Published Aerospace Power Journal - Winter 2000
LT COL ERIC A. ASH, EDITOR
What does “command of the air” mean for the twenty-first-century Air Force? Perhaps it is what Giulio Douhet, Frederick Sykes, Billy Mitchell, and others first envisioned, combined with Carl von Clausewitz’s total-war concept. The result might be something like total “aerospace omnipotence.” That concept—aerospace power eclipsing the fog and friction of war—may be unobtainable, but it is still an important one to consider in terms of what it takes to make aerospace power work today and in the future. For example, command of the air, or air superiority, really also implies things like leadership superiority, technological superiority, and organizational superiority. As the world has become increasingly connected and interdependent, so too has aerospace become a very complex web. Early airpower theorists conceived of command of the air operationally, strategically, and geographically. Today, however, maintaining the ability to exploit the aerospace environment while denying the same to the enemy involves other increasingly complex domains. As our capability in aerospace power grows, the challenge is to exploit that to the fullest extent possible without building an aerospace Maginot Line that fails to meet expectations.
What about the concept of leadership superiority? It is an interesting play on words that a primary leadership challenge of the twenty-first-century Air Force is the challenge to produce leaders—that is, leaders with the mental tools gained through the right educational and career experiences. This is the challenge in front of the USAF chief of staff’s Developing Aerospace Leaders initiative. The piece by Dr. Smith represents some of the thinking going on to meet that leadership challenge.
In addition, our force has to be more air superior than many of us even want to consider—i.e., the air where bioweapons can be dispersed. It adds an interesting twist to “all-aspect” and “all-weather.” There are sound arguments for technologically superior F-22 and Joint Strike Fighters to win the fight in and from the air. But the best fighter conceivable cannot dogfight bugs a fraction of the size of the period ending this sentence. And the circular error probable (CEP) required for micro air-to-ground attacks is inconceivable. The cover of this APJ issue is very busy—reflecting how our aerospace business with expeditionary forces is becoming increasingly busy over concerns about anthrax and other burgeoning threats.
The new century does not pose all that many new threats, just different and proliferating variations on old themes. In reaction, we have many leading-edge counterproliferation efforts (we need to invent the word conliferation). These efforts usually start with awareness. Both nuclear and nonnuclear weapons of mass destruction, like anthrax, make a head- in-the-sand approach stupid. The anthrax article by Drs. Johnson-Winegar and Davis paints an alarming picture of a very real air-superiority challenge that requires technological superiority in the form of various protective devices as well as products and practices from medical technology.
In a way, immunization against biological threats is similar to the organizational immunization behind the Expeditionary Air Force (EAF) concept. Injecting this new expeditionary management tool into our scheduling process helps ward off inefficient mobilizations, unfair commitments, and infectious sinking morale. The process is evolving and improving as different ideas like those presented in General Cook’s EAF piece are considered and implemented. How we are organized determines how we fight, and again, the link to the air is very real with a clean argument that organizational superiority is key to air superiority.
Bottom line: As we enter the twenty-first century, there is basically another element of difficulty added to the command-of-the-air equation, something we might call aerospace omnipotence. To go from air superiority to air supremacy to aerospace omnipotence—the ability to win the entire fight, achieving the desired effects and end states from aerospace—the force has to be superior not just in the air, but in the many realms interconnected with aerospace.
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.
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