Airpower for Strategic Effect

Airpower for Strategic Effect provides both a critical analytical strategic history of airpower and a new general strategic theory of airpower. This wholly original work situates airpower history in modern strategic history broadly, and it rests airpower theory on the author's prior work on the general theory of strategy. Airpower re-evaluates the strategic value of airpower from the First World War to Iraq and Afghanistan in the 2000s. The author considers political, cultural, military-strategic, and technological contexts. Divided into three sections, the first part locates the current state of understanding and misunderstanding of airpower. It further explains both how strategic ideas relate to strategic practice and how the grand narrative of the airpower century needs to be reviewed in the context of the relations among the different geographies of war (land, sea, air, orbital space, and now cyberspace). The second section reconsiders the whole record of airpower strategic history. In the third part, the author rewrites the general strategic theory of airpower in the light of the evidential base yielded by the historical chapters, and concludes by relating the understanding in the theory to issues of enduring importance. Airpower challenges some persisting beliefs that are, and have always been, wrong or misleading. The text shows how airpower's advocates often inadvertently have harmed the case for their preferred military instrument. The author argues that when sensibly viewed, the history of airpower is one of strategic success. Airpower fails when it is misused, but then so does land power and sea power. This book is a major original effort to improve understanding of the strategic effect of airpower on the course of history.