as seen by William Astore who spent his career as a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force and now spends his time teaching "military science". He makes his case that there are no enemy air forces or significant air defenses, we are the air power today. His basic tenets:
1. Just because U.S. warplanes and drones can strike almost anywhere on the globe with relative impunity doesn’t mean that they should.
2. Bombing alone will never be the key to victory.
3. No matter how much it’s advertised as “precise,” “discriminate,” and “measured,” bombing (or using missiles like the Tomahawk) rarely is.
4. Using air power to send political messages about resolve or seriousness rarely works.
5. Air power is enormously expensive.
6. Aerial surveillance (as with drones), while useful, can also be misleading.
7. Air power is inherently offensive.
8. Despite the fantasies of those sending out the planes, air power often lengthens wars rather than shortening them.
9. Air power, even of the shock-and-awe variety, loses its impact over time.
10. Pounding peasants from two miles up is not exactly an ideal way to occupy the moral high ground in war.
His summary:
If I had to reduce these tenets to a single maxim, it would be this: all the happy talk about the techno-wonders of modern air power obscures its darker facets, especially its ability to lock America into what are effectively one-way wars with dead-end results.
No comments:
Post a Comment