worse. The British by then had an all

aspect version of the Sidewinder aboard their Harriers, but the

Argentines were still equipped with the older version of the

AIM-9 requiring stern shots and some French and Israeli mis

siles that were better—but not as good as—the AIM-9L. Fou

years later, a raid was made on Libya in response to terrorism

with impressive results and the loss of only one airplane—bu

it was only a one-time attack on an unalerted enemy.81 Thus

as had been the case with the 1930s combats in Spain and

China, there was enough ambiguity in the experiences of for

eign armed forces that the message for doctrinal and organi

zational change in America was unclear.

Meanwhile, the reaction to the frustrations of Vietnam also

stimulated doctrinal change in the US Army, which had an im

pact on the USAF.82 The Army refocused its attention to the

problems of a possible NATO war, sought ways to fight with in

ferior numbers, and perhaps even win without having to use

nuclear weapons. To some extent, this was also driven by

known Soviet doctrinal and organizational changes them

selves designed to bring about early victory in a nuclear con

text—hopefully without suffering the ravages of a nuclear ex

change. The US Army felt that the West would have to gain

leverage out of its technological advantage. It could not hope

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32
to win a force-on-force engagement given the perceived huge

numerical advantages enjoyed by the Warsaw Pact forces.

In America the soldiers developed the notion that the Soviets

could be defeated by disrupting the scheduled reinforcements

on the part of the second and third echelon Warsaw Pac

forces sent to exploit the breakthroughs achieved by the

Communist first echelon. The NATO first line forces would en

gage and hold the Warsaw Pact first echelon along the front

Meanwhile the West’s forces would use their technological ad

vantages for a deep attack upon the reinforcing echelons. Tha

was to disrupt them so as to skew the entire enemy schedule

and lead to confusion and defeat without generating the ne

cessity for NATO to use its nuclear weapons. Much of this

thought was originated at the US Army Training and Doctrine

Command (TRADOC) headquartered at Fort Monroe, Virginia

neighboring the USAF TAC at Langley AFB, Virginia. TRADOC

saw the deep attack being carried out principally by the ai

forces—at least for the time being—and called the scheme

AirLand Battle. The TAC leadership, at least initially, though

the notion was a good one. 

During this same period in Europe, in NATO circles simila

ideas were developing under the rubric of follow-on-forces at

tack. The idea of disrupting the time line of the follow-on

forces to enable winning in spite of being outnumbered was

the same.83 But the TRADOC idea had focused the planning

and execution at the corps level, with the corps commanders

being the lords of battle. NATO looked upon the scheme as

being centered at the theater level. The difference rang alarm

bells in some USAF circles because the AirLand Battle seemed

a step back toward Kasserine and the fragmentation of the

control of airpower among the various ground commanders

The new Army interest in deep attack also made some Ai

Force folks uncomfortable because the soldiers had been den

igrating the potential of interdiction since the beginning o

time. The appearance of long-range, ground-based fires on the

technological horizon seemed to portend an Army effort to

grab another chunk of the Air Force turf. Thus it happened

that though TAC signed agreements incorporating the AirLand

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Battle idea, the notion never got written into Air Force doctrine

in general. 

By the mid-1980s Congress got around to doing something

in the hope of clarifying the command practices for future the

ater wars. It generally strengthened the role of the CJCS and

the area CINCs and more closely confined the work of the serv

ice chiefs to the functions of training and equipping thei

forces for employment by those CINCs. It also seemed to pro

vide a partial step in the direction long favored by the airmen

as to the C2 of airpower: centralized at the theater level and

controlled by an airman coequal to the land and sea com

manders. The Goldwater–Nichols Act also recommended tha

CINCs appoint a joint force air component commande

(JFACC) and that he be chosen from the service with the pre

ponderance of air assets engaged.84 Just as electronic ad

vances had enhanced the development of PGMs, they also fa

cilitated the improvement of gathering information and o

unifying C2 at the theater level. The improvement in electron

ics also facilitated the development of space assets that could

provide sensors for information, help with weather forecasting

greatly facilitate precise navigation, and improve worldwide

communications.85

Those, then, were the airpower technological, doctrinal, and

organizational changes that took place before the Warsaw Pac

and the USSR collapsed and the Gulf War appeared in close

succession.

War and Technology in the 1990s:

Has the Last Sanctuary Been Closed?

The Cold War ended abruptly and the United States had no

even begun to explore the required policy, strategy, doctrinal

or organizational changes when Saddam Hussein marched

into Kuwait and threatened to go farther. 

Gulf War, Weather Sanctuary, and Concrete Sanctuary

The coalition that was developed to oppose Iraq’s move to

ward domination of the oil supply was blessed with a good dea

of time to plan and deploy its response.86 When combat was fi

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34
nally initiated, the result was so pleasing, swift, and complete

that it surprised even the most optimistic planners. The coali

tion won the air superiority campaign in a trice; the air-to-ai

battle itself did not last long. Practically all of the coalition’s

few aircraft losses fell to the ground elements of the enemy

IADS, and that had been effectively suppressed by the third

day through both lethal and nonlethal means. In the years

that had passed since the end of the Vietnam War, electronic

news reporting had developed still further so as to have in

stant worldwide coverage. It was emplaced in Baghdad when

the war began and was able to return impressive video images

of the character of the strategic part of the air attack. The ai

campaign ran several weeks before the CINC, US Army genera

H. Norman Schwarzkopf, launched the ground assault. The

ground portion of the campaign was over in four days and

brought the analysts out in droves explaining that the proo

was at hand that the Douhet/Mitchell revolution was finally

consummated or denying that was so.87

Many technological advances made since Vietnam had an

effect. One was that space technology had greatly advanced fa

cilitating a much better picture of what was going on for the

commanders on the coalition side. It also gave accurate and

timely weather forecasts and greatly improved navigation (by

Global Positioning System [GPS]) for some vehicles of every de

scription, and even for the foot soldiers. The technologies fo

deployment were not much changed since Vietnam; and

though the striking force was made up of new jets, their ad

vance had not been as great as the one made between, for in

stance, World War II and Vietnam. 

There were some new weapons guidance technologies in

place in the GBU-15 and antiradiation missiles (ARM), bu

their principles of operation were not much different from

those employed in their predecessors in Vietnam. In any case

by far the greater part of the PGMs employed were the LGBs

and Mavericks—the former of which had been extensively

used in Linebacker I in 1972. Their utility was much bette

noted this time because of the great electronic news coverage

in Baghdad, which yielded some spectacular combat footage

Even at that, only about 10 percent of the bombs dropped

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were guided weapons. But is was clear enough that at times

the weather was still a potential sanctuary from air attack

even from PGMs. 

Practically all of the kills made in the short air battle were

the result of PGMs, but the missiles used were later models o

the same AIM-9 Sidewinders and AIM-7 Sparrows that had

armed our forces in Vietnam. The air-to-ground part of the ai

superiority battle was facilitated by one new technology in a

major way: the F-117 stealth aircraft had come on the line.8

It was used against some of the most dangerous C2 nodes in

the enemy defense system, and the combination of its stealth

with the two LGBs it carried proved devastating.89 According

to some estimates, one F-117 could achieve in one sortie wha

was achieved with a striking force of 300 B-17s in World Wa

II—a change of potentially revolutionary proportions. In the

words of Gen Buster C. Glosson:

Air power advocates have long dreamed of a day when the weapon, platform, and willingness to use them properly would come together to

make air power a decisive force. Today, those dreams are reality. One

need only look back to our raids on Schweinfurt, Germany, in World

War II to see how dramatically precision weapons have enhanced our

capabilities over the last 50 years. Two raids of 300 B-17 bombers could

not achieve with 3,000 bombs what two F-117s can do with only four.

Precision weapons have truly given a new meaning to the term mass.90

No F-117s were lost, even though theirs were the most dan

gerous targets assigned. The new high-speed antiradiation

missile (HARM) also facilitated the air-to-ground part of the ai

superiority effort. It was much faster than the antiradiation

weapons used in Vietnam; and even when the enemy knew a

HARM had been launched, it yielded him much less time to

shut down his radar than theretofore (ARMs home in on rada

emissions).91 Those lethal methods were supplemented by the

nonlethal jamming efforts of various platforms such as the

Navy’s EA-6 and the Air Force’s EF-111. The consequence was

that though all of the coalition losses save perhaps one were

to the surface defenses, they were nonetheless minimal com

pared to Vietnam and the Yom Kippur War—and especially to

World War II. 

The doctrinal dimensions of the air war in the Gulf were o

some consequence. One argument was stimulated between

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36
the Army and the Air Force that probably emerged from the

AirLand doctrines of the former. The corps commanders had

jurisdiction of the placement of the fire support coordination

line (FSCL), which had marked the border between CAS and

interdiction—or between Army and Air Force turf—for many

years past. Detailed coordination with the ground commande

was required for any air strikes inside the FSCL, whereas the

air commander could conduct his operations outside the line

in an unhampered way.92

That coordination had worked well ever since World War II

But now, in the rapidly moving four-day ground battle, it led

to some difficulty. Formerly the FSCL had been set at the

outer limit of the field artillery range, a limited distance. Bu

in the years since Vietnam, new ground technologies in the

multiple launch rocket system, helicopters, and potentially in

the new ground launched missile systems (Army Tactica

Missile System) greatly increased the range of organic fire sup

port systems available to the ground commander. He was thus

tempted to project the FSCL out much farther than thereto

fore. This happened in the closing hours of the ground cam

paign and, according to the airmen, excluded them from at

tacking fleeing Republican Guard units—many of which

wound up escaping.93

Another of the traditional Air Force doctrinal issues stimu

lated a good deal of debate as a result of the Gulf War. Since

the beginning of World War II, the airmen had been urging tha

airpower be commanded by an airman in a centralized way a

the theater level. The air commander was to be colocated with

the ground commander and was to be equal to him. Neithe

force was to be subordinate to the other. As noted, the

Goldwater–Nichols Act in 1986 had provided a legal basis fo

this though it did not mandate that the joint force commande

adhere to the ideal.94 In the Gulf War, a JFACC was estab

lished in the person of Air Force Lt Gen Charles A. Horner; and

his air operations center produced the daily air tasking orde

(ATO). Everything that flew over the landmass in the area o

operations (AO) was required to be listed on that ATO. Genera

Horner and many other airmen argued that the airmen’s idea

for centralized command had finally been realized. Not all air

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men agreed, and many in the Navy and Marine Corps did not

