Contents

Senior Leader Perspective

• Team Building:
  The Next Chapter of Airpower Command and Control in Afghanistan
  Maj Gen Tod D. Wolters, USAF
  Lt Col Joseph L. Campo, USAF

  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 (Read More)

  

Feature Articles

• Operationalizing Knowledge:
  A New Chapter in the Saga of US War Fighting and Cognition
  Philip Kao

  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 (Read More)

  

• Airpower in the Interagency:
  Success in the Dominican Republic
  Lt Col S. Edward Boxx, USAF

  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, (Read More)

  

Ricochets And Replies

• Air Force Policy for Advanced Education
  Lt Col Loretta J. Lombard, FLANG

  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.

  (Read More)
  

Historical Highlights

• Mobility in the Next War
  Colonel Clifford J. Heflin

  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.

  (Read More)
  

Views

• Ten Thousand Feet and Ten Thousand Miles:
  Reconciling Our Air Force Culture to Remotely Piloted Aircraft and the New Nature of Aerial Combat
  Maj Dave Blair, USAF

  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 (Read More)

  

• Long-Range Strike:
  The Bedrock of Deterrence and America's Strategic Advantage
  Maj Wade S. Karren, USAF

  Long-range strike (LRS) and the often-associated phrase strategic attack are perhaps the most discussed but least understood terms in current military use.¹ Despite, or perhaps because of, numerous definitions and formulations, we tend to overlook the real value of LRS capabilities in the minor details of numerous (Read More)

  

International Feature

• Thinking about Air and Space Power in 2025:
  Five Guiding Principles
  Lt Gen Denis Mercier, French Air Force

  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. (Read More)

  

Warrior Feedback

• Reflections on Iraq
  Lt Gen Dave Goldfein, USAF

  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.

  (Read More)
  

Selected Air University Research

• Remote Sensing and Mass Migration Policy Development
  Mary D. Dysart, DAFC

  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 (Read More)

  

• Bureaucracy vs. Bioterrorism:
  Countering a Globalized Threat
  Lt Col Stephen G. Hoffman, USAF

  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 (Read More)

  

Book Reviews

• 

  Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power
  Robert Kaplan

  Those familiar with Robert Kaplan's work will know that he has a reputation for unorthodox analysis that is rooted in his broad and deep study of history and supplemented by his extensive travels through the countries about which he writes. I have always found Kaplan to be provocative and thoughtful, and his articles and books are more than worth the time it takes to work through them. One of his latest works, Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power, does not disappoint in this regard and provides a well-written analysis of the region and how it could shape America's future in the world.

• 

  Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do about It
  Richard A. Clark and Robert K. Knake

  A few years back, the US Air Force presented me with a professional development opportunity that proved to be a tremendous personal challenge. I received orders to become director of war-fighting integration in SAF/XC, our service’s communications and computers directorate in the Pentagon. At the time of assignment notification, my beautiful bride astutely observed, “You know in this world of ones and zeroes, you’re a zero, don’t you?” Candidly speaking, I must confess that even after a year of Headquarters Air Force experience with all things cyber, I remain a zero in this area. That said, the SAF/XC job did pique my interest in this fascinating new domain through which we project airpower in defense of our nation.

• 

  Three Cups of Tea
  Greg Mortenson and Ravid Oliver Relin

  Many of us have drunk the tea. Many have personal experiences and stories set in the rugged mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan during the war on terror. Greg Mortenson went there as a scraggly mountain climber and emerged as a humanitarian leader. The story of his failed attempt to climb a mountain called K2 and the people who came to his aid forms the setting for a lifetime of work. Despite his noble intentions and the bestseller status of his book, Mortenson today finds himself in the midst of controversy. The veracity of some events he related in Three Cups has been challenged by American journalists, and mismanagement of the humanitarian foundation he founded is alleged.

• 

  Hubert R. Harmon: Airman, Officer, Father of the Air Force Academy
  Phillip S. Meilinger

  The structures in the cadet area of the US Air Force Academy (USAFA) are named for Airmen who seem to personify the function of those edifices. Buildings affecting cadet life, such as the dormitories, dining hall, and social center, carry the names of air war heroes (e.g., Lance Sijan), airpower combatant commanders (e.g., Hoyt Vandenberg and Hap Arnold), and airpower visionaries (e.g., Billy Mitchell). The academic buildings are named for prominent Air Force educators (e.g., Muir Fairchild and Robert McDermott).

• 

  Shield of Dreams: Missile Defense and U.S.-Russian Nuclear Strategy
  Stephen J. Cimbala

  Stephen J. Cimbala’s Shield of Dreams offers more than a traditional overview of and discourse on missile defense. In this well-written text, the author seeks to show the reader how strategic force models with different force-structure configurations would affect any missile defense configuration. A nuclear strategist who published extensively on superpower force structures during the Cold War, Cimbala has moved on to the twenty-first century, with its multipolarity and nonstate actors—both of which have an effect on strategy and new defense calculations.

• 

  Daring Young Men: The Heroism and Triumph of the Berlin Airlift, June 1948–May 1949
  Richard Reeves

  In his well-chosen title, Richard Reeves clearly lays out his purpose of revealing the bravery and achievement of a military operation often misunderstood or overlooked by Americans today. He explains in the introduction that studies of the post–World War II period sometimes paid little, if any, attention to the Berlin airlift and that students regularly confused it with later Cold War hostilities taking place after the official division of Germany (p. xv).

• 

  In the Graveyard of Empires: America’s War in Afghanistan
  Seth G. Jones

  Drawn from recently declassified documents and hundreds of interviews with the architects of US policy in Afghanistan, Seth G. Jones’s new work explains how the US military campaign, despite its early successes, ultimately stalled in Afghanistan. In the Graveyard of Empires is replete with insiders’ insights, including the perspectives of Colin Powell, Richard Armitage, Zalmay Khalilzad, Ronald Neumann, Lt Gen Karl W. Eikenberry, Lt Gen David W. Barno, Wendy Chamberlin, Robert Grenier, and Graham Fuller. The inclusion of viewpoints from the State Department, Defense Department, and Central Intelligence Agency also indicates the disconnected nature of their objectives in Afghanistan.