Air University Review, March-April 1968

Views on Aerospace Power

Colonel Donald F. Martin

Today the Air Force is composed of diverse skills and disciplines. Tomorrow we must expect the trend toward specialization to continue, with even more shredouts required to cope effectively with the accretion of knowledge important to national defense.

Yet, is it possible that our efforts toward increased professionalism will result in the virtual elimination of professional airmen? Will this trend substitute a genus of military weapon system “operator”?-an operator whose primary concern is the manipulation of weapon systems in combat? It is, perhaps, all too possible.

Of course specialization produces a degree of expertise obtainable in no other way. We are inundated with knowledge, and there are only 24 hours in a day.

But the “force” which creates the need for our individual skills is the Air Force. The Air Force, with its contribution to national defense, is our entire reason for being. General McConnell has a sign on his office door which reads:

The Mission of the United States Air Force Is To Fly and Fight. Don’t You Ever Forget It.

It is a motto credited to the 388th Tactical Fighter Wing, Korat, Thailand.

With specialization upon us, we cannot let the entire job of being professional airmen fall to the commander, the planner, or a select few. We must all make every effort to remain professional airmen. There is more to being an airman than wearing the Air Force blue. And there is certainly far more to being a professional airman than supporting or operating a weapon system.

The professional airman, whether logistician, comptroller, or information specialist, must have a grasp of the fundamental polemics inherent in military theory. This awareness and understanding of competing or complementary military viewpoints comprise one of the characteristics which sets the professional military man apart from those individual, narrow disciplines he employs in his daily pursuits.

While most of us do not expect to qualify as expert strategists or tacticians, many students of national defense and all professional airmen can form opinions with regard to the military instrument, based upon their individual experiences and persuasions. What follows is the statement of one airman’s views on several aspects of aerospace power views which have evolved during 25 years spent in a variety of Air Force occupations, hopefully as a professional airman. These views are added to the continuing dialogue found in the pages of Air University Review in the hope that they may be useful in stimulating the specialized reader to crystallize his own thinking on similar issues.

Guerrilla Warfare

Guerrilla warfare has one unique characteristic for airmen which sets it apart from a higher intensities of military conflict. Guerrillas by definition do not have air power support. If an external power supporting an insurgency were to employ air power (except perhaps for clandestine aerial resupply) to aid the insurgents, the convict would no longer conform to the concept of guerrilla warfare. It would take on the overt aggression characteristics of a limited war. Likewise, if guerrillas themselves possessed air vehicles, the conflict would involve a level of military sophistication and directness associated with the clash of modern military forces.

In its present state of technological development, air power, with its required supporting structure, would provide a precise military “point of focus,” clarity, and definition to an important part of the battlefield that would be entirely incompatible with guerrilla warfare, which capitalizes upon concealment, surprise, and lack of a front line. Thus, air power can be exploited, on a continuing basis, only by that military force within the country which is defending against the guerrillas. Moreover, if the convict were to remain a guerrilla war, air power could not be used by the guerrillas even in the third and final phase when large pitched battles may be expected, as at Dine Bien Phu. While the French there may have recognized their air monopoly for the application of military force against the Vietminh, the inept manner in which they employed their quantitatively and qualitatively inadequate Air Force could not reverse their hopeless position. Those mistakes are not being repeated.

The military/political environment obtaining in Southeast Asia today is different in important respects from that which existed in the Indochina war of the early 1950s. One significant difference lies in the availability now of superior air power in quantity.

Several years ago air power in Vietnam was limited by constraints placed upon its composition and employment deriving from the 1954 Geneva accords. One such constraint prevented utilization of our more effective aircraft, including jets, and another prohibited combat by aircraft manned by USAF crews.

Widespread and continuing violations of the Geneva accords by the Communists made it militarily and politically important in 1963-64 for the United States to bring into play our most appropriate air delivery vehicles, in quantity, armed with more effective conventional weapons, managed in a manner to increase effectiveness and decrease command redundancy, and employed in support of ground forces so as to (a) place the Viet Cong on the defensive by spoiling operations and then (b) find, fix, and neutralize them.

