The F/A-22 Raptor is a new weapons system replacing the F-15C Eagle. The F/A-22’s development, testing, and IOC declaration at Langley AFB, Virginia, in December 2005 closely parallels the F-15A’s experience of 29 years ago. This paper provides background information on both aircraft, their T&E processes, and their first operational assignments to Langley AFB. Comparisons are made, differences highlighted, and recommendations offered. While it may appear that everything ...

Colonel dePalo believes that better application of the doctrinal tenets of airpower is needed for more effective and efficient utilization of USAF combat rescue forces. He uses the tenets of flexibility, concentration, and persistence to demonstrate that the current force can transform to more effectively support the global war on terrorism and adapt to new roles and missions leading to a more agile, multifaceted personnel-recovery capability worldwide. This force can ab...

In support of national and military security strategies, the DOD has established the joint force commander (JFC) as the means to provide unity of command, exercised through component commanders, during contingency operations. Intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) is key to the JFC’s successful prosecution of contingency operations. The multifaceted complexity cannot be overstated as both national and theater ISR architectures include many linked nodes that...

The author contends that urban terrain has become the preferred battlespace of US adversaries in the early twenty-first century. This environment poses unique challenges, especially to air and space warfare. The difficulty of sorting friendlies from enemy combatants, the latter intermingled with large numbers of noncombatants in very confined spaces, creates serious dilemmas for maneuver and aviation forces. Colonel Kemper believes that this mission, though well document...

In Tanker-Force Structure: Recapitalization of the KC-135, Lieutenant Colonel Juan Narvid challenges air mobility warriors to develop a tanker-force structure that overcomes the thinking of old to launch new concepts and capabilities for the future tanker. He argues that the future of warfare will require a tanker that is able to operate as a force enabler across the full spectrum of operations. This research is very timely with the Boeing 767 being looked at as a replac...

The use of the heavy bomber during Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) is just one more chapter on the flexibility of airpower. Bombers in the early stages of the war destroyed the Taliban air force on the ground and the limited air-to-air defenses, as well as disrupting command and control nodes. Orbiting close over problem areas, heavy bombers, guided by ground terminal attack controllers, precisely struck key targets. The bombers were supplying something different than t...

In this paper, Lt Col Devin L. Cate tackles the question of whether an air superiority fighter is relevant to warfare in the twenty-first century.

In Weather Operations in the Transformation Era, Col John M. Lanicci, USAF, takes a compelling look at future weather operations. His hypothesis is that a consolidated battlespace picture integrates both natural and man-made elements, which is totally consistent with USAF transformation efforts. He points out that the way ahead is easier said than done and offers several cogent reasons why the weather operations portion of information-in-warfare has not caught up with cu...

A huge portion of the military burden in support of these operations falls on the shoulders of the Mobility Air Forces (MAF). Lt Col Eileen M. Isola’s Leading Air Mobