Air University

air force doctrine development AND

eduation center

The Airpower Advantage 

in Future Warfare

The Need for Strategy

Colin S. Gray

Research Paper 2007-2

Airpower Research Institute

Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama 36112-6026

December 2007
ii

Disclaimer

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

author and do not necessarily represent the views of the Air Force Doctrine Development and

Education Center (AFDDEC), Air University, the United States Air Force, the Department of 

Defense, or any other US Government agency. Cleared for public release: distribution unlimited.

Airpower Research Institute (ARI) papers and Air University Monographs are occasional studies written by 

Air Force researchers at large and military defense analysts assigned to the Airpower Research Institute of 

AFDDEC at Air University and beyond. The purpose of 

this series is to provide useful ideas and independent 

analysis of issues of current or potential importance to 

Air Force commanders and their staffs. This monograph 

and others in the series are also available electronically 

and at the Air University Research Web Site (https://

research.maxwell.af.mil/) and the Air and Space Power 

Journal (http://www.airpower.au.af.mil). 
iii

Contents

Page

DISCLAIMER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ii

ABOUT THE AUTHOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v

SUMMARY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii

THE AIRPOWER ADVANTAGE IN FUTURE WARFARE:

THE NEED FOR STRATEGY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Plan of Attack . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Why this Study? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Airpower Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Issues and Arguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Future Warfare: Contextual Realities . . . . . . . . . . 20

US Airpower Advantage in Future Warfare . . . . . . 30

NOTES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

v

About the Author

Dr. Colin S. Gray is Professor of International Politics and 

Strategic Studies at the University of Reading in England. He is 

a dual US-UK citizen and has served as an adviser in Washington 

and London. He was educated in England at the Universities of 

Manchester and Oxford. Dr. Gray has taught at universities in 

Britain, Canada, and the United States, has been assistant director 

of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (London), and 

worked with Herman Kahn at the Hudson Institute before founding the National Institute for Public Policy. From 1982 until 1987, 

he held a presidential appointment on the President’s Advisory 

Committee on Arms Control and Disarmament.

Dr. Gray’s work has addressed a wide range of subjects on 

national security. For example, he has written extensively on 

nuclear strategy, maritime strategy, space strategy, special 

operations, geopolitics, airpower, arms control, and strategic 

theory. He is the author of 22 books, including Another Bloody 

Century: Future Warfare (Phoenix, 2006); Strategy and History: 

Essays on Theory and Practice (Routledge, 2006); War, Peace 

and International Relations: An Introduction to Strategic History 

(Routledge, 2007); and Fighting Talk: Forty Maxims on War, 

Peace, and Strategy (Praeger Security International, 2007). 

Currently, he is working on The Strategy Bridge, a major book on 

strategic theory.

Summary

The United States has long suffered from a serious strategy 

deficit. For so long as Americans short change the strategic 

function, the leverage of US airpower must be much less 

than its potential. The study argues strongly for the rigorous 

application of strategic discipline to all airpower activity, not 

only the kinetic.

Even today, more than 100 years into the air age, many people 

are inappropriately committed to the view that either landpower 

or airpower must be the dominant force in warfare. In fact, extensive historical experience demonstrates that the relative utility of 

airpower is powerfully situational. Futurology is a necessary art, 

not science, but its record of prescience is poor. With respect to 

science and technology and to politics, our ability to see into the 

future is completely unreliable. Technical innovation lies at the 

heart of the case for privileging airpower in the American way of 

war, but such innovation comprises only one of warfare’s seven 

vital contexts. The sheer complexity of war and warfare renders 

prediction, technological and other, a high-risk activity. The contexts of war and warfare are (1) political, (2) societal-cultural, (3) 

economic, (4) technological, (5) military-strategic, (6) geographical, 

and (7) historical.

The major purpose of the study is to contribute to some reduction in America’s strategy deficit. A common and serious 

error is the belief that airpower theory is uniquely immature and 

contested. Currently, it so happens, literally every dimension of 

US military power is fraught with conceptual uncertainty. Specifically, landpower knows it is challenged by a transforming 

airpower; seapower is suffering from a conceptual and strategic 

crisis as it strives, in part, to reinvent itself for a world wherein 

it faces no first-class naval enemies, but in which it will have to 

devise effective answers to anti-access tactics by littoral states; 

spacepower and cyberwar are utterly bereft of strategic theory 

tailored for their realms of behavior; and nuclear weapons are 

almost in conceptual limbo, challenged by the radical improvements in precision conventional weapons. Airpower is in no better or worse condition than the others. In short, there is a general 

crisis of strategic comprehension, a lack of agreement on the most 

vii
viii

effective organizing ideas. Airpower is by no means lonely in suffering from strategic theoretical uncertainty.

The study argues that the United States needs a theory of war 

and warfare. It claims that future warfare will be diverse and 

that the tactical, operational, and strategic value of airpower 

must always be situational. A coherent theory of employment for 

all of airpower’s capabilities, not only the kinetic, is needed. Airpower’s potential utility lies within a spectrum of possibilities 

and is dependent on context.

Looking to the future, it would be an error to assume that the 

United States will enjoy the benefits of air dominance as of right. 

Capable enemies who have studied the US style in warfare would 

be hugely motivated to reduce the American airpower advantage. 

Such a reduction might be achieved not only by air defense but 

also by contesting the uses of space or cyberspace. 

Near exclusive focus upon the contributions airpower can make 

to warfare is a mistake. Airpower will generate strategic effect in 

time of peace and crisis also. We should not forget the continuing 

relevance of the concept and attempted practice of deterrence. 

The study advises frank recognition of airpower’s situational 

limitations. Those limitations are less than they used to be, but 

some remain simply as a consequence of the physical realities of 

flight with reference to a conflict that must relate, ultimately, to 

decisions and behavior on land. It is necessary to acknowledge 

and exploit the technological, tactical, and operational fact that 

the balance of relative influence, at least in regular warfare, has 

shifted very noticeably in favor of airpower. Irregular warfare is 

another matter altogether, of course. 

The discussion notes some important factors that can detract 

from airpower’s effectiveness: for examples, poor air strategy, 

operational art, or tactics; inappropriate equipment; loss of vital 

support from space and cyberspace systems; performance by 

friendly landpower and seapower that is so poor that the military 

context is beyond rescue by the action of land-based airpower; 

and, last but not least, the harmful consequences of being directed by dysfunctional national policy and strategy.

The study reaches six conclusions:

1. The US asymmetric advantage in airpower must be exploited to the maximum.
ix

2. It is necessary to be clear about the critical distinction 

between airpower as a war decider and as a war winner.

3. High technology is, and has to be, the American way in 

warfare. Much of the criticism of the American love affair 

with machines is simply irrelevant.

4. Unfortunately, the now long-standing debate between landpower and airpower over which is dominant in regular warfare is all too alive and well. This conflict is understandable, 

but it is thoroughly misconceived and continues to harm US 

military and strategic prowess.

5. It cannot be denied that people allow themselves, their affection, to be captured by their favorite machines. Again, 

this is understandable, but it is not helpful if airpower is 

to benefit from a genuinely strategic analysis and debate.

6. Only strategy has the potential to unlock the full leverage 

that the United States should expect to achieve through 

the threat and use of its multi-faceted airpower.



The Airpower Advantage in Future Warfare

The Need for Strategy

Airpower has become the preferred American way of war.

Grant T. Hammond, 2005

Ultimately, the use of land power remains the most conclusive instrument of strategy.

Michael Evans, 2004

This is a study of strategy and of that most essential of concepts, 

strategic effect. If America is able to reduce or eliminate its strategy 

deficit, much of the argument that underlies analysis of the future 

roles and influence of airpower will fall away as irrelevant.1 The 

strategic effect of airpower is the master theme that binds this 

work and to which all the issues raised here relate. It is to strategy 

and a grasp of strategic effect that one must look if there is to be a 

marked improvement in the American way of war.

Debate, in the form of competing ideas that reflect rival institutional interests as well as alternative strategic perspectives, has marked the history of airpower from the early 1920s 

to the present. It is a rare occurrence in strategic history for 

technology to permit exploitation of a new geographical environment. Of course, the addition of a technically dynamic third 

dimension to warfare could not help but fuel lively, even bitter, 

argument. After all, the stakes were high indeed.

It is more than 100 years since Wilbur and Orville Wright 

achieved the first sustained heavier-than-air flight, and those 

years have been liberal in providing a host of opportunities for 

airpower to demonstrate its contemporary prowess. Most especially, there have been conflicts great and small wherein the 

roles of and significance of airpower vis-à-vis landpower in particular, as well as seapower, have varied widely. Among others, 

Edward Luttwak has emphasized that the utility of airpower is, 

and has always been, highly situational.2 This surely incontestable claim is not disputed today, at least not directly. But, 
in politically and doctrinally guarded form, the now traditional 

argument over the relative importance of airpower persists.3

This study argues that the debate over airpower versus landpower is long past its sell-by date. The issues in this debate 

have by no means been foolish; indeed, they could hardly have 

been more serious. Similarly, there is no doubting the sincerity, 

though not always the objectivity, of the rival camps. Nonetheless, it is time, and then some, to call a halt to the American 

habit of indulging in harmful interservice combat. There are 

practical reasons of great complexity which account for 

the airpower/landpower rivalry. Those reasons, in good 

part pertaining to distinctive institutional cultures that 

express different strategic worldviews, will continue to resist efforts at reform.4 In some respects, it is all but inconceivable for soldiers and airmen to share a common military 

culture. Moreover, it is probably as undesirable as it is impossible. Nevertheless, there is a frontier to competitive military and 

strategic attitudes and assumptions which all too easily is 

crossed into a region of dysfunctional disagreement. In a modest 

way, this study is designed to help alleviate some of the negative 

consequences of the continuing controversy over the relative 

military and strategic utility of airpower.

An important underrecognized reason why American airpower and landpower historically have had extraordinary difficulty practicing a truly joint style of warfare is the country’s 

strategy deficit, the concept introduced to open this text. Modern America has not really “done” strategy. This deficit applies 

both to military strategy narrowly and to national security 

strategy—what the British term grand strategy—broadly.5 It is 

hardly surprising that American airpower and landpower often 

have pursued different agendas in planning and in actual war 

making, given the persisting absence of a coherent strategic 

grip from the topmost ranks of policy.

The author is a strategic theorist, perhaps a “strategist” even, 

and therefore brings the bias of his trade to the subject of the 

airpower advantage in future warfare. However, he believes the 

only way forward for an American military power that is joint or 

integrated in practice, rather than just in name, is for the country’s strategy deficit to be reduced drastically. A failure to think 

and behave strategically is near certain to be fatal for the proper 
employment of airpower, as well as for the effectiveness of US 

military power as an agent of high policy. But all is far from lost. 