One of the reasons was that there was such a huge force o

airplanes available that the hard choices that would have had

to have been made in a time of aircraft scarcity had not been

necessary. The resulting theater organization resembled tha

envisioned in the Goldwater–Nichols Act; but Genera

Schwarzkopf acted as his own land force component com

mander, and that was said to have made the various compo

nents unequal.95

Another thing made possible by the great abundance o

coalition airpower was what has come to be called parallel at

tack in the writings of Warden and later in Air Force Doctrine

Document 1, Air Force Basic Doctrine.96 The idea is that from

the beginning, airpower has usually been condemned to a se

quential attack—that it first had to mass all the power avail

able in the counterair mission to gain air superiority. Only

after that was achieved could it turn to the other missions

However, by the time of the Gulf War, the combination o

ample numbers of aircraft and the new efficiency of PGMs so

reduced the number of sorties needed to destroy a target tha

new options were thus opened. Now, according to Warden and

others, it was possible to undertake the various tasks of air

power simultaneously. One could conduct the counterair, in

terdiction, CAS, and strategic attack missions at the same

time. The result would not be the dispersion of one’s forces

and the violation of the principle of mass. Rather, it was to be

the accomplishment of massing firepower in time—hitting

multiple centers of gravity at the same time. That would cre

ate synergies that would greatly increase enemy shock and

confusion. As an antithesis to gradualism, the idea was highly

appealing to many airmen.97

As noted, the weather during the Gulf War was far worse

than it had been in that region for a number of years, which

inhibited the effectiveness of the PGMs then available. The

Iraqis also found another sanctuary that was not altogethe

new—a cultural or humanitarian one. One example was the

civilian deaths suffered in the bombing of the Al Fidros

bunker, a military installation temporarily being used as a

bomb shelter for noncombatants. Saddam Hussein effectively

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38
used the incident—together with his access to the West’s elec

tronic media—to shock public opinion to the point that furthe

attacks in Baghdad were prohibited for most of the rest of the

war.98 Additionally, when he found that his concrete aircraf

shelters were no protection for his air force, he sent many o

the survivors into another sanctuary: Iran. That, in effect, was

a functional kill for the coalition because the Iraqis never go

them back.99 Some of the remnants were parked near monu

ments and other civil structures, which formed cultural sanc

tuaries.

In earlier days, the Vietnamese found sanctuaries for some

elements of their IADS by deploying them along dikes, nea

hospitals, or in villages. The coming of PGMs was to make the

physical task of destroying such targets without collatera

damage less difficult than theretofore, but the penalties fo

any collateral damage in lost public and neutral suppor

steadily grew as the century waned. 

In the euphoria that we enjoyed at the end of the Gulf War

the president said we had finally overcome the Vietnam Wa

syndrome. Many airmen argued that the visions of the pio

neers of the 1920s had finally been fulfilled. The ideal of cen

tralized control had been consummated. The potential for pre

cision would not only make the penalties of collateral damage

less but also induce such economies that parallel attack would

become more feasible. It might also considerably reduce the

size of the logistical tail and diminish the time necessary to

deploy and to bring sufficient shock on the enemy to cause

him to do our will. It might even enable an air alone campaign

in some circumstances.100 Whether it was the strategic attack

or the tactical operations that had brought that about is no

easy to determine. But the fact remains that the air campaign

had reduced the enemy to the point where the ground battle

lasted only four days, and the whole war cost the United

States only 148 service people killed in action.101 But there

were gnawing concerns that with all our information and pre

cision attack advantages, we had been unable to master the

threat of theater ballistic missiles. The weather sanctuary re

mained, and many argued that the results should not be

taken as the wave of the future. Though concrete shelters and

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underground bunkers were put at risk by new penetrating

bombs, going underground could still provide some refuge.10

Even with the bad weather, the desert environment and rela

tively good climate were ideal for air campaigns and would sel

dom be seen again.

Organizational Change after the Gulf War

Some air reorganization was in the wind before the Gulf Wa

but did not come to fruition until afterwards. The heyday o

SAC was in the distant past. There had been questions abou

the fragmentation of combat airpower since the days of Billy

Mitchell, and even at the time of the creation of SAC, TAC, and

the Air Defense Command. The coming of the ICBMs and the

sea launched ballistic missiles (SLBM) caused a gradual tran

sition from reliance on bombers to dependence upon missiles

for deterrence. The Navy role with the SLBMs had long been

an obvious inducement toward the creation of a joint organi

zation. Finally, the collapse of the USSR reduced the relative

importance of nuclear deterrence in national security planning. 

The disappearance of the Soviet Union and the end of the

Cold War were important factors leading to organizationa

change in another way. The American people had been labor

ing under heavy defense expenditures and frequently unbal

anced federal budgets ever since 1938. The end of the Cold

War greatly reduced their fear of general war. It also stimu

lated their desire to gain a peace dividend, balance the na

tional accounts, begin paying down the national debt, and

apply funding to other important social needs. Thus, any con

solidations and reductions in the numbers of headquarters

would facilitate those desires. 

One of the consolidations was the reunification of the R&D

function with the procurement role. The original splitting o

those functions occurred in the early 1950s and was done on

the notion that the R&D funding would always be so much

less than that for procurement and supply that the officers in

charge of the latter would always dominate the Air Materie

Command. The argument was that such dominance would be

certain to limit the Air Force to incremental change and con

CADRE PAPER

40
demn it to unimaginative developmental programs. On the

other hand, it did create two commands where one had existed

theretofore and thus increased the overhead. The reunification

was achieved under the name of Air Force Materiel Command

which is headquartered at Wright–Patterson AFB, Ohio.103

The notion that underlay the creation of GHQ Air Force in

1935 was that combat airpower was inherently indivisible

Were it commanded in a fragmented way, its full shocking

power could never be realized. The GHQ AF briefly lived unde

the name of Air Combat Command (ACC) before the onset o

World War II.104 But during World War II, airpower was seldom

controlled in a unified way. Often the RAF model of functiona

commands was followed—usually a bomber command, a

fighter command, a coastal command, a training command

and perhaps a service command. In the RAF case, airpowe

was under unified command only at the ministerial level. 

After World War II, just before the creation of the USAF, the

USAAF reorganized for a peacetime role. In 1946 strategic at

tack, strategic defense, and tactical airpower were split into

their respective functional commands. So it remained unti

1992 when they were all reunified into an ACC led from

Langley AFB.105 Still, the ACC function is mainly to train and

equip air forces for employment by the area CINCs. The

bomber force was only a shadow of its former self, and tha

was a part of the reason the command wound up at Langley

where TAC had been situated. Another part of the reason was

that the remaining nuclear deterrence functions were placed

under a new joint command, the United States Strategic

Command; and it needed a home, which was found at Offut

AFB, Nebraska—formerly the location of SAC headquarters

But that created a problem with finding a home for SAC’s

tankers. They were often discounted as combat aircraft, and

thus it was thought inappropriate to put them in ACC. Rather

the name of MAC was broadened to Air Mobility Command

(AMC); and the tankers were transferred to its control, which

would be exerted from Scott AFB, Illinois.106 These name

changes and functions were more stimulated by politica

change than by technology.

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Changes in Air Technology after the Persian Gulf War

There was little change in the technology of aircraft in the

aftermath of the Gulf War, and the Kosovo campaign was

fought with largely the same types of aircraft. The B-2 bombe

was indeed used over Kosovo for the first time in combat,10

and its stealth and massive bomb load combined with one

more improvement in conventional munitions technology

might tempt one to say that the last sanctuary has been

closed: the bad weather refuge.108

Allied Force, AMRAAM, JDAM, JSOW, and

Weather Sanctuary

The improvement was really a combination of conventiona

guidance and space technology advances. The GPS system

had matured more since the Gulf War, and a technology pro

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42

B-2 Spirit

In 1999 this bomber was first used in combat over Serbia with the GPS/INS

bombs with very good results. The joint direct attack munition used there wa

the 2,000 lb size, but there are now programs under way to adapt the guidanc

to the 500 lb weapon so that each sortie could hit more than the 16 targets pos

sible with the 2,000 pounders.
gram that antedated it was transitioned into line weaponry

Both the joint direct attack munition (JDAM) and the join

standoff weapon (JSOW) programs achieved their IOCs before

NATO attacked Slobodan Milosevic’s Serbia.109 Both are

launch-and-leave weapons, though each can receive GPS up

dates after launch. By 1999 JDAM had been certified for op

eration only aboard the B-2, though it was in the process o

being qualified on practically all American air-to-ground air

craft. On the B-2, however, the plane’s radar systems permi

the correcting of the GPS coordinates of targets—thereby in

creasing JDAM accuracy over that achieved on other aircraft

The results were spectacular in that the JDAM attacks were

launched against Serbian targets from a USAF base in

Missouri and continued even when the weather had grounded

all other attack aircraft. The bombing was done through the

clouds and yet yielded highly accurate results.

