Aerospace power : the case for indivisible application

Book excerpt: Air power doctrine is comprised of both a formal literature such as the Army's Field Manual lO0-2O, Command and Employment of Air Power (published during World War II), or today's Air Force Manual 1-1, Basic Aerospace Doctrine of the United States Air Force, and an informal and uncodified set of doctrinal perceptions that, although they are not in the official literature, affect the way our military forces do business. This second category, the unofficial doctrine, represents a sort of corporate consensus of "how we really do business" and is generally based on a combination of "real world" observations and political necessity. This study addressed just such an unofficial doctrine. A persistent legacy of the World War II era of strategic bombardment and the postwar requirement for nuclear deterrence is the association of long-range combat aircraft (bombers) with the strategic nuclear mission and, conversely, the assumption that the far more likely nonnuclear conflicts will be handled by the "tactical" elements of our aerospace forces, our fighters. This study offers a serious alternative to this "aerospace folklore." The proposals put forth here are based on the indivisible air power concept which suggests that strategic and tactical classifications are purely transitory and depend on how a weapon is used, not on its size, speed, range, payload, employment medium (space or air), or service or command affiliation. The doctrinal framework presented in this study, if applied to all our aerospace systems, should result in a far more flexible aerospace force structure, one that gets the most from our increasingly expensive and limited assets. More important, it should improve our ability to rapidly respond to global crisis and conflict and to apply the appropriate level of force at the right place and the right time.