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Published Airpower Journal - Fall 1991

LT GEN CHARLES G. BOYD, USAF
LT COL CHARLES M. WESTENHOFF, USAF

This article evolved from an oral presentation I made at an air power conference in March 1991 at Canberra, Australia. Much of the chore of putting it in publishable form fell to Colonel Westenhoff. He therefore deserves equal credit in the endeavor.

Having said that, I would hasten to add that the ideas contained here are my own and that I alone accept responsibility for them.

THE Air Force is nearing the end of an extensive effort to refine its basic doctrine. Consisting of two books, the new edition will even look different from all previous editions. One volume is a thin, bare-bones summation of AirForce thinking, while the other is acollection of essay that explain Air Force reasoning, based on the record of air power in war.¹

Although airmen have not been famous for reading history, they now have lessons from the past 80 years, and most of them have been paid for in blood. There is no way to calculate an adequate cover price for that kindof knowledge. I am confident that most Air Force professionals not only will read our new doctrine with care, but will devote themselves to making it better in the future. My purpose in this article is to suggest some directions that our thinking might take in the near future.

One of the institutional strengths that has best served the Air Force has been its unswerving interest in the foreseeable future. Given that background, the Air Force should consider the dynamic events of the present time as an undeserved and unasked-for gift, keeping in mind that unsolicited good fortune imposes a weighty responsibility.² Like it or not, the world is changing, the place of air power is changing, and it is air power's day in the heat of the spotlight.

Just when the threats we have understood for decades appear to have diminished, the international security structure has entered a less stable phase. This almost paradoxical situation constitutes a novel challenge for the United States. For those of us serving in the Air Force, the future demands a surer, more comprehensive, and more penetrating understanding of air power and its uses. In that regard, let me make clear that I use the term air power in its most comprehensive sense of air and space power. Such inclusive air power values every role and mission, as well as all the support, services, and most importantly-all the people the Air Force needs to be a fully capable service.

I submit that air power will play the leading role in our response to the security challenges of the uncharted future. It will in some circumstances be the only engaging form of military power and in others the form upon which successful surface operations depend. My reasoning in support of this assertion has two main points. The first deals with the maturity of air power within the context of modern warfare. The second concerns the nature of this potentially dangerous new world and the consequent importance of time. Because these points enrich our understanding of the new place that air power is likely to take in national security policy, each one deserves some discussion.

The Growth of Air Power
and the Nature of
Modern Warfare

As we look to the future, airmen must be the first to admit that the history of air power is replete with promises of too much too soon. The early prophets of air power-notably Gen Giulio Douhet (1869-1930), Gen William ("Billy") Mitchell (1879-1936), and Air Marshal Hugh Trenchard (1873-1956)--based their visions on the very limited. air power experience of World War I. I believe that their visionary reach exceeded their technological grasp by many decades. As a result, they seemed to promise quick, cheap victories from the air.³ This was certainly true of General Douhet, who insisted that achieving "command of the air" would not only be necessary but also sufficient for victory. Let there be no doubt that he was certain of himself:

In spite of the close reasoning by which I have arrived at these affirmations, I am sure they will seem extravagant to many. That does not affect me in the least.... Such stubbornness leaves me absolutely unaffected, because I have the mathematical certainty that the time will come, when air forces of nations everywhere will conform exactly to the concepts described above.⁴

Douhet was not an ambivalent man. For the most part, neither was General Mitchell, especially after his court-martial in 1925. The dramatic claims of the air power visionaries overshadowed the less provocative work of other air power advocates, such as Sir John Slessor and many of the Air Corps Tactical School staff, a group that has been termed the "air-first moderates."⁵ Recent history appears to confirm the more tempered views of the moderates even more than those of the better-known visionaries. The perspective of Gen (then Maj) Harold ("Hal") George on air power in war is a notable example:

Whether air power can, by and of itself, accomplish the whole object of war is certainly an academic question; but that the air phase of a future war between major powers will the decisive phase seems to be accepted as more and more plausible as each year passes.⁶

Of course, many assumptions and promises of the air power prophets, of whatever persuasion, fell short. That is not to suggest that there was anything wrong with their prophecies-as prophecies go. Technological shortcomings regarding carrying capacity, materials and fuels, speed, range, weapons accuracy, target intelligence, precision navigation equipment, and so forth took their toll. But so did a lack of experience in applying air power.

