UNDERSTANDING GLOBAL THOUGHTS ON AIR POWER

This art icle was downloaded by: [ Dr Arj un Subram aniam ] On: 04 April 2013, At : 19: 54 Publisher: Rout ledge I nform a Lt d Regist ered in England and Wales Regist ered Num ber: 1072954 Regist ered office: Mort im er House, 37- 41 Mort im er St reet , London W1T 3JH, UK Strategic Analysis Publicat ion det ails, including inst ruct ions for aut hors and subscript ion informat ion: ht t p:/ / www.t andfonline.com/ loi/ rsan20 Understanding Diverse Global Thoughts on Air Power Arj un Subramaniam Version of record first published: 06 Mar 2013. To cite this article: Arj un Subramaniam (2013): Underst anding Diverse Global Thought s on Air Power, St rat egic Analysis, 37:2, 242-250 To link to this article: ht t p:/ / dx.doi.org/ 10.1080/ 09700161.2012.755786 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTI CLE Full t erm s and condit ions of use: ht t p: / / www.t andfonline.com / page/ t erm s- andcondit ions This art icle m ay be used for research, t eaching, and privat e st udy purposes. 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The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, act ions, claim s, proceedings, dem and, or cost s or dam ages what soever or howsoever caused arising direct ly or indirect ly in connect ion wit h or arising out of t he use of t his m at erial. Strategic Analysis, 2013 Vol. 37, No. 2, 242–250, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09700161.2012.755786 Strategic Essay Understanding Diverse Global Thoughts on Air Power Downloaded by [Dr Arjun Subramaniam] at 19:54 04 April 2013 Arjun Subramaniam Introduction ir power has gone through a lot over the last two decades—from being a decisive tool of war fighting during Operation Desert Storm and operations over Kosovo, to a more sobering period in the first decade of this century when it faced intense criticism over its use in Lebanon, Iraq and Af-Pak. The resilience and versatility of air power ensured that it adapted to the requirements of modern conflict, albeit a trifle slower than expected, with Operation Geronimo (the mission to eliminate Osama bin Laden) and Operation Unified Protector (the aerial campaign to facilitate the ouster of the Libyan dictator Gadaffi) being prime examples. Some air power theorists feel that practitioners of air power may have got carried away by the seductiveness of technology and precision, leading to the wrong strategic application of air power in some places. Thus, a need is felt to revisit current global air power discourse from a theoretical perspective and create a convergence of sorts between the strategist, theorist and practitioner. A Characteristics of air power While different air forces across the world have marginally differing perspectives on what the most enduring characteristics of air power are, let me try and benchmark these templates against what are widely regarded as the most relevant and impactful characteristics of air power in modern conflict from a ‘strategic options’ context and not an ‘operational impact’ perspective. While it is not necessary to go into the intricacies of each characteristic mentioned in Table 1, as they are easily available for study and dissection in the open domain, a bird’s eye view of the various strengths of air power as seen from a representative doctrinal selection of air forces reveals a similarity of focus. As a planning tool for strategic planners, the entire basket of strengths as indicated in Table 1 can be exploited without much of a problem in conventional conflict scenarios. The challenges and dilemmas faced by air power in modern conflict lie in the discriminate selection of strengths that need to be leveraged at different points during a long drawn out sub-conventional conflict. Typical examples of such conflicts are the proxy war between Pakistan and Arjun Subramaniam is a serving Air Vice Marshal in the Indian Air Force and holds a PhD in Defence and Strategic Studies from the University of Madras (now Chennai). The views expressed in the article are his own and do not reflect the views of the Indian Air Force. © 2013 Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses Strategic Analysis 243 Table 1. Comparative doctrinal strengths of air power. a IAF (Indian Air Force) Flexibility Mobility Responsiveness Shock effect Concentration Offensive action b RAF (Royal Air Force) Concentration Reach Speed Agility Height Ubiquity RAAFc (Royal Australian Air Force) USAFd (United States Air Force) Flexibility Responsiveness Reach Persistence Precision effect Versatility Penetration Flexibility Speed Precision Range Lethality Downloaded by [Dr Arjun Subramaniam] at 19:54 04 April 2013 a b Doctrine of the Indian Air Force, IAP-2000-12, Air Headquarters, New Delhi, October 2012. British Air and Space Power Doctrine, AP 3000 4th edition, at http://www.raf.mod.uk/rafcms/mediafiles/ 9E435312_5056_A318_A88F14CF6F4FC6CE.pdf (Accessed 3 September 2012). c AAP-1000-D, The Air Power Manual (5th edition), May 2008, at http://airpower.airforce.gov.au/Publications/ Details/161/AAP1000-D-The-Air-Power-Manual-5th-Edition.aspx (Accessed 3 September 2012). d USAF