Airpower

Not much more than a century old, airpower and airpower theory have already provided a compelling and varied narrative. The emergence of a third dimension to warfare in the first decades of the twentieth century sparked some theorizing as to the role, promise, and potential of airpower in warfare. The theorists included American General William Mitchell and Russian air theorist Alexander de Seversky, but the name that is most associated with early airpower theory is Italian General Guilio Douhet. His was a grand vision of airpower as being revolutionary in nature, and many of his key tenets were proven wrong by the events of World War Two. There followed four decades of Cold War during which conventional airpower theory received relatively little attention, dominated as the era was by nuclear strategy. But beginning with the 1991 Gulf War, which seemingly vindicated some of Douhet’s ideas, the post-Cold War period’s first two decades contained numerous conventional airpower cases and examples. This resulted in a significant degree of strategic thinking about the role and utility of airpower. This chapter examines contemporary strategic thought in the air dimension. It begins

by highlighting the key ideas of Guilio Douhet, and touches on various critiques of his thinking. It then examines new ideas about airpower, some of which can be viewed through the prism of Douhet’s framework and many of which are substantively new. Notable post-Cold War airpower theorists, all civilian scholars but some with military backgrounds, include Stephen Biddle, James Corum, Benjamin Lambeth and Robert Pape, among others. The chapter concludes with some thoughts on the components of contemporary airpower theory.