The JDAM and JSOW use similar guidance systems that are

not dependent upon visual, IR, or radar acquisition of the tar

get if its coordinates are known. Both these systems are

guided first by an inertial measurement unit (IMU) that can

bring them very close to the target. They also have a relatively

simple GPS receiver so that they can receive accuracy updates

to their IMUs during their time of fall to the target. The JDAM

is a tail kit that is fitted to the standard 2,000 lb US bombs

stored in huge numbers all over the world, and kits are being

developed for smaller sized bombs as well. In terms of the

usual PGM costs, they are exceedingly cheap and thus are

being acquired in huge numbers. The two great advantages o

the JDAM and the JSOW are their low cost and their ability to

hit a target through the clouds, at night, or through smoke o

other obscuration. They also do not require designation, and

thus the launch crews can move on to other things or drop ad

ditional weapons. The disadvantage of both weapons is that in

some applications, though not as much in the B-2, they re

quire good intelligence on the exact location of the target

JSOW costs substantially more than JDAM, but it is still rel

atively economical compared to the usual PGM with the same

standoff capability.110 It has a set of folding wings that enable

it to glide a considerable distance and still hit a target through

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43
the weather with the same accuracy as the JDAM. Being

presently unpowered and lacking a seeker with large data pro

cessing requirements, it is more economical by far than the

usual cruise missile, or even the AGM-130 (which has a much

larger radar cross section, higher drag, and a bigger warhead

than JSOW). JSOW is not a mere attachment to a standard

weapon. Rather, it has a weapons bay which—in its earlies

version—carries a number of the standard submunitions nor

mally delivered with a munitions dispenser, which sometimes

requires that the delivery aircraft make a closer approach to

the target.111

It is well established in the historiographical literature tha

the “want of a nail” single causation explanations of military

technical revolutions (MTR) are very seldom correct. This is

also true of the perceived RMA at hand. Arguably, it is based

on far more than the coming of stealth and air-to-ground pre

cision weapons. By the turn of the century, the last severa

combats (Yom Kippur War, Falklands War, Bekáa Valley, the

Gulf War, and the air war over Serbia) all suggest that there

has been a radical improvement in the West’s ability to con

duct the air-to-air battle since Vietnam. In part, this has been

based on the improvements in the Sidewinders and Sparrows

of that day to make them more reliable, easier to use, and less

easy to evade. In part, it has arisen from much improved C

with the coming of the airborne warning and control system

as well as aircraft optimized for the air battle (F-15C). In addi

tion, just after the end of the Gulf War, new precision weapons

CADRE PAPER

44

Joint Standoff Weapon
came on the line in the form of the advanced medium range

air-to-air missile (AMRAAM).112 The Sparrow was roughly in

the same range category, but it was not a fire-and-forge

weapon. Its launching crew had to direct it toward its target al

the way up to impact. In turn, the crew could not begin eva

sive maneuvers or attacks on additional enemies until the

missile reached its target; and the relatively slow speed of the

Sparrow and its visible smoke trail made it conceivable that an

alert enemy could avoid it.

AMRAAM made many improvements. It is much lighter and

can be carried aboard most of the F-16s in the inventory, o

which there were many which could not handle the weight no

the radar requirements of the Sparrow. In one of its modes o

operation, the AMRAAM has an active radar. That is to say, i

can “paint” the target with its own radar transmitter. This

makes it possible for the launching fighter to begin his escape

or another attack before impact. In contrast, the Sparrow only

has a receiver. AMRAAM has a higher speed than Sparrow

which gives the enemy less time to evade it; and it has less o

a smoke trail, which makes it less likely that an enemy wil

discover he is under attack until it is too late.113

The Western capability for the close-in fight has also been

improved since the Gulf War. In the American case, this has

come about in small part by the design of improved ammuni

tion for the standard air-to-air gun, the M-61. That design has

improved the muzzle velocity with the effect of flattening the

trajectory while at the same time reducing the time the enemy

aircraft has to get out of harm’s way. But atop that improve

ment has been the design of a new version of the Sidewinder

the AIM-9X. That, too, has a higher velocity and less smoke

than its predecessors. It also has a new control system tha

enables it to turn more sharply, thereby reducing the enemy’s

chance to escape by way of violent maneuvers. Like its imme

diate predecessors, the AIM-9X is simpler to use than its

Vietnam ancestors because it is an all-aspect weapon. This

means that the attacker no longer has to maneuver into a nar

row cone astern its victim to get a lock on. Rather, the

Sidewinder now can attack from the beam or ahead of the tar

get. A further improvement is also on the horizon for some o

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45
the US air-to-air fighters: the helmet mounted sight. The pilo

will no longer have to maneuver his jet so as to get his targe

into his heads up display (HUD) on the cowling. Rather, all o

the HUD information will now be projected onto the visor o

his helmet so that he will not even be required to look forward

to his cowling. He will be able to slave the seeker in the AIM

9X to the sight on his helmet and to launch it at whatever he

is looking at—within the field of regard of the seeker. Tha

means saving of precious seconds consumed in maneuvering

and the ability to launch off-boresight shots at targets on the

beam—and potentially even some behind the beam.114

Added to those weapon improvements are still others in C

and situational awareness, in addition to the design of a suc

cessor to the F-15C as a dedicated air-to-air plane. The new

craft—the F-22—has stealth, improved agility, and super

cruise (the ability to sustain supersonic flight without the use

of fuel-guzzling afterburners)—all of which promise to com

bine with the weapons improvements to further widen the

West’s advantage in the air-to-air part of the air superiority

battle.115 Given the weakness of the Russian economy and its

R&D base in the last 10 years, it seems doubtful that the im

provements on the ground-based defenses have kept up with

the combinations cited above—but, as always, only all-ou

battle could prove that point.

CADRE PAPER

46

Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile

The advanced medium range air-to-air missile (AMRAAM—AIM-120) on an F

16.The weapon achieved its initial operational capability in 1991 and scored it

first kill in 1992.
The Remaining Humanitarian

Sanctuary and Doctrinal Implications

Airpower began to remove the sanctuary of distance a long

time ago. In the United States, Professor Thaddeus Lowe’s bal

loons began to diminish the Confederate ability to hide from

prying Union eyes as long ago as 1862.116 The addition of air

planes to the lighter-than-air capability of reconnaissance and

spotting was a major factor in denying World War I enemies an

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47

Artist Drawing of the F-22 Raptor

The USAF F-22 depicted above is the latest technology development designed

first to sustain command of the air. An air-to-ground capability is being added to

increase its versatility. A complementary program is afoot to develop the “sma

diameter bomb” that will fit into its weapons bay and yet have the precision and

improved explosive filler to give it the same potency as much larger weapons. It

stealth—in most circumstances—should give it the first shot advantage ove

nonstealthy aircraft, which has usually been decisive in past aerial battles. Ato

that it has a sustained supersonic capability without the use of afterburners

which aims to reduce the time it would be vulnerable to the ground defenses.
offensive potential by peering into their rear areas to preven

undetected massing of troops.117 By World War II, the offensive

capabilities of airpower brought lethal firepower far into the

enemy homeland to further close the sanctuary of distance

Gerd von Rundstedt’s troops could still find some protection

from airpower during the darkness of short nights as they fled

across France in 1944 and 1945. The Wehrmacht found some

safety under the clouds for the first six days of the Battle o

the Bulge. Also, the combination of the inaccuracy of the

bombs and the pain inflicted on the air offensive by the de

fenses limited the shock put on enemies. The North Koreans

and the Chinese enjoyed the same sanctuaries up to 1953, bu

the refuge of darkness began to disappear for enemies during

the Vietnam War. By the time of the Gulf War, the curtain o

the night had been removed—in fact, the darkness had be

come the friend of offensive airpower. But Saddam Hussein’s

soldiers could still find a little safety underground or behind

the clouds and smoke. 

Neither clouds nor darkness helped Milosevic’s Serbia much

because by then these elements made no difference to JDAM

or JSOW. His people could still find a little shelter behind cul

tural and humanitarian sanctuaries and some protection be

neath soil or concrete in a limited war world. They also proved

expert at using decoys and camouflage to help them hide—a

some cost in time and mobility. But the increasing application

of precision to conventional weapons was working to diminish

that protection.

Organizational Implications

It would certainly be presumptive to argue that PGMs had

brought the revolution envisioned by Douhet and Mitchell and

their followers to full flower. RMAs in the past have almost al

ways been the result of a new combination of relatively mature

technologies, not a single radical new invention.118 In the ab

sence of stealth, the B-2 would have been highly vulnerable in

Allied Force, and its 16 JDAMs might all have gone for naught

Even with stealth, the B-2 crews could not have hit their tar

gets with that kind of regularity without the combining of in

CADRE PAPER

48
ertial measurement technologies with those provided by

space-based navigation systems. 

There are predictions far and wide suggesting that because

countermeasures such as radar have always been found in the

past, a counter to stealth might be just around the corner

There is a regular refrain regarding the possibility of jamming

GPS, thereby preventing transition to a full-blooded doctrine

of air-only coercion. Accordingly, to reorganize our nationa

security around airpower alone would require a superhuman

act of foresight—or a foolhardy one. Those who can remembe

the rapid disappearance of the US isolationist world during

the afternoon of 7 December 1941 would never again want to

put our national eggs into that single basket. Yet the advice o

Rear Adm James Winnefeld and Dr. Dana J. Johnson certainly

seems worth contemplating. 

Perhaps the combination—of air refueling, long-range air

power, superior information, precision and accurate guidance

stealth and superior defense suppression, and increased

standoff—is enough to cause us to at least consider the possi

bility that an airpower-based RMA has occurred. On the othe

hand, it would be imprudent to conclude that air-only solu

tions apply in all instances. With that much said, many histo

rians would still cringe at the use of the word revolution, espe

cially since the greater part of a century has passed since the

days of Douhet and Mitchell. But in my own opinion

Benjamin Lambeth’s choice of Transformation for the title o

his new book is not too much.119

I would further argue that the great improvements in conven

tional weapons since 1945 have changed the cost-effectiveness

calculations in favor of the aerial offensive. This change has

been dramatic enough since the discovery of laser light in

1958 that I would argue that PGMs are a main pillar of tha

transformation. Two cautions are necessary. First, Vietnam

showed us that being prepared for one kind of larger war did

not automatically mean that we were also prepared for a

smaller conflict of another sort. The potential adversaries

know that and will surely be reluctant to challenge the United

States in another Desert Storm. Second, we so dominate the

conventional battlefield that we should carefully conside

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49
whether we should deliberately change the arena by weaponiz

ing space, where it might be more difficult to establish and

sustain a commanding advantage on a new battlefield. 

