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Published: 1 December 2008
Air & Space
Power Journal - Winter 2008
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Dr. Stephen E. Wright, Colonel, USAF, Retired*
THE FOLLOWING DISCUSSION resulted from a review of a proposed revision to Air Force Doctrine Document (AFDD) 1, Air Force Basic Doctrine, and the author’s belief that it fails to adequately describe the airpower of the United States and of the US Air Force.1Consequently, in this article I take the original AFDD 1 framework and expand it to offer a more comprehensive picture of US airpower and the contributions of the Air Force. My discussion begins with an expansive perspective of US airpower and concludes with elements that combine to explain the “air-mindedness” unique to Air Force Airmen.
To understand Air Force airpower, one must first understand that the United States is an airpower nation. It is a global leader in airpower technology, economically dependent on access to the global domains of airpower (air, space, and cyberspace), and a provider of access to these domains. Its people love the technology of airpower, and they make up a nation of air, space, and cyberspace innovation. US airpower, therefore, is a combination of the nation’s air, space, and cyberspace research and development, production capacities (both private and government), commercial capabilities (in and across the three domains), military capabilities resident in its military services, and, most importantly, people who excel in every aspect of airpower activity.2 For the purpose of this discussion, the term airpower encompasses all three domains: air, space, and cyberspace.3
The Air Force conducts air, space, and cyberspace operations around the globe as the leading “full-service” military provider and protector of the nation’s airpower.4 The Air Force provides options to defend the nation and its vital interests by means of efforts in and through the air, space, and cyberspace domains, protecting access to those domains for the nation, as well as for allies and partners. In conjunction with sister services and other instruments/institutions of national power, the Air Force defends the nation and protects access to these global domains as a global good in peacetime and as a matter of necessity during conflict. When and where required, the Air Force uses its access capabilities to obtain control of a domain and then employs its capacities for persistence to sustain that access and control. The ability to protect worldwide access and to project control of air, space, and cyberspace constitutes the Air Force’s unique contribution to national defense.
The Air Force’s role in US airpower encompasses the synergistic application of air, space, and cyberspace capabilities to project strategic military power throughout the globe. Airmen exploit speed, range, payload, and precision to create effects in the global domains of air, space, and cyberspace, as well as in the maritime and land domains. Unencumbered by the constraints of surface domains, airpower provides the nation and joint team unequalled flexibility in response options to meet mission requirements during either peacetime or contingencies. In defense or on offense, only Air Force airpower can so quickly and precisely provide so many effects anywhere on the planet, in air, space, and/or cyberspace.
Three strategic pillars—global reach, global power, and global vigilance—direct Air Force strategy in the development of ways and means to offer flexible options to the president, secretary of defense, and combatant commanders; those pillars function across the spectrum of operations and through every phase of joint and coalition actions. Serving as the conceptual framework for the Air Force, they are therefore neither restricted nor tied to an organizational command structure or platform; they guide the way Airmen think about the application of airpower.5
Global reach, which directs the Air Force’s determination to offer options and effects anywhere, anytime, spans all three global domains and includes both kinetic and nonkinetic capabilities. The service’s reach includes airlift that supports humanitarian-relief operations such as tsunami relief in Indonesia and the transport of soldiers to limit convoy exposure to improvised explosive devices, as well as air-refueling capabilities that support airlift and strike operations around the globe. Reaching out and kinetically producing effects by means of operational concepts such as global strike reflects another aspect of global reach. Finally, the reach provided by Air Force capabilities in the cyberspace domain permits options and effects restricted only by the limits of imagination and technology. Thus, global reach, which transcends all other Air Force capabilities, lies at the core of its two companion pillars.
Global power focuses on providing effects enabled by global reach, those of the kinetic variety often the most visible ones. For example, the termination of news broadcasts from Baghdad during the first night of Operation Desert Storm in 1991 dramatically demonstrated the might of US military airpower. The power of the Air Force’s kinetic capabilities greatly contributed to joint and coalition triumphs in Operations Deliberate Force, Allied Force, Enduring Freedom, and Iraqi Freedom, making the war-fighting portions of these missions some of the most successful in US history. In addition, every airlift mission that provides humanitarian aid throughout the world also delivers the power of US values. A C-130 with its American flag tail flash represents a visible statement of US values and commitment to the global community. Similarly, the ideas, values, and information transmitted through cyberspace give US policy makers powerful options. Indeed, defending and exploiting ever-expanding transmission capabilities constitute one of the Air Force’s (and the entire joint team’s) key challenges in the future.