In Vietnam tactical air power has proven to be the most efficient casualty-producing means on a man-for-man basis. However, its greatest potential in guerrilla conflicts is when nationalist/ allied forces are on the offense, rather than the defense.

While air power has been decisive in defensive operations by reason of its quick response and concentration of firepower, it can and should take a much greater toll of guerrillas in offensive operations. With ground forces in the role of finding, concentrating, and fixing the VC, close air support becomes a most effective means of eliminating guerrillas, usually without the necessity for ground forces physically overwhelming enemy defensive positions and strong points except in mop-up actions.

As counter tactics, the guerrilla options are either to infiltrate the attacking government troops and try to maintain very close but distinct frontal contact with them, or to break contact and try to flee. The comparative attractiveness of these two defensive tactics is markedly influenced by the disparity in numerical strength, firepower, and aggressiveness between the guerrillas and the government forces, and the ability to close the guerrillas’ escape routes.

An evaluation of the desirability, or even necessity, of employing parallel air force command and operational control structures appears to require a review of certain fundamentals of air power which have become quite clear to the professional airman over the course of the past fifty-odd years. In the air over Vietnam today operate aircraft of the Vietnamese Air Force and of the U.S. Army, Marine Corps, Navy, and Air Force. Some of the missions performed by air vehicles in counterguerrilla warfare are close air support, direct (but not close) air support, interdiction, escort, armed reconnaissance, airborne forward air controller, combat liaison/observation, airborne/airland assault, and airborne/ airland resupply. Although it is sometimes overlooked, a single type of air vehicle may perform several different missions effectively.

Requirements for support of air vehicles include ordnance (for offensive air vehicles), crews, ground servicing and maintenance personnel/facilities, POL, communications systems (including communications interface between “users” and “providers”), navigational aids, and command and control systems. These are requisite to the employment of air power irrespective of which service may own, direct, or operate particular air vehicles.

Similarly, the versatile nature of vehicles constructed to function in the atmosphere, coupled with the three-dimensional medium in which they operate, makes it virtually inevitable that air vehicles belonging to one service will essentially duplicate (with varying degrees of effectiveness in the performance of singular design parameters) the capabilities of air vehicles belonging to other services.

Finally, the physical characteristics of the medium in which air power functions produce the same effects upon all air vehicles. Inherent advantages and limitations imposed upon air power under combat conditions are unalterably the same for all services. For example, the loss of air vehicles to ground fire over the target is influenced by the type, deployment, intensity, and accuracy of the ground fire, as well as the number of simultaneously attacking air vehicles, their physical characteristics as a target, speed, method of attack, and the intensity and accuracy of integral counter fire.

It would seem that the absence of an “air war” in a guerrilla environment obscures certain fundamentals applicable to the employment of air power at higher intensities of conflict (e.g., achieving air superiority, isolation of the battlefield, and classic interdiction), with the result that fragmentation of air resources and use of obsolescent air vehicles are permitted, even encouraged, due to the lack of opposing air power. However, it could be dangerous indeed to base future Air Force composition and structure on the U.S. experience in Southeast Asia, which is the product of political constraints that may not again obtain.

In any event, the capability of air forces to fight at higher intensities of conflict should in no way be degraded to accommodate increased effectiveness in purely guerrilla struggles. If the need is great enough, then separate air vehicles optimized for guerrilla warfare in various geographical environments should be created; they could be “written off” or taken out of play at higher intensities of conflict.

Limited War

Proceeding up the ladder of “escalation” (as it is popularly known) from guerrilla warfare, one encounters limited war. There may be several rungs on the ladder between guerrilla and limited war¹ but for purposes of this article it is enough to distinguish between those lower-intensity conflicts wherein the insurgents have no air capability, the defenders having a monopoly, and those higher-intensity conflicts* wherein both adversaries are expected to employ air—at least initially until the air war is won and one nation possesses the capability to penetrate any portion of the opponent’s territory with acceptable attrition.