AFDD-1, Air Force Basic Doctrine, November 2003, Revised 2012, at http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/ service_pubs/afdd1.pdf (Accessed 4 September 2012). India in Jammu and Kashmir, the US and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) interventions in the AF-Pak region and Iraq or the recently concluded ethnicterrorist conflict in Sri Lanka. The common threads, however, which run across the spectrum of conflict in both kinetic and non-kinetic applications of air power, are flexibility, reach and speed, along with their corollary attributes of range, versatility and responsiveness. Arguably, the contentious issues relate to the kinetic attributes like offensive action, precision, shock effect, lethality and penetration, all of which are vital for classical military victory. It may be argued that the effectiveness of air power in modern conflict lies in the right balance between kinetic and non-kinetic application of combat power from the air, both in terms of timing and the geopolitical landscape of the conflict. With technology being seen as the primary discriminating agent and a powerful enabler of precision attacks to create strategic effects, the seductive impact of air power is hard to ignore. The problem lies in the impatience that follows whenever kinetic application of air power is not immediately followed by the effect that it was expected to generate. It is this impatience that could lead to a breakdown in discrimination and incorrect application that could have ‘snowballing’ political and strategic implications. The right way to leverage the doctrinal characteristics of air power is by contextualising and aligning them to politico-military objectives. Understanding the way different air forces think about air power, and taking cognisance of how theorists and academics view the interplay between policy, strategy and the practice of air power, allows for a holistic understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of air power and how it can be leveraged as a potent tool of statecraft. This article aims at increasing the understanding of air power by showcasing the thoughts of a few contemporary air power practitioners, theorists, historians and academics. By no means is the list allencompassing and no disrespect is meant to the many scholars who have contributed significantly to the global discourse on air power and could not be acknowledged in this article. The practitioners-theorists-strategists The French connection While it is tempting to begin with the ‘big boy’ of global air power, the US, or the more articulate Royal Air Force (RAF), or for that matter, the Indian Air Force (IAF), views Downloaded by [Dr Arjun Subramaniam] at 19:54 04 April 2013 244 Arjun Subramaniam from the French Air Force (FAF), which I have not listed above, present an interesting cocktail of ideas. The French have generally been reticent about expressing theoretical concepts of air power. One exception is Colonel Regis Chamagne, who, in his simple but interesting book, The Art of Air War,1 writes about what he calls the ‘fundamentals of aerial action’. According to him, the exclusive characteristics of air power that lend themselves easily to modern conflict profiles are global nature, continuity of action, thematic nature and, lastly, reversibility.2 He goes on to blend these fundamentals of air power with classical principles of war such as concentration of effort on the decisive point, pursuit of a single objective, offensive spirit, economy of means, mobility of means, unity of command, security, surprise and simplicity. He also argues that ‘aerial action, by its own characteristics—global nature, thematic consistency and reversibility–gives strength to war principles when it comes to air to land or air to sea action . . . ’.3 Of particular interest is the concept of reversibility, which according to Col. Chamagne reduces the probability of a reciprocal revenge cycle, particularly in expeditionary, peace-enforcing or stability operations.4 This, he goes on to explain, is why air power can be employed, withdrawn or reassigned effectively as compared to ground deployments.5 To wrap up the French perspective, what is most appealing about this perspective is the attempt by a mainstream practitioner of air power to acknowledge the intrinsic linkages between air power as a tool of force projection, and its small but important role in shaping strategic outcomes in future conflicts. It is particularly pleasing to see that many principles of dynamic targeting were assiduously worked on in the years after the Kosovo aerial campaign of 1999 by the FAF and were effectively implemented during the recent NATO air campaign over Libya, primarily with the aim of shrinking the Observe Orient Decide and Act (OODA) loop and improving the discriminatory capabilities of air power.6 The US discourse The US discourse on air power over the last two decades has seen two airmen and an air power historian occupy centre stage. While Colonels John Warden and Phillip Meilinger have offered illuminating discourses as ‘practitioner theorists’,7 Dr. Benjamin Lambeth has tracked the