Airpower for Strategic Effect
Abstract
Airpower for Strategic Effect is intended to contribute to the understanding of airpower - what it is, what it does, why it does it, and what the consequences are. This is the plot: airpower generates strategic effect. Airpower's product is strategic effect on the course of strategic history. Everything about military airpower is instrumental to the purpose of securing strategic effect. To adapt a familiar saying for my particular purpose, "they cannot airpower know, who only know airpower." I have attempted to explain airpower strategically, partly because that was my mission, but also because I am a strategic theorist and defense analyst and I cannot approach airpower in any other way. There is a whole library of books about airpower, some of them of high merit and with deservedly substantial reputations. When I began my research on this subject, my main anxiety was that I might find that everything worth saying had been said already. On reflection, I suspect that just about everything that needs saying has been said already, many times over. However, the strategic story of airpower and some useful distillation of that narrative in an adequate formulation of airpower theory, I found to be lacking. So, with an all too genuine humility and respect for past authors of airpower history and theory, I proceeded to attempt to provide what I believe is needed - a well enough evidenced theory of airpower.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Feb 01, 2012
- Accession Number
- AD1122882
Entities
People
- Colin S. Gray
Organizations
- Air University Press