Global vigilance underpins Air Force capabilities across the range of military operations. In each of the global domains, the Air Force uses its surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities to develop actionable intelligence to exploit its capacities for reach and power. By integrating its capabilities with the other services, allies, partners, and national agencies, the Air Force can supply policy makers with decision-quality information. For the future, the service will work to improve its coverage (in terms of both area and persistence) and data-fusion ability to offer even greater capability to the combined team. In the future, the Air Force plans for every system to serve as an intelligence-collection gatherer, receiver, or transmitter that can seamlessly plug into the global grid to share data with national systems and those of America’s allies and partners.
A foundation based on global partnership supports the three strategy pillars. Without question, global partnerships have increasingly become the key to mission success and will remain so in the future.6 In this regard, the Air Force will chart a path beyond its current efforts in foreign internal defense (FID) and foreign military sales. A clear requirement exists to build partnership capacities, beginning with FID missions to lay the foundation for partners to conduct their own internal-defense initiatives. Such engagement will enable the Air Force to operate more effectively with counterparts around the world, extending global reach and leveraging the talents and capabilities of its allies and partners. The service will do more than sell systems—it will look for opportunities to share training, education, and personnel to ensure that its cultural knowledge matches the operational acumen of those allies and partners.
The Air Force executes its strategy within three operational, or war-fighting, global domains (air, space, and cyberspace), seeking to control access to and use of these domains, as directed by national leadership. The Air Force is prepared to conduct operations in one or all of these global domains to support national defense and ensure their use to secure national interests and to support allies and partners. Although attaining supremacy in any one of these operational domains may not always be possible, the Air Force will provide the joint and/or coalition team with access to and control of a domain to conduct operations, offensively or defensively, in support of mission objectives. Because it supplies a tremendous array of flexible options to policy makers, Air Force airpower can be used in supported or supporting command relationships to carry out the mission. The service rapidly provides effects within and across these global domains, using its asymmetric advantages of range, payload, and precision to meet the needs of national leadership. By working to improve its capabilities, the Air Force will offer policy makers and the joint team new options and greater persistence to access and control operations in these global domains.
Over 100 years have passed since the Wright brothers’ first powered flight; in that time, civil and government efforts have developed and produced technologies that make the United States an airpower nation, allowing today’s Airmen to operate with great effect in their global domains. The joint team depends upon US airpower, as evidenced by the fact that each service has significant portions of its capabilities operating in each of these domains. More importantly, the American people rely upon US airpower as an engine and enabler of daily life, economically and personally. Thus, Air Force airpower must ensure access to these global domains.
The nature of airpower emerged from its technological foundation and the unique advantages found in its three global domains. First and foremost, airpower is inherently technological. The air or space domains remain unusable without technology; indeed, technological innovation created the cyberspace domain in its entirety. The maritime domain is similar in this regard because technology allows mankind to exploit this domain, both in commerce and war. Although our ancestors could hurl rocks, arrows, and other projectiles through the air, they could not access the domains without the requisite technology. As technology advanced, however, the operational nature of the air, space, and cyberspace domains took shape and matured in its usefulness and effect on national objectives and military actions.
The global nature of the three domains constitutes a unique aspect of airpower. The air and space domains have no boundaries other than Earth’s surface itself. Although that surface frames the air domain on one side, air covers the entirety of the planet and seamlessly merges with the space domain on the other side. Today, the operational space domain takes airpower to geosynchronous orbit for the most part and occasionally to outer space. The future may see US airpower reaching further out into the space domain. A unique global province, cyberspace can occur anywhere in any of the other operational domains and thus generates great concern among all war fighters. The domain is characterized by the use of electronics and the electromagnetic spectrum to store, modify, and exchange data via networked systems and associated physical infrastructures.7 Additionally, cyberspace is unique in that partners and adversaries alike can create new cyberspace, which remains unknown until it plugs into the existing, known cyberspace.