As many people have argued, America needs to stop simply 

praising strategy, and the handful of classic texts that seek to 

explain its mysteries, and instead move decisively into the difficult realm of practice.

Plan of Attack

With strategy and strategic effect as the golden threads that 

run through this study, as well as providing the major part of 

the solution to America’s difficulties with war and warfare, the 

study opens with a direct treatment of the question, “Why this 

study?” The answers may surprise, and the author hopes trouble, 

some readers. That is followed by a brief commentary on the 

state of airpower theory relative to the condition of theory for 

the other forms of military power. To the best of the author’s 

knowledge, no other study has noticed an important fact highlighted here: Today, mature and settled theory bearing on any 

of the geographically specialized forms of military power is absent. Next, the study perilously offers hostages to fortune by 

exposing the assumptions, issues, and arguments that drive 

the body of the succeeding analysis. Then, the essential and 

inescapable contexts of war and warfare in the future are identified and discussed. The study concludes by providing judgments on the US airpower advantage in future warfare. 

A caveat is needed before moving forward. What a hypothetical 

Omniscient Strategic Person might identify as best strategic and 

military practice may not be feasible for Americans, given their 

general societal, strategic, and military cultures. Although this 

study is written by a strategic theorist, he is sufficiently experienced in the habits and attitudes prevalent in the American defense community so as not to assume that apparently superior 

ideas are miraculously self-effecting. People and institutions really matter. 

Why this Study?

This analysis explores the issues relevant to the advantages 

that should be conveyed by airpower in future warfare. How-
ever, as the opening paragraphs have established, the issue is 

by no means strictly military or even strategic. Surface and air 

forces with their distinctive cultures are in contention, as they 

have been for nearly 90 years. Moreover, the military cultures 

of the US Army and Air Force necessarily are much in debt to 

two other levels of culture: national strategic and, simply but 

pervasively, general societal. Contrary to the impression possibly conveyed by the evidence of the text thus far, the mission 

here is strongly positive and constructive. It is also optimistic, 

since strategists are not attracted to a mission impossible.

To solve a problem, one first needs to be certain that it has 

been diagnosed accurately. The problem, to repeat, is that the 

United States has a severe strategy deficit. It is, and has long 

been, guilty of what is known as the “tacticization” of strategy.6

US military power does tactics well and tends to expect success 

at that level to translate automatically into strategic victory. 

Furthermore, the relatively recent advent of the computerbased information revolution has spurred speculation to the 

effect that the speed at which technology now functions has 

the consequence of eliminating the operational level of warfare. 

There are those who believe that information technology has 

shrunk distance and therefore time to a condition of near insignificance. This temporal and geographical shrinkage supposedly 

means that individual actions can play instantly at the strategic 

level with no need for operational-level purpose and direction. 

The operational level, the “great intellectual contribution of the 

continental school of strategy to 20th century military theory” as 

Michael Evans claims, allegedly can be discarded as obsolescent 

or even obsolete.7 Tactics and strategy thus no longer need an 

operational-level transmission belt. This is nonsense, but it is 

the kind of nonsense with which we have become familiar. 

The US defense community is not well endowed with practical 

minded strategic theorists who can do what Carl von Clausewitz 

specified as a necessary function. He explains that “theory exists 

so that one need not start afresh each time sorting out the material and plowing through it, but will find it ready to hand and in 

good order.”8 Strategic theory of a partial kind, which is to say 

that which seeks to provide order for the distinctive land, sea, 

air, space, cyberspace, and nuclear realms, is in anything but 

good order for the twenty-first century. If airpower theory is in 
poor condition, as many claim, it is far from lonely in that state. 

Lest the author’s perspective and approach are misunderstood by 

readers who hail from the world of military action rather than military and strategic thought, he must signal endorsement of Bernard 

Brodie’s timeless judgment on strategic theory. Brodie advised,

Strategic thinking, or “theory,” if one prefers, is nothing if not pragmatic. 

Strategy is a “how to do it” study, a guide to accomplishing something 

and doing it efficiently. As in many other branches of politics, the question that matters in strategy is: Will the idea work? More important, will 

it be likely to work under the special circumstances under which it will 

next be tested? These circumstances are not likely to be known or knowable much in advance of the moment of testing, though the uncertainty 

is itself a factor to be reckoned with in one’s strategic doctrine.9

This analysis is motivated by four serious concerns. 

First, much, indeed most, of the American debate about 

future warfare is written by people inalienably committed to 

a strategic view that privileges either landpower or airpower. 

This parochialism is rarely crude and simpleminded, but its 

presence can taint and skew even the best of analyses. Above 

all else, the committed theorist is contributing fuel to a controversy that should be dead and buried. The truth is that the 

more sophisticated advocates of airpower and the more balanced theorists for landpower are both correct. The relative importance of air and ground must depend upon the situation. In 

the future as in the past, it will vary from case to case. Of 

course airpower, US airpower at least, has been transformed in 

its tactical and, potentially, its operational effectiveness over 

the past 20 years, since the mid-1990s in particular.10 The 

facts of the matter, as well as common sense, should indicate 

to those with a less parochial mindset that it is absurd to argue 

about which of two essential assets is in a general way the 

more essential. To repeat, the relative importance of airpower 

must vary with the strategic situation. Unfortunately, this ridiculous debate has major implications for funding, for careers, 

and for institutional ranking. Indeed, the author is reminded of 

Thucydides’ famous triptych, “fear, honor, and interest,” which 

he said comprised the principal motives behind decisions for 

war.11 It would be unfair to claim that both sides of the controversy are far more interested in institutional well-being than 

they are in military and strategic truth. The problem is that the 

rival advocates of airpower primacy and of the continuation of 
sovereign landpower are both desperately sincere. And, it must 

be conceded, both are correct—given the appropriate situation. 

Where both are in error is in arguing their corners for a general 

approach to future warfare.

Second, the quality of expert strategic futurology is typically 

abysmal. This is not to criticize people for failing to foresee the 

future. Surprises happen. But it is to criticize strategic futurists, official and private, for their lack of an adequate template 

for strategic history. That template should be authoritative for 

the past, present, and the future. Naturally, there are some 

exceptions, but it is commonplace for high officials, civilian and 

military, to be guilty of the sin of presentism. Typically lacking 

any noteworthy historical education and deprived by the laws 

of physics of any knowledge whatsoever about the future, these 

officials are obliged to find their evidence about the future in 

present conditions. So, the future is predicted to resemble the 

present with only minor linear changes. The author recommends to readers’ attention a comforting, but alas dangerous, 

advisory aphorism: “We judge the unknown to be unlikely.” It 

is perhaps important to add the caveat that a US defense community, not known for its richness in historical understanding, 

is always at risk to scholarly-seeming purveyors of allegedly 

historically well-founded theories of change. “Power-Pointed” 

history can capture the imagination of those who are easily 

confused between Spartans and Athenians.

Third, technological innovation lies at the heart of the argument for the privileging of airpower in a new American way in 

warfare. There is nothing wrong with that, as far as it goes. 

Unfortunately for the integrity of the argument, technology is 

only one of warfare’s seven contexts. To assess intelligently the 

strategic and political implications of new technology, one must 

command a comprehensive theory of war and warfare. This is 

not just a matter of speculation about the future. It so happens 

that we are blessed with variably reliable access to no fewer 

than 2,500 years of strategic history. The twenty-first century 

is not exactly the first period in the human adventure when 

science and technology have shifted, or threatened to shift, the 

balance among military instruments. If we choose to be ignorant 

of what history can teach us, the choice and cost are ours. The 

great Prussian theorist had this to say about the third reason 
for this study, “But in war more than in any other subject we 

must begin by looking at the nature of the whole; for here 

more than elsewhere the part and the whole must always be 

thought of together.”12

In other words, for the purposes of this study it has to be 

unsound to develop theories of landpower and airpower, among 

others, unless they are firmly grasped by an overarching theory 

of war and warfare. Plainly, a holistic theory of warfare is lacking today. As a direct consequence, argument about the strategic implications of airpower’s recent transformation or the allegedly enduring necessity for the presence of “the man [our 

man, naturally; CSG] on the scene with the gun” is conducted 

out of context and even, one can assert, out of paradigm.13 In 

the latter regard, if a holistic view of war and warfare is absent, 

there can be no dominant paradigm worthy of the ascription. 

Of course there will be rival paradigms which express the deepest beliefs of true disciples of one or another of the partial theories of warfare: for example, victory through decisive land battle 

or victory through airpower.

Fourth and finally, this study is designed and executed to 

contribute to the reduction of America’s long-standing strategy 

deficit. In the United States, strategy is neither well understood 

nor, as an inevitable consequence, well conceived—when it is 

conceived at all—and executed. This author does not know how 

to approach the roles and relative influence of airpower in future 

warfare except in strategic perspective. This perspective requires 

appreciation of the central significance of the concept, and prospective reality, of strategic effect. As the author has explained 

elsewhere, strategy is the bridge that should link the realm of 

policy with the world of its instruments, in the case of this study 

with policy’s military agency.14 The defining characteristic of 

strategy, and the quality strategic, is instrumentality. It is the 

task of strategy to translate the ends of policy into the ways and 

means for their achievement. In practice, the process of strategy 

making and adjustment entails a dialogue between policy 

makers and soldiers as aspiration, theory, and plans meet the 

reality of a sentient and reacting enemy.15 It so happens that 

strategy is an exceptionally challenging function to perform 

competently. We are blessed with many more expert politicians 

and soldiers than strategists. The job of the strategist may be 
likened to currency conversion when there is no stable exchange 

rate. For the desired, at least for an acceptable, political outcome, the threat or actual use of military power has to be converted into strategic effect upon the overall course of a conflict. 

This is no mean feat. History records unambiguously that despite the prodigious military accomplishments of the past century, the United States has rarely performed with a strategic 

skill worthy of its combat forces. More to the point, the way forward in advancing understanding of the benefits and limitations 

of America’s airpower advantage has to be through a considerable improvement in the quality of the country’s strategy.

Airpower Theory

Scholars disagree, as scholars will, over the issue of whether 

the history of airpower reveals the leadership of ideas and doctrine over technology or vice versa. Both points of view are defensible, though this study leans toward the former. The issue 

is important because it bears upon the future of the airpower 

advantage. It has generated rival interpretations of airpower 

history: either technology has been chasing ideas on use or 

ideas and doctrine have been rationalizing what technology 

provided largely uninvited. Each school of opinion advances a 

distinctive view of the preferred path forward. The technology 

ascendant school looks to theory to provide airpower with its 

allegedly missing conceptual framework. The doctrine first 

school, in contrast, emphasizes the need to build airpower 

capable of delivering the effects required by powerful ideas. 

