Airpower for Strategic Effect Air University Series on Airpower and National Security Divining Victory by William M. Arkin (2007) The Quest for Relevant Air Power by Christian F. Anrig (2011) Airpower for Strategic Effect by Colin S. Gray (2012) Bomber: The Formation and Early Years of Strategic Air Command by Phillip S. Meilinger (forthcoming) Airpower for Strategic Effect Colin S. Gray Air University Press Air Force Research Institute Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama February 2012 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gray, Colin S. Airpower for strategic effect / Colin S. Gray. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-58566-218-0 1. Air power. 2. Air power—United States. I. Title. UG630.G75 2011 358.4'03--dc23 2011035404 Disclaimer Opinions, conclusions, and recommendations expressed or implied within are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of Air University, the United States Air Force, the Department of Defense, or any other US government agency. Cleared for public release: distribution unlimited. Copyright 2012 by Colin S. Gray The author retains all rights to this work granted under 17 USC §106. The US Air Force retains nonexclusive royalty-free license to publish and distribute this work. AFRI Air Force Research Institute Air University Press Air Force Research Institute 155 North Twining Street Maxwell AFB, AL 36112-6026 http://aupress.au.af.mil iv This book is dedicated to the memory of my father, William “Bill” Gray, who said that the proudest moment of his life was when he was awarded his “wings” in the RAF in 1943. Contents Foreword ix About the Author xiii Preface xv 1 Airpower: A Contested Narrative 1 Approach 2 What Is Airpower? An Open Question Still 6 Some Keys to Understanding 12 Faith, Interest, and Fear 17 Disarray: Diagnosis and Prescription 20 Conclusion: From Wonder to Routine 22 2 Ideas for Action 27 Locating Airpower 30 The General Theory of Strategy 35 The General Theory for Education 40 Policy, Strategy, Tactics: What or Who Is in Charge? 45 Between Politics and Tactics: The Strategist’s Dilemma 49 Conclusion: Scope for Discretion 51 3 Geographies of Warfare 57 Airpower Controversy 58 The Joint Challenge 61 Out of Joint 66 The Territorial Imperative 72 Strategy and Air Strategy 76 Conclusion: E Pluribus Unum? 80 4 Strategic History I: Sagittarius Rising, 1903–39 85 Prelude, 1903–14 88 Beginnings, 1914–18 90 Promise, 1919–39 100 Conclusion: Coming, Ready or Not 107 vii CONTENTS 5 Strategic History II: The Great Test, 1939–45 113 Air War within the War 115 Blitzkrieg and the Battle of Britain, 1939–40 117 Airpower, Joint Warfare in the West, 1941–45 128 The Eastern Front, 1941–45 132 Strategic Bombing in Europe, 1940–45 134 Air Warfare in Asia-Pacific, 1941–45 143 Conclusion: Slessor Was Mainly Correct 147 6 Strategic History III: Troubled Triumph, 1945–89 157 Airpower and Nuclear Weapons 158 Airpower in Korea 165 Airpower in Vietnam 171 Conclusion: Promise Unfulfilled 182 7 Strategic History IV: Strategic Moment, 1990–99 189 Recap: From the Past to the Brink of the Present 192 Weapon of Choice: Operational Airpower, 1991–99 197 Conceptual Renaissance 205 Conclusion: Airpower Transformed—but “So What?” 226 8 Strategic History V: Airpower after 9/11 235 Airpower and the War on Terrorists 238 A Decade of Terror 242 Afghanistan and Iraq, 2001–Present 246 Second Lebanon and Gaza 255 Conclusion: Continuity in Change in the Big Picture 262 9 Airpower Theory 267 Airpower Theory in 27 Dicta: A Granular Approach 274 Conclusion: Theory Rules! 304 10 Per Ardua ad Astra 307 Bibliography 317 Index 347 viii Foreword The 12 years that spanned the first Persian Gulf War of 1991 and the three weeks of major combat in Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 were a triumphal time for American airpower. By the end of that eventful period, featuring five successful air-dominated campaigns that also included Operations Deliberate Force, Allied Force, and En- during Freedom, America’s air weapon could be fairly said to have matured in its ability to deliver repeatedly the sorts of outcome-de- termining results that airpower’s pioneer theoreticians had foreseen generations before. The ensuing years since that unbroken chain of successes, however, have entailed a different mode of combat and, as a result, a less-pre- eminent role for airpower. During the more recent period, the sorts of high-end challenges that prompted America’s aerial involvements from 1991 to 2003 have been displaced, at least for the time being, by lower-intensity counterinsurgency operations in which the air input, while no less important than before as a shaper of events, has taken a secondary role to ground troops as the starring force element. In the eyes of many, this shift in the character of Washington’s latest combat involvements has cast air operations in general, and the US Air Force in