Elevation, the vertical dimension, represents perhaps the most obvious aspect of the nature of air and space power. Technological innovations have provided that power with increasingly capable tools for use in the high ground of these two domains. In essence, this elevation dimension becomes a vertical flank for all Air Force operations, whether offensive or defensive—supported or supporting. For example, imagery from air or space assets can generate information for assessment of agricultural crops, worldwide weather analysis, or traffic reports. Similarly, such imagery offers insights into an adversary’s intentions, enabling US forces to act to prevent conflict or to fight more effectively if crisis prevention or deterrence options fail.
The physical nature of these domains, coupled with technology, allows for dramatic increases in the speed and range of transmitting effects in and through them. In the air domain, this factor allows for speeds in the hundreds of miles per hour; in space, speeds in the thousands of miles per hour; and in cyberspace, transmission at light speed. Each year, airpower is the primary means of transporting millions of people over vast distances and of moving high-value assets from one location to another. No other country can match US space capabilities, and the Air Force possesses the means to track items in space as a service to the global community. In cyberspace, billions of dollars worth of communication traffic and electronic transactions occur at light speed from users around the globe on the Internet, developed by the United States. This level of speed and range of transmission of people, things, and information is possible only within these domains.
The technology inherent to airpower has produced several key, advantageous characteristics in addition to speed and range—precision, for one, which manifests itself not only in terms of weaponry but also in global positioning; navigation; and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR). These advantages allow the Air Force to employ fewer assets to produce desired effects. In this way, precision has so altered the war-fighting idea of mass that force commanders and policy makers can think in terms of massing effects versus massing forces.
Another such characteristic, theaterwide persistence, derives from Air Force airpower’s ability to provide policy makers and commanders with forces capable of long loiter or rapid reconstitution times. Furthermore, in many cases, Air Force space power can produce near-continuous dwell time for ISR and communications services. The advent of unmanned aerial vehicles enables the service to increase dwell time significantly, thereby enabling ISR support or strike missions. Like precision, increased persistence widens the Air Force’s range of flexible options available to the joint team and national political leaders. The image of our service delivering humanitarian aid persists wherever Airmen reach out to refugees or displaced, hungry, and suffering peoples. Each year, Air Force cyber forces engage in the fight to defend cyberspace against hundreds of thousands of attacks. Truly these forces give new meaning to the idea of continuous, persistent operations.
Air Force airpower possesses a tremendous versatility through its adaptation of technology. Increasingly, Air Force capabilities have shown that they can multitask during a given mission—or simply reconfigure to new requirements with little degradation in operations tempo. For example, a platform configured for deep strike on one sortie can be reconfigured for close air support on its next flight. In the future, most platforms in each global domain will have not only a primary function but also the task of data gathering to support ISR activities. Multirole and multitask capabilities give rise to versatile forces that contribute to the flexible options derived from Air Force airpower—a potent combination of efficiency and effectiveness at the disposal of policy makers and combatant commanders.
The nature of airpower also imposes key limitations upon our use of its domains. The technologies that allow such use require support in order to ensure continuous and persistent operation. That is, we must have bases capable of regenerating people and equipment. The Air Force does possess a force-multiplying factor with its air-refueling capabilities, enabling it to extend airpower across its global domain. However, once on the ground, air assets themselves become more vulnerable to attack. Despite these limitations, the high entry barrier of cost means that only a peer competitor with great economic wealth could directly challenge the Air Force in the air domain.
Space power requires specialized launch and recovery sites and highly specialized equipment to allow for operations. As with airpower, space capabilities need fuel and maintenance or they cease to function. In addition, because of the tremendous costs associated with space operations, few countries will have the means to access this domain directly; however, many peoples on Earth can make use of numerous applications available from space (e.g., information from the global positioning system). Air Force space power must provide capabilities to ensure access to the space domain and, if necessary, to deny access to a potential adversary. Today, this requirement drives the militarization of space; tomorrow, it may necessitate its weaponization. That decision, of course, remains one for US policy makers.
In order to function in a meaningful manner, cyberspace must have its physical infrastructure—analogous to bases for aircraft, a tether from which operations occur. Fueled by electricity, it too must either have a continuous fuel source or deal with the limitations of battery capacity and the need to recharge. Creating and functioning in cyberspace, however, is inexpensive. Many nations can train and employ a few cyberspace agents yet produce significant effects (from the tactical to the strategic level), for good or ill, in the cyberspace domain. These characteristics combine to make cyberspace one of the most demanding domains in which to operate—a tremendous challenge to the joint team and the nation. Further, because so much information of such great value travels through this domain, the Air Force and the other services must assure access to and defense of it.