This study suggests that neither approach is helpful when employed preclusively. It argues that to develop airpower for its 

maximum advantage, the focus must first be expanded to encompass the whole of a conflict. The airpower story, or however 

else one elects to phrase it, should be conceived, designed, and 

executed only in the context of war and warfare as a whole. 

There should be no need to stress the point that the identical 

rule applies to landpower, seapower, spacepower, and cyberpower. Airpower is not being singularized. Given the extent of 

the assertions in this paragraph, it is useful to quote a few especially potent examples of the rival perspectives on the significance of ideas in airpower history.
Probably the most quoted claim for technological leadership 

is that of David MacIsaac.

Air power, the generic term widely adopted to identify this phenomenon 

[advent of manned aircraft], has nonetheless yet to find a clearly defined 

or unchallenged place in the history of military or strategic theory. There 

has been no lack of theorists, but they have had only limited influence in 

a field where the effects of technology and the deeds of practitioners have 

from the beginning played greater roles than have ideas.16

To drive home his claim for technological ascendancy, 

MacIsaac concludes his analysis with this clever thought, 

“One might conclude, with some distress, that technology 

itself may be today’s primary air power theorist: that invention may, for the moment be the mother of application.”17 It 

sounds plausible, but is it true? In support of MacIsaac’s 

position one can quote the opinion of that greatly respected 

airpower historian, I.B. Holley. “The airplane has been 

around for nearly one hundred years, but, given its remarkable potential, surely one is surprised by the dearth of really 

comprehensive thinkers and theorists on airpower.”18

However, the “technology rules” school does not reign unchallenged. In the best, which is to say analytically the most balanced and penetrating book offering a general theory of war and 

of strategy written in the twentieth century, Adm J.C. Wylie, 

USN, argued as follows:

The air theory, now so prominent in the minds of all of the world [1967; 

CSG], is unique in that it was born as an idea rather than developed 

from experience.

[T]he air theory is unique in the sense that it exists primarily as theory 

rather than as a system of tested experiments that have grown gradually into a meaningful pattern over the years.19

The final quotation illustrating the rival arguments, or assertions perhaps, is a contemporary judgment offered by historian 

and defense analyst, Frederick W. Kagan.

This dismissal of the role of theory [by military professionals; CSG] has 

never been valid—theories of war have driven the planning and conduct 

of military operations since the mid-eighteenth century at least—but it 

is nowhere less valid than in the consideration of air power. From the 

first time a man put a bomb on a plane to drop on the enemy [1911; 

CSG], the planning and conduct of air operations has been a thoroughly 

theoretical undertaking.20
10

The debate inevitably is inconclusive, though it is probably 

true to claim that most of airpower’s critics are persuaded that 

technology has led ideas. On balance, as noted already, the 

author is not at all convinced that ideas typically have followed 

in technology’s wake. However, there is no denying the ease with 

which both points of view can find historical counter-examples to 

score debating points. The clearest and most dramatic example 

of science and technology leaving strategic ideas far behind was, 

of course, the atomic bomb. The Allied military establishments 

did not request nuclear weapons, in fact did not even know that 

they could be built, and certainly were undecided for many years 

over their strategic meaning. They were not alone in their confusion. Policy makers and most defense theorists were similarly 

confounded, at least for the better part of a decade.

As a belated caveat, it is necessary to remember that this 

study focuses on US airpower and on the kinds of warfare for 

which the United States needs to prepare in the future. Often, 

American defense theorists and commentators forget that the 

problems and possible solutions that consume their attention 

are, in major part, unique to the current global superpower. 

Size does matter. While there are vital general truths about 

war, warfare, peace, order, and strategy, once one descends 

into the zone of real-world application, one is faced with challenges of a scope and kind that no other security community 

must meet. Writing as an Anglo-American strategic theorist, it 

is easy to neglect to notice, for example, that one theory of 

seapower does not fit all cases adequately. Both of the leading 

theorists of seapower, Alfred Thayer Mahan (American) and Sir 

Julian Corbett (British) wrote for a dominant navy. But few 

countries have aspired to maritime dominance. Today, most 

countries’ navies more closely resemble the US Coast Guard in 

missions and capabilities than they do the US Navy. Naturally 

one can theorize for airpower, landpower, spacepower, and now 

cyberpower. But while assuredly there are bodies of general 

wisdom governing both warfare as a whole and combat in each 

distinctive environment, the contexts for each country’s airpower (and the other forms of military power) are unique and 

so must be application of the general theory.

The extended US defense community, certainly in its official 

and industrial ranks, by and large is organized to provide and 
11

support the individual services. As a consequence, there is a 

widespread lack of appreciation of the scope of the problem 

that drives this study. Specifically, it seeks to understand and 

advance America’s airpower advantage in future warfare. It 

may have escaped the notice of many defense analysts and 

commentators, but every major element of, or geographical dimension to, US military power is facing deep uncertainty over 

its roles and relative significance. The study is primarily about 

airpower, but its argument, analysis, and conclusions cannot 

be thus narrowly restricted. In summary form, the strategic 

condition of America’s geographically specific military power, 

plus the nuclear element, is as follow.

1. Landpower knows that it must be dominant in irregular 

warfare, but it is under increasing challenge from airpower 

in regular combat. Since a regular style of warfare is the 

US Army’s far preferred modus operandi, this menace 

from altitude has some unwelcome implications for favored, very expensive high-technology transformation 

plans. Is landpower theory, with its devotion to operational 

art, essentially obsolete now that non Army-organic airpower can maul, and perhaps defeat, enemy regular forces 

in the deep battle?21

2. Seapower is not threatened so directly by the recent evolution of, or revolution in, US airpower, but it is vulnerable 

to the charge that it plans to retain a blue-water focus, 

even though future combat is expected to be confined to 

green or even brown water. Tomorrow’s enemies may not 

contest US control on the high seas, but rather seek to 

deny access to Eurasian geography. Does the US Navy feel 

confident that it comprehends its roles and its necessary 

capabilities in future warfare? The author thinks not.

3. Spacepower has evolved, system by system, to answer 

particular needs. Quite literally, there is no theory of 

spacepower worthy of the title. Is Benjamin S. Lambeth 

correct when he anticipates a functional, effective merger 

of airpower and spacepower, despite the contrasting geophysics of the atmosphere and space?22 Or, are the “space 

cadets” thinking soundly when they argue that for space 
12

to be approached prudently as a future environment for 

warfare (on historical precedent an inevitable development) its military needs should be in the hands of a 

space-dedicated organization? At present, the geophysical 

vacuum is well matched by the vacuum in theory, concepts, 

ideas, and plausible forward-looking doctrine.

4. Cyberpower is in an even greater state of incoherence than 

is spacepower. This is scarcely surprising given its novelty. 

Nonetheless, in common with spacepower, it is here to stay 

and it needs to be accommodated in the American way in 

warfare. As threat and as opportunity, cyberpower is a 

challenge to all the levels of warfare. For the time being, it 

is open season for speculative theory on the relative significance of the computer. In addition, the doors are wide 

open to scientific and technological prediction as to the 

pace, direction, and military utility of electronic innovation. To say that strategic theory for cyberpower currently 

is still in its infancy would be a gross understatement.

5. Nuclear weapons triggered the invention of the theory of 

stable mutual deterrence, the centerpiece of US nuclear 

thinking for 35 years. Today that theory is almost wholly 

irrelevant to contemporary and anticipated future political 

and military-strategic contexts. In addition, serious doubts 

have been raised about the historical validity of the theory.23

Since the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics 

(USSR), credible evidence, from Soviet general staff sources 

in particular, suggests strongly that American assumptions 

about Soviet nuclear thinking and war planning were seriously in error.24 Be that as it may, the point is that today the 

United States is rewriting its nuclear strategy for coherence 

and complementarity with the new competence of precision 

conventional strike, and is seeking to “tailor” deterrence to 

the character of specific foes. At this time, US nuclear 

strategy is being debated energetically in the aftermath of 

the root-and-branch Nuclear Policy Review (NPR) of 2002.25

Some of the most cherished beliefs of American arms controllers about stable deterrence have been shown to have 

rested on wishful thinking. For more than 40 years, the 

orthodox American view held that there was only a single 
13

nuclear doctrinal enlightenment; that American theorists 

were the first to grasp the essentials of that enlightenment; 

and that, with the aid of some American education on the 

matter, Soviet officials either had, or soon would, come to 

share the dominant American view.

It should be clear enough from this brief review and analysis 

that literally every major element in US military power currently 

faces an uncertain future. Two of those elements, spacepower 

and cyberpower, are completely lacking in theoretical, even 

just conceptual, support while landpower, seapower, and nuclear weapons are all menaced by changing political, militarystrategic, and technological contexts.26 These facts should ease 

some of the anxieties of air-minded persons. Everyone and everything are having difficulty understanding where their kind of military power fits, how that fit will vary according to the character of 

specific conflicts, and how significant their roles will be in relation 

to the other players in the supposedly joint team. It is noticeable 

that in typical stovepipe fashion, the separate US military communities are earnestly and, in many ways properly, worrying more 

about their particular roles in future warfare than they are about 

the overall conduct of that warfare.

If airpower is short of conceptual support, which this study begs 

leave to doubt, the answer does, or would, not lie in the creation of 

some master air theory. Instead, suitable ideas for the roles of airpower in future warfare can be developed only in the context of a 

whole theory of warfare. Environmentally privileged theory for 

landpower, seapower, airpower, and the rest can only promote 

interservice antagonism at the expense of comprehension of 

the whole challenge of warfare. The best that a cluster of 

geographically specific theories can achieve is a minimum 

consensus, not a truly joint, let alone integrated, approach 

to deterrence and actual combat.

Issues and Arguments

Airpower can be decisive in both warfare and in war. Note the 

qualification “can.” Also, airpower may not be decisive. It may 

just be a supporting agent for a struggle on land. This reads 

like a typical piece of scholarly equivocation, of an academic 
14

trying to have it both ways, avoiding a commitment. Such an 

impression would be wrong. It is the case that airpower can 

influence a conflict, or a potential conflict via deterrence and 

coercion generally, on a wide spectrum of possibilities. That is 

the way it has been historically, it is today, and one must assume it will be tomorrow. One restricted size in airpower’s strategic utility, great or small, emphatically does not fit its future 

tasks and responsibilities in the US arsenal. 