particular, in a decidedly subordinate role. Not only that, it has been said by some to have had the pernicious effect of inclining many younger Air Force Airmen who have been exposed to no other form of operational commitment during their relatively short time in the ranks to infer from their limited experience that their service’s main purpose is to support land warfare by US Army and Marine Corps combatants. In its worst extreme, the changed nature of today’s en- gagements and the consequent lower profile maintained by airpower in them has led more than a few to ask why the United States even needs an independent Air Force any more. In this magisterial tour d’horizon of the air weapon’s steady rise in effectiveness since its fledgling days, Colin Gray, a prolific strate gist of long-standing scholarly achievement and international repute, has rightly taken a long view of today’s pattern of regional conflict by ap- praising airpower in the broader context in which its operational payoff will ultimately be registered. His careful development of air- power’s “strategic narrative,” as he calls it, shows convincingly how the relative criticality of the air weapon in joint warfare is neither ix FOREWORD universal nor unchanging but rather is crucially dependent on the particular circumstances of a confrontation. More to the point, viewed situationally, airpower can be every- thing from single-handedly decisive to largely irrelevant to a combat- ant commander’s needs, depending on his most pressing challenges of the moment. Because its relative import, like that of all other force elements, hinges directly on how its comparative advantages relate to a commander’s most immediate here-and-now concerns, airpower does not disappoint when it is not the main producer of desired out- comes. Indeed, the idea that airpower should be able to perform ef- fectively in all forms of combat unaided by other force elements is both an absurd measure of its operational merit and a baseless argu- ing point that its most outspoken advocates, from Giulio Douhet and Billy Mitchell onward, have done their cause a major disservice by misguidedly espousing over many decades. Although the air weapon today may have been temporarily overshadowed by more land-cen- tric forms of force employment, given the kinds of lower-intensity conflicts that the United States and its allies have been obliged to con- tend with in recent years, there will most assuredly be future times when new challenges yet to arise will again test America’s air posture to the fullest extent of its deterrent and combat potential. Professor Gray’s central theme is that airpower generates strategic effect. More specifically, he maintains, airpower is a tactical equity that operates—ideally—with strategic consequences. To him, “strate- gic” does not inhere in the equity’s physical characteristics, such as an aircraft’s range or payload, but rather in what it can do by way of pro- ducing desired results. From his perspective, a strategic effect is, first and foremost, that which enables outcome-determining results. And producing such results is quintessentially the stock in trade of Amer- ican airpower as it has progressively evolved since Vietnam. Airpower for Strategic Effect offers an uncommonly thoughtful ap- plication of informed intellect to an explanation of how modern air warfare capabilities should be understood. Along the way, it puts for- ward a roster of observations about the air weapon that warrant care- ful reflection by all who would presume to find it wanting. Among the most notable of those observations are that context rules in every case and that whether airpower should be regarded as supported by or supporting of other force elements is not a question that can ever have a single answer for all time. Rather, as noted above, the answer will hinge invariably on the unique conditions of any given conflict. x FOREWORD It naturally follows that whenever airpower has been said to have “failed,” it has only been because more was expected of it than it could deliver. Any tool can appear deficient if used unwisely or irresponsi- bly. And as both the United States and Israel have experienced in their most recent airpower applications, even the most robust and capable air weapon can never be more effective than the strategy it is intended to support. On the strength of this teaching, perhaps the single most helpful service air warfare professionals can perform for their cause is to un- derpromise and overdeliver as a matter of standard practice. In this regard, Professor Gray repeatedly voices a stern reminder that a long history of overpromising on the part of airpower’s most vocal propo- nents has needlessly sold the air weapon short for what it is actually able to deliver to joint force commanders today—and not just in high-intensity combat, but in all forms of operations across the con- flict spectrum.