Aerospace Power in Cities Joint Urban Operations for the 21st Century
Abstract
As the U.S. Military continues to dominate the air land and sea adversaries will attempt to exploit perceived vulnerabilities. The new American way of war attempts to defeat the enemy without necessarily destroying his infrastructure or killing or injuring his non-combatants. Realizing this future enemies of the U.S. and alliedicoalition forces will try to lure us into combat in urban areas where the complexities of applying decisive force are more pronounced and the ability to use overwhelming force is constrained by the threat of collateral damage. As the world becomes more urbanized the likelihood of conducting humanitarian, peacekeeping and combat operations in cities will increase. While urban operations have traditionally been land centric the joint applications of aerospace power must be part of our grand military strategy. This strategic research paper explores the strategy for projecting aerospace power from all services over urban terrain while acknowledging the diplomatic informational economic and military considerations and constraints of future conflict. It will focus on the key elements of aerospace strategy in urban areas to include a concept that will encompass five major components. These components should be regarded as interdependent continuous and overlapping. They include evaluation and interpretation identification of centers of gravity a specific application of force a sustainment of the operation and finally termination and transition to post-conflict operations. This analysis also offers some recent and relevant case-studies to illustrate effective or ineffective uses of aerospace power in urban terrain thereby providing strategic leaders lessons that may be applied in the 21st Century.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Mar 19, 2004
- Accession Number
- ADA423846
Entities
People
- Michael Marra
Organizations
- United States Army War College