At this juncture in the study, having cleared some dead wood 

and set the scene, the author assembles a summary of the arguments and issues which carry the work forward and through to its 

conclusions. Most of these vital items have been raised already in 

passing, but it is necessary to collect them to present the clearest 

possible picture of the main thrusts of the argument. 

The United States needs a reasonably authoritative theory of 

war and warfare which accommodates a theory of airpower.

That theory of airpower, currently absent along with the master 

theory into which it must fit, is not, cannot be and must not 

substitute for, a theory of war and warfare. It may be necessary 

to clarify a definitional point. Warfare refers to the actual waging of war, pre-eminently though not exclusively to fighting. In 

contrast, war is a total relationship of belligerency that naturally includes warfare. Not all of airpower’s true disciples, by 

which is meant people who argue largely from faith and are not 

moveable by evidence, have distinguished between war and 

warfare. They have conveniently conflated the two.27 For a classic example, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris, then the commander of the Royal Air Force’s Bomber Command, claimed as 

follows: “We can wreck Berlin from end to end if the USAAF 

[United States Army Air Forces] will come in on it. It will cost 

between us 400-500 aircraft. It will cost Germany the war.”28

Similar beliefs were expressed over the wars in Korea, Vietnam, 

Gulf War I, Kosovo 1999, Afghanistan in 2001 for a while at 

least, and Gulf War II, again only for a while.

Future warfare will assume many forms. It will not neatly 

nest in a binary way into regular or irregular categories. Some 

conflicts will embrace both, probably simultaneously.29 This 

less than startling safe prediction means that the future airpower advantage in its many forms, all contributing to the key 

quality, strategic effect, will be diverse in delivery and impor-
15

tance. It is not a simple strategic tale to attempt to predict in 

detail, assess, and debate with skeptics.

Next, for the airpower advantage to secure strategic results 

of value, it must serve a national policy and a grand and overall 

military strategy that are feasible, coherent, and politically sensible. If these basic requirements are not met, airpower, no 

matter how impeccably applied tactically and operationally, 

will be employed as a waste of life, taxes, and, frankly, trust 

between the sharp end of America’s spear and its shaft. This 

situation is by no means unlikely in the future, if history, including current events, is a guide. 

The strategic advantage that airpower can convey depends 

entirely upon the contexts of war, crisis, and peace. These contexts (the author chooses to identify seven) determine, yes determine (the word that scholars fear to use), what the war is 

about, how it is waged, and indeed everything about the conflict. The seven contexts comprise the following:30

• Political

• Social-cultural

• Economic

• Technological

• Military-Strategic

• Geographical

• Historical

These are sufficiently broad, yet also adequately focused, to 

capture all that we need to know about the conditions that govern the terms on which a conflict, in time of peace or actual 

war, must be waged. As many theorists have argued, correctly 

in the view of this study, airpower is highly situational in its 

ability to deliver advantage. And that idea of situational airpower is just another way of saying that the airpower advantage is strongly contextual.

It should be to the amazement of none to read now that airpower itself needs a coherent strategy of employment, and by no 

means only of “kinetic” employment as the currently fashionable euphemism has it. Future warfare must, and will, be joint 
16

and perhaps even integrated in well “internetted” character. 

This is not quite the radical innovation, let alone discovery as a 

desideratum, that some people believe. Although US airpower 

has a distinctly checkered history of cooperation with landpower and seapower, in practice it has always been obliged to 

function to a degree jointly. There are important historical examples of superb cooperation for joint effectiveness. One can 

cite US airpower supporting, literally enabling, Gen Douglas 

MacArthur’s painful climb from New Guinea up the Japaneseoccupied Dutch East Indies towards Java. Or, one could mention Maj Gen Elwood R. “Pete” Quesada’s somewhat disobedient and officially strongly disliked insistence upon placing his 

mighty tactical airpower assets in direct support of ground 

forces. Quesada, who commanded the USAAF’s IX Fighter Command of the Ninth Air Force, provided such support despite 

formidable service opposition, including that from the chief, 

Gen Henry H. “Hap” [for “Happy”; CSG] Arnold. Quesada’s 

1,600 P-47 Thunderbolt fighter bombers, which were superb 

aircraft for close air support and tactical interdiction for isolation of the battlefield, made an immeasurably great contribution to the hugely risky operation that was D-day.31 For much 

more recent examples of excellent cooperation between airpower and landpower, one must mention the conventional 

campaign against the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001 and again 

the conventional, regular “march up country” campaign to seize 

Baghdad, almost by a surprise coup de main, in 2003.32 Those 

brilliantly successful brief campaigns did not end the warfare, 

alas, but they undoubtedly showcased what airpower could do 

when it adopted a coherent and appropriate strategy.

The potential value of airpower in future warfare is a spectrum 

of possibilities, depending upon the contexts or situation. It is 

not an either/or quality and quantity of strategic utility. Unless 

this elementary claim is recognized and fully understood, there 

is little prospect of the true value of airpower being properly assessed as to its strategic effect or potential.

Next, one should not assume that complete air domination is 

America’s as by divine, or would-be hegemonic, right. Most airpersons, especially those at the sharp end, know this, but many 

people who should know better are apt to forget that warfare is 

by its very nature a competitive project. Recall that in the war-
17

fare against Serbia in 1999, allied, largely US, aircraft were ordered to fly no lower than 15,000 feet to eliminate or significantly 

reduce the dangers from ground fire. In the future, America’s 

anticipated airpower advantage could well be eroded by an intelligent enemy. One who may be able to render the skies less benign than American landpower has long come to expect. Not 

only will some foes be able to menace US airpower directly and 

kinetically, but they will be powerfully motivated to reduce that 

airpower’s effectiveness through assaults upon US spacepower. 

Those attacks would probably aim to degrade global positioning 

system signals in particular. Also, well planned cyberattacks 

against America’s heavily internetted forces are so predictable 

as to warrant labeling as a certainty.33 US airpower could well, 

and should assume that it will, have to perform in hazardous 

military contexts in some kinds of future warfare.

American airpower is a very great asymmetrical advantage. At 

least, it is very great if it is properly equipped, trained, provided 

with suitable concepts of operation—doctrine—and properly employed within a coherent strategy in the service of a prudent 

overall strategy and national policy. US enemies in the future 

are fairly certain to enjoy some major asymmetrical advantages 

(e.g., the initiative, knowledge of the terrain, and relative strength 

of political motivation). Airpower intelligently prepared and employed can and should go a long way toward leveling a battlespace 

in contexts that otherwise would see friendly forces possibly fatally 

disadvantaged. America should seek to squeeze every possible 

gain from its predictable asymmetrical domination of the skies, 

even as the quality of that domination increasingly is challenged 

as it certainly will be.

It is not possible to predict with total confidence the character 

of future warfare. Admiral Wylie, quoted earlier, offers these 

wise words:

We cannot predict with certainty the pattern of the war for which we prepare 

ourselves. We cannot, with reasonable certainty, forecast the time, the place, 

the scope, the intensity, the course of a war. I think no man ever has. A 

strategy for an entire war is not predictable (emphasis in original).34

Two pages later, the Admiral sums up his message thus, “But 

planning for certitude is the greatest of all military mistakes, as 

military history demonstrates all too vividly.”35 America be 

warned. The US military establishment is in danger of enjoying an 
18

overconfidence based imprudently upon favorable order-of-battle 

comparisons. Time and again, devastating surprise has been 

achieved not by the sudden appearance of some novel items of 

equipment, but rather in the unexpected ways in which familiar 

military assets are used. Given the deep contemporary uncertainty about the effectiveness of space and cyber warfare for two 

leading examples, it is not difficult to understand how fragile 

must be official predictions on the character of future warfare.

For reasons that are both pragmatically sensible as well as 

deeply cultural, one can expect airpower to remain the most favored military agency in the American way of warfare.36 Sometimes this popular, and therefore political, appeal will not be 

well judged. It must depend upon the particular contexts. Understanding of the inherent strengths and limitations of airpower, as well as of the exact meaning of airpower (the range 

and scope of its diverse components), is not exactly widespread. 

To most Americans, airpower equals dropping explosives on 

“bad guys”—well, mostly bad guys. Such activities as logistic 

support; medevac; intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR); and search and rescue, for a few examples, have a 

low profile among armchair amateur warriors. Because airpower holds a treasured place in the affections of an unmilitary, yet rather warlike, American public, there is a constant 

danger that much more will be asked and expected of it than it 

can deliver. Since America’s now longstanding love affair with 

airpower is significantly cultural, it is futile to hope for a transformation, to resort to a familiar concept, in that affection to a 

condition better suited to the varying situations of conflict. Airpower is the epitome of high technology, high technology is 

America, and Americans expect to wage high-technology warfare, successfully of course.

One should not take a narrowly focused view of the advantages 

of airpower by concentrating strictly on the variable conditions of 

actual warfare. Airpower has amply demonstrated its strategic effectiveness, as well as its limitations, in contexts of watchful and 

tense peace, for deterrence, to police some of the conditions of 

adversary behavior that are legally and therefore politically prohibited, and for coercion or even some reassurance—deliberately 

visible operational arms control, for example—in times of incipient or actual crisis.
19

It is important for those sincerely convinced of the great advantages conferred by superior airpower not to understate its 

systemic and situational limitations. There is nothing to be 

gained by silence or exaggerated denial on this topic from the 

ranks of airpersons. The US defense community is well populated by strong critics of airpower who will be only too pleased 

to exploit that silence and exaggeration to show how untrustworthy is the airpower story as delivered by its truest disciples. 

Error has a way of being punished. The moral has biblical authority. The advantages conferred by airpower must vary with 

the contexts of its employment.

The balance of relative influence upon the course of regular conventional war has been shifting for 20 years or more in favor of 

airpower as compared to landpower. This is and should be undeniable. Needless to say, this plain tactical and operational fact is 

flatly denied by landpower theorists and executors who hold to 

the fundamental belief that victory can only ultimately be 

achieved by the decisive engagement of armies. The landpower 

stance and doctrine are not all wrong. It depends upon the situation. The claim for America achieving a transformation in the 

tactical, operational, and therefore, logically, the strategic and 

political effectiveness of its airpower became ever more plausible 

as the 1990s advanced. However, Kosovo struck a sour note in 

that, although airpower succeeded in the absence of a NATO 

landpower intervention, the coercive air campaign lasted an embarrassing 78 days rather than the confidently anticipated 

three.37 Moving on, so effective and innovative was the joint-tointegrated use of airpower in Afghanistan (against a Taliban 

that unwisely chose to stand and stage a regular resistance) 

that there was much contemporary speculation claiming that a 

“new American way of war” had just been discovered and practiced to a brilliant outcome.38 Strategic history has a habit of 

laughing at premature optimists. The reality and relevance of 

the shift that privileges airpower over landpower are highly context dependent. And even in situations where airpower unquestionably is the force that decides who wins, usually there will 

still be vital missions that only landpower can undertake. The 

controversy over airpower versus landpower for relative influence is alive and all too well at present and, sadly, predictably 

far into the future.
20

The general thrust of this analysis is to identify the advantages that should be conveyed by leadership in the air (and in 

space and cyberspace). Therefore, it is only prudent to take 

notice of some of the more perilous of the factors that can, not 

necessarily will, let alone must, limit airpower’s relative effectiveness. Consider these potential factors that would weaken 

the airpower contribution to war fighting.