Notes

1. Bernard Brodie, Strategy in the Missile Age (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton

University Press, 1965), 73.

2. Gian P. Gentile, How Effective Is Strategic Bombing? Lessons Learned

from World War II to Kosovo (New York: New York University Press, 2001).

3. David MacIsaac, “Voices from the Central Blue: The Airpowe

Theorists,” in Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclea

Age, ed. Peter Paret (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986)

624–30; Brodie, 98; Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett, A War to B

Won: Fighting the Second World War (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press

2000), 304; and Lee Kennett, “Strategic Bombardment: A Retrospective,” in

Case Studies in Strategic Bombardment, ed. R. Cargill Hall (Washington

D.C.: Air Force History and Museums Program, 1998), 623. The idea tha

bombing could reduce human suffering by shortening wars antedates both

Mitchell and Douhet for it was voiced by Capt William Crozier, US Army, a

the Hague Conference of 1899. 

4. William “Billy” Mitchell, lecture, Army War College, 24 Novembe

1922, Curricular Archives file no. 240-49, US Army Military Institute

Carlisle Barracks, Pa., hereinafter referred to as Mitchell’s lecture; Giuli

Douhet, The Command of the Air, trans. Dino Ferrari (1942; new imprint

Washington, D.C.: Office of Air Force History, 1983), 9; and Brodie, 71–144

In his lecture, General Mitchell said “some improvement has been made in

antiaircraft artillery. However, as I said before, we care little for antiaircraf

artillery.” In The Command of the Air, Douhet stated that “the airplane ha

complete freedom of action and direction; it can fly to and from any point o

the compass in the shortest time—in a straight line—by any route deemed

expedient. Nothing man can do on the surface of the earth can interfere with

a plane in flight, moving freely in the third dimension. All the influence

which have conditioned and characterized warfare from the beginning ar

powerless to affect aerial action.” The ideas of Douhet may be received di

rectly from his book or indirectly from Brodie. 

5. Alfred F. Hurley, Billy Mitchell: Crusader for Air Power (1964; reprint

Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1975); and William Mitchell

Winged Defense: The Development and Possibilities of Modern Air Power—

Economic and Military (1925; reprint, New York: Dover Publications, 1988)

Hurley is considered the authority on Mitchell as is Mitchell himself in

Winged Defense.

6. Adm William A. Owens, US Navy (USN), retired, “The Emerging System

of Systems,” US Naval Institute (USNI) Proceedings, May 1995, 35–39; idem

“It’s Time for the Revolution,” USNI Proceedings, April 2000, 90–92; Bill Toti

“Stop the Revolution; I Want to Get Off,” USNI Proceedings, July 2000

CADRE PAPER

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30–33; Andrew F. Krepinevich, “Cavalry to Computer,” National Interest, Fal

1994, 30–42; idem,“Forging a Path to a Post-Nuclear U.S. Military,” Issue

in Science and Technology, Spring 1997; Michael E. O’Hanlon, Technologica

Change and the Future of Warfare (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution

Press, 2000); idem, “Can High Technology Bring U.S. Troops Home?” Foreign

Policy, Winter 1998/99, 72–87; Thomas C. Hone, “Jackie Fisher’s Revenge,

USNI Proceedings, February 2000, 82–86; Steven Metz, “The Next Twist o

the RMA,” Parameters, Autumn 2000, 40–54; Eric R. Sterner, “You Say You

Want a Revolution (in Military Affairs)?” Comparative Strategy

October–December 1999, 297–309; Colin S. Gray and John B. Sheldon

“Space Power and the Revolution in Military Affairs: A Glass Half Full?

Airpower Journal, Fall 1999, 23–39; on-line, Internet, available a

http://www.airpower.maxwell.

af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj99/fal99/gray.html; Williamson Murray

“Clausewitz Out, Computer In: Military Culture and Technological Hubris,

National Interest, Summer 1997, 57–65; Lawrence Freedman, The Revolution

in Strategic Affairs, Adelphi Paper 318 (New York: Oxford University Press

1998); Thomas A. Keaney and Eliot A. Cohen, Revolution in Warfare? Ai

Power in the Persian Gulf (Annapolis, Md.: USNI Press, 1995); Michael J

Mazarr, Jeffrey Shaffer, and Benjamin Edrington, “The Military Technica

Revolution,” in American Defense Policy, ed. Peter L. Hays, Brenda J

Vallance, and Alan R. Van Tassel, 7th ed. (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkin

University Press, 1997); and Robert Tomes, “Revolution in Military Affairs—

A History,” Military Review, September–October 2000, 98–102. These ar

samples of that huge literature.

7. Peter R. Faber, “Interwar US Army Aviation and the Air Corps Tactica

School: Incubators of American Airpower,” in The Paths of Heaven: Th

Evolution of Airpower Theory, ed. Phillip S. Meilinger (Maxwell Air Force Bas

[AFB], Ala.: Air University Press, 1997), 183–238. 

8. Phillip S. Meilinger, “Trenchard, Slessor, and Royal Air Force [RAF

Doctrine before World War II,” in The Paths of Heaven, ed. Meilinger, 41–78

9. James S. Corum, The Roots of the Blitzkrieg: Hans von Seeckt and th

German Military Reform (Lawrence, Kans.: University Press of Kansas

1992), 151–59; and Richard Muller, The German Air War in Russia

(Baltimore, Md.: Nautical and Aviation Publishing, 1992), 149–88.

10. Among those using such a concept are Steven M. Kosiak, “U.S

Fighter Modernization: An Alternative Approach,” Issues in Science and

Technology Online, Spring 2000, 8, on-line, Internet, 25 April 2001, availabl

at http://www.nap.edu/issues/16.3/kosiak.htm; and Dr. Elinor Sloan

“Canada and the Revolution in Military Affairs: Current Response and

Future Opportunities,” Canadian Military Journal, Autumn 2000, 1–2, on

line, Internet, 25 April 2001, available at http://www.journal.dnd.ca/vol1

no3_e/revolution_e/rev1_e.html.

11. Brodie, 73.

12. US Army, Air Service, Headquarters First Provisional Air Brigade

Langley Field, Va., “Armament Report,” 8 August 1921, copy at USAF

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51
Historical Research Agency (AFHRA), file no. 248.222-89; Mitchell’s lecture

9; and Maj T. D. Milling, report, “The Air Service Tactical School,” Langle

Field, Va., 1924, copy in files of History Office, Air Armament Center, Eglin

AFB, Fla., file no. 25A-1-15. Major Milling relates some experiences in th

bombing tests. The school had not yet migrated from Langley to Maxwel

AFB, Ala., to become the Air Corps Tactical School (ACTS); and instruction

was suspended for the duration of the tests. The officers of the school be

came a part of the nucleus of the First Provisional Air Brigade, which con

ducted the Air Service part of the tests. During his lecture Mitchell speak

also of some of the bomb research that the First Provisional Air Brigade did

in preparing for the bombing tests. 

13. Neville Jones, The Beginnings of Strategic Air Power: A History of th

British Bomber Force, 1923–39 (London: Frank Cass, 1987), 66.

14. Edward Jablonski, Flying Fortress: The Illustrated Biography of the B

17s and the Men Who Flew Them (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1965), 315

15. C. M. Green, H. C. Thomson and Peter C. Roots, The United State

Army in World War II, vol. 3, The Ordnance Department, pt. 1, “Plannin

Munitions for War” (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Chief of Military History

Department of the Army, 1955), 422, 452–55; Harry C. Thomson and Lid

Mayo, in The United States Army in World War II, vol. 3, The Ordnanc

Department, pt. 2, Procurement and Supply (Washington, D.C.: Office of th

Chief of Military History, Department of the Army, 1960), 119–21; and US

Air Force (USAF), Air Command and Staff College (ACSC), Air Weapon

(Gunter Air Station, Ala.: Extension Course Institute, 1957), 1–2.

16. Lt Col Robert A. Colella, interviewed by author, 9 May 2001, Maxwel

AFB, Ala. The joint direct attack munitions (JDAM) used by the B-2 in th

Kosovo campaign all had 2,000-pound warheads, which allowed the deliver

of 16 on different targets on every trip; since then, given the accuracy de

veloped by the new tail kits, the USAF has moved to develop a 500-pound

version of JDAMs so as to enable the delivery of even more rifle shots than

were possible in 1999. 

17. Thomas Wildenberg, Destined for Glory: Dive Bombing, Midway, and

the Evolution of Carrier Airpower (Annapolis, Md.: USNI Press, 1998), 219–20

and Stephen Lee McFarland, America’s Pursuit of Precision Bombing

1910–1945 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995)

McFarland traces the history of the Norden bombsight development, and

Wildenberg traces the origins of the Norden bombsight development and th

adoption of dive bombing for the sake of hitting a maneuvering ship.

18. William A. Borden, “Air Bombing of Industrial Plants,” Army

Ordnance, I, November–December 1920. Borden’s early ideas are similar in

some ways to those prominent at the ACTS a decade and a half later and

even some on incendiary weapons often associated with the name of Gen

Curtis E. LeMay and the fire bombing of Japan a quarter century after

wards.

19. In the abstract a fortress is a defensive system, and that name for th

aircraft was originally chosen to suggest its defensive character.

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20. Mitchell’s lecture, 23; Faber, 219–21; and Robert T. Finney, History

of the Air Corps Tactical School, 1920–1940, USAF Historical Study 100

(Maxwell AFB, Ala.: USAF Historical Division, Air University, 1955). Usuall

the idea of the vulnerable triangle subject to bombing from an Ontario bas

is attributed to the ACTS, but Gen Billy Mitchell referred to the notion in thi

lecture.

21. Haywood S. Hansell Jr., The Air Plan That Defeated Hitler (Atlanta

Ga.: Higgins–MacArthur/Longino and Porter, 1972), 94–95, 112.

22. Russell F. Weigley, Eisenhower’s Lieutenants: The Campaign o

France and Germany, 1944–1945 (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana Universit

Press, 1981), 12–19.

