A Historical Look At Air Power And its Failure To Deliver Successful Outcomes In War

A U.S. Air Force A-10 Thunderbolt II aircraft moves into position to refuel from a KC-135 Stratotanker aircraft while on a mission over Afghanistan on May 29, 2008. The Stratotanker is assigned to the Expeditionary Air Refueling Squadron, 376th Air Expeditionary Wing. DoD photo by Master Sgt. Andy Dunaway, U.S. Air Force. (Released)

Air Power’s Century of False Promises -- Daniel Swift, New York Times

A HUNDRED years ago today, an Italian airman named Giulio Gavotti dropped three hand grenades out of his monoplane onto a camp of Arab and Turkish troops at Ain Zara, just east of Tripoli, during the Italian-Turkish War. It was the world’s first aerial bombardment. Each grenade weighed three pounds, and it is likely that no one was hurt. “I came back really pleased with the result,” Lieutenant Gavotti wrote to his father. Italian newspapers raved about the sortie: “Terrorized Turks Scatter.”

From this modest beginning, the air raid as a style of war grew both in scale and imagination. Popular novelists like H. G. Wells had been fantasizing about war by airship and flying machine since the late 19th century. When the First World War began, these science fiction scenes recurred in the policy assessments of military planners, who assumed that victory and defeat in a bombing war would be absolute and immediate.

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My Comment: Technology and accurate aerial weapon platforms have transformed air power into tools that military planners could only dream about a few decades ago. But .... air power does have its limits, and that big limit is not having boots on the ground.