Airmen had to learn how to determine, find, and attack the enemy's vital centers, how to conduct an effective interdiction campaign, how to organize, train, equip, command, and control air assets--along with learning how to take best advantage of emerging technology and, more importantly, how to drive and channel the pursuit of new technology. (A century ago. Adm Alfred Thayer Mahan, the great exponent of sea power, energized military study of how technical changes influenced history. Airmen learned that they could go one step further. Instead of harnessing the achievements of independent inventors, they underwrote major developments, experiments, and even basic research, the results of which subsequently helped change the world, giving us computers, telecommunications, satellites, and airliners). Airmen also had to learn that the enemy had a capacity to interfere with air operations and that air war also involved friction, fog, uncertainty, and ambiguity--all the classic characteristics of war that Clausewitz described.

Shortcomings in both technology and experience meant that victory in World War II came neither quickly nor cheaply. As one result, many soldiers and sailors, as well as some of our civilian leaders, came to view the history of air power as a series of unrealized--perhaps unrealizable--dreams. Airmen, in short, paid a price in credibility for the expansive and premature visions of the early prophets. Yet, I am not sure that the modern airmen have been mentally prepared to accept, much less to take advantage of, the sudden consensus that the early air power prophets were basically right (although decades premature). Perhaps we have been floating on the stream of history but need to begin paddling, as did the air power prophets.

In truth, the history of air power has been a gradual maturation process over a period of some 80 years. Gradual might even be too hard a word. Compare the centuries required for gunpowder weapons to supersede the sword and pike or the decades required for motorized vehicles to outnumber horses in modern armies.⁷

Today, after 80 years of experience extending across the spectrum of conflict and after stunning technological developments that have largely solved many problems that previously limited air power, we are in a far better position to make the case that air power will normally dominate modern warfare. Consider the following:

• Surface forces have great difficulty operating in the face of strong, hostile air power--if indeed they can operate at all. After seeing the litter along the road from Kuwait City to Basra, Iraq, the whole world now has an image of how difficult it is to do anything--even to run away when an opponent commands the skies.

  When augmented by strong, friendly air power, surface forces have a variety of opportunities open to them which would otherwise be denied. As Gen George S. Patton's Third Army sped across France, air power protected its southern flank and its "overhead flank."⁸ One could even say that Patton's audacious reliance on air power set the pace for his army's offensive drive although defensive operations relinquish much of advantage in using the initiative, the United Nations' defense of South Korea's Pusan perimeter in the summer of 1950 depended on air power, as did the defense of Khe Sanh, South Vietnam, in 1968.⁹

• Modern navies have capitalized heavily on the strength of naval air power--witness the role of the carrier as queen of the fleet and the new role of surface ships armed with cruise missiles in projecting power through the air.

Air power's attributes provide ways to fight asymmetrically and to exert leverage. The latter quality applies at varying scales, from grand strategy to the individual engagement. Further, it applies to fighting different types of forces, as well as to conducting different forms of warfare:

• In what has been called the low-intensity conflict environment, air power provides the few advantages available to modern surface forces engaged with enemies using guerrilla tactics. Specifically, these advantages are mobility, aerial reconnaissance, and quick-response firepower.
• In conventional war, only air power can be rapidly applied simultaneously to every type of target--strategic, operational, and tactical. Targets in Operation Desert Storm, such as military command centers in Baghdad, the bridges near Basra, and Iraqi tanks, illustrate these categories clearly.
• Aerospace power is, of course, the sine qua non of strategic nuclear war.

In short, it seems clear that armies and navies must increasingly appreciate that their capabilities and roles are determined by the existing air power situation. At the same time--and to a greater extent than is generally acknowledged--air power retains its capacity to operate independently of surface forces. This combination of factors leads quite naturally to the conclusion that air power--especially in its extended form as aerospace power--has come to dominate warfare.

In truth, we are only beginning to frame how air power can dominate modern warfare-that is, how air power's tremendous leverage creates conditions for other forces to fight, shapes campaigns, opens up options, and denies the enemy not just battle and campaign choices, but whole strategies. Professionals from all the services will increasingly study air power as a catalyst and prerequisite to other military means, just as policymakers will view air power as a key that opens and closes the doors of many strategy and policy options. An airman could, with equal ease, assume any role in this effort: that of amused bystander, critic, cheerleader, pliant respondent to others' applications, or leader in this art form. To my mind, airmen owe it to their country to take the lead and use their expertise in understanding and applying air power's special capacities.