23. Murray and Millett, 509–10; Thomas B. Buell, The Quiet Warrior: A

Biography of Admiral Raymond A. Spruance (Annapolis, Md.: USNI Press

1987), 396; E. B. Potter, Nimitz (Annapolis, Md.: USNI Press, 1976), 378–81

Gerhard L. Weinberg, A World at Arms: A Global History of World War I

(Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 882; and Ronald H

Spector, Eagle against the Sun: The American War with Japan (New York

Vintage, 1985), 540–44.

24. The United States Strategic Bombing Surveys [USSBS], Summary

Report: European War, Pacific War (1947; reprint, Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Ai

University Press, 1987), 37, 106.

25. Bernard and Fawn M. Brodie, From Crossbow to H-Bomb

(Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1962, 1973), 207–8. Th

Brodies show that the Navy was working on radar in Washington from 193

and demonstrated it aboard ship before the war; the Army tested radar fo

antiaircraft guns and for aircraft warning by 1939 as well, but little though

had so far been given to the implications for air defense and for long-rang

bombing before World War II.

26. Maurer Maurer, Aviation in the U.S. Army, 1919–1939 (Washington

D.C.: Office of Air Force History, 1987), 69–84; and USSBS, Summary Report

37–40, 108–13. The comments on the ACTS and Mitchell in this essay ar

not meant to convey any notion that they were totally preoccupied with

strategic bombing. Mitchell, especially in his earlier writings, was arguing fo

balanced air forces, and the US Army air arm contained a dedicated tactica

support group throughout the interwar period—the 3d Attack Group based

at Barksdale Field, La., for the greater part of the period. It was one of thre

operational groups, and the others also contained attack airplanes. Ther

was an attack course in the curriculum of the ACTS throughout the inter

war period, and numerous attack aircraft were designed and produced dur

ing that period. The first monoplane in US service was the Curtiss A-8 o

1928, some time before the monoplane P-26 and B-10 appeared. 

27. Dudley Saward, Bomber Harris: The Story of Marshal of the Royal Ai

Force, Sir Arthur Harris (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1985), 221.

28. Marshall L. Michel III, Clashes: Air Combat over North Vietnam

1965–1972 (Annapolis, Md.: USNI Press, 1997), 164–65; and Wayn

Thompson, To Hanoi and Back: The U.S. Air Force and North Vietnam

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1966–1973 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000), 288

This is a continuing concern. The reason why the USAF was so successfu

in the Korean air battles was that it still had World War II experienced fighte

pilots in its ranks who were still young enough for combat. However, tha

kind of experience was no longer available in Vietnam; and that was one o

the reasons for disappointing results there. The peacetime training pro

grams were then beefed up to reduce the difficulty, and neither the Persian

Gulf War nor the air war over Serbia lasted long enough to exhaust our sup

ply of well-trained people.

29. Hansell, 257.

30. Ibid.

31. This is not to imply that all those diversions were bad. Clearly, th

submarine campaign was near enough to success that everything conceiv

able had to be done to defeat it. They could not know in advance that the at

tacks on the submarine pens or the shipyards building the U-boats were t

be futile. Also, the bombing of the V-1 launching sites was a waste of bombs

and the Germans knew it. They continued to build the concrete launchin

ramps even after they had decided on other means to launch the V-1 pre

cisely because they were attracting bombs that otherwise might have gon

to downtown Germany. Again, the political impact of the V-1s that were hit

ting London was so great that in the absence of the knowledge about th

launchers, everything possible had to be attempted. The so-called diversion

to Africa turned out to yield much greater gains than the airmen (or Georg

Marshall) anticipated.

32. Kenneth P. Werrell, Blankets of Fire: U.S. Bombers over Japan durin

World War II (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996)

195–201.

33. Kenneth P. Werrell, The Evolution of the Cruise Missile (Maxwell AFB

Ala.: Air University Press, 1985, 1996), 12–17.

34. US Army Air Forces (AAF), AAF Board, Orlando, Fla., “Controlled

Missiles,” Project no. GP 5, 29 October 1943, copy in Technical Library

Eglin AFB, Fla., file no. 2416, 1–7; and Albert B. Christman and J. D

Gerrard-Gough, History of the Naval Weapons Center, China Lake, Calif., vol

2, The Grand Experiment at Inyokern: Narrative of the Naval Ordnance Tes

Station during the Second World War and the Immediate Postwar Year

(Washington, D.C.: Naval History Division, 1978), 277–79.

35. Herman S. Wolk, Planning and Organizing the Postwar Air Force

1943–1947 (Washington, D.C.: Office of Air Force History, 1984), 147.

36. Harry R. Borowski, A Hollow Threat: Strategic Air Power and

Containment Before Korea (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982)

Borowski is considered the authority on the early years of Strategic Ai

Command.

37. Donald E. Wilson, “The History of President Truman’s Air Polic

Commission and Its Influence on Air Policy, 1947–1949” (PhD diss.

University of Denver, 1978), 3–30; and USAF, “Report of the Chief of Staff o

the United States Air Force to the Secretary of the Air Force,” 30 June 1948

CADRE PAPER

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10–13. Copy in Air University Library, Maxwell AFB, Ala. This report show

that the AAF discharged more than 400,000 people in October 1945, greate

than the entire strength that the USAF planned for 2001. 

38. USAF, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Aberdeen, Md., “The Provin

Ground’s Role in the Air Force Missile Development Program,” 1 Decembe

1957, copy at Air Armament Center/HO, file no. 25A-1-1.

39. Roger G. Miller, To Save a City: The Berlin Airlift, 1948–1949

(Washington, D.C.: Air Force History and Museums Program, 1998). 

40. Stephen Ambrose, Eisenhower, vol. 2, The President (New York

Simon and Schuster, 1984), 52; on the discontent among Reservists se

Doris M. Condit, History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, vol. 2, Th

Test of War, 1950–1953 (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Secretary o

Defense, 1988), 491.

41. Notwithstanding the great kill ratios in the air-to-air battle, the large

fight for air superiority was not a pushover. The USAF suffered very sub

stantial losses to ground defenses, and the B-29s could not fly except a

night along the Yalu. 

42. Robert F. Futrell, The United States Air Force in Korea, 1950–1953, 2d

ed. rev. (Washington, D.C.: Office of Air Force History, 1983), 244–53

696–98. The M-2 of World War II was the standard, and the .50 calibers in

the F-86 through its E model were the M-3. The action in the M-3 was prac

tically the same as that in the M-2—the principal difference being in the bar

rel, which had a liner that was much superior. The main benefit was in lo

gistics, as one could use the M-3 barrels for many more missions than th

M-2; but it did permit a higher rate of fire and a slower deterioration of ac

curacy resulting from barrel wear. The M-2 was tested first in 1917 and wa

standard for many years. The USAF stuck with the gun for a long time be

cause of its superior armor piercing incendiary ammunition.

43. USAF, ACSC, Air Weapons, 1–2.

44. Dr. William S. Coker, “The Extra-Super Blockbuster,” Air University

Review, March–April 1967, 61–68; “Big Bombs,” Impact, June 1945, 46–48

and Marshal of the RAF Sir Arthur Harris, Bomber Offensive (London

Collins, 1947), 44, 58, 59, 77, 82, 237–53. During World War II, the British

did more development of larger bombs precisely because their aircraft wer

capable of carrying them. That, in large part, was driven by the frustration

of the submarine war wherein it seemed impossible to conquer the U-boat

on the high seas. It did not seem feasible to cut them off at the source in th

shipyards while they were under construction. Yet the Germans built con

crete slips for the submarines in the French ports that were too stout for th

largest conventional bombs, even when they did achieve direct hits. This led

to the development of blockbusters like the 12,000 lb TALLBOY and th

GRAND SLAM of 22,000 pounds. The crisis was past before the RAF wa

ready to use them against the sub pens, but they managed to penetrate th

concrete when so used; and the giant weapons also succeeded in finally get

ting the Tirpitz in a Scandinavian fjord. Later the United States adapted th

TALLBOY for use as the TARZON guided bomb with some success agains

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Korean bridges; see also Harris, on the British underestimate of both th

size of the bombs that would be effective and on the merit of incendiar

weapons plus the wartime development of the weapons and tactics to adjus

to that misestimation. 

45. USAF, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Aberdeen, Md., “Operationa

Suitability Tests of the TARZON Air-to-Surface Guided Missile,” 13 Augus

1951. Copy in Technical Library, Eglin AFB, Fla., file no. 5999.

46. Futrell, 474.

47. Ibid., 195.

48. Ambrose, 172–73.

49. Michael H. Gorn, Vulcans Forge: The Making of an Air Forc

Command for Weapons Acquisition (1950–1985) (Andrews AFB, Md.: Office o

History, Headquarters Air Force Systems Command [AFSC], 1985), 3–17

and Albert Misenko and Phillip Pollack, Engineering History from McCook

Field to the Aeronautical Systems Division (Wright–Patterson AFB, Ohio

History Office, Aeronautical Systems Division, 1978), 23–29. In the 1990

the argument had come full circle and Air Force Logistics Command and

AFSC merged again—still at Dayton, Ohio, under the old name of Air Forc

Materiel Command (AFMC). 

50. USAF, AFMC, “Air Materiel Armament Test Center, January 1949 t

30 June 1950.” Copy at AF Development Test Center, Eglin AFB, Fla., file no

25b. Even at this early date, the intent was clear: “the basic reason and ide

for the Center was to give the Air Force complete and direct control over th

armament program and to speed up armament development, making tes

proved equipment ready for installation in production aircraft at the earlies

possible date”; and Maj Gen Richard C. Coupland, briefing to the Scientifi

Advisory Board, 12 July 1949, wherein he described the concurrent devel

opment model and lamented that armament as a part of the systems ap

proach tended to be neglected. Copy in files of History Office, Air Armamen

Center, file no. 25-N-4-8.

51. Warren A. Trest, “View from the Gallery: Laying to Rest the Admiral’

Revolt of 1949,” Air Power History, Spring 1995, 16–29. 