evolution of modern air power through the lens of most of the major air campaigns that the US and its allies have prosecuted in recent times, from Kosovo to Afghanistan, as well as the application of air power in Israel’s recent campaigns against the Hezbollah and Hamas in 2006 and 2008 respectively.8 The simplicity of Phillip Meilinger’s ‘Ten Propositions Regarding Air Power’9 lies in their holistic approach and makes compelling reading if one wants to look at some of the enduring principles and characteristics of air power. He has tried to amalgamate global doctrinal precepts and principles into propositions that can be debated, dissected and argued by both practitioners and theorists in a modern context. Of his 10 propositions propounded at the School for Advanced Airpower Studies (SAAS), Air University, at Maxwell Air Force Base (AFB) in the mid-1990s, most are still relevant today. That air power is a strategic force irrespective of the conflict landscape is beyond reasonable doubt, barring a few sceptics who question its effectiveness in sub-conventional warfare. Colin Gray, one of the foremost modern air power theorists from the UK, has both endorsed and contested some of these propositions in a recent book entitled Airpower for Strategic Effect.10 Some of Meilinger’s propositions that deal with dominating the fourth dimension, parallel operations and unbridled offensive action could mainly be identified with conventional operations, while his proposition that synthesises targeting with intelligence is relevant for all kinds of air operations Downloaded by [Dr Arjun Subramaniam] at 19:54 04 April 2013 Strategic Analysis 245 including non-kinetic and enabling operations. His first proposition that ‘whoever controls the air, generally controls the surface’ still holds true for conventional conflict wherein varied degrees of control of the air are essential for any kind of freedom of operation of surface forces, be they land based or maritime. The proposition loses a bit of steam as one looks at conflict at the lower end of the spectrum of warfare because recent conflicts have shown that control of the air is not a ‘sure shot recipe for victory on ground’, particularly when victory is seen in the context of the quality of the peace that follows. Even Libya, which has been a success for air power in recent times, can only be considered an enabling and not a decisive success as air power was in Operation Desert Storm. The years ahead will decide whether or not it was a strategic success. The only other proposition that can be contested is the one that says that ‘air power is primarily an offensive weapon’. How can one discount the numerous non-kinetic capabilities of air power that have generated goodwill, sustained cities, provided succour and relief in disaster situations, and emerged as key enablers of nation building? Would it not be fair to build on the flexibility characteristic of air power and modify the proposition to say ‘air power is not only an offensive weapon; it is a critical tool of military diplomacy and nation building’. An unabashed soldier-scholar cum flag bearer of kinetic or offensive air power and its ability to shape the contours of conflict across the spectrum of conflict was Col. John Warden. A fighter pilot-scholar turned air power strategist who is arguably amongst the most cerebral fighter pilots of his generation, John Warden’s impact on global air power began in the early 1990s when he laid out the framework for what turned out to be one of the most innovative aerial campaigns of all time, Instant Thunder, the strategic bombing campaign during the first Gulf War of 1991.11 Instead of dwelling on the virtues of the cerebral fighter pilot that Warden was, it would be appropriate to say that he influenced a whole generation of aerial planners to ‘stretch the envelope’ when it came to exploiting the immense capabilities of air power. More importantly, he revolutionised the entire operational process of target selection based on critical vulnerabilities and re-emphasised the criticality of centralised control and execution of large aerial campaigns. While enough has been written about Warden’s ‘Five Rings’ theory for strategic targeting in the last two decades,12 of interest in recent years have been his writings that attempt to remodel his theories to keep pace with the changing nature of warfare. Ironically, when asked about the need for air power to adapt to ‘small wars’ during his tenure as commandant of the Air War College at Maxwell in the early 1990s, he airily dismissed the thought by saying, ‘Oh! We won’t fight those kinds of wars’.13 It has indeed been surprising that it took him almost two decades to adapt his model to Fourth Generation Warfare (4GW) and sub-conventional conflict14 as many felt that his targeting model had universal application across the spectrum of conflict. If I were to compress all of John Warden’s ideas into one singular achievement it would be that he infused a sense of urgency into the whole air campaign planning process with a systematic and effects-based approach that amalgamated the processes and the result into one self-sustaining