The decisive nature of such military advantage has been amply illustrated in recent years by the Middle East conflicts of 1956 and 1967, which saw the destruction of the Arab air forces in a matter of hours, with all that such loss implied for continued Arab resistance.

Limited wars of substantial duration are wars of attrition in the classic sense. They may be “limited” only in the sense that certain weapons are not employed, certain targets are avoided, or the conflict is confined to certain political entities or geographical areas. All wars of recent times have been limited in the respect that total annihilation of the opponent and “stone upon stone” destruction were not carried out.

Some six years ago, attention was focused on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the then new strategy of conventional defense and “negotiating pauses.” The “trip wire” strategy, which the “flexible response” replaced, had been designed to act as a trigger for “massive retaliation” should aggression by sizable forces be directed against NATO —particularly West Germany—even if the aggression were committed with conventional weapons.

The Kennedy Administration was opposed to this all-or-nothing choice, feeling it to be too restrictive. President Kennedy wanted many “options,” or alternatives, for many possible eventualities. Of particular concern was the policy that the United States must not be bound to making a nuclear response to a conventional attack. A virtual blueprint for the new Administration’s military policy was found in General Maxwell Taylor’s The Uncertain Trumpet.²

The possibility of a limited conventional war in Europe arose, to the consternation of the West Europeans.  The basis for their concern was understandable. Two tenets of conventional war were particularly alarming and distasteful: (a) that a successful offense should be based upon numerical superiority on the order of three to one over the defense, and (b) that a successful conventional defense must be constructed in depth. Collapse of the Maginot Line, virtually intact, supported the latter tenet.³

Being constructed for purposes of defense rather than offense, NATO ground forces were numerically inferior to those of the U.S.S.R. and the Eastern bloc.**  This, on the surface, gave rise to the expectation that the only possible nonnuclear response to a massive attack would be a well-conceived retrograde maneuver designed to slow, stall, and contain the attack—at least until the political leaders of the attacking force could be made to come to their senses, realize the enormity of their act, and appreciate the fact that the consequences of continuing the aggression would be U.S. use of nuclear weapons, with all the implications which this would have for both sides.

So far, so good. Yet there were those in West Germany (and other Western European nations) who were unhappy with the options available to NATO at this juncture, particularly if the Communists did not elect to return to the prehostilities boundary with NATO. If the attackers held their ground and refused to divest themselves of territory already taken, numerically inferior NATO forces lacked the superior conventional strength in-being to counterattack successfully and retake the lost territory. Worse, if tactical nuclear weapons were then employed against the attackers, “the bomb” would fall on West Germany, since that would be the location of the most threatening part of the enemy forces. Not entirely without reason, some argued that conventional defenses in NATO, based upon numerical inferiority, would be far more costly and destructive to the defending nations than to employ tactical nuclear weapons at the outset of aggression, hoping that the shock effect would restore sanity. Or, failing that, they argued that atomic destruction of the aggressor’s forces would then take place on his homeland rather than wait until he had occupied NATO territory and then use nuclear weapons in an area populated by friend and foe alike in an equivocal effort to dislodge him. Regardless of the true merits of the competing points of view, they engendered nationalistic feelings on the Continent.

The new U.S. military policy also held implications for our Asian commitments. Since the possibility of involvement with Communist China’s military forces in Southeast Asia cannot be ruled out at this writing, that policy will be very cursorily treated with these few observations. Anticipating involvement in an ever larger ground war on the Asian mainland should be expected to raise immediate questions of calling up the reserves,*** raising draft quotas, imposing price and wage controls, and rationing—or use of nuclear weapons—all of which are politically sensitive issues in any situation wherein an urgent, fearsome threat to U.S. security is not completely apparent or generally agreed to.

With regard to conventional limited war, particularly a greatly expanded ground war on the Asian mainland, it would be difficult to foretell at the outset if the U.S. people would willingly pay the price required of a long drawn-out classic war of attrition. Over a period of time, pressure could conceivably build to employ our most effective weapons.

