ABSTRACT
Jack Slessor was a founder member of the Council of the original Institute for Strategic Studies and one of the first Vice-Presidents of the IISS. His outstanding career in the Royal Air Force and the honours bestowed on him as an officer who reached the summit of his profession have tended to obscure his role as one of the most influential strategic thinkers of our times. The concept of deterrence through Air Power was not of course new. It had been the orthodox doctrine of the Royal Air Force between the wars and indeed, briefly, the policy of the British Government when it began to rearm in 1934. In 1950, at the time of the Korean War, he became Chief of the Air Staff and found himself faced with the same depressing task that had confronted him as a staff officer in the Air Ministry in the 1930s - making military bricks without financial straw.