operational activity. If there was a flaw in his campaign planning process, it was in his neglect of the non-kinetic or ‘softer’ capabilities of air power as critical tools in the campaign planning process, and his obsession with targeting as the sole determinant of conflict termination and resolution. The Indian experience Air Commodore Jasjit Singh is an Indian fighter pilot who hung up his blue uniform prematurely to lead a single-handed crusade to make the Indian strategic establishment Downloaded by [Dr Arjun Subramaniam] at 19:54 04 April 2013 246 Arjun Subramaniam aware of the strategic capabilities of air power. A decorated airman from India’s 1965 conflict with Pakistan, he is unarguably the first aviator-scholar-strategist to emerge from the post-colonial Indian Air Force. An intellectually gifted and prolific writer from very early on in his air force career, Jasjit Singh chose to give up a promising mainstream trajectory in the early 1980s to devote himself to the onerous task of alerting a conservative and land-centric strategic establishment to the need to embrace air power as a critical tool of war fighting. He was fortunate to have an influential and powerful mentor in the form of Mr. K. Subrahmanyam, the then director of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, who gave him the intellectual freedom to write and express himself freely in the fairly dogmatic and stereotyped strategic environment that prevailed at that time. Boxed in by its predominantly Soviet inventory and little exposed to emerging Western air power, thought, concepts and doctrine in the Indian Air Force of the 1960s and 1970s were still heavily reliant on an amalgamation of archaic World War II air power theory, emerging US air power concepts (thanks to a few Indian Air Force fighter pilots who converted onto the Sabre jet in USAF fighter schools in the early 1960s) and an interpretation of Soviet combat employment manuals. This resulted in a predominantly tactical orientation of air power that mainly delivered tactical effects in the 1965 war against Pakistan. Although the Indian Air Force did create some strategic effect in the 1971 war against Pakistan, particularly in the Eastern Theatre and during the Battle for Longewala in the Rajasthan Desert, it was only in the 1980s that it started thinking as a service that truly believed that it had the capability to independently influence war fighting over a wide front; in short, the emergence of a strategic mindset. The credit for this must go primarily to Air Commodore Jasjit Singh who was relentless in his publishing and lecturing across the country on the need to upgrade air power thinking from tactical and operational levels to a higher strategic level. Singh’s first book, Air Power in Modern Warfare, published in 1988, remains his best book,15 primarily for the reason that it has shaped the thinking of an entire generation of military aviators in India and equipped them well to understand modern Western air power theory and operational doctrine when India opened its doors to Western military thought in the 1990s. Another seminal contribution of Jasjit Singh was in the area of Joint Operations.16 Until the late 1970s, air power in India was seen as an adjunct of land power. Its offensive capabilities were merely seen as an extension of artillery and its ability to create strategic effects with tactical action was looked at with amusement by strategic planners. Jasjit Singh preceded his book Air Power in Joint Operations with a widespread awareness campaign in institutions of joint professional military education like the National Defence College, the Higher Command Wing of the Army War College and the Defence Services Staff College, on the importance of the various roles and missions of air power in prosecuting the land campaign. To his advantage, this was also the time when the Air Land Battle Concept was being propounded in NATO as a means of blunting any large-scale Soviet offensive on the plains of Europe. Like Warden, the fighter pilot in Jasjit Singh does not relish the idea of restructuring air power, moving away from the ‘big battle’, and looking at conflict at the lower end of the spectrum of warfare as something that has become inevitable in recent years. We have had many discussions on the issue in recent years. He always tells me, ‘Arjun, I am not entirely comfortable with your focus on 4GW. Do not abdicate your capability to influence other forms of conflict, be it conventional conflict under a nuclear overhang where air power can be a decisive element of a credible secondstrike capability, or a limited high tempo conflict. They are very much a reality in our immediate environment’. Full spectrum capability has now become an integral part Strategic Analysis 247 Downloaded by [Dr Arjun Subramaniam] at 19:54 04 April 2013 of Indian air power doctrine.17 Due credit must go to Air Commodore Jasjit Singh for this. The academics This section attempts to offer thoughts on the contribution of three academics—Dr. Benjamin Lambeth, Prof. Robert Pape and Prof. Colin Gray—to the global discourse on air power. While Regis Chamagne, Jasjit