52. Albert N. Garland and Howard M. Smythe, United States Army in

World War II, vol. 2, The Mediterranean Theater of Operations, Sicily and th

Surrender of Italy (Washington, D.C.: Chief of Military History, 1965)

532–33; Charles H. Bogart, “German Remotely Piloted Bombs,” USN

Proceedings, November 1976, 62–68. The Italian battleship Roma was sunk

in September 1943 by two Luftwaffe Fritz guided bombs employing guidanc

systems not very different from that of the RAZON. 

53. Semiactive radar missiles have a radar receiver and a control system

that guides them toward the source of the radar energy. That means that th

aircraft radar has to continue bouncing the radar signal off the enemy air

craft until the time of impact. Some of the newer missiles, like the AIM-120

have active radars—that is, they can be launched at a target and they hav

their own radar transmitters as well as receivers. At some point in their tra

jectories, their own radar transmitters will start “painting” the target; and

CADRE PAPER

56
thus they will home on the energy reflected back from their own radar sig

nals. That means that the launching aircraft can leave as soon as the mis

sile is on its way (in one mode of its operation, at least).

54. Bill Gunston, The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Aircraft Armament: A

Major Directory of Guns, Rockets, Missiles, Bombs, Torpedoes and Mines (New

York: Orion, 1988), 55; Frederick I. Ordway and Ronald C. Wakeford

International Missile and Spacecraft Guide (New York: McGraw–Hill, 1960)

34–35; Ron Westrum, Sidewinder: Creative Missile Development at China

Lake (Annapolis, Md.: USNI Press, 1999), 208; and Capt Robert Thor, “GAR

8,” Fighter Weapons Newsletter, June 1958, 29–30. Thor comments on th

early notion the new missiles were so good that admitting a gun kill would

be a sign of incompetence on the part of the pilot. Westrum gives an ex

haustive treatment of the Sidewinder. 

55. Robert Futrell, The United States Air Force in Korea, 1950–195

(Washington, D.C.: Office of Air Force History, 1983). Futrell is the author

ity by a wide margin on the air war in Korea. During the infancy of the je

age, there was a retrogression of sorts. The early jet engines were slow to ac

celerate and, unlike the reciprocating engines, they did not develop their op

timum power at the lower altitudes. Thus, their payloads were often les

than those of the older aircraft. Too, as the drag of the bombs goes up with

the square of the airspeed, the penalty on the jets was higher than it ma

seem at first; but they did have the virtue of flying through the ground fir

danger zone in less time than required by the Mustangs, Corsairs, and

Skyraiders. But then the latter, especially the Skyraiders, had payloads tha

were so much larger that they had to make fewer trips into the danger zone

to get the same effect. 

56. Gen Carl A. Spaatz, memorandum to all major commands and al

staff sections, Headquarters Army Air Forces, 1 April 1947, with attached

testimony on Senate bill 758, 63–88, copy in Air University Library; Ma

John S. Hardy, “Development of Conventional Fighter Weapons” (thesis

ACSC, Maxwell AFB, Ala., June 1967); and Lt Col Kenneth Rasmussen, re

port, “The Munitions of Airpower in Southeast Asia, 1964–69,” AFHRA fil

no. K239.0370-2 (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Corona Harvest Project Office

Aerospace Studies Institute, Air University, January 1970), 5. Hardy had

been a test pilot at Eglin AFB, Fla., prior to attending ACSC and, amon

other things, speaks of the Air Force approach to doing its research, devel

opment, and testing of armament via contract as opposed to the Navy’s us

of in-house resources for the work. Rasmussen’s report complains that on

of the reasons for shortfalls in both acquisition and shipping of munition

was the by-then traditional dependence of the Air Force on the other serv

ices for its weapons development and supply.

57. “Aircraft Armament Division Notes,” Army Ordnance, March–Apri

1921, 290; and “Aircraft Armament Division Notes,” Army Ordnance

May–June 1921, 360–6l. From the early 1920s, it was established that th

Ordnance Department would be responsible for the development of guns a

well as all the armament items that left the aircraft (e.g., bombs and am

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57
munition). The Air Service would be responsible for all the equipment tha

stayed with the airplane (e.g., bombsights and bomb racks) except the guns

The Chemical Service was responsible for chemical weapons, flares, and in

cendiaries. The Navy was responsible for armor-piercing bombs. This per

sisted well after the Air Force was founded until the I-2000 penetrator bomb

was developed in the 1970s and the GAU-8 30 millimeter (mm) weapon wa

developed for the A-10 in the same decade.

58. In 1967 Maj John S. Hardy lamented the slow development of arma

ment but cited both the 20 mm M-39 (in the F-100 and F-5) and the M-6

(in all other current and subsequent US fighters) as exceptions

“Development of Conventional Fighter Weapons,” 2; even the World War II in

ventory was made usable aboard the F-100 and the fighters of the late 1950

by the redesign of the tail fin to reduce the drag and increase the reliabilit

of their safe separation from the aircraft, USAF, ACSC, Air Weapons, 9; US

Navy, Bureau of Naval Weapons, “Free-Fall Nonnuclear Ordnance RDT&E

Program,” 9 September 1960, 2, shows that the Mk 80 series was ready fo

action even before the election of 1960 and the coming of flexible respons

with the Kennedy administration; Capt Martin J. Loftus, “Tactical Non

Nuclear Weapons,” in Fighter Weapons Review, June 1964, 20–28, speaks o

both the M-117/M-118 and the Mk 80 series as being standard on USAF

fighters—the date being before the passage of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

He notes that the AN series of World War II bombs was still in the inventor

and said that when carried on fighters they had to be used with the new low

drag conical fins rather than the World War II box-type fins. In a 1962 study

R. S. Titchen and P. E. DePoy, (U), “Conventional Ordnance for Aircraft Us

1962–67,” Interim Research Memorandum, Operations Evaluation Group

Washington, D.C., 8 January 1962, show that the Bullpup guided missile

the ROCKEYE shaped-charge submunition, the WALLEYE TV bomb, and th

Shrike antiradiation missile (ARM) were either in development or in the in

ventory before either the frustrations of Vietnam or the impact of flexible re

sponse can have stimulated the services into action.

59. W. C. Richert, The World’s Missile Systems (Pomona, Calif.: Genera

Dynamics, 1975), 50–53.

60. Daniel McNeil, “Technology, History and the Revolution in Militar

Affairs,” Canadian Military Journal, Winter 2000–2001, n.p., on-line

Internet, available at www.journal.dnd.ca/vol1/no4_e/ronald_e/ronald1

e.html, 24 April 2001.

61. Thomas Hugh Buckley, “The United States and the Washington

Conference, 1921–1922” (PhD diss., Indiana University, 1961), 178. Th

prohibition of attacks on noncombatant shipping without warning and pro

vision for the safety of the merchant crews and passengers had been em

bedded in the treaty at the insistence of the United States. 

62. John W. R. Taylor, Combat Aircraft of the World from 1909 to th

Present (New York: Paragon, 1969), 492.

63. Daniel R. Mortensen, “The Legend of Laurence Kuter,” in Airpowe

and Ground Armies: Essays on the Evolution of Anglo-American Air Doctrine

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1940–1943, ed. Daniel R. Mortensen (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air Universit

Press, 1998), 93–145. Mortensen discusses the origins of Field Manual 100

20 in 1943. 

64. Among the many interpretations of airpower in the Vietnam War ar

Mark Clodfelter, The Limits of Air Power: The American Bombing of North

Vietnam (New York: Free Press, 1989); Thompson, n.p.; Michel, n.p.; John

Schlight, The War in South Vietnam: The Years of the Offensive, 1965–1968

The United States Air Force in Southeast Asia series (Washington: Office o

Air Force History, 1988); and Adm U. S. G. Sharp, Strategy for Defeat

Vietnam in Retrospect (Novato, Calif.: Presidio Press, 1978)

65. Peter Braestrup, Big Story: How the American Press and Television

Reported and Interpreted the Crisis of Tet in 1968 in Vietnam and Washington

(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1983). Braestrup presents an in

teresting case study on the subject.

66. Michael Ignatieff, “The Virtual Commander: How NATO Invented 

New Kind of War,” New Yorker, 2 August 1999, 33–35, explores Gen Wesle

K. Clark’s travails in that area; Lt Gen Michael C. Short, NATO air com

mander, came out of the campaign with a disdain for the gradual applica

tion of airpower; however, the chief of staff of the Air Force, Gen Michael E

Ryan, hedges on the issue, John G. Roos, “Effects Based Operations: US Ai

Force Chief Assesses a Decade of Transformation,” Armed Forces Journa

International, March 2001, 70; General Clark defended it in Crawley, “Clark

Explains Choices,” 25; and he also defended it in interview, Gen Wesley K

Clark with Col Mason Carpenter, USAF, Washington, D.C., 6 November 2000

67. Col Walter Kross, Military Reform: The High-tech Debate in Tactical Ai

Forces (Washington, D.C.: National Defense University Press, 1985). A “mil

itary reform” debate grew out of the Vietnam and Yom Kippur Wars, amon

other things, and the two sides are generally divided into “low-tech” and

“high-tech” schools. The limitations of weather on tactical airpower hav

been a major concern for both schools and remained a sanctuary for enem

ground forces even as it had been during the first six days of the Battle o

the Bulge in 1944. Colonel Kross gives a convenient summary of the debat

from the high-tech viewpoint.

68. Stephen Peter Rosen, Winning the Next War: Innovation and th

Modern Military (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991), 250, 252

Rosen makes it clear enough that neither defeat nor budgetary plenty are es

sential to military reform, though ample time is a factor.

69. Johnny R. Jones, Development of Air Force Basic Doctrine, 1947–199

(Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air University Press, 1997); and Robert Frank Futrell

Ideas, Concepts, Doctrine: Basic Thinking in the United States Air Force, vol

1, 1907–1960, and vol. 2, 1961–1984 (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air Universit

Press, 1989). The USAF has published editions of its basic doctrine in 1953

1954, 1955, 1959, 1964, 1971, 1975, 1979, 1984, 1992, and 1997. 