None of this should be taken to deny the importance of surface forces, for whom many tasks remain, some of which (e.g., occupying territory and maintaining an extended presence) air power cannot now and almost certainly never will achieve. Rather, the emergence of air (and aerospace) power as the vanguard for all our forces requires new ways of thinking about warfare and new planning paradigms, as well as new ways of organizing, structuring, and commanding our forces.¹⁰ The results of Desert Storm suggest that while we have made considerable progress in these respects, this very progress opens up major new challenges on which to focus.

The Role of Time in the
New World Older

I suggested earlier that my second point had to do with time. One reason that the time factor has assumed increasingly critical significance is that the threats to American vital interests are much more diffuse in our brave new world:

• We no longer have the luxury, as it were, of preparing for the well-defined, worst-case scenarios that characterized the bipolar world. (As known threats shrink, so will our forces, and forward-deployed forces are likely to shrink the most. The magnitude of the foreseeable changes in funding indicates that we can no longer continue business as usual [i.e., shrinking all things equally]. We will need to separate the essential from the less important and adopt new ways of doing things. For example, Desert Storm affirmed the critical value of bases. The first ground forces into the Arabian Peninsula during Desert Shield were charged with the security of key military airfields and ports, reminiscent of Gen Douglas MacArthur's classic use of ground forces to support his air campaigns. To consider an extreme example, if--hypothetically-our forward-deployed forces in NATO were reduced to, say, 10,000 troops, might not airfield and harbor defense missions be the most important role they could assume?)¹¹
• The general relaxation of East-West tensions could well encourage regional aggressors of all sorts. These nations have increasingly dangerous military capabilities: the ability to move quickly, achieve an objective, and consolidate gains before any but the quickest forces can respond with positive effect (as we have so recently seen!). Triggers for such eventualities are legion; they include age-old ethnic and religious hatreds, attempts to monopolize markets or resources, irredentism, religious fervor, dreams of greater power and glory for individuals and/or nations, and so forth. Such threats could arise almost anywhere and could involve formidable foes. The very distribution of the threat picture requires a reexamination of how we think and plan and suggests that we need forces tailored to these new circumstances (i.e., forces trained, equipped, and postured for a faster-moving world). We surely need no further instruction about how quickly events can move.
• The where, when, and by whom are among the crucial unknowns regarding future threats. What can be known in advance is that response time will often be the most important factor in deterring a threat or attempting to contain a crisis situation.

Recent events in the Gulf region provide a thought-provoking example of how air power's responsiveness complements the developing security picture. For example, in the months leading to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, Saddam Hussein's verbal attacks were not confined to Kuwait but extended to neighboring Gulf nations. His Pan-Arab rhetoric assumed an ominous tone before Iraqi armies moved. (Monday-morning quarterbacks now suggest that Saddam's swift attack against Kuwait could have been anticipated. But no nation, as far as we know, believed that an Iraqi attack was imminent. Saddam surprised everybody.)

Once Iraq's forces moved, they secured their first objective in Kuwait very quickly, and they then--whatever their intentions--certainly had the capability to resume their march in a short time. (By the end of the Iran-Iraq war in 1988, Iraqi forces demonstrated that they could launch successive attacks in less than a month.) Iraq thus had the capability and opportunity to extend its gains, had declared a motive for doing so, and was organizing its means when the coalition responded.

Thirty-four hours after it was ordered to deploy, the first coalition squadron arrived in Saudi Arabia from the United States. In the Desert Shield buildup, airlift duplicated the movement of the 400-day Berlin airlift every 40 days or so. It did this five times without pause.12 Fortunately, the United States had the capability to response rapidly with air power. This quick response threw the Iraqis off balance and provided a deterrent and a breathing space until the US could deploy a full array of forces and the coalition could deliberately plan a method for rolling back the aggression. Air power not only curtailed many Iraqi options, but even reshaped the regional power balance-almost overnight.

The global spread of near-instantaneous information highlights the requirement to adapt to rapidly changing circumstances, something which air power does so well. Iraq's Scud campaign was televised as it occurred, with unforeseen political impact. Although that campaign had no military value in the narrow sense, its great political potential demanded that it be dealt with immediately. The rapidly improvised "Great Scud Chase" and the swift marriage of Patriot missiles to rapid surveillance and cueing systems again showed air power's advantages in flexibility and responsiveness, as well as its unique capabilities to secure politically desirable military aims.¹³

Air power's responsiveness brings our policymakers distinct capabilities discriminating means, and desirable options for rapid responses. We need to see air power and its components in just such terms, and we need to explore their meaning for the future. To punctuate the point, we must note that when time is of the essence-as it is increasingly in this world-air power will be the only means by which our armed forces can

• go directly from the United States to any location in the world within hours;
• deliver massive firepower upon arrival; and
• deliver surface forces anywhere in the world within hours-witness the air bridge that linked the US and Saudi Arabia early in the Iraq crisis.