Singh, John Warden and Phillip Meilinger were all operational practitioners of air power who managed to make an impact on global air power discourse over the last two decades, Ben Lambeth started his academic career with a PhD in Political Science from Harvard. Since then, he has arguably assumed the mantle of the foremost air power historian of recent times with his relentless and research-intensive chronicling of recent air campaigns. Ben Lambeth’s tryst with exploring new challenges for air power in a changing world began with his RAND study on the ‘Transformation of American Air Power’.18 This sweeping and predictive treatise offered an initial glimpse into the emerging fault-lines in modern air power, particularly when it looked at the ability of air power to create strategic effects19 on its own; very similar to the decisive effects that I have written about earlier in this article. It also attempted to provide clarity to a still ongoing turf battle across the globe from an American perspective—a battle for control of air power resources and technology. These turf battles have emerged in the wake of numerous arguments that question the indivisibility of air power and suggest that it is more effective in support of surface operations than in stand-alone operations that are aimed at creating strategic effects.20 His relentless pursuit in chronicling air power for posterity has resulted in well-researched books and monographs on aerial campaigns over Kargil, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Gaza. His understanding of technology, the aviator’s mind, and how air power fits into the landscape of modern conflict, makes him an eminently readable and objective air power historian. He is, arguably, the most ardent non-military and academic flag bearer for air power today and one suspects that he is going to play an important role in stimulating ideas in the years ahead on emerging concepts like the ‘Air Sea Battle Concept’, considering that he is now a senior analyst at the Centre for Budgetary Support and Analyses. He is currently in the midst of a seminal research project on the Indian Air Force of the 21st century, and if the final draft is any indicator, it will be the most comprehensive study of the Indian Air Force to date. How ironic it will be that the most comprehensive and objective analysis of the Indian Air Force should come from a Western researcher. His tenacity, insistence on field research, the hours he spent interviewing two generations of IAF leadership, the boyish enthusiasm when it comes to sharing his experiences of flying more than 40 types of aircraft and, most importantly, his objectivity and passion to proliferate the right message about air power makes him a universal ambassador for air power. To round off this overview of air power thought in recent times by giving it a distinctly scholarly flavour, two eminent academics have been chosen—Robert Pape and Colin Gray—on the strength of their outstanding and provocative books, Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War and Air Power for Strategic Effect.21 Their writings attempt to blend political theory, history, theories of warfare in general, and air power theory into eminently readable treatises, for both the discerning student and practitioner of air power. Robert Pape, a Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago who also served on the faculty of the Air University in the 1990s, questions Downloaded by [Dr Arjun Subramaniam] at 19:54 04 April 2013 248 Arjun Subramaniam many of the existing beliefs on the ability of air power to effectively engage in strategic coercion and win wars through the punitive and decapitating aerial action that had gained visibility during Operation Desert Storm. He also challenges the ‘risk strategies’ of air power that were put together as part of nuclear deterrence and argues that convincing the opponent that the risk of subjecting his population centres to relentless attack and punishment from the air was enough to force him to back off from escalating a potentially dangerous confrontation was an over-ambitious and historically unsupported proposition. The essence of his argument lies in his assertion that air power was best utilised in conventional conflict as a means of denying the enemy the space, time and speed to conduct military operations through a variety of interdiction roles at the strategic, operational and tactical levels in conjunction with surface forces, rather than to shape battle spaces on its own to inflict strategic coercion on the enemy. While his arguments may have some strength in the conduct of short and swift conventional military campaigns, they can be contested in the pursuit of strategic coercion in full-spectrum operations, the likes of which are seen today. In Af-Pak, for example, while there is no doubt that boots on the ground are essential for conducting stability operations, it is the kinetic application of air power through precision strikes in the decapitation role against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda that has eroded their leadership base. Without doubt, air power has acted as a