1. Poor air strategy, operational artistry, or tactics.

2. Inappropriate air assets.

3. Loss or serious degradation of support from space systems.

4. Serious damage through effective cyberattacks.

5. Incompetent or inappropriate mixes and uses of landpower and seapower; meaning that the prospects for success in the war on land or at sea are beyond rescue by US 

land-based airpower.

6. Finally, for the killer limitation, US national security policy 

and possibly its national security strategy, as well as its 

overall national military strategy, may all be so dysfunctional that they cannot be rescued from defeat by a dominant airpower, no matter how that airpower is employed.

And now it is necessary to turn to speculative, and it must 

be admitted controversial, consideration of the contexts of future warfare.

Future Warfare: Contextual Realities

Nothing in this study is, or could be, more important than the 

contexts of future warfare. They cannot determine exactly which 

events will occur or which decisions will be taken, but they will 

provide just about everything else. To explain, the seven chosen 

contexts (see above) provide the political situation which generates war and therefore warfare, foreign and domestic; the socialcultural ideologies, attitudes, habits of mind, and behavior patterns that to a degree program different security communities 

and organizations within those communities in their approach 

to issues of war and peace;39 the economic wherewithal to raise 
21

and sustain armed forces; the technological terms upon which 

warfare is threatened and waged; the military-strategic relationship between antagonists, as well as details of the actual contemporary military “grammar” of war (to borrow from Clausewitz);40

the geographical setting for hostilities, be it global or localized; 

and the historical placement of war and warlike happenings since 

all wars have origins and consequences in the stream of time.

Could we only be certain in our speculation, understanding 

of these contexts should enable us to achieve near perfection in 

strategy were it not for four major sources of difficulty. These 

are (1) the active intervention of enemies to spoil our unilateral 

picture of the future; (2) the inability of our institutions of government, civilian and military, to deliver an approximation to 

perfection substantially through bureaucratic, which is to say 

political, endeavor in the matching of ways, means, and policy 

ends; (3) the unpredictability of human behavior, as our future 

political leaders sometimes will make choices that do not appear to correspond to the familiar rules of rational choice; and 

(4) the certain non-linearities of accident and surprise. This 

contextual framework, by theatrical analogy, should capture 

everything about the play that will be future warfare, save only 

for the particular interconnected choices made by competing 

statespeople who have some discretion as to how they can play 

their parts. In this section, the study will go far beyond the bare 

framework of contextuality and venture heavily and contentiously into prediction. Some readers may find more value in 

the contextual approach adopted than in the judgments of the 

strategist-author.

Political Context

Since war is always about politics, the political context must 

be the source for all future warfare of every character. If the 

primary motive of organized violence is criminal profit, culturally induced and licensed recreation, or just sheer hooliganism 

on a large scale, it cannot be warfare. However, those blights 

sometimes merge into, certainly are inadvertently promoted by, 

wartime conditions.

How will future political contexts, domestic and foreign, impact upon the prospects for warfare? History obliges us to re-
22

spect as a fact that its strategic dimension has been constant, 

albeit not constantly active on the largest of scales.41 The prospects for the twenty-first century could be much worse than 

they seem at present, but these are very early years and there 

is ample cause for concern already. 

The good news is that unlike the twentieth century from 1917 

until 1991, the ideological rivalries that contributed so powerfully 

to interstate rivalry, ambition, and anxiety are all but defunct, 

save only in two respects whose influence is easy to exaggerate. 

On the hostile side, the global jihad proclaimed by al Qaeda in 

1998 assuredly is a source of contemporary and future warfare. 

But, unless its decidedly irregular and unofficial behaviors can 

promote interstate warfare, the challenge it can pose must be 

minor compared with the greatest of threats registered and overcome over the course of the past 100 years. Even an al Qaeda 

affiliate with a “dirty” radiological device or two will not compare 

with the perils posed during the Cold War. The other major ideological element alive in global politics is, and for cultural reasons to a degree must remain, America’s enduring commitment 

to spread liberal democracy and the free market.

A major political and strategic rivalry between, perhaps 

among, the United States, China, and the Russian Federation 

is unavoidable and confidently predictable. None of the three 

wants war, but Thucydides’ “fear, honor, and interest” mandate 

the near certainty that their conflicting interests will result in a 

new political architecture of antagonistic alignments. The 

United States will strive to remain the sole global superpower; 

the state that counts for the most on nearly every question of 

global security. This American stance has become habitual, it 

is the product of the reality of resources and superior wealth, 

and it is the existing situation. 

Both China and Russia are strongly motivated to reduce the 

American role of global judge, jury, and sheriff. Neither wishes 

to risk war with Washington, but the century has barely begun. 

Global security politics were not unduly ominous from the perspective of 1907, at least to contemporary optimists. And we 

are not short of such people today. 

China does not accept the extant measure of US global influence. Why? Because it fears America’s ability to harm its increasingly global range of interests, and hence by extension its 
23

domestic political stability; it is acutely sensitive to the dishonor of being obliged to tolerate American leadership and unilateralism; and it fears that America’s undoubted strength 

could overmatch China and frustrate her drive for primacy. 

As for the new-old Russia, the contextual reality of the twentyfirst century is that this country has serious irredentist claims 

in all directions save the north, and even the Arctic will return 

to its erstwhile somewhat contested state as a result of global 

warming. Russia is ruled by a former KGB functionary of modest ability. His chosen political partners and most likely successors should be assumed to be people of similar attitude, if 

not background. Russia is an increasingly loose cannon on a 

notably rolling international security deck. 

Both China and Russia are potentially unstable in their domestic politics and will be compelled by the authoritative logic 

of the balance of power to seek friends and allies if they are to 

discipline an unacceptable US hegemony. India, Japan, Brazil, 

and EU-Europe will remain second or third-order players of 

international security politics, while the Middle East will continue to fester from its multiple troubles. That festering could 

well occasion a regional nuclear conflict. Elsewhere, warfare 

will remain as endemic as it has always been.42

Socio-Cultural Context

Liberal optimists who believe that future warfare will be 

much reduced by the spread of benign globally recognized and 

practiced norms are certain to be disappointed. Most people in 

most places throughout history have not favored warfare. It did 

not make much difference. World War II was not a popular war, 

in prospect not even in Germany. It does not take much for 

pacific norms, conventions, laws, and international institutions to count for nought. All it takes is one country, even one 

person in the wrong country, to be strongly risk-accepting, 

highly ambitious, and well enough endowed with material assets and a sufficiency of local political support for the history of 

a decade, or a century, to be changed much for the worse. 

The attractive conceits we humans have learnt (or are learning), the benefits of peace, are increasingly interdependent 

through the wonders of globalization; and suchlike claims are 
24

by no means false. However, unfortunately, those arguments 

have been made repeatedly since the conclusion of the first of 

the cycle of modern great wars in 1815. And one should never 

forget that there is not a truly global culture for a no less truly 

global society or community.43 If such is advancing today, 

which may be the case, it is doing so at so deliberate a pace, 

and in such prospectively hostile conditions, that it can serve 

as no sort of a guide to the future of warfare for any period of 

interest to this study.

Economic Context

Economic motivations for war would appear to make little sense 

in an intricately globalized world. Does not Chinese industry require American and European consumers? Russians and Iranians 

cannot drink their oil and gas, and so forth. Alas, the economic 

story of the twenty-first century is not entirely a prospectively 

happy one. There are many (over)confident predictions by mainly 

American techno-optimists. But, there will be a growing energy 

shortage for a sharply increasing world population whose well being must be menaced in the very areas most at risk to adverse 

climate change. The extent and severity of the coming crisis are 

deeply uncertain, but the fact of the trend and its inescapable outcomes are not. Those outcomes will include increasing competition for the staples of life, competition for productive land, and, of 

course, mass migration. 

Additionally, the theory that a rising tide of globalized prosperity raises all boats is both not true enough and encourages 

an unsound conclusion. Globalization, it is now generally recognized, raises some boats almost precipitately while others 

are left rotting on the mud-flats of the world economy. More to 

the international security point, while the genuine losers in the 

information technology (IT) enabled global economy will be able 

to suffer and promote only a very local mayhem, some of the 

major winners will want to win more, more rapidly. They will be 

prepared to give economic history a helping push by challenging the still-Western (i.e., US) authored international rules and 

institutional frameworks that govern world trade and finance.
25

Technological Context 

Extensive past experience demonstrates that technological 

prediction is close to worthless.44 Great unexpected discoveries 

are exactly that, unexpected. Typically, they are made by individuals or small teams, not by massively funded official or industrial programs. Often they are the thoroughly serendipitous 

product of a single brain. There is a concept that covers the 

case; it is genius. Current technological trends are easy to identify, but they offer no reliable guide to the future because they 

rest upon a basis in science, which is to say in scientific discovery, that cannot be predicted, even by scientists themselves. 

To predict the technological future for warfare many decades 

into the future is a perilous undertaking. However, we cannot 

simply throw up our hands in despair. Fortunately, there is some 

limited help at hand. First, given the lead-time for science to turn 

into usable military technology and given the porous nature of 

the barriers protecting national secrets in an all but universally 

digitized world, advance notice of foreign technology is generally 

attainable. Much less attainable is understanding of just what new 

technologies will mean for alien strategic and military cultures and 

their possibly cunning plans. Since those cultures are likely themselves to be in doubt as to how new capabilities can best be exploited, US uncertainty will be thoroughly understandable.

One can be certain that America’s principal foreign challengers in this century, who must be China and Russia, just possibly 

in combination, will seek asymmetric advantage in order to degrade the potency of America’s military, political, and economic 

strengths.45 Already, the Chinese are working hard to achieve a 

useful, and prospectively an actually disabling, space denial capability.46 In addition, China is devoting major efforts to modernize its armed forces for combat in information-led battlespace 

by developing a credible access denial capability resting upon a 

large force of both nuclear and conventional missiles, ballistic 

and cruise. However, precise guidance at longer ranges will remain a severe challenge for many years to come. 

