Command of the air: as aircraft have changed, so has the way air power is used. But the goal remains - A Centennial of Flight Special Feature

Airman, Oct, 2003 by Mark Kinkade

In 1912, Giulio Douhet led the first Italian air battalion in the dawning days before World War I. The airplane was a new weapon in the military arsenal, and Douhet was one of a handful who saw its potential.

He made his observations at a time when warfare was about to change. The wholesale carnage of trench warfare appalled many military leaders and politicians. After centuries of human warfare, the concept was still the same: land armies trying to break the resistance of an enemy by direct frontline conflict.

But the aircraft, he said, changed all that. The aircraft meant the pitched battles and trench warfare would be a thing of the past because it gave warring nations the ability to reach behind enemy lines to attack cities, destroy factories and cut vital supply, communications and support lines.

Douhet wanted an air force that could win not just air battles but total command of the air. In his vision, land and sea battles would become a thing of the past. Armies and navies were destined to be defensive organizations only.

Nearly 100 years later, Douhet is still praised by some as one of the world's visionaries for the use of air power. The concept of a massive fleet of attack aircraft has matured.

The Air Force is that fleet, and the idea that air power, as part of a joint force, can control an enemy is a vital element of the United States warfighting strategy.

"The primary mission of the Air Force is to control air and space," said Dr. David Mets, an instructor at the Air Force's School of Advanced Air and Space Studies at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala. "The tactical goals may change, but the strategic goal remains denying sanctuary and controlling the air space."

BREAKING THE STALEMATE

From the first day Army biplanes flew over the Mexican desert on observation patrols for U.S. forces fighting bandits, to Operation Iraqi Freedom, the people behind air power have been learning from history.

But if there is one thing Mets and the other instructors at the air and space studies course want students to learn, it's that history does not repeat itself. And that means air power has to be adaptive. There are some constants, but it has to be capable of changing to meet new threats, environments and conditions. It has to be flexible.

"History is so complex that it cannot be repeated in many of its details," Mets said. "The environments change. Situations change. It may look similar, but those who try to pattern responses based on what they see in history are going to make costly mistakes. We want our leaders to learn to apply lessons with dynamic thinking."

The development of air power strategy has been marked by a series of philosophical struggles between ground strategy theorists who see the airplane as a weapon supporting front line troops or protecting resources, and planners who see air power as a means to not only dominate air space, but deliver the war to the enemy's heartland.

"For a long time, military leadership didn't see the real value of air power," Mets said. "And to be fair, technology wasn't to the point where the aircraft offered what it does today."

Early aircraft were chiefly used to watch enemy troop movements and to gain information about the battlefield. In time, they battled over trenches in World War I, engaged in dogfights with other aircraft, attacked ground troops and disrupted enemy activity near the front lines. After watching armies fill the trenches with each other's blood, it was Douhet who said land-based warfare had become a defensive struggle, and only air power would break the stalemate.

Douhet prophesied a day when fleets of aircraft would rain tons of bombs on enemy towns and cities, striking such terror in the civilian population that they would rise up and demand an end to war. He saw the airplane as a means of sparking internal resistance and strife within the enemy.

AIR POWER TAKES THE STAGE

World War II was a watershed time for air power. For the first time, fleets of heavy bombers flanked by light, lethal fighter escorts hammered enemy hometowns. The terror of war was no longer confined to battlefields miles away from the civilian population. War had reached the homefront.

The concept of reaching the enemy's homeland came of age with Col. William "Billy" Mitchell and his very public rebuke of current military thinking about air power. By the outbreak of war, air power strategists were looking at aircraft with new respect.

"Strategic bombing was designed to go back to vital targets at the very source of enemy power," Mets said. "The Americans, in particular, focused on precision attacks on the key industries of every function."

Technology seemed to make the strategy change possible, he said. From advances in aeronautics, bomb sights and night-flying navigation to survival equipment, fuel and radar, the aircraft carrying the war to the Nazis was a far cry from the wooden biplanes that carved the skies over France in World War I.

After the war, the men who flew the bombers and commanded the bomber wings were at the forefront of leadership in the new Air Force. Technology was speeding up, bringing advances at an alarming pace. The atomic bomb that ended the war with Japan was delivered by aircraft. The Cold War had begun.