powerful strategic coercer in Af-Pak. Even Operation Geronimo, the Seals operation to eliminate Osama bin Laden, rode on the back of air power, which demonstrated its coercive capability even with non-kinetic applications. Libya too is an interesting academic discussion. While denying Gadaffi his military capability to carry out genocide remained the prime operational and tactical objective of the NATO aerial campaign, one cannot but look at the strategic capitulation of the Gadaffi regime being accelerated by the fear of being continuously targeted from the air. Robert Pape offers contrarian views on the ability of air power to create strategic effect on its own, which most operational practitioners find hard to digest. For that very reason, his views need to be discussed and debated. Colin Gray’s latest book, Airpower for Strategic Effect, is voluminous and tough to digest, but equally hard to ignore because it encapsulates nearly four decades of deep thinking and profound articulation on the symbiotic relationship between strategy, warfare and air power. Colin Gray takes on the onerous burden of orchestrating an academic and intellectual revival of air power by revisiting and cementing the relationship between the theory and practice of air power. His underlying fear, which runs through the book and many of his other writings, is that practitioners of air power run the risk of getting carried away by the dynamism22 and seductiveness of technology, platforms, weapons and enablers. He writes quite forcefully that ‘air-minded people are inclined to be impatient with, if not dismissive of, theory and theorists’.23 The crux of his arguments lies in his attempt to link theory and practice in a manner that is easily understandable, in general, by a wide cross-section of air power historians, strategists and practitioners, and in particular air power leadership across the world. According to him, theories of strategy and air power, when combined with historical findings, lead to the emergence of sound doctrine and a completion of the ‘theory loop’. Existing politics, policy, grand strategy, joint military strategy, and air power strategy lead to the closure of the practice loop of air power in the form of operations and tactics.24 Whenever there has been a disconnect between the two loops, application of air power has either been flawed or too much has been expected of air power in terms of what it can and cannot do. Colin Gray’s greatest achievement in his recent book has been to link the recent revival of air power to its correct contextualisation and application across the spectrum of conflict. One suspects that Colin Gray is trying Strategic Analysis 249 Downloaded by [Dr Arjun Subramaniam] at 19:54 04 April 2013 to send a message to the air power community: ‘Hey! All you air power practitioners, will you listen to me when I say that you guys have a powerful tool of war fighting and statecraft; but only as long as you use it as an instrument of policy, and not as a grandiose manifestation of victory being achievable by raining death and destruction from the air’. A brief Chinese perspective The most comprehensive initial explanation of tenets of modern Chinese air power can be found in a monograph put together by a group of RAND researchers entitled Shaking the Heavens and Splitting the Earth.25 The five basic concepts of executing strategic coercion, independent and concentrated use of air power, joint application with other services, strategic force delivery and seizing information and electromagnetic superiority26 reveal a new and aggressive intent. What it also indicates is that the Chinese were willing to project air power as a strategic tool that was based on spectacular advances in Chinese aviation and space technologies. Improved air power capabilities, offensive cyber and space strategies, and the new Anti-Access and Area Denial Strategy,27 seem to be part of a combined strategy to cope with regional threats from a position of strength and use asymmetric strategies to counter the US in the Pacific. A more recent study from the Institute for Strategic Studies of the National Defense University in Washington entitled The Chinese Air Force: Evolving Concepts, Roles and Capabilities28 confirms the transformation of the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) from an air defence-oriented force to one that is increasingly looking at offensive air power as a tool of conventional deterrence. Summary Doctrine provides an overarching framework for creating and refining strategic and operational concepts with assistance from historical analysis. From an Indian perspective, our understanding of air power theory, doctrine and practice has not matured enough to fully exploit it as a decisive tool of statecraft. We simply do not have enough people to proliferate an understanding of air power amongst policy makers and the strategic and academic community. Leaving alone policy makers, the air power community has only partially succeeded in furthering an understanding of air power amongst practitioners of land and maritime power; so much so that there is a pressing need for more air power