General War

Admittedly, attempting to define “general war” is to enter a semantic morass.⁵ Yet our national military budget is structured around strategic forces, which connote general war, and general-purpose forces, which would seem to connote all lesser intensities of conflict. Moreover, I am persuaded that only the use of nuclear weapons and employment of some  portion of the strategic forces would ultimately be classified as a “general” war because, regardless of the apparent success of an opponent’s conventional efforts on the battlefield, the “loser” need not submit without employing, or threatening to employ, its nuclear capability in an effort to reverse or modify the outcome.

In bringing strategic nuclear forces into play, a nation may have a variety of options for employment, depending upon the size and diversification of the nuclear force. Alternatives range from the initial destruction of a single target, usually depicted as a city, to the exchange of complete arsenals under a counter value targeting concept.

The counterforce concept of war, even at the highest intensities of conflict, has as its objective destruction of the opposing military force to the degree necessary to achieve unquestioned military ascendancy, if not absolute military dominance, and the acceptance by the opponent of terms for cessation of hostilities in consonance with national objectives.⁶ In an environment in which major powers with differing political objectives possess sufficient nuclear weapons to assure inflicting an unacceptable level of damage from a second-strike posture, viability in nuclear weaponry is dependent upon a capability for the utmost discrimination in the application of nuclear force. For example, if a particular crisis warrants resort to nuclear weapons to achieve military or political advantage, they should normally be applied against selected targets in such a discriminating fashion that the urban/industrial base remains largely undamaged. Under these conditions the opponent may be made to realize that his nation and people, as a socioeconomic entity, are very much alive although they may have lost substantial military forces. If enemy leaders are aware that their country is largely unharmed, it would be difficult indeed for them to reach a decision to launch a countervalue (city-busting) attack, with the full realization that in so doing they would be exposing to annihilation by their opponent’s remaining forces⁷ the very life of the nation they were seeking to protect.

In nuclear warfare, care must be continually exercised to assure that there remains as wide a difference as possible between the desired response, dictated by realistic political objectives, and the unwanted irrational resort to indiscriminate destruction. One should always seek to make the desired response far more attractive to the opponent than his futile resort to certain national suicide.

Discrimination in the application of nuclear weapons places a premium upon accuracy and small yields for most military targets. So often one forgets that a I-kiloton bomb exerts 1000 pounds per square inch overpressure outward for some 150 feet from the center of the explosion. Few targets would seem to require more than 1000 psi to effect their destruction. The central problem in the discriminating application of nuclear weapons, then, is not in packaging 1 kt in a warhead or bomb. Rather, it is in acquiring, identifying, penetrating to, and placing the warhead accurately upon the target.

For these reasons, as well as the quantitative/qualitative requirements of offensive vehicles and defensive systems, the newest members of the “nuclear club” do not possess the variety of alternatives for employment that are available to the major nuclear powers. “More bang for a buck” was, and is, a truism. Larger megaton weapons are far more economical and possess far less utility.

A nation with only a few nuclear weapons obviously must plan to employ them against significant area targets (cities), since such weapons are ideal for creating gross devastation. Moreover, the targeting of purely military forces may be expected to require numbers of weapons greatly exceeding those available to the new and small nuclear force.

On balance, however, it would seem that a nuclear capability limited by size and composition to counter-city employment could only protect against a similarly conceived counter-city attack. Perhaps more important, such a restricted nuclear capability for assured destruction could give a false sense of security to its possessor. For example, if the larger nuclear power did not “cooperate” by attacking the small power’s urban/industrial base, the smaller power might find employment of its nuclear force against the attacker’s cities a totally irrational act entirely unsuited to the situation. In such a case, the availability of some degree of counterforce capability would become critical to the smaller power or accommodation to the opponent’s demands would appear to be far more attractive than “national destruction.”

Today the U.S. has the strategic “edge,” if not overwhelming superiority, and some measure of “damage limiting” capability. It could possess a far more discriminating counterforce capability if it deemed the need urgent to national security.