70. “USAF’s Air Support Role to Change, Jane’s Defence Weekly, 11 Jun

1988, 1158; John D. Morrocco, “Pentagon to Review Air Force Stud

Supporting Modified F-16 for CAS Role, Aviation Week and Spac

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Technology, 31 October 1988, 30; Maj Pat A. Pentland, “Close Air Support—

A War Fighting Role,” Armed Forces Journal International, September 1988

92–96; “Operation Desert Storm: Initial Lessons Learned,” Aviation Week

and Space Technology, 18 February 1991, 40–55; and Paul Mann

“Mammoth Air/Ground Assault Defeats Iraq in Gulf War,” Aviation Week and

Space Technology, 4 March 1991, 20–22.

71. Christopher Chant, Encyclopedia of Modern Aircraft Armamen

(Wellingsborough, Northamptonshire, U.K.: Stephens, 1988), 161, on the F

15 and 112 on the F-16; “Filling the Missing Link,” Jane’s Defence Weekly

13 April 1991, 606–9; and Maj Gerald R. Volloy, “Red Flag in Perspective,

USAF Fighter Weapons Review, Spring 1979, 2–5.

72. Dale M. Davis, report, “Historical Development Summary o

Automatic Cannon Caliber Ammunition: 20-30 Millimeter,” file no. AFATL

TR-84-03 (Eglin AFB, Fla.: Air Force Armament Laboratory, January 1984)

24–53. The only other use of the technology is in a gun pod (GPU-5A) con

taining a 30 mm weapon with fewer barrels than the GAU-8, which is als

built by General Electric. It uses the same ammunition, and it gives man

of the aircraft in the inventory the tank-killing capability of the A-10’s 30

mm ammunition through the carriage of the pod on external stations. Th

F-4 came to the USAF on the insistence of Secretary of Defense Robert S

McNamara; and though Tactical Air Command wanted it modified to includ

a gun, McNamara refused it. Rather, a gun pod was developed for a 20 mm

Gatling weapon and carried aboard the center line station of Phantoms unti

combat had shown the necessity of a gun and the E model was redesigned

to include an internal M-61 20 mm.

73. USAF, 7AF/DOA, Working Paper, “Pave Way Utility and Cos

Effectiveness in SEA,” file no. AFATL 68-1605 (Eglin AFB, Fla.: Technica

Library, 15 September 1968); and Peter DeLeon, report no. R-1312-1-PR

The Laser-Guided Bomb: Case History of a Development (Santa Monica

Calif.: RAND, 1974).

74. South Vietnam had been divided into four corps areas and assigned

roman numerals. Orally, all were commonly referred to by number. For ex

ample, the area around Saigon was called “Three Corps (III Corps)”; but th

northernmost one was the exception called “Eye Corps (I Corps).”

75. Col Thomas Keaney, USAF, retired, E-mail to author, 21 May 2001

Colonel Keaney argues that the development of the laser-guided bomb wa

not at first pressed as hard as it might have been because some USAF offi

cers thought it would be impractical against the Warsaw Pact ground de

fenses. The requirement to loiter over the battlefield to lase the target unti

impact was thought to be an inhibitor and an argument in favor of buildin

the precision into the airplane and not the weapon—where it also could b

used repeatedly.

76. AFSC, AD, 3246th Test Wing, report, “GBU-22/B and GBU-24/B

Low-level Laser Guided Bombs [LGB] Development Test and Evaluation,

(Secret), file no. AD-TR-R-84-20 [hereinafter cited as TW, LGB DT&E] (Eglin

AFB, Fla.: Technical Library, 1984), 13 (data extracted is unclassified); AFSC

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AD, Directorate of Systems Safety, report, “Safety Study Report of the Low

Level Laser Guided Bomb, GBU-22/B, GBU-24/B,” 20-5, file no. AD-E8000

[hereinafter cited as AD, LGB Safety] (Eglin AFB, Fla.: Technical Library

December 1982), 791.

77. Edward L. Korb, ed., The World’s Missile Systems (Pomona, Calif.

General Dynamics, 1982), 138–42; Maj Scott Long, interview, 6 May 2001

Similar in that once a Maverick is launched, there is nothing further th

crew can do about it so they might as well leave the area. In the case of th

GBU-15 or AGM-130, the weapon can be more properly called a “launch

and-leave” because though the crew need not tarry to guide them, it can stil

affect their trajectories through the data link. Thus, the crew can get on it

way out of the area, but still is in contact with the weapon and can eithe

perfect its aim as it gets nearer the target or divert it away from a target sud

denly determined to be undesirable—all the while continuing the escape o

the launch aircraft. Alternatively, the weapon can be left on its own to pro

ceed to the original aim point.

78. John A. Warden III, The Air Campaign: Planning for Comba

(Washington, D.C.: National Defense University Press, 1988), 39.

79. Brereton Greenhous, “The Israeli Experience,” in Case Studies in th

Achievement of Air Superiority, ed. Benjamin F. Cooling (Washington, D.C.

Center for Air Force History, 1994), 578–82; and Nadav Safran, “Trial b

Ordeal: The Yom Kippur War, October 1973,” International Security, Fal

1977, 130–62.

80. Anwar Sadat, In Search of Identity: An Autobiography (New York

Harper and Row, 1978), 263.

81. Lon O. Nordeen, Airpower in the Missile Age (Washington, D.C.

Smithsonian Institution Press, 1985), 201–6; Matthew M. Hurley, “Th

Bekáa Valley Air Battle, June 1982: Lessons Mislearned?” Airpower Journal

Winter 1989, 60–70; Nick Kerr, “The Falklands Campaign,” Naval Wa

College Review, November–December 1982), 14–21; Lt Comdr Robert E

Stumpf, US Navy, “Air War with Libya,” USNI Proceedings, August 1986

42–47; “U.S. Demonstrates Advanced Weapons Technology in Libya,

Aviation Week and Space Technology, 21 April 1986, 18–20; David M. North

“Air Force, Navy Brief Congress on Lessons from Libya Strikes,” Aviation

Week and Space Technology, 2 June 1986, 63; and Benjamin F. Schemmer

“AFJ’s Dart to USAF Leadership for ‘Antique Ordnance’ was 180 Degrees Of

Course,” Armed Forces Journal International, June 1986, 67–68. 

82. Harold R. Winton, “An Ambivalent Partnership: US Army and Air Forc

Perspectives on Air-Ground Operations, 1973–90,” in The Paths of Heaven: Th

Evolution of Airpower Theory, ed. Phillip S. Meilinger (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Ai

University Press, 1997), 399–441. Meilinger provides an articulate and author

itative discussion of the development of Army doctrine and the Air Force–Arm

doctrinal relationships during the post–Vietnam period. 

83. Maris McCrabb, “The Evolution of NATO Air Doctrine,” in Paths o

Heaven, ed. Meilinger, 458–60.

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84. Rear Adm James A. Winnefeld, US Navy, retired, and Dr. Dana J

Johnson, Joint Air Operations: Pursuit of Unity in Command and Contro

1942–1991 (Annapolis, Md.: USNI Press, 1993), 100–101; and Stephen J

McNamara, Air Power’s Gordian Knot: Centralized versus Organic Contro

(Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air University Press, 1994), 122.

85. Keaney and Cohen, 48–49; and Michael R. Gordon and Bernard E

Trainor, The Generals’ War: The Inside Story of the Conflict in the Gul

(Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown & Co., 1995), 205–26, 473–74. Keaney and

Cohen do make the point that the bomb damage assessment in the Gulf Wa

was far from perfect, and we had little success in determining the launch

ing locations of the Scuds in time to destroy them or their launchers.

86. Richard P. Hallion, Storm Over Iraq: Air Power and the Gulf Wa

(Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992); and Richard M

Swain, Lucky War: Third Army in Desert Storm (Fort Leavenworth, Kans.: US

Army Command and General Staff College Press, 1994). Hallion provides an

Air Force point of view on the MTR during the Gulf War, and Swain provide

an argument written from an Army perspective.

87. Col John D. Waghelstein, “Some Thoughts on Operation Deser

Storm and Future Wars,” Military Review, February 1992, 80–83. 

88. The designation of the F-117 is “fighter,” but it does not have an air

to-air function; and in other times it would have been classified as a bomber

89. Kosiak, 9.

90. Lt Gen Buster C. Glosson, USAF, “Impact of Precision Weapons on

Air Combat Operations,” Airpower Journal, Summer 1993, 4–10, on-line

Internet, available at http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles

apj/glosson.html. (I know that there were more skeptical treatments of thi

issue published afterwards, but even the most skeptical estimates indicated

an order of magnitude improvement over the Schweinfurt experience.)

91. Keaney and Cohen. It is reported that early in the Gulf War th

HARM shooters were coming back to base without having fired thei

weapons, and only five coalition aircraft were lost to radar surface-to-ai

missiles during the war.

92. R. Kent Laughbaum, Synchronizing Airpower and Firepower in th

Deep Battle (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air University Press, 1999). Laughbaum pro

vides an authoritative discussion of the topic from an airman’s point of view

93. Rick Atkinson, Crusade: The Untold Story of the Persian Gulf Wa

(Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1993), 470–71; and Gordon and

Trainor, 429, 477.

94. Lt Col Michael O’Halloran, USMC, E-mail to author, 21 May 2001. T

some extent, in the context of theater war, debates about equality amon

component commanders may be somewhat sterile. The Goldwater–Nichol

Act makes it quite clear that the joint force commander is in complete con

trol, and equality is whatever he wants it to be. I am indebted to Colone

Halloran for this insight.

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95. McNamara, 124; Swain, 28; and Edward C. Mann, Thunder and

Lightning: Desert Storm and the Airpower Debates (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Ai

University Press, 1995), 178–80.

96. Air Force Doctrine Document 1, Air Force Basic Doctrine, Septembe

1997, 29.