Airpower in all its forms remains inherently limited by its inability to physically seize and occupy territory.8 We can apply varying levels of control in each domain, however. For example, in the interwar years, the British achieved a level of air control over Middle Eastern tribesmen by using airpower to restrict and/or direct ground movement. This modified “air occupation,” however, was limited in both temporal and geographic scope. If policy makers and military leadership decide to impose physical occupation, then a combination of airpower and ground power must complete the mission.
Because airpower possesses the unique nature described above, Airmen have developed a distinct perspective that guides how they think about it in their operational war-fighting domains of air, space, and cyberspace. Gen Hap Arnold referred to this “Airman’s perspective” as air-mindedness.9 First and foremost, Airmen view airpower from a global perspective. Since airpower operates in and across global domains, Airmen begin with this perspective and often work across as well as within theater boundaries. Having limited assets, the Air Force must view its commitments through a worldwide lens. In a given theater, Airmen must focus across all boundaries—geographic or surface-based operational lines—to support theaterwide requirements. Although a given effect might be local, the perspective is always theater-to-global. This view results in a strategic perspective that Airmen carry into every operation.
Scarcity also factors into the Airman’s perspective. Because airpower capabilities are costly, we procure them in limited numbers. This limitation makes most air, space, and cyberspace forces high-demand, low-density national assets. As such, military airpower is usually matched to a coalition/joint force commander’s (JFC) objectives and desired effects having the highest value. During conflict, the Air Force makes control in each domain its priority effect. In the air domain, control may be expressed in either local or theaterwide terms; in space, usually in either theater or global terms. In the latter domain, control capabilities may seek to ensure that friendly forces have access to space assets, while denying access and/or services to an adversary. Similar to control in space, that in cyberspace will mature to encompass a theater-to-global perspective. What might appear as a local denial-of-service attack could progress to a theaterwide shutdown if cyberspace power fails to defend the entire team. If surface forces must engage an adversary, then the priority effect for Air Force airpower could become support of ground and maritime operations. The broad range of effects that high-demand, low-density Air Force airpower brings to the joint team typically results in our thinking of military airpower as a strategic asset that meets the JFC’s priority mission requirements by means of its employment across all levels of conflict and throughout the spectrum of operations.
The phrase “speed, range, and payload” captures another important aspect of the Airman’s perspective. Not only can airpower operate across domains but also it can do so rapidly to deliver payload (effects) at any point in the global domains and upon Earth’s surface. Airmen believe they serve as a global maneuver force, unrestrained by geographical boundaries, that provides policy makers flexible options which allow the United States to take political and/or military initiative. Whether tasked to deliver relief aid in the Berlin airlift or to tsunami refugees in Indonesia, or to strike at the heart of an adversary’s command and control (C2) system by using either kinetic airpower or nonkinetic cyber power, the Air Force can quickly and effectively deliver tactical-to-strategic effects anywhere on the planet. Today, the Air Force delivers effects with amazing accuracy, day or night, in all kinds of weather. Many Airmen say that “flexibility is the key to airpower,” but a more accurate statement is that “airpower is the key to flexibility” for the joint team and national policy makers.
Airmen believe that they need domain expertise to execute military airpower to its best advantage in support of taskings from national and combatant commanders. This belief has led Airmen to argue for the selection of commanders with air and space expertise to fill positions such as the coalition or joint force air component commander (C/JFACC). According to the Air Force, any airpower expert, regardless of service component, could serve as a C/JFACC. That said, our service provides the JFC with the most robust and flexible C2 to develop strategy, as well as plan, execute, and assess air, space, and cyberspace effects. The design of the centralized control and decentralized execution found in its operations-center capabilities ensures unity of effort and command to support national and JFC objectives. In the future, we may need a coalition and/or joint component commander to guarantee that the JFC’s team can protect its own use of the cyberspace domain and exploit or deny its use by an adversary.