Military Superiority

Some basic tenets of military power are presently open to question. One involves the utility of military superiority.⁸

Oddly enough, U.S. strategic predominance has had a beneficial effect upon the international demeanor of the world’s second most-powerful nation. Something of a detente would appear to exist, at least for the moment, between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. Yet that same U.S. military power has not, thus far, clearly demonstrated a comparable ability to influence decisively the external conduct of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam [North Vietnam] (DRV) and Communist China.

Based upon the present U.S. experience in Southeast Asia, it could be concluded that the influence of total force superiority is minimal at the lower intensities of conflict and that its influence tends to increase as the intensity of conflict increases.⁹

The value of the air power contribution to overall military superiority in Southeast Asia continues to be debated. The Viet Cong have no air power. Communist China does not as yet have a large deliverable nuclear capability. Despite the advantages this situation would seem to offer, U.S. air power is alleged by some not to have had the desired influence upon the Southeast Asia conflict. It has been said that air power has been given every opportunity to display its decisiveness—and has failed to deliver.

If total force superiority, including unquestioned air superiority, cannot effectively elicit the desired response from our opponents, then the utility of that military superiority, of itself, would seem to be limited to deterring direct attack against the U.S. proper. Alternatively, perhaps the lesson may be that latent military superiority is of questionable utility in dealing with the lower intensities of conflict. Such a conclusion comes hard indeed, even if it is the well-reasoned product of the real world political environment. Bringing total military superiority to bear in conflicts with limited objectives cannot be accomplished without risk; however, our military defeat is not an option available to our opponents at the lower intensities of conflict. Nor is our acquiescence to a less-than-favorable negotiated settlement a remote possibility for our opponents, if we do not wish to submit to it.

Military Strategy
for the Future

Fear of nuclear weapons—regardless of size and manner of employment —and the corollary fear of uncontrolled or uncontrollable escalation represent the single largest factor which will, realistically, influence our future military strategy. For this reason, maintenance of a distinct margin of nuclear superiority should remain the foundation of our future military strategy.

As an inherent aspect of total force superiority, emphasis should be placed on acquiring the technology required for a military capability in space. To date we have displayed only passive space systems: communication, navigation, meteorology, geodesy, reconnaissance, and space-vehicle cataloguing seem well established.

There is also some agreement within the professional military that the world needs or may shortly need a space system to inspect and neutralize, if necessary, hostile, noncooperating space vehicles.

Hopefully, the passive nature of our space program may influence Russian efforts and behavior in space. If this comes to pass, it could be beneficial to both sides. However, just as our unilateral decision to stop nuclear testing was made capital of by the U.S.S.R., which subsequently broke the moratorium, we could not unilaterally restrict our military space efforts to the development and employment of passive or purely defensive weapons without some risk to our security. As a personal view, it would appear to be in consonance with the recent space treaty if the United States were to perform the research necessary to development of a military space capability, against the possibility of the need arising, while stopping short of actually producing any system not permissible under the treaty.

For perhaps the indefinite future, the United States should expect to furnish the bulk of the strategic defense of the free world. Our allies should continue to be asked to furnish stepped-up contributions of conventional forces for the lower intensities of conflict, as in Southeast Asia. Even if this were to come about, it would seem that the U.S. experience in Southeast Asia demands a substantial increase in U.S. general-purpose forces for land, sea, and air.

Based upon the past, it would seem that as the intensity level of conflict decreases, direct involvement of U.S. forces should correspondingly diminish until, at the level of true guerrilla warfare, the U.S. contribution should be principally materiel and the training of indigenous forces.¹⁰ Conversely, as the intensity of conflict increases, so must direct participation of greater numbers of U.S. forces. Finally, at the highest level of conflict, general war, the defense of the free world must continue to depend, for the near term at least, almost entirely upon U.S. forces in-being. Thus, viewing the spectrum of conflict from cold war through guerrilla and limited war to general war, we see an ascending order of relative U.S. commitment to the total free world effort—as well as an ascending order of threat to U.S. national security.