97. John A Warden III, “The Enemy as a System,” Airpower Journa

Spring 1995, 40–55; idem, “Air Theory for the Twenty-first Century,” in

Challenge and Response: Anticipating US Military Security Concerns, ed. Kar

P. Magyar (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air University Press, August 1994), 311–32.

98. Keaney and Cohen, 222–23.

99. Ibid., 48–54.

100. Winnefeld and Johnson, 171.

101. Almost 10 percent of them died when a single aircraft, an AC-130

with its crew of 14, was shot down.

102. John D. Morrocco and David A. Fulghum, “USAF Developed 4,700

lb Bomb in Crash Program to Attack Iraqi Military Leaders in Hardened

Bunkers,” Aviation Week and Space Technology, 6 May 1991, 67. The au

thors speak of the great effect of the I-2000 (BLU-109) on shelters though

more was needed for the deep command bunkers. The bomb in the title i

the GBU-28, with its warhead made from an artillery barrel and produced

in very short order during the Gulf War. Two were dropped from an F-111 in

the closing moments with good effects.

103. History, USAF Development Test Center, 1 October 1990–30

September 1991, vol. 1, 10. 

104. Maurer Maurer, Aviation in the U.S. Army, 1919–1939 (Washington

D.C.: Office of Air Force History, 1987), 325–31; Jeffery S. Underwood, Th

Wings of Democracy: The Influence of Air Power on the Roosevel

Administration (College Station, Tex.: Texas A & M University Press, 1991)

59–61; and Haywood S. Hansell Jr., “Harold L. George: Apostle of Air Power,

in Makers of the United States Air Force, ed. John L. Frisbee (Washington

D.C.: Office of Air Force History, 1987), 82–83.

105. Gen George Lee Butler, “Disestablishing SAC: Reprint of an Officia

Speech Presented to the Air Force Historical Foundation,” Air Power History

Fall 1993, 4–11; and Kennett, 631.

106. Richard K. Smith, 75 Years of Inflight Refueling: Highlights

1923–1998 (Washington, D.C.: Air Force History and Museums Program

1998), 76.

107. ABC News.com, “B-2 Sees First Combat,” 24 March 1999, n.p., on

line, Internet, available at sections/world/DailyNews/bomber990324.html

John A. Tirpak, “With Stealth in the Balkans,” Air Force Magazine, Octobe

1999, 23–28; and Rebecca Grant, The B-2 Goes to War (Arlington, Va.: Iri

Press, 2001). The success of the B-2 in the face of former skepticism is 

main theme of Grant’s book.

108. For an early but authoritative analysis of the air war over Serbi

campaign, see Barry Posen, “The Air War in Kosovo,” International Security

Spring 2000; Alan Stephens, “Kosovo: Or the Future of War,” Asia–Pacifi

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Defence Reporter, June–July 1999, 18–19, leans toward the airpower advo

cates on the conflict; the many more skeptical views include Grant T

Hammond, “Myths of the Air War over Serbia: Some ‘Lessons’ Not to Learn,

Aerospace Power Journal, Winter 2000, 79; Milan Vego, “Wake-Up Call in

Kosovo,” USNI Proceedings, October 2000, 66–70, wherein he is concerned

that the United States may be becoming too reliant on smart weapons tech

nology and remarks upon the degree to which alliance politics conditioned

detailed strategic and targeting choices; Earl H. Tilford, “Operation Allied

Force and the Role of Air Power,” Parameters, Winter 1999–2000, 4; for th

official version, Ministry of Defence, United Kingdom, “Kosovo An Account o

the Crisis: Initial Lessons Learned,” 15 December 1999, n.p., on-line, Internet

available at http://www.mod.uk.news/kosovo/account/lessons.htm; and

Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs o

Staff Gen Henry H. Shelton, “Joint Statement on the Kosovo After Action

Review,” Defense Link, 14 October 1999, n.p., on-line, Internet, available a

http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Oct1999/b10141999_bt478-99.html. T

indulge in a sin often committed by airmen from Mitchell forward, if on

makes a linear extrapolation of General Glosson’s 300:1 ratio cited above

then one might assert that the B-2 carries sixteen 2,000 lb bombs with bu

two crew members compared to two such bombs and one crewman on th

F-117. Thus, if the F-117 is 300 times as effective as the B-17 in World Wa

II, then in terms of bombs, the B-2 would be 24,000 times as effective a

were bombers in the Schweinfurt raid—or in terms of crew members, 12,000

times! The skeptic will immediately observe that we built about 12,000 B

17s and 18,000 B-24s in World War II, but only 21 B-2s have been ordered

so far. There are so many slips twixt cup and lip that quantifying the chang

is near impossible and a little ridiculous, but perhaps the notion that ther

has been a very massive one is not an unreasonable assumption.

109. Bill Sweetman, “Scratching the Surface: Next Century Air-to

Ground Weapons,” Jane’s International Defense Review, July 1997, 55–63

Stacey Evers in November 1997 reported that the unit cost would be abou

$18,000 and that the program, then in low rate initial production, would b

delayed in going to full rate production until some design flaws revealed in

testing were overcome, “Experts Count Costs to Fix JDAM Design Flaws,

Jane’s Defence Weekly, 5 November 1999, 6. In November 1997 it was re

ported that the first joint standoff weapons (JSOW) were deployed aboard

the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz in the Persian Gulf even though they had no

achieved their initial operational capability and were still in a low rate of ini

tial production. The versions deployed were said to be the ones containin

combined effects munitions particularly useful against air defense sites

“Nimitz Is Carrying Latest Stand-off Weapon,” Jane’s Defence Weekly, 19

November 1997, 4. 

110. Lon O. Nordeen Jr., E-mail to author, 24 May 2001, puts the ap

proximate costs at $200,000 to $300,000 for the JSOW, $30,000 for the JDAM

kit, and around $50,000 for LGB guidance kits, though the lattermost cos

about twice as much if they have an inertial measurement capability.

CADRE PAPER

64
111. Maj Scott C. Long, interviewed by author, Maxwell AFB, Ala., 7 May

2001; Bill Sweetman, “Scratching the Surface,” 57; “USAF Plans Inertia

Dispenser Selection This Month,” Jane’s International Defense Review

January 1997, 10; and USAF, Headquarters Air Combat Command/DRPW

“Final Operational Requirements Document, Wind Corrected Munition

Dispenser,” 23 September 1994. The inventory munitions dispenser (TMD

for tactical munitions dispenser) can be launched from fairly high altitudes

but its standard dispersion with some degree of wind effects can reduce th

accuracy of the delivery of its submunitions of various types. The JSOW wil

permit launches from longer ranges and high altitudes with accuracy de

rived from its combination of inertial and Global Positioning System (GPS

guidance. Another new weapons program also reduces the errors when dis

pensers are released at higher altitudes: the wind-corrected munitions dis

penser. It adds an inertial kit to the inventory dispensers at modest cost

Though it does not include a GPS receiver, the inertial feature will nonethe

less remove most of the wind effect during the time of fall.

112. “Eglin’s AMRAAM Joins the War,” Northwest Florida Daily News, 2

February 1991, 3; and Mark Hewish, Anthony Robinson, and Gerarde Turbe

“Air-to-Air Missiles,” International Defense Review, August 1990, 871–77.

113. Air Force History and Museums Program, “Hughes AIM-120 AM

RAAM,” n.d., n.p., on-line, Internet, available at http://www.wpafb.af.mil

museum/arm/arm10a.htm; and John Pike, “AIM-120 AMRAAM Slammer,

n.d., n.p., on-line, Internet, available at www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys

missile/aim-120.htm.

114. Brad Harlow, “Missile Systems,” Aerospace America, Decembe

1999, 49; Linda de France, “AIM-9X Scores with Accuracy, Capability, High

Hit-Rate,” Aerospace Daily, 3 October 2000; and Christian Lowe, “High-Tech

Helmet to Cut Targeting Times 90 Percent,” Defense Week, 18 Septembe

2000, 1.

115. Bill Sweetman, “The Progress of the F-22 Fighter Program,” Jane’

International Defense Review, Quarterly Report, no. 1, 1997. Another devel

opment is the effort to develop the small smart bomb at 250 pounds with

such accuracy that it will have the same effect in some situations as th

2,000-pound LGB, yet six of them will fit in the F-22 weapons bay.

116. Juliette A. Hennessy, The United States Army Air Arm: April 1861 t

April 1917 (1958; reprint, Washington: Office of Air Force History, 1985), 1–10

117. The best short treatment of airpower in World War I is Lee B

Kennett, The First Air War: 1914–1918 (New York: Free Press, 1991); on th

origins of the demand for air superiority, see Maj William Mitchell, Aviation

Section, Signal Corps, memorandum to Chief of Staff, American

Expeditionary Force, 12 June 1917, in The U.S. Air Service in World War I

vol. 2, Early Concepts of Military Aviation, ed. Maurer Maurer (Maxwell AFB

Ala.: AFHRA, 1978), 108.

118. Robert Perry, “The Interaction of Technology and Doctrine in th

USAF,” in Air Power and Warfare: The Proceedings of the 8th Military History

Symposium, United States Air Force Academy, 18–20 October 1978, ed. Alfred

MET

65
F. Hurley and Robert C. Ehrhart (Washington, D.C.: Office of Air Forc

History, 1978), 386; and Rosen, 258.

119. Benjamin S. Lambeth, The Transformation of American Air Powe

(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000). Lambeth presents his view ar

guing that there has been a transformation in the potency of airpower sinc

the frustrating experiences in Vietnam. I share Michael O’Hanlon’s caution

ary note in his Technological Change and the Future of Warfare (Washington

D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2000), 31, to the effect that RMAs can

sometimes make things worse not better, and that sometimes the ones wh

create the RMA are not the ones who benefit from it.

CADRE PAPER

66
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The Long Search for a Surgical Strike

Precision Munitions and the Revolution

in Military Affairs

Air University (AU) Library/AU Press

Chief Editor

Hattie D. Minter

Copy Editor

Rita B. Mathis

Book Design and Cover Art

Daniel Armstrong

Composition and

Prepress Production

Vivian D. O’Neal