Air and Space Power Journal (ASPJ) RSS FEED

Senior Leader Perspective - Team Building: The Next Chapter of Airpower Command and Control in Afghanistan

On 22 May 2011, command of the 9th Air and Space Expeditionary Task Force–Afghanistan (9 AETF-A) shifted from Maj Gen Charles Lyon’s team to ours, and almost immediately we went to work writing the next chapter of airpower support to counterinsurgency operations. As we began our new roles, the 9 AETF-A staff and subordinate commanders were keenly aware of the recent changes to the command and control (C2) architecture of US Air Forces Central (AFCENT) that occurred in November 2010, thus establishing the subtheater C2.¹

Feature Articles - Operationalizing Knowledge: A New Chapter in the Saga of US War Fighting and Cognition

If military operations have evolved since World War II, what can we say about the changing role(s) of the war fighter? Rather than explore the metaphysical and ontological changes attending the modern soldier, this article examines the epistemological evolution of the soldier. In particular, what has evolved or changed is the growing number of US military members working and waging war at the operational level. The article draws ethnographically from the author’s work with a small “core element” operational organization (now defunct) that sought to facilitate and accelerate the formation of various joint task force headquarters responsible for designing, planning, and responding to a host of combatant and noncombatant situations. It shows that the complicated intersection of defense and development in recent nation-building operations is hardwired into and partially the result of operational conceptual thinking and constructs. The article makes the point that operations affect the way we think about knowledge and that this knowledge also shapes the operational level of war.

Feature Articles - Airpower in the Interagency: Success in the Dominican Republic

The Air Force must apply effective airpower within the interagency. Toward that end, this article explores the joint air component coordination element (JACCE) and its applicability to the mission against counter-transnational organized crime. Current and future challenges to US security will increase the need for interagency coordination, collaboration, and integration. The JACCE may be the mechanism to ensure that a mission-specific joint force commander has access to the full capabilities of airpower. To illustrate those capabilities, Lieutenant Colonel Boxx offers an air sovereignty vignette about the rise and fall of illicit drug trafficking into the Dominican Republic from 2003 through 2011. The success of the Sovereign Skies initiative demonstrates the importance of the JACCE within the interagency as well as the increased partnership capacity and capabilities of the Dominican Republic’s air force.

Ricochets And Replies - Air Force Policy for Advanced Education

Air & Space Power Journal encourages worldwide debate about military topics by publishing articles that critique current methods and propose new ideas. We frequently receive Letters to the Editor from readers responding to articles and allow the author an opportunity to reply.

Historical Highlights - Mobility in the Next War

This article from Air University Quarterly Review (Fall 1947) offers insights concerning strategic basing and its effect on global military operations under consideration during the earliest days of our Air Force. Colonel Heflin uses an analysis of the British Navy as the foundation for his perceptive conclusions.

Views - Ten Thousand Feet and Ten Thousand Miles: Reconciling Our Air Force Culture to Remotely Piloted Aircraft and the New Nature of Aerial Combat

The impact and scope of modern remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) demand a reexamination of our cultural assumptions about combat. The needs of combat gave rise to our RPA force, yet institutional incentives inform the members of that force to the contrary. Conventional wisdom holds that RPA crew members are not in combat because their lives are not in danger. This “combat risk” logic is deeply problematic in two regards: (1) technological defenses such as stealth and highly permissive aerial environments do not diminish the reality of combat for manned aircraft, and (2) given the global nature of terrorism and the priority that our enemy places on thwarting RPAs, the argument of lower differential risk is simply untrue. Instead, I propose a logic of “combat responsibility.” Under this model, an individual is engaged in combat if he or she meets two criteria: (1) direct agency in life-and-death outcomes (2) while engaged with the enemy during wartime. This definition captures RPA kinetic strikes and escort duties yet still encompasses manned sorties in combat zones. Thus, we institutionally affirm that an RPA crew, while manning its weapon system, is very much at war.

Views - Long-Range Strike: The Bedrock of Deterrence and America's Strategic Advantage

Long-range strike (LRS) and the often-associated phrase strategic attack are perhaps the most discussed but least understood terms in current military use.¹Despite, or perhaps because of, numerous definitions and formulations, we tend to overlook the real value of LRS capabilities in the minor details of numerous acquisition plans and concepts of operations. Many components comprise America’s power to influence. Yet its ability to project conventional and nuclear military power across the globe at a time and place of our choosing represents the influential backstop for other US instruments of power. The latent threat of violence supported by a credible capability to hold an enemy’s most valued resources at risk with little notice or chance for defense gives LRS its ultimate strategic value. Similarly, nations that maintain a robust LRS historically retain a strategic advantage against peer or near-peer state actors. Although the platform, plan, or strategy may change, the purpose of LRS remains the same—to undergird political will by demonstrating credible, flexible, survivable, and visible military power. If the United States wishes to maintain a strategic advantage across the globe, it should heed lessons learned by past global powers and place capable LRS among the highest priorities for development, investment, and modernization—even in a fiscally constrained environment.

International Feature - Thinking about Air and Space Power in 2025: Five Guiding Principles

Lieutenant General Mercier discusses his views concerning the future of airpower and the impact of today’s decisions on tomorrow’s forces. He provides five principles that leaders can use as they consider the rapidly developing technologies that will determine requirements and capabilities through 2025.

Warrior Feedback - Reflections on Iraq

Welcome to Air and Space Power Journal’s inaugural posting of Warrior Feedback, designed to provide engaging content and opportunities for you to participate in the airpower dialogue.

Selected Air University Research - Remote Sensing and Mass Migration Policy Development

Mass migration is a global problem affecting both displaced persons, their countries of origin, and the nations that voluntarily or involuntarily receive them. The 2010 U.S. National Security Strategy recognized the domestic and international perils that refugees and the underlying causes for their dislocation represent and acknowledged that future conflicts caused by scarce resources, environmental disasters, or refugees were possible.¹ In his Congressional testimony regarding the 2010 Threat Assessment, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair expressed concern about the prospect of mass migration from Cuba or Haiti to the United States. He also warned that population movements caused by climate change could have a negative impact in India, China, Southeast Asia, and Europe within 20 years, resulting in broad national security consequences for the United States.²

Selected Air University Research - Bureaucracy vs. Bioterrorism: Countering a Globalized Threat

Two things are certain: death and taxes! Or maybe just taxes. Scientists are attempting to cheat death with rapidly progressing technologies capable of constructing and manipulating life synthetically from basic chemical elements. While the advancing rates of capability in computing speed, genomics, synthetic biology and nanotechnology have the potential to improve and lengthen life for all humans, they also enable biological weapons that can destroy wide swaths of humanity or attack specific groups of individuals. This confluence of technology is advancing at exponential rates and seems have the advantage over the limited detection, protection and treatment capabilities offered by a lumbering bureaucracy.