historians and theorists among our strategic community. There is much scope for improvement within the Indian Air Force too when it comes to creating a self-sustaining loop comprising the various theoretical and historical interfaces, doctrinal and conceptual organisations and departments that formulate strategy. The day this loop becomes interdependent, air power in India will mature as a means to achieving state policy. This article, hopefully, will stimulate further study of air power, not only in our schools of professional military education, but also amongst civilian academics. Notes 1. Colonel Regis Chamagne, The Art of Air War, Collection Strategie & Defense, L’Esprit du livre editions, Sceaux, France, 2007, pp. 125–135. The book is not readily available. However, it is a must-read to understand one of the oldest and proudest air forces of the world. Many of the concepts propounded in the book appear to have been operationally tried out during recent 250 2. 3. 4. 5. Downloaded by [Dr Arjun Subramaniam] at 19:54 04 April 2013 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. Arjun Subramaniam air operations over Libya in a sub-conventional environment and semi-conventional battles in desert terrain. Colonel Regis Chamagne, no. 1. Ibid., p. 135. Ibid., p. 129. Speaking at the Jumbo Mazumdar seminar in Delhi on 3–4 February 2012, Air Vice Marshal Dick Garwood, RAF and Lt. Col. Patrice Hugret, FAF, highlighted the issue of the discriminatory capability and reversibility of air power during the Libyan aerial campaign by citing several examples of targeting orders being countermanded at the last minute by pilots themselves when they were certain that their offensive action had a possibility of causing unwanted collateral damage. This action is part of an articulated philosophy of ‘Zero Dead’ and ‘Zero Collateral Damage’ that was actively practised during the campaign. Colonel Regis Chamagne, no. 1, p. 207. John A. Warden III, The Air Campaign: Planning for Combat, National Defense University Press, Washington, DC, 1988. Also see Col. Phillip S. Meilinger (ed.), The Paths of Heaven: The Evolution of Airpower Theory, Air University Press, Maxwell Air Force Base, AL, 1997. Benjamin S. Lambeth, Transformation of American Airpower, Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London, 2000. Also see Air Power against Terror, RAND Monograph No MG 166, RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, 2005 and Air Operations against Hezbollah: Learning from Lebanon and Getting it Right in Gaza, ‘Project Air Force’, RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, 2011. Col. Phillip S. Meilinger, ‘Ten Propositions Regarding Airpower’, Airpower Journal, Spring 1996, pp. 1–18. Colin S. Gray, Airpower for Strategic Effect, Air University Press, Maxwell Air Force Base, AL, 2012. Richard T. Reynolds, Heart of the Storm: The Genesis of the Air Campaign against Iraq, Air University Press, Maxwell Air Force Base, AL, 1995, p. 15. Ibid., p. 17. Joel Hayward and Tamir Lebal, ‘Reflections on the Maxwell Revolution: John Warden and Reforms in Professional Military Education’, Royal Air Force Air Power Review, 14(1), 2011, p. 24. John Warden, ‘Strategy and Airpower’, Air & Space Power Journal, Volume XXV, No.1, September 2011, at http://www.airpower.au.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/2011/2011-1/2011_1_04_ warden.pdf. Jasjit Singh, Air Power in Modern Warfare, Lancer, New Delhi, 1988. Jasjit Singh, Air Power in Joint Operations (2nd edition), KW Publishers, New Delhi, 2008. Doctrine of the IAF-2012, Air Headquarters, New Delhi. Benjamin S. Lambeth, no. 8. Ibid., chapter 8, pp. 260–296. While Robert Pape argues that the decisive impact of air power in recent times has been more evident in roles and missions that deny the enemy access to immediate military capability, Ben Lambeth and Colin Gray argue that air power, with all its characteristics such as reach, flexibility and precision, has the intrinsic ability to create strategic effect with diverse missions and roles that transcend mere tactical and operational support to surface forces. Robert Pape, Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War, Cornell University Press, Cornell (Ithaca, NY), 1996 and Colin S. Gray, Airpower for Strategic Effect, Air University Press, Maxwell Air Force Base, AL, 2012. Colin S. Gray, no. 10, p. 12. Ibid., p. 27. Ibid., p. 32. Roger Cliff, John Fei, Jeff Hagen, Elizabeth Hague, Eric Heginbotham and John Sillion, Shaking the Heavens and Splitting the Earth: Chinese Air Force Employment Concepts in the 21st Century, Monograph, RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, 2011. Ibid., p. 55. For a detailed analysis of the air sea battle see Jan Van Toll, AirSea Battle: A Point-of-Departure Operational Concept, Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, Washington, DC, 2010, at http://www.csbaonline.org/publications/2010/05/airsea-battle-concept/ (Accessed 29 August 2012). Richard P. Hallion, Roger Cliff and Phillip C. Saunders (eds.), The Chinese Air Force: Evolving Concepts, Roles and Capabilities, National Defense University Press, Washington, DC, 2012.