At present, the United States stands at a moment of opportunity. Our nation has a clear lead on re-usable launch vehicles (RLVs). The highly visible demonstrations of SpaceX and Blue Origin are just the observable portion of a much larger iceberg of commercial ambitions and industrial capabilities. With the right policies, regulation, incentives, and anchor…
Today’s Air Force fleet structure is in the midst of an identity crisis, full of contradictions and built upon a multi-role fighter foundation. Despite this, the Air Force Future Operating Concept document categorizes its current force structure as a high-low mixture.
[This is a continuation of a previous article in a series] There are many ways of going forward, but only one way of standing still. Franklin D. Roosevelt The founding fathers of military aviation had an uphill battle in advocating the value of airpower to their doubtful Army and Navy counterparts. Though their approaches (and…
Just the other day, a conversation amongst a small group of Army, Navy, and Air Force officers turned to the topic of recent U.S. Air Force (USAF) modernization and recapitalization efforts, sparked by the issue of A-10 and MQ-1 divestment and turning to debating the point of the F-35. The consensus from the non-Air Force…
This is the second part of a two-part article on French airpower in current contingencies. For a country like France, the strategic context in the short- to mid-term will probably be the continuation of the current era of protracted interventions, necessary but unfortunately non-decisive, in Africa (as leading nation) and the Middle East (as part…
Peter Singer and August Cole’s new novel, Ghost Fleet, has become a critical darling in beltway defense circles. Called “useful fiction” by the authors, its exhaustively-researched details aim to paint a picture of near-future great-power conflict, earning favorable comparisons to Tom Clancy’s Cold War masterpiece Red Storm Rising.
In 2011, during the heady early days of the Arab Spring, a coalition of a dozen Western and Arab states led by France, Britain, and the United States conducted a seven-month military intervention in Libya that led to the defeat of Muammar Qaddafi’s dictatorial regime. A newly-released study of this campaign describes in detail why…
A half-century ago, the United States was into the fifth month of the longest sustained strategic bombing campaign this nation has ever conducted, Operation Rolling Thunder, an attempt to thwart an insurgency with air power by attacking the external power that backed it with men and equipment. To today’s readers, parallels between American bombing efforts…
Airpower, provided by the French Air Force as well as Army and Navy aviation, has always been an important component of the French armed forces; but in the current context, it is proving to be an even more critical tool than ever before.
The US Army, the US Navy and the US Marine Corps each possess an aviation component to meet their organic requirements, but only the USAF has the full range of offensive, defensive and support capabilities to act in the air, in space and in cyberspace. It carries out five core missions: air and space superiority;…
Leading Edge 
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