The Russians have decided that the centerpiece of their return to 

the higher table of states that matter, aside from a coercive energy 

policy, is a sophisticated, modernizing, nuclear missile arsenal.47

This arsenal is matched by a doctrine of very early nuclear use 
26

and by full appreciation of the disabling damage that nuclear 

weapon effects (electromagnetic pulse most especially) could have 

upon an enemy dependent upon an intimately network-centric 

style of military operations. The USSR was obliged to file for reorganization, but Russia remains strong in basic science and it 

has a gigantic nuclear infrastructure that continues to function 

well enough to be able to innovate impressively.

Military-Strategic Context

The military-strategic context of the twenty-first century 

cannot continue to be as favorable to the United States as it is 

at present. China, Russia, India, Japan, and even EU-Europe 

either are or could become global science-based technological 

superstates. That condition, in a world beset by life-and-death 

resource shortages and the continuing authority of the all too 

familiar triad of “fear, honor, and interest,” means that in some 

national cases elementary prudence and a measure of ambition will translate wealth and technology into military power. 

America is currently Number One in regular military capability 

in every geographical environment. This is historically unprecedented. In the sole possible comparison, even the Romans never 

dominated Persia or the Germanic tribes beyond the Rhine and 

the Danube for long, or simultaneously. From the topmost rung, 

America’s relative military, and hence strategic and political, standing can only move in one direction. Competitors will learn from 

the successes and failures of the military leader, and will invest 

selectively in the most cost effective answers to America’s 

strengths. Future foes will make strategic and military 

choices based not only on what Americans would judge to 

be rational cost-benefit choices but also their behavior will 

bear local cultural stamps. 

The continuing military transformation drive of the US armed 

forces is in large degree culturally mandated by the technology 

momentum of the IT revolution. But all too often, it has been 

propelled by unconvincing strategic rationales. In large measure, this absence of plausible strategic logic has been the 

product of the threat vacuum in which America happily and 

unexpectedly found itself in the inter-war decade of the 1990s. 

Between Christmas 1991 and 9/11, the US threat board was 
27

bereft of any really serious menace. Since warfare is by definition a competitive endeavor, this vacuum made the task of 

American defense planners exceptionally difficult. Money for 

the military is tight in a democracy when the voting public is 

not frightened. And even in the expert depths of the extended 

defense community, predictions of future warfare were not sufficiently convincing to provide useful guidance. Those few 

among us who anticipated a hostile China and Russia were 

generally dismissed as locked in an archaic worldview. Today 

our anticipations have turned into predictions. They are in competition not so much with the view that major interstate war has 

passed into history, but rather with the extremely popular post 

9/11 assumption, one can hardly say argument, that future warfare for Americans will be almost entirely irregular in character. 

After all, is not that the reality of the 2000s?

It is the view of this study that the United States will need to 

develop and sustain armed forces adaptable to warfare all along 

its bloody spectrum. From the occasional terrorist outrage to 

large-scale nuclear conflict, a global superpower is obliged by 

its values and its continuing immense strengths to play policeman for international order. It must do so both on its own behalf and for the general good.48 Americans would soon find a 

policy doctrine of non-intervention to be thoroughly unsustainable, 

notwithstanding its obvious popular attraction. The trouble is that 

America’s assets, though large, are not infinite. Also, America’s 

policy makers will not be reliably wise or competent while its official 

strategists, should it have one or two at the time, will need to 

exercise choice over the ways and means to effect the ends 

desired by politics. If warfare of all kinds certainly lies before 

Americans in this century, what should be US military strategy? 

Where should the balance be struck among capabilities to excel in regular and irregular warfare, and how fungible is the 

military power generated primarily for each of these unduly 

neat conceptual categories?

The primary source of the confidence with which this study 

anticipates an unhappily active and highly varied future in the 

American waging of warfare can only be historical. One should 

be impressed by the master narrative of 2,500 years which has 

been dominated by its strategic, which is to say its force-related, 

theme. This time, in the twenty-first century, history might be 
28

radically different. That could be true, but it is so improbable 

that no responsible US government or strategic advisor could 

offer it as an actionable anticipation, let alone as prediction. 

Geographical Context

What will be the geographical contexts for future warfare? 

Where will Americans have to fight and for what goals? Will the 

warfare serve unlimited or limited ends? These are not idle rhetorical questions. They bear directly upon the scope and scale 

of strategic and military challenges and, as a consequence, 

upon the balance among geographically specialized armed 

forces. Geography still matters greatly. Admittedly, it matters 

less than it did before airpower could function reliably and effectively in bad weather, a very recent improvement, but it does still 

matter. Future warfare will include action in and through no fewer 

than five environments: land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace. 

We are advised, with some good reasons, that America 

should concentrate on commanding “the commons.” By this, 

Barry Posen extends Mahan’s powerful concept to include the 

commons of the air, space, and cyberspace.49 Minimize the 

placing of American boots on culturally alien ground, let us 

control everything else. Posen’s analysis and suggestion are 

persuasive but, alas, fundamentally unsound. Today, one cannot know with “rock-like confidence” exactly where, why, and 

how the United States will wish to fight in the future.50 But 

what is known with the confidence born of extensive experience is that every war requires the waging of warfare in a manner somewhat unique to its circumstances. In particular, the 

airpower contribution will be different in detail from case to 

case. Fortunately, there is much about airpower, as indeed 

about war and warfare in general, that is common to many or 

even all cases. Still, the objective facts of physical and socialcultural geography do not by any means present a standard 

battlespace. It is noticeable how in the on-going debate over the 

relative future importance of landpower and airpower, rival debaters are obliged to select an environmental context that flatters the strengths and discounts the limitations of their case.

As a challenging thought to some readers, the author suggests that for most military technologies (considered singly but 
29

more intelligently, especially, in combination), there is an 

equivalent to Clausewitz’s concept of “the culminating point of 

victory.”51 In partial translation, Clausewitz points to a diminishing, and eventually a strongly negative, rate of return to effort when behavior or capability is permitted a dominant role 

beyond its competence. Also, there is always an enemy out 

there, determined to reduce the military and strategic value of 

America’s more or less jointly fighting, semi-transformed forces. 

Transformation is an essentially endless process, systemically 

conducted with high risks of activating potent regrets downstream. The author suggests that the transformation of US airpower, a process about which Benjamin Lambeth has written brilliantly, is approaching the edge of its envelope of war-fighting 

effectiveness.52 This is not a criticism of airpower, far from it. This 

study’s tentative claim is to the effect that each of the five geographically specialized forms of American military power has its unique 

strengths and limitations. Airpower, thanks to revolutionary improvements in ISR, precision, and stealth, is close to perfection. 

The burning issue for the future is not so much the ability to 

perform yet more immaculately from the sky, but instead to fit 

that still improving competence into a truly holistic approach 

to warfare. That approach, in its turn, needs to fit into a genuinely holistic grand strategic approach to war, peace, and deterrence. And the unique geography of a war, terrain in the 

soldier’s worldview, must always offer reasonably distinctive 

incentives and disincentives to employ airpower in its many 

aspects for the joint fighting project. 

Despite the visions of some of the technophiles among us, 

the IT revolution will not retire the significance of either politics 

or physical and cultural geography. This is easy to demonstrate 

in historical, logical, and common sense terms, but it is not 

overly helpful to the airpower planner in the twenty-first century. That is why the concluding section of the study must seek 

to answer the all but unanswerable question directly, “How can 

America secure the leverage it will need from its predictable 

airpower advantage?” Some readers may need to be reminded 

that America’s transformed airpower will have to be effective in 

the face of transformed enemy capabilities and tactics. The defense has not been banished or definitively vanquished.
30

Historical Context

In good measure, people and institutions are part prisoners 

of their pasts and of their interests in the present and the future. The contemporary controversy in the US armed forces 

over the character of future wars and warfare is amply fuelled 

by genuine ground for uncertainty. Will the challenge be largely 

regular or irregular? Is a high-technology-based near-peer 

challenge a significant source of quite near-term menace, or is 

it a distant possibility and, for now, a figment more of paranoia 

than of careful net assessment? And, even as history marches 

along unpredictably to no predetermined destination, the important details of current controversy are debated in the exceptionally potent historical context of nearly a century of air, land, 

and sea disagreement over who can and should be allowed to 

try to do what, by when, at what cost, and with what strategic 

and political consequences. 

The final point just noted tends not to be prominent in American debate. That debate is more comfortable dealing with the 

difficult enough problems of actual war fighting, let alone venturing higher than the overhead flank into the rarefied zone 

wherein the political purposes of the fighting in question should 

dominate discussion. As indicated much earlier, America suffers 

from a strategy deficit that is a mighty hindrance to leveraging 

what should be its powerfully multi-faceted airpower advantage. 

It is not possible to approach the urgent issue of the airpower 

advantage in future warfare competently in the absence of a firm 

grasp of airpower’s near century-long struggle for organizational 

influence and independence. America’s airpower advocates have 

sought doctrinal self-determination and the opportunity to demonstrate as much relative influence in warfare as they could 

squeeze out of other military organizations determined to protect their interests. “Fear, honor, and interest” rule, as always.

US Airpower Advantage in Future Warfare

This wide ranging study of the probable and possible US airpower advantage in future warfare reaches six major conclusions.

First, because airpower, broadly defined, is and will long remain a prime source of US asymmetrical advantage, it should be 
31

exploited to the fullest for all the leverage it can deliver. As other 

concluding points indicate, this will only be possible in the 

context of a sound theory of warfare overall, which is to say 

sound for the particular war in question, and an effective joint/

integrated strategy, military and nonmilitary. Defenders of the 

airpower contribution to future warfare, faced with heavy criticism and other doubts deriving from elsewhere in the armed 

forces, should not be moved to compromise their basic stance. 

That stance is to insist upon the objective claim that the relative 

leverage of airpower is recognized to be highly situational. The 

issue, hence the subject of this study, is the airpower “advantage,” not the ability of airpower to deliver decisive military, possibly strategic, and hopefully political victory in all cases. Such 

an imperial claim does untold harm to the sensible case for airpower’s significance. In war and warfare, to the degree feasible, 

a belligerent should always strive to fight on the most favorable 

terms it can impose on the enemy. Given America’s lead in, indeed identification with, high technology, it would be bizarre, 

actually impossible, as well as foolish for the country’s military 

planners and strategists not to look for every effective way in 

which airpower can deliver advantage. Plausible situational objections to some uses of airpower should be acknowledged, and 

their implications, when practicable, noted, assessed, and employed to modify military behavior.