Future Applications of Air Power

When one combines my two main points--the maturity (and its corresponding increase in utility) of air power and the significance of time (i.e. responsiveness)--it should be clear that the results of Operation Desert Storm provide several strong hints about the application of air power in the near future:

1. Technology works and saves lives, on both sides. The long-lingering debate over quality versus quantity should be put to rest. The idea that "because our equipment is sophisticated, it therefore is unlikely to work" has been thoroughly discredited.¹⁴ Our institutional bias, as airmen, to "lead turn" events and technology has been validated.

2. Low-observable (LO) technology is here to stay. We have demonstrated our long-standing goal of penetrating enemy defenses safely without unwieldy force packaging. The capability to put any feature of the enemy at risk--which includes the ability to threaten every asset an enemy possesses with unprecedented probability of target engagement and low risk of interference, loss, or capture-provides not just tactical but strategic leverage.

3. Precision guided munitions (PGM) work. Furthermore, if some ideas still on the drawing board or in early development are any indication, PGMs will reach new heights of capability. The marriage of PGMs to LO platforms provides enormous leverage, especially in terms of the level(s) of force required to attain specific objectives.¹⁵ This marriage also helps us with another problem--the fact that the American public is loathe to accept high casualty rates, whether among its own sons and daughters or the enemy civilian population.¹⁶ Precision munitions are an enormous help in holding down both types of casualties.

Above all, PGMs connect political objectives to military execution with much greater reliability than ever before. The political leader can have far greater confidence that discrete objectives can be met and can thus gain broader latitude in formulating the overall objective. This is not just a change in air power or even in military power; it is a fundamental change in warfare.

In past air campaigns, the random effects--of ballistic weapons often created ambiguity and uncertainty as to intent. We can now expect enemies to rapidly assess the pattern of targets attacked by PGMs in an effort to predict future attacks. This suggests that we need to contemplate the second-order effects of force application--human responses and target system responses--rather than just the immediate effects we intend to achieve. Understanding what up to now have been "unintended effects" is just a first step; airmen need to plan and perhaps even devise strategy around them. All the processes of adjusting to air attack (e.g., dispersing, digging in, moving, reorganizing) cost the enemy something and may deserve consideration as campaign objectives in themselves.

Of course, airmen need to be aware that the public--even policymakers--may now expect all attacks to be precise and may not understand or tolerate the small degrees of random error inherent in any weapon, no matter how precisely it is aimed. We certainly need to guard against creating a popular expectation that air power has attained some form of mechanistic perfection. Every single sortie is an effort that can be described in terms of probabilities--not certainties--of launch, refuelling, ingress and navigation, defeating the defenses, acquiring the target, attacking the target, fuze and weapon functioning, and egress recovery. I think that the example of Douhet's inflated prophecies provides adequate warning of the dangers of oversimplifying the tremendous advances we have made and of the hazard of confusing reliability with certainty.

Nevertheless, a primary aspect of precision weapons that should shape our future thinking is their ability to achieve politically desirable military aims quickly and with ever-increasing reliability. The capabilities of air power have increased vastly in the 60 years since Air Vice Marshal H. N. Wrigley of the Royal Australian Air Force explained that the potential of each sortie to create immediate political effects required every airman to understand the broad aspects and policy aims of the war at hand.¹⁷ The precision and speed that air power now brings to force application increase the need for airmen to understand war in even broader terms.

Air power's adroitness seems particularly useful in a time of increasing uncertainty. It also suggests future directions for thinking about air power. The flexibility and responsiveness of air power have long been a two-edged sword: because of its many capabilities, there has been a constant struggle between competing aims, roles, and target sets, and a consequent temptation to disperse air power. The need to concentrate air power on specific objectives and the effort to define those objectives best served by air power have been at the core of air power doctrine and should remain our principal concerns.

However that may be, I do want to apply a necessary flash of speedbrake to my emphasis on time and our capability of responding rapidly in the emerging security picture. In doing so, I again call to my assistance the late Air Vice-Marshal Wrigley, who warned us that in all we do, we must be on guard to "foresee the possible danger that the precipitate use of the air force may bring about a war [emphasis added]." As the editors of his papers note,

This is a significant observation. In the middle of his discourse on the causes of war, Wrigley notes that the immediate trigger of a conflict may not truly represent the underlying causes, and, in that context, sounds a warning that the careless use of air power could lead to "precipitate" hostilities. Wrigley's logic for that judgment is central to doctrines of air power employment, for it arises from the aircraft's singular speed, flexibility and capacity to concentrate force.