When addressing the problem of future military strategy to achieve national objectives, writers obscure an important issue by their conflicting conceptual articles on “victory,” “win,” “overkill,” “mutual deterrence,” “finite deterrence,” “flexible response,” the “oceanic theory,” and the like. Irrespective of the particular political environment in which the military is called into play, and despite political or policy constraints upon military operations, the U.S. must continue in the future to build toward a capability to defeat potential opponents decisively.

Any lesser goal, such as attempting to judge the composition and force posture of a military establishment necessary merely to “deny the enemy his objective” from a position of “stability” or “parity” could become extremely dangerous.

If the ultimate national objective is to be content with perpetuating a stalemate, that objective may be achieved—but it could prove deficient, and then all would be lost. On the other hand, striving for unmistakable superiority may not produce an unbeatable, or certain, defense—but such an objective would seem to have a far better chance of achieving the lesser state of stalemate.

On Balance

Capabilities of the individual services to carry out the military strategies for various intensities of conflict are obviously equivocal in many instances. However, certain generalities may be made with reasonably high confidence.

The prospects of general nuclear war eventuating in the near term are minimal, due in part to unquestioned U.S. nuclear offensive capability and in part to the inevitable gross devastation that would result from use of the higher-yield weapons in an environment virtually devoid of highly effective active and passive defenses.

At the lowest intensity of overt military conflict, guerrilla war, the experience, tactics, and doctrine exist within each service for engaging collectively in potentially effective insurgency and counterinsurgency. While this know-how may be imparted to local forces, and U.S. industrial capacity is unquestionably capable of supplying the materiel needs of several guerrilla conflicts simultaneously, commitment of U.S. ground forces in quantity poses a more difficult problem. There are finite limits on the number of U.S. troops that could prudently be deployed in support of counterinsurgency operations.

With regard to limited conventional war along the lines of classic wars of attrition, the capability of U.S. forces obviously is dramatically influenced by the opponent, the area of the world involved, and the course of conflict during the buildup phase. Keeping the ocean lines of communication open against the 25 odd Chinese Communist submarines presents an entirely different prospect from that of keeping them open in the face of 400 to 500 Soviet subs.

Likewise, ground force requirements to defend NATO are easier to accommodate than similar requirements to defend effectively against large-scale use of Chinese Communist forces in Asia. The outcome of an air war between U.S. forces and the Chinese Communists can be predicted with high confidence, while the outcome of a conventional air war involving the U.S.S.R. is equivocal at best. Yet it seems improbable indeed that serious conventional conflict between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. could take place in the near term without the introduction of nuclear weapons.

The outcome of most wars cannot be predicted with certainty. The course and termination of armed conflict are the result of the interaction of many influences, some of which cannot be reliably tested in peacetime.

It is likely that at least some careful calculations prior to the recent Arab-Israeli war showed the well-armed, quantitatively superior Arab bloc as far stronger than the forces of Israel. Yet the skilled employment of tactical forces in the conflict proved otherwise. Perhaps the greatest benefit for professional airmen to be derived from study of that war is the re-emphasis it gives to the importance of basic doctrine for effective employment of air forces.

The decisive nature of aerospace power, when skillfully employed, is a visible lesson from past and present. The import of those experiences lies unrecognized or neglected only at great peril for our nation and the free world. Thus, it behooves the Air Force to continue to shape its thinking on the future use of its forces with the objective of winning military decisions—notwithstanding the likelihood of termination of conflicts in other ways.

Office of the Secretary of the Air Force

*Treatment of the air war in the north is intentionally omitted. While effectiveness of air strikes there may be legitimately examined to a limited extent, such operations are so closely attuned to political considerations as to make objective and meaningful evaluation of purely military considerations virtually impossible at this time.

**The importance of the numerical/qualitative disparity was significantly reduced in Secretary McNamara’s budget presentation before Congress in 1964.⁴

***Quite apart from the issue of calling up the reserves in response to Chinese Communist intervention with military forces, the question has been raised by Congress and news media with regard to the war in South Vietnam should the need for further increases in military manpower rise significantly.