Second, many people, including scholars and military professionals, appear to be genuinely confused about the distinction 

between airpower as a “war winner” and airpower as a “war 

decider.” Even at the high end of the airpower leverage scale, 

the distinction matters. In Gulf Wars I and II, in Bosnia, in 

Kosovo, and in the regular war to depose the Taliban from Kabul, US airpower either decided which side would win or apparently independently provided the leverage for victory. Of course, 

there are always multiple reasons for success and failure in war, 

and all claims for relative advantage that strongly privilege one 

military element—airpower in this case—will be contested. 

In some historical cases, certainly in the five recent ones just 

cited, a key role for airpower was not the only approach that 

could have been adopted. US and allied landpower, with much 

less airpower support, could have won or delivered the advantage required in all five conflicts. This is an important but not 
32

exactly devastating caveat. After all, strategy is about the 

choices made among ways, means, and ends.53 There will usually be alternative theories of how the enemy’s will to resist can 

best be broken. The point is that in these five cases, airpower 

was employed successfully, if inevitably controversially in some 

operational terms, to shape the course and outcome of hostilities. But these were wars, or less than wars, of discretion. They 

were waged to defeat or coerce enemies barely worthy of the 

title. The situational reality behind this second conclusion will 

not always be so permissive. Against an enemy cunning in the 

ways of warfare and able to employ information-led forces, the 

vital issue of just what should airpower contribute to the joint 

US effort becomes a topic of outstanding importance. And it 

will be necessary, though alas not certain, for American strategists to find a correct enough answer rapidly. They will have to 

be adaptable to the surprises and surprise effects that the bilateral dimension of war always imposes. Today’s argument 

about the future advantage securable through the use of airpower is certain to be tried, though probably not settled definitively, in the actual battlespace of warfare.

Third, it is futile to debate the subject of America’s airpower 

advantage either strictly from the perspective of rational strategic 

analysis or even with heavy-to-dominant reference to interorganizational politics and influence in Washington. It is a fact that high 

technology is the American way in warfare. It has to be. A hightechnology society cannot possibly prepare for, or attempt to 

fight, its wars in any other than a technology-led manner. A 

technology privileging American approach to combat is of long 

standing and is beyond intelligent debate. To seek technology 

solutions to military challenges, in many cases whether or not 

there are superior or comparable alternatives theoretically available, is the American style. The reasons for this condition reach 

back to Colonial times, certainly through the nineteenth century, and became legendary among America’s allies and foes in 

World War II. Since there is an undeniable sense in which the 

American love affair with machinery is so deep-seated as to be 

cultural, its strategists must exploit this enduring fact for all it 

is worth, while seeking, typically with only limited success, to 

curb its negative influence. When airpower is asked to do too 

much, this American-preferred leading way in warfare will fail.
33

Fourth, as a strategist this author is distressed to find that the 

long-standing debate over landpower versus airpower is still 

alive and blooming. Generally, the debate is phrased carefully, 

with nuance and nods toward currently acceptable slogans and 

dogmas, and even with the making of some unavoidable concessions to the adversary’s position. But, not far beneath the 

polite exchange of analyses lies the struggle over who is top 

dog. Is landpower the supported element or is airpower? This 

debate would be laughable were it not so serious in the damage 

it does to the national security. America needs a unified theory 

of war and warfare, and it has to try to cure itself of its strategic 

allergy. And yet, stovepipe thinking and behavior continue to 

thrive. To be fair, the fault does not lie only with the people in 

uniform. The Constitution has much to answer for. Politicians, 

not all of whom are strategically literate, find that a much divided military establishment is advantageous for control and 

constituency benefit. Decisions on policy, strategy, and defense 

planning are made in an endless and seamlessly complex, even 

chaotic, process. This political reality can be hard to convey 

with any approximation to accuracy to those who lack firsthand experience of the phenomenon. 

To be crystal clear on the matter, there should be no room for 

general debate on landpower versus airpower. The advantages 

of each are almost invariably enhanced by the other and will 

vary widely from context to context because every conflict must 

have significantly unique features. But, in all circumstances, 

the distinctive strengths and limitations of landpower and airpower have to be recognized, especially by those who are most 

reluctant to do so. The airpower advantage in future warfare 

cannot be a single story. This is not to deny the radical tactical 

and operational advances that the past decade has recorded in 

airpower’s potency. Such due recognition, however, must not 

be permitted to encourage further the unhelpfully military operational, even tacticized, approach to war which has long been 

dominant in the US way of warfare. The shadows of Napoleon, 

Lee, Moltke, and Schlieffen still fall heavily upon the American 

approach to war and warfare.

Fifth, it is understandably, if often unfortunately, difficult for 

people to escape capture by the law of their favored instrument.

Airpersons love to fly. That is why they do what they do. As a 
34

consequence, it is hard for them to accept the fact that there 

are significant limitations to the leverage that airpower will deliver, albeit deliver variably in diverse conditions. Anyone whose 

career is devoted to developing and practicing an extremely demanding, as well as satisfying, technical and tactical mastery 

is apt to develop a matching worldview. Although one can always find arguments in praise of a deeply favored military 

agency, a significant source of the opinion will lie with a particular powerful organizational culture. This is a fact, though 

one rarely admitted. 

It is no less a fact, regardless of the strength of the case for 

airpower being employed as the “leading edge” in a particular 

conflict, that human beings can only live upon the land. Sir 

Julian Corbett’s much quoted acknowledgment of this only 

seemingly banal point in his 1911 classic, Some Principles of 

Maritime Strategy, greatly strengthened the confidence with 

which he has been read by non-sea-minded people.54 So it 

should be also on the subject of airpower. No matter how decisive airpower may be in warfare, the purpose of the action can 

only be to influence political behavior on the land. There can be 

no other purpose. Air warfare, in common with warfare at sea, 

in and from space, and through cyberspace, ultimately is meaningless on its own terms. This is an objective fact, inherent in 

the nature, not the ever changing character, of war.

Sixth, the only key able to unlock the complete leverage that US 

airpower can deliver in future warfare is strategy. Moreover, that 

strategy must be developed and maintained hierarchically, notwithstanding the multiple dialogs necessary among the levels. 

Those levels, in descending order, are national security strategy 

or grand strategy, national military strategy, and strategy for 

individual conflicts. The character of each conflict and the 

identity, especially the scope, of US policy goals must shape 

choices in strategy. They will not determine it fully because 

strategy is a pragmatic undertaking that will not yield useful 

advantage if it seeks to direct behavior to perform impractical 

missions. These words by British strategist Lawrence Freedman 

can scarcely be bettered for their identification of the heart of the 

matter. “Strategy constitutes the creative element in any exercise of power. It involves the search for the optimum relationship 
35

between political ends and the means available for obtaining 

them.”55

Alternatively, one could turn to the perennially relevant 

pages of Clausewitz’s On War. But, the United States continues 

to be hobbled in the leverage it can obtain from its armed forces 

in peace and war by its seemingly systemic, perhaps cultural, 

aversion to the sophisticated practice of strategy. And to overcome that aversion, Americans require the services of a holistic 

theory of war and warfare. Only then will its potential airpower 

advantage be fully liberated to fly and hit the target.

Notes

1. I have discussed America’s problem with strategy in many places, most 

recently in Irregular Enemies and the Essence of Strategy: Can the American 

Way of War Adapt? (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War 

College, March 2006), pp. 31-2; and Fighting Talk: Forty Maxims on War, Peace, 

and Strategy (Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2007). For the 

purposes of this paper, I choose to define airpower in the minimalist tradition 

as anything that flies. In this instance, a controversy over definition, far from 

being simply an exercise in scholasticism, has profound implications for grand 

and military strategy, as well as for the roles and missions of the services.

2. See Edward N. Luttwak, Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace, revised ed. 

(Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001), p.188.

3. For two first-rate studies that argue the case for a radical improvement 

in airpower’s competitive position vis-à-vis landpower in regular warfare, see 

Benjamin S. Lambeth, The Transformation of American Air Power (Ithaca, NY: 

Cornell University Press, 2000); and David E. Johnson, Learning Large Lessons: The Evolving Roles of Ground Power and Air Power in the Post-Cold War 

Era, MG–405–AF (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2006).

4. Outstanding treatments of the contrasting world views of the armed 

services include Carl H. Builder, The Masks of War: American Military Styles 

in Strategy and Analysis (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University 

Press, 1989); and J.C. Wylie, Military Strategy: A General Theory of Power 

Control (1967; Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1989), especially Ch. 5.

5. See B.H. Liddell Hart, Strategy: The Indirect Approach (1941; London: 

Faber and Faber, 1967), Ch. 22; and Luttwak, Strategy, Ch. 13.

6. The “tacticization of strategy” is discussed helpfully in Michael I. Handel, 

Masters of War: Classical Strategic Thought, 3rd ed. (London: Frank Cass, 2001), 

pp. 355-60. Handel believes that the advent of air war promoted such tacticization by creating “a situation in which targeting has de facto become a substitute 

for proper strategic planning.” p. 358. He claims, not unpersuasively, that “in the 

twentieth century, particularly after the Second World War, an additional cause 

[of tacticization] emerged in the form of military-technological developments (i.e., 
36

new military means) that instead of serving strategy in fact determined the logic 

underlying major strategic choices.” Ibid.

7. Michael Evans, The Continental School of Strategy: The Past, Present 

and Future of Land Power, Study Paper No. 305 (Duntroon, ACT, Australia: 

Land Warfare Studies Centre, 2004), p.84.

8. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, edited and translated by Michael Howard 

and Peter Paret (1832; Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), p.141.

9. Bernard Brodie, War and Politics (New York: Macmillan, 1973), p. 452.

10. Lambeth, Transformation of American Air Power is now showing its 

age, but it remains a work of lasting merit.

11. Thucydides, The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to 

“The Peloponnesian War,” edited by Robert B. Strassler (ca. 400 BC; New 

York: The Free Press, 1996), p.43.

12. Clausewitz, On War, p.75.

13. Wylie, Military Strategy, p.72 (emphasis in the original text).

14. Colin S. Gray, Modern Strategy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 

1999), pp. 17-23; and Strategy and History: Essays on Theory and Practice

(London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 1-13, 74-80.

15. See Eliot A. Cohen, Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and 

Leadership in War (New York: The Free Press, 2002). This is the latest, but 

certainly far from the last, commentary on civil-military relations in its relation to strategy.

