ABSTRACT
The employment of land-based air power has always been important in maritime training and missions. As early as 1921, General Billy Mitchell demonstrated that land-based aviation could have a significant effect on the outcome of combat at sea. Land-based aviation had played a major antiship role during World War II. On one mission there was no disagreement: the role of land-based aviation in antisubmarine warfare. The Navy had never relinquished this mission after World War II, when land-based aviation had accounted for 38 percent of all submarine sinkings. The primary task of land-based aviation in northwest Asia is to protect Japan and South Korea against threats from Soviet air attack. Few dispute the potential benefits that land-based aviation brings to the US maritime posture, given the advantages that geography proffers the West, particularly in the North Atlantic and northwest Pacific.