In response to the demands of irregular warfare, the Air Force is examining its capabilities to distribute tactical-planning functions to tactical echelons of operation. To offer ground forces increasingly responsive air, space, and cyberspace power in the dynamic operational environment of irregular warfare, the Air Force must develop new ways to achieve effects without sacrificing unity of effort and command for the JFC. Increasingly, adversaries opt to challenge the United States with asymmetric means. Rather than massing their forces to fight US forces head-on, they use unconventional and irregular means to offset the tremendous capabilities of the joint team, especially those of the Air Force. Our service must become equally adept at centralized and distributed control (primarily in planning), along with decentralized execution.10
Finally, Airmen traditionally think of airpower and the application of force from a functional rather than geographical perspective. They do not divide the battlefield into operating areas as do surface forces. Typically, Airmen classify targets and their missions in terms of the effect their actions would have on the adversary, not in terms of the physical location of the targets or mission activities and/or execution platforms. This approach normally leads to more inclusive and comprehensive operations that favor strategic and operational perspectives over tactical ones. We can summarize air-mindedness as follows:
Control of the Vertical and Cyber Dimension
Is Generally a Necessary Precondition for
Control of the Surface
The first mission of the Air Force involves accessing and controlling air, space, and cyberspace for the joint team. Those tasks may require the defeat or neutralization of enemy air forces so that friendly operations on land, at sea, in the air, and in space can proceed unhindered; at the same time, the Air Force must protect US military forces and critical vulnerabilities from attack.
Airpower Is Usually the First Force That Can
Hold an Enemy at Risk, from the Tactical to
the Strategic Levels
War and peace are decided, organized, planned, supplied, and commanded, beginning at the strategic level of war. Airpower can hold an enemy’s centers of gravity and critical vulnerabilities directly at risk, immediately and continuously. It can bring capabilities to bear on that enemy’s political, informational, military, economic, and social structures simultaneously or separately. Air Force airpower also has great capability for nonlethal strategic influence, as in humanitarian-relief and security-cooperation activities.
Air Force Airpower Gives the Joint Team the
Means to Exploit, Rapidly and Simultaneously,
the Principles of Mass and Maneuver
Because the vertical environment has no natural lateral boundaries to prevent air, space, and cyberspace systems from quickly concentrating their power at any point, Air Force airpower is often the first force to arrive in-theater and begin operations. The speed with which the Air Force can maneuver and concentrate effects allows it to dominate the fourth dimension—time. This ability to produce rapid effects gives policy makers and commanders a wide array of flexible options to deter potential adversaries, deny and/or defeat enemies, or provide a variety of alternatives for security cooperation and peace support.
Air Force Airpower Can Be Employed Jointly or
Independently to Meet Mission Requirements
The tremendous C2 capabilities of the Air Force enable it to employ in either small or large units to meet mission tasking. Whether the task entails sending a flight of stealth bombers to deliver a show-of-force strike, deploying expeditionary wings to fight a major conflict, providing persistent ISR, or supporting a humanitarian crisis, the Air Force has in place, at all times, the C2 necessary to ensure unity of effort, effect, and command in and across its global domains.
Airpower Is Inherently Technological, and
Advancements in Speed, Range, Payload,
Precision, and Persistence Have Resulted
in an Air Force Capable of Providing a Vast
Array of Flexible Options to Civilian and
Military National Leaders
Airpower’s versatility allows rapid, simultaneous employment against strategic, operational, and tactical objectives. That versatility derives not only from the characteristics of air forces themselves but also from the manner in which they are organized and controlled.
Air Force Airpower Results from the Effective
Integration of Platforms, People, Weapons, Bases,
Logistics, and Supporting Infrastructure
No one aspect of air, space, and cyberspace capabilities should be treated in isolation since each element is essential and interdependent. Ultimately, the Air Force depends upon the performance of the people who operate, command, and sustain air, space, and cyberspace forces. Furthermore, our service’s capabilities can produce strategic effects even when conducting tactical missions. Therefore, these unique elements require an Airman’s expertise to command them at the component level of operations.
Supporting Bases with Their People, Systems, and
Facilities Is Essential to Launch, Recovery, and
Sustainment of Air Force Forces
The Air Force’s ability to move anywhere in the world quickly and then rapidly begin operations has remained one of its most important aspects. However, we must balance the need for mobility against the need to operate at the deployment site. The availability and operability of suitable bases can become the dominant factor in employment planning and execution.