One of his major themes, recurrent and firmly stated, is that of the three forms of combat power, the air is the most suited to offensive action. An air force which is forced to defend tends to disperse and react; one which is on the offensive can concentrate, control and initiate. Wrigley warns that such a weapon must be handled with care.¹⁸

I could not agree more and hope that my emphasis on providing a capability for rapid response is not taken to imply any casualness of thought regarding the implications of providing such a capability. Although we must guard against being too quick off the mark, we must be careful not to be too late. To argue otherwise would be tantamount to dismissing judgment from the art of war. In today's world-subject to the above caveat and given continuing advances in precision (above all, selectivity)--"air power [can] be a ubiquitous arm of the first hour, and thus escape the need to be employed as a weapon of last resort."¹⁹

Conclusion

My intent has been to suggest that the emerging security picture and recent trends in world events indicate that we will likely earn our paychecks the hard way at some time in the future. I have emphasized that the other services, national decision makers, and our countrymen expect more of the Air Force than ever before.

Our recent revision of Air Force doctrine presents our understanding of how air power has worked best in war and supports that view with comprehensive historical evidence. But, as Abraham Lincoln put it, "The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present . . . .As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves."²⁰

I expect that the publication of our revised basic doctrine-the first documented doctrine we have ever had-will stir debates and challenges, reexamination of the evidence, and new reasoning. I have proposed some directions that our future thoughts might take. But what I really look forward to seeing are those new directions-or even border horizons-that have escaped my view.

Notes

1. Air Force Manual (AFM) 1-1, Basic Aerospace Doctrine of the United States Air Force, 2 vols. (forthcoming).

2. In 890 A.D., Alfred the Great, a remarkable military leader and one of the foremost scholars of his day, expressed the obligations of good fortune (in the form of position or rank) this way: "If, when such power is offered them, the refuse it, it often happens that they are deprived of the gifts which God bestowed on them for the sake of many men, not of them alone." Alf J. Mapp, Jr., The Gold Dragon: Alfred the Great and His Times (Lanham, Md.: Madison Books, 1991), 109.

3. See David MacIsacc, "Voices from the Central Blue: The Air Power Theorists," in Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age, ed. Peter Paret (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986), 624-47.

4. Giulio Douhet, The Command of the Air, trans. Dino Ferrari (1942; new imprint, Washington, D.C.: Office of Air Force History, 1983), 129.

5. See Stephen B. Jones, "Global Strategic Views," in The Impact of Air Power, ed. Eugene M. Emme (Princeton, N.J.: D. Van Nostrand Co., Inc., 1959), 118-28.

6. Maj Harold Lee George, "An Inquiry into the Subject `War'," undated lecture notes, c. 1936, USAF Historical Research Center, Maxwell AFB, Ala., file 248.11-9, page 9.

7. For example, when the vaunted Panzer armies of the Wehrmacht invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, they took with them 750,000 horses and only 600,000 motorized vehicles. Robert Goralski, World War II Almanac: 1931-1945, A Political and Military Record (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1981), 164.

8. As the Allies gathered momentum after the Normandy invasion, Gen George S. Patton "turned over the task of protecting [Third US Army's] southern flank to XIX [Tactical Air Command]." Wesley F. Craven and James L. Cate, eds., The Army Air Forces in World War II, vol. 3, Europe: ARGUMENT to V-E Day (1951; new imprint, Washington, D.C.: Office of Air Force History, 1983), 247.

9. Gen Walton H. Walker, commander of the US Eighth Army, characterized air power's effectiveness this way: `"I will gladly lay my cards right on the table and state that if it had not been for the air support that we received from the Fifth Air Force we would not have been able to stay in Korea."' Quoted in Robert F. Futrell, The United States Air Korea in Korea, 1950-1953, rev. ed. (Washington, D.C.: Office of Air Force History, 1983), 146.

10. For new USAF thinking on these matters, see Gen Merrill A. McPeak, "For the Composite Wing," Airpower Journal 4, no. 3 (Fall 1990): 4-12.

11. This is not to relegate American ground forces to port or airfield security as their raison d'etre; rather, it suggests that a new paradigm for warfare in a new era will require imaginative and creative use of all forces at the disposal of the joint forces commander.

