Air Power its Strategic Role

Contents: Preface. 1. Introduction. 2. Defence and Aerospace industry. 3. Air safety and control management. 4. Contemporary airpower. 5. Air force and aircraft maintenance. 6. Aerodynamics. 7. Airpower and the U.S. Navy. 8. Competing visions of airmobility. 9. Airpower theory. Bibliography. Index. Airpower is the most responsive and in many ways the most useful form of military force yet developed. Increasingly airpower demonstrates the capacity to dominate warfare, yet variations in its effectiveness show that air forces rarely achieve their material potential. The great success with which liberal democracies have employed air forces as instruments of power is most easily attributed to asymmetrical wealth, but this understanding misses the role democratic institutions and value systems play in the development and employment of airpower. As a form of power airpower provides access, speed, precision, and flexibility available from no other form of power. Power however is only as useful as the policy that guides its use. It is incumbent upon airmen, as the ones who understand the nature of conflict and the strengths and limitations of airpower to advise policymakers on its use. This book contains the fundamental and basic information of the subject.