 

 

Notes

1. Herman Kahn, Thinking About the Unthinkable (New York: Horizon Press, 1962), pp. 185-208.

2. Maxwell D. Taylor, The Uncertain Trumpet (New York: Harper, 1960).

3. Samuel P. Huntington, “The Dimensions of Military Policy,” in Chap. 1, Vol. IV, National and Military Strategy, Air War College Associate Programs, 1963-64 edition, p. 34.

4. “How Many Military Options Are Enough?” Supplement to the Air Force Policy Letter for Commanders, No. 130, April 1964, pp. 23-24. “Capabilities and Employment of General Purpose Forces,” Chap. 9, Vol. IV, National and Military Strategy, Air War College Associate Programs, 1963-64 edition, p. 12, citing Armed Forces Management, Vol. 10, April 1964.

5. Woodford A. Hellin, “Terminology Control and National Strategy,” Air University Review, XIV, 4 (September-October 1963), 21-36. 

6. Richard Fryklund, 100 Million Lives (New York: Macmillan, 1962), pp. 20-32.

7. Donald F. Martin, “Manned Combat Aircraft in Nuclear War,” Flying, September 1963.

8. Herman Kahn, On Thermonuclear War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960), pp. 579-80.

9. Rodger Swearingen, “Mao Tse-tung: Ruler of Red China,” in Focus: World Communism (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1964), p. 80.

10. Statement (author unnamed) before House Foreign Affairs Committee, 25 March 1964, in Chap. 16, Vol. IV, National and Military Strategy, Air War College Associate Programs, 1963-64 edition, pp. 32-35.

Additional References

The following useful sources supplement those cited in the notes.

“Counterinsurgency in Perspective,” Chap. 10 of Vol. IV, National and Military Strategy, Air War College Associate Programs, 1963-64 edition, pp. 9-10.

Fall, Bernard B. Street Without Joy. Harrisburg: Stackpole, 1964 (revised).

Fall, Bernard B. The Two Vietnams. New York: Praeger, 1963.

Hadley, Arthur T. The Nation’s Safety and Arms Control. New York: Viking, 1961.

Halperin, Morton H. China and the Bomb. New York: Praeger, 1965.

Kaufmann, William W. The McNamara Strategy. New York: Harper & Row, 1964.

Kissinger, Henry A. The Necessity for Choice. New York: Harper, 1961.

Morgenstern, Oskar. Question of National Defense. New York: Random House, 1959.

Morgenthau, Hans J. Impasse of American Foreign Policy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962.

Schelling, Thomas C., and Morton H. Halperin. Strategy and Arms Control. New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1961.

Strausz-Hupe, Robert, William R. Kintner, and Stefan T. Possony. A Forward Strategy for America. New York: Harper, 1961.

Contributor

Colonel Donald F. Martin is chief, Plans and Programs Division, Offices of Information, Office of the Secretary of the Air Force.  He entered the service as an aviation cadet and was graduated from pilot training in 1943.  Assigned to the Eighth Air Force, England, he flew 30 combat missions.  His postwar assignments have been as student, Statistical School, Harvard University; in the Comptroller Office, Headquarters Air Material Command; in the Comptroller’s Office, 59th Air Depot Wing, Burtonwood, England, 1948-51; in the Directorate of Flight Safety Research, Norton AFB, California, 1951-54; as student, Air Command and Staff College, 1955; in the Strategic Air Command, 1955-58, becoming Deputy Director of Operations, 38th Air Division, in 1957; in the Directorate of Plans, DCS/Plans and Operations, Hq USAF, 1958-63; in charge of Project CHECO (Contemporary Historical Evaluations of Countersurgency Operations), Hq PACAF, 1963-65; and in the Tactical Evaluation Center, Hq PACAF, from 1965 until his present assignment in June 1966.  Colonel Martin completed the Air War College Seminar Program in 1966.

Disclaimer

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.

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