Air Force Airpower Can Respond Rapidly, Span
the Globe, and Precisely Deliver Effects (Kinetic or
Nonkinetic; Lethal or Nonlethal; Security-Related or
Humanitarian in Purpose) to Defend the United
States and Its Vital Interests and Assure Access to the
Global Domains of Air, Space, and Cyberspace
The Air Force engages in these activities constantly across the spectrum of operations. As a first-in, last-out expeditionary force, it delivers effects anytime, anywhere.
Ideally, an Airpower Expert Will Command
and Control Military Airpower
Component commanders must have expertise over the domains in which they operate. The global domains of air, space, and cyberspace are not unique in this regard. Today, the centralized control of military airpower resident in the C/JFACC ensures application of the high-value, low-density capabilities to meet the JFC’s priorities, thus avoiding the “penny packet” use of yesteryear.
The United States is a nation with incredible airpower and an air force to match. Its people have a pioneering drive, as reflected in the nation’s development of commercial and military airpower capabilities, and a determination to excel in both arenas. The Air Force operates in the global domains of air, space, and cyberspace, defending the nation and ensuring both access and control as required by policy makers. Although this article has focused on what the Air Force brings to US airpower, each member of the joint team contributes to the nation’s airpower capabilities, creating the world’s preeminent airpower force.
Maxwell AFB, Alabama
*The author is a faculty member at the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, Maxwell AFB, Alabama.
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Notes
1. An offer to rewrite the "Airpower" chapter in AFDD 1 prompted me to write this article. I present this conceptualization of airpower to replace what I perceive as an anemic "lowest common denominator of agreement" text. Though not given to hyperbole, I do believe that the Air Force's seminal doctrinal document needs a bolder proclamation of airpower.
2. A. T. Mahan eloquently made a similar argument in The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783 (New York: Dover Publications, 1987). See chap. 1, "Discussion of the Elements of Sea Power."
3. Within the Air Force, one finds much angst over using a single term, especially airpower, as a sole descriptor. That said, the roots of modern air, space, and cyberspace power draw from aviation in peace and war, scientific discovery, and the barnstormers of a past era. The use of airpower as the overarching term only recognizes the genesis of flight, not an end state or terminus of activity and achievement. This broader terminology applies to both US and Air Force airpower. When the article refers to capability in a given domain, it uses the terms airpower, space power, and cyberspace power, as applicable.
4. In 2005 Michael W. Wynne, secretary of the Air Force, and Gen T. Michael Moseley, chief of staff, released the Air Force's new mission statement, which expanded Air Force operational domains from air and space to include cyberspace. See MSgt Mitch Gettle, "Air Force Releases New Mission Statement," Air Force Link, 8 December 2005, http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?storyID=123013440.
5. In recent years, the Air Force has allowed specific major commands and/or platforms to characterize its strategic pillars. The discussion here returns those pillars to the strategic level-one that transcends organizational structure or weapon systems and platforms.
6. Some strategists argue that global partnership is a subset of global reach. This article suggests that global partnership stands alone for two key reasons. First, it cuts across each of the three strategy pillars, affecting what the Air Force can accomplish as it projects power and reach. Second, the US need for partnership across all of the Department of Defense will raise this element of national security operations to ever-higher levels of importance. Simply stated, its importance dictates that we give it a place at the strategic table.
7. This definition of cyberspace, developed by the USAF Cyberspace Task Force, remains one of the best characterizations of this domain. See briefing, Dr. Lani Kass to the Air Force Association, subject: "A Warfighting Domain," 26 September 2006, http://www.au.af.mil/info-ops/usaf/cyberspace_taskforce_sep06.pdf.
8. However, the imaginative cyber warrior could make a case for capabilities that might allow one to occupy cyberspace, albeit with some temporal limitations.
9. See AFDD 2, Operations and Organization, 3 April 2007, 2, http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/service_pubs/afdd2.pdf.
10. By "distributed control," I mean a construct that builds upon the responsibilities of the air component coordination element in today's fight. In the future, the Air Force may find that it needs to distribute some of its C2 elements-strategy and planning come first to mind. Tomorrow's fight may require strategy and planning efforts at much lower levels of C2 than those we see today in Central Command-specifically, in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Air Force needs to prepare today for a more distributed fight tomorrow.
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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