12. News briefing, Department of Defense, Gen Merrill A. McPeak, Air Force chief of staff, subject: Operation Desert Storm, 15 March 1991, 1-2.

13. Speaking of hunting and attacking Scud missiles, General McPeak noted that "we put about three times the effort that we thought we would on this job." Ibid., 5.

14. In World War II, after a lenghty maturation of maintenance and supply practices, the US Army Air Forces achieved an in-commission rate of 55 percent; in Desert Storm the US Air Force maintained a 93 percent incommission rate. In other words, out-of-commission rates of the comparatively simple and far less potent World War II aircraft exceeded modern rates by over six times. Edward H. Kolcum, "Gulf War Reinforces Value of U.S. Stealth Technologies," Aviation Week & Space Technology, 18 February 1991, 40; Craven and Cate, vol. 6, Men and Planes (1955; new imprint, Washington D.C.:Office of Air Force History, 1983), 396.

15. Two figures suggests the leverage that low-observable aircraft using precision weapons can apply, in combination with other force multipliers: (1) F-117s comprised a mere 2.5 percent of coalition aircraft involved in air attacks but accounted for 31 percent of the targets on the first raid; their targets were generally centers for air defense operations, communications, and command and control; (2) total coalition combat losses in the air effort of 109,876 sorties were 42 aircraft. The paralysis of Iraq's command and control structure can be seen in the coalition's ability to fly combat sorties-many at night and many in adverse weather-yet keep losses to a level that, a few years ago, would have been normal (or better) for peacetime training (see also note 15). McPeak briefing, 4, 6, 9-10, 12.

16. Reduction in the risk of human life as a result of better technology and sound practices is one of air power's great success stories. The combat loss rate of Tactical Air Command (TAC) during Desert Storm was about eight aircraft per 100,000 flying hours. In my days as a lieutenant, TAC lost 14.6 aircraft per 100,000 flying hours just by doing peacetime training. Central Command air forces lost one aircraft every three days in Desert Storm, whereas in the days of the F-86, we lost one aircraft a day-every day-for three years, just in training.

17. "If commanders fail to keep the national policy in view when planning their operations, they are wrong. And in order to understand this policy, they must look at the war from the broadest aspect. This applies especially to the case of the Air Forces, because even a junior officer may have to make grave decisions as to the nature of the target he is going to bomb." Air Vice-Marshal H.N. Wrigley, The Decisive Factor: Air Power Doctrine, ed. Alan Stephens and Brendan O'Loghlin (Canberra, Australia: Australian Government Publishing Services, 1990), 11.

18. Ibid., 6,8.

19. M.J. Armitage and R.A. Mason, Air Power in the Nuclear Age (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1983), 257.

20. "Annual Message to Congress, December 1, 1862," in Abraham Lincoln, Speeches and Writings, 1859-1865 (New York: Library of America/Viking, 1989), 415.

Contributors

Lt Gen Charles G. Boyd (BA and MA, University of Kansas) is commander of Air University, Maxwell AFB, Alabama. A command pilot, General Boyd has held previous assignments as special assistant to the chief of staff, Headquarters Allied Forces Southern Europe, Naples, Italy; chief of the Western Hemisphere Division, Director of Plans, Headquarters US Air Force; assistant director for joint and National Security Council matters; deputy chief of staff for plans and programs, Headquarters US Air Forces in Europe, Ramstein Air Base, Germany; vice-commander of Eighth Air Force, Barksdale AFB, Louisiana; and assistant deputy chief of staff for plans and operations, Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans and Operations. Headquarters USAF. General Boyd is a graduate of Air War College.

Lt Col Charles M. Westenhoff (USMA) is a military doctrine analyst at the Airpower Research Institute, Air University Center for Aeorspace Doctrine, Research and Education (AUCADRE), Maxwell AFB, Alabama. His previous assignments include standardization evaluation flight examiner, Headquarters Ninth Air Force, Shaw AFB, South Carolina, and forward air control tactics officer, Tactical Fighter Weapons Center, Nellis AFB, Nevada. Colonel Westenhoff is the compiler of Military Air Power: The CADRE Digest of Air Power Opinions and Thoughts. His articles have appeared in Airpower Journal, Military Review, Fighter Weapons Review, Tactical Analysis Bulletin, Air Scoop, and The MAC Flyer. Colonel Westenhoff is a graduate of Squadron Officer School, Air Command and Staff College, the Marine Corps Command and Staff College, and Air War College.

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