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Essay

The True Worth of Air Power

Robert A. Pape

Precision air weapons have revolutionized modern warfare, but not by making it easier to kill enemy leaders. Decapitation alone still doesn't work; wars are still won by pummeling troops in the field. The new weaponry makes it easier to hammer the enemy's forces from the air--but only when they are kept in place by ground forces.

A Neater Way to Win

Merrill A. McPeak

Robert Pape ("The True Worth of Air Power," March/April 2004) seems to think that all modern war is of a kind, featuring large formations of mechanized infantry, artillery, and armor. He asserts that wars are still decided "the old-fashioned way," by pounding opposing forces into submission. He concedes that the advent of air-delivered precision-guided munitions (PGMS) has made the task easier; formerly the largely ineffective handmaiden to ground forces, air power is now a "hammer" to be used in concert with the ground forces' "anvil." Still, Pape argues, it would be a mistake to think of air power as useful on its own, particularly when it is put to the service of a "decapitation" strategy-the elimination of enemy leadership-which "has never been effective." As a consequence, tomorrow's Air Force should look much like yesterday's, with perhaps a "few F-22s (or electronically upgraded F-15s)," but mostly lots of relatively cheap "bomb trucks."

Pape concludes that "precision air weapons ... have not brought about the revolution often proclaimed by many air power advocates." Yet he also notes that in just over a decade the United States "has won five major wars ... at the cost of only about 400 combat fatalities overall." This hardly describes old-fashioned warfare; on the contrary, something remarkable must have happened. In fact, the widespread use of PGMS has indeed enabled air power to deliver on its early promise.

As Pape notes, the old way of bombing was to miss the target. The average miss distance for all U.S. bombs dropped on Germany during World War II was about a kilometer. By the Vietnam War, it had improved to 100 meters, still leaving bombs ineffective against many targets. Now, with PGMS, bombing accuracy is about 10 meters-good enough against most targets. Yet Pape seems to think that "hitting" is only a slight variation on "missing." From the target's point of view, however, the outcome is binary.

It is true that the transition to accurate weaponry occurred rather slowly with air-to-ground munitions. But air-to-air weaponry evolved rapidly. Dumb bullets were replaced long before dumb bombs, because flight officers were convinced their first job was to take away the enemy's hammer. Pape ignores this progress, however-a curious omission in an article about the "true worth" of air power.

Ground-centric critics have argued that putting destruction of hostile air forces at the top of the to-do list is a mistake. They say that fighter pilots want to chase MiGS, make ace, and sleep between clean sheets. (If charged, I plead not guilty but will settle out of court.) The critics overlook one astonishing result brought about by the emphasis on air superiority: no U.S. soldier or marine has been killed by enemy aircraft in 50 years, half the history of manned flight.

Moreover, stripping away the opponent's hammer has freed the U.S. anvil to maneuver as it wishes, including, for example, to stay out of the fight entirely, as it did in Kosovo or at al Khafji in the Persian Gulf War-a battle that will surely be studied at the war colleges. When Pape says that "tactics commonly used by large mechanized armies ... have not changed with the advent of precision weaponry," he must be talking about the large, mechanized U.S. Army, whose tactics have not changed because they have not had to. On the other hand, as Pape also notes, enemy soldiers facing precision air power now simply separate themselves from their equipment. One can hardly imagine a more pronounced change in tactics.

Targets are what give a war its character, so it is worth turning to the "never effective" decapitation strategy. Pape objects to using air-delivered PGMS to target enemy leadership. Yet he never explains why it is a bad idea to pursue decapitation with PGMS, as opposed to, say, the soldiers who killed Saddam Hussein's sons and captured the man himself. As of this writing, Osama bin Laden is still being chased with both ground and air forces, and I presume Pape joins in the hope that the results will be precise. If, for whatever reason, the United States decides to attack enemy leadership, it is a no-brainer to do it with accurate instead of inaccurate weaponry.

Pape also says nothing of stealth, even though it and precision weaponry are the two technologies on which the future Air Force must be built. It is worth noting, however, that stealth restores tactical surprise to aerial warfare-a development of enormous significance and another topic that might have found its way into a discussion of air power's "true worth."

Pape does make one important point about PGMS: in the era of precision weapons, bad intelligence means hitting the wrong target precisely, as with the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in 1999. But the sad fact that targets will sometimes be misidentified is an argument for better intelligence, not less precise weaponry.

Wars are not all alike. Air power will be "worth" more in one contest, less in another; decapitation will be a winning strategy in some, a less effective one in others. Thus Pape would do well to make the more modest argument that not every military problem can be solved with air-delivered weaponry, precisely placed or not. The current fighting in Iraq, for example, genuinely calls for boots on the battlefield. It is important to note this, since the conduct of the Iraq war will inevitably produce still more controversy over whether we can and should rely on technology-principally aerospace technology-to replace heavy, slow-moving ground forces. That question has been settled in the affirmative for all but the most determinedly sightless. But the United States still needs the Army, and probably a larger one, to meet a variety of twenty-first-century security challenges.