16. David MacIsaac, “Voices from the Central Blue: The Air Power Theorists,” in Peter Paret, ed., Makers of Modern Strategy: from Machiavelli to the 

Nuclear Age (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), p. 624.

17. Ibid., p. 647.

18. I.B. Holley Jr., “Reflections on the Search for Airpower Theory”, in 

Phillip S. Meilinger, ed., The Paths of Heaven: The Evolution of Airpower Theory (Maxwell AFB, AL: Air University Press, 1997), pp. 598-9.

19. Wylie, Military Strategy, pp. 33, 36.

20. Frederick W. Kagan, Finding the Target: The Transformation of American Military Policy (New York: Encounter Books, 2006), pp. 125-6.

21. Johnson, Learning Large Lessons, is essential reading as a historical 

marker in the debate.

22. Lambeth, Transformation of American Air Power, Ch. 7. He continues his 

politically sensitive narrative and analysis in Mastering the Ultimate High Ground: 

Next Steps in the Military Uses of Space (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2003). 

23. Keith B. Payne, The Fallacies of Cold War Deterrence and a New Direction (Lexington, KY: The University of Kentucky Press, 2001), offers a devastating critique of orthodox deterrence theory and policy.

24. John G. Hines, Ellis M. Mishulovich, and John F. Shull, Soviet Intentions, 1965-1985, 2 vols. (McLean, VA: BDM Federal, 22 September 1995), 

is indispensable.

25. See the recent testimony by Keith B. Payne before the House Armed 

Services Committee on July 18, 2007. Payne was a principal author of the 

Bush Administration’s NPR.
37

26. For example, the contemporary health of theory for spacepower can be 

gauged by a perusal of these brave offerings: Jim Oberg, Space Power Theory

(Colorado Springs, CO: US Space Command, 2000); Everett C. Dolman, Astropolitik: Classical Geopolitics in the Space Age (London: Frank Cass, 2002); 

and John J. Klein, Space Warfare: Strategy, Principles and Policy (London: 

Routledge, 2006).

27. See Carl H. Builder, The Icarus Syndrome: The Role of Air Power Theory 

in the Evolution and Fate of the US Air Force (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction 

Publishers, 1993).

28. Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris quoted in Sir Charles Webster and 

Noble Frankland, The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany, 1939-1945, Vol. II 

(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1961), p.190. Harris urged this evidence bereft item of faith upon Winston Churchill on November 3, 1943.

29. I probably should plead guilty to some inadvertent promotion of the 

fallacy that wars are either regular or irregular in character. I tried to warn 

readers against such a view, but I doubt if my caveat had the potency, it certainly lacked the conceptual expediency, of the binary distinction. See Colin 

S. Gray, Another Bloody Century: Future Warfare (London: Phoenix, 2006), 

Chs. 5-6.

30. Ibid., Ch. 2. Historian Jeremy Black reminds us that “an understanding 

of war requires contextualization. Military history exists in a context of other 

histories.” Rethinking Military History (London: Routledge, 2004), p.243.

31. See Ian Gooderson, Air Power at the Battlefront: Allied Close Air Support in Europe, 1943-45 (London: Frank Cass, 1998); and Richard P. Hallion,

Strike from the Sky: The History of Battlefield Air Attack, 1911-1945 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989).

32. Benjamin S. Lambeth provides another of his excellent operational 

histories in Air Power Against Terror: America’s Conduct of Operation Enduring Freedom (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2005).

33. Larry M. Wortzel, China’s Nuclear Forces: Operations, Training, Doctrine, Command, Control, and Campaign Planning (Carlisle, PA: Strategic 

Studies Institute, US Army War College, May 2007), offers a most useful review of recent Chinese professional military literature.

34. Wylie, Military Strategy, p.70 (emphasis in the original text).

35. Ibid., p. 72.

36. Eliot A. Cohen, “The Mystique of US Air Power,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 

73, No. 1 (January-February 1994), pp. 109-24.

37. See Andrew J. Bacevich and Eliot A. Cohen, eds., War Over Kosovo: 

Politics and Strategy in a Global Age (New York: Columbia University Press, 

2001); and Benjamin S. Lambeth, NATO’s Air War for Kosovo: A Strategic and 

Operational Assessment (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2001).

38. Max Boot, “The New American Way of War,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 82, 

No. 4 (July/August 2003), pp. 41-58. A far less excited analysis was offered 

in Stephen Biddle, Afghanistan and the Future of Warfare: Implications for 

Army and Defense (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War 

College, November 2002).
38

39. Culture is a much contested concept among scholars, especially in regard to its significance for national security. Recent overall reviews of the debate include Lawrence Sondhaus, Strategic Culture and Ways of War (London: 

Routledge, 2006); and Colin S. Gray, “Out of the Wilderness: Prime Time for 

Strategic Culture,” Comparative Strategy, Vol. 26, No. 1 (January-February 

2007), pp. 1-20. See also John Glenn, Darryl Howlett, and Stuart Poore, eds., 

Neorealism Versus Strategic Culture (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2004); and Theo 

Farrell, The Norms of War: Cultural Beliefs and Modern Conflict (Boulder, CO: 

Lynne Rienner Publications, 2005). The market for cultural awareness exploded into life in the 2000s when the US armed forces realized that they were 

trying to influence people in Afghanistan and Iraq who they did not really begin 

to understand. When one is attempting to change minds, rather than blow 

them away, local beliefs and attitudes assume high strategic importance. Contemporary American doctrinal publications on COIN are almost over-full of 

insistence for a cultural perspective. There is some danger that, with all the 

naïve enthusiasm of the recently converted, the American defense establishment is in the process of settling—briefly—upon cultural expertise as the panacea solution to most of its problems in irregular warfare. See Robert H. Scales, 

Jr., “Culture-Centric Warfare,” Naval Institute Proceedings, Vol. 130, No. 10 

(October 2004), pp. 32-6. Less dramatic, but more persuasive, was Montgomery McFate, “The Military Utility of Understanding Adversary Culture,” Joint 

Force Quarterly, No. 38 (3rd quarter, 2005), pp. 42-8. The fact that Americans 

today are simply rediscovering two of the most ancient truths about warfare—

know the enemy and yourself—does not lessen its significance. Every generation, so it seems, needs to reread Sun-tzu, The Art of War, translated by Ralph 

Sawyer (ca. 400 BC; Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994), especially p. 179.

40. Clausewitz, On War, p.605.

41. This is the binding argument in Colin S. Gray, War, Peace, and International Relations: An Introduction to Strategic History (London: Routledge, 2007).

42. It is open season for geopolitical speculation on the future architecture of balance of power politics. Amidst a drove of interesting studies, well 

guesses, there is much to recommend C. Dale Walton, Geopolitics and the 

Great Powers in the Twenty-first Century: Multipolarity and the Revolution in 

Strategic Perspective (London: Routledge, 2007). With ideology retired for a 

while as a motive force from great-power competition, geopolitics returns to 

pole position.

43. Amitai Etzioni, From Empire to Community: A New Approach to International Relations (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). World peace 

through world community is an intellectually and culturally compelling idea. 

Alas, it is just too far from contemporary realization to be of much practical 

interest for policy. With some reluctance I have located some of the weaknesses in the communitarian approach in my “Sandcastle of Theory: A Critique of Amitai Etzioni’s Communitarianism,” American Behavioral Scientist, 

Vol. 48, No. 12 (August 2005), pp. 1607-25.

44. A former president of the British Association for the Advancement of 

Science advises that “forecasters have generally failed dismally to foresee 

drastic changes brought about by completely unpredictable discoveries.” 
39

Martin Rees, Our Final Century: Will Civilization Survive the Twenty-First Century? (London: Arrow Books, 2003), p.14.

45. The Shanghai Co-operation Organization, which has some potential 

to serve as a Sino-Russian-led Eurasian counterweight to NATO, held large 

multinational military maneuvers near Chelyabinsk in Russia in August 

2007. The armed forces of Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan participated, along with Russians and Chinese. This may not mean very much 

militarily, but it is unquestionably a sign of the times of which the United 

States has to take due note. Somewhat organized opposition to a US-led 

world order is beginning to make a showing. See “‘Rival to NATO’ begins first 

military exercise,” The Times (London), 6 August 2007, p.32.

46. See Phillip C. Saunders and Charles D. Lutes, “China’s ASAT Test: 

Motivations and Implications,” Joint Force Quarterly, No. 46 (3rd quarter, 

2007), pp. 39-45. For a usefully broader view, see Andrew Scobell and Larry M. 

Wortzel, eds., Shaping China’s Security Environment: The Role of the People’s 

Liberation Army (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College, October 2006). 

47. Mark Schneider, The Nuclear Forces and Doctrine of the Russian Federation (Fairfax, VA: The National Institute Press, for the US Nuclear Strategy 

Forum, 2006), is a reliable source.

48. Colin S. Gray, The Sheriff: America’s Defense of the New World Order

(Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 2004), presents the reasoning for this claim in some detail. I completed The Sheriff prior to the invasion of 

Iraq in 2003, but I have no wish to change my argument. World order requires 

a policing agent. The fact that the United States performed poorly in Iraq beyond the regime take-down phase does not invalidate the sense in the policy.

49. Barry R. Posen, “Command of the Commons: The Military Foundation of 

US Hegemony,” International Security, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Summer 2003), pp. 5-46.

50. I borrow the phrase from Adolf Hitler. In his New Year’s message on 1

January 1943 to the Sixth Army, surrounded at Stalingrad, he offered his 

doomed soldiers the comforting promise that “you can rely on me with rocklike confidence.” The moral of this illustration is to the effect that one should 

always beware of policy makers who speak with a confidence that history 

does not allow.

51. Clausewitz, On War, pp. 566-73.

52. Lambeth, Transformation of American Air Power.

53. Harry R. Yarger, Strategic Theory for the 21st Century: The Little Book 

on Big Strategy (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College, February 2006), is a fine achievement. I recommend it strongly, even for 

those who believe themselves to be strategically expert.

54. Julian S. Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy (1911; Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1988), p.16.

55. Lawrence Freedman, “Strategic Coercion,” in Freedman, ed., Strategic 

Coercion: Concepts and Cases (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p.14.

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Title of Paper: The Airpower Advantage in Future Warfare: The 

Need for Strategy

Author: Dr. Colin S. Gray, Professor of International Politics and 

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AFDDEC/AR

Director, Airpower Research Institute

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 Commander, Air University

 Lt Gen Stephen R. Lorenz

 Commander, Air Force Doctrine 

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 Maj Gen Allen G. Peck

Director, Airpower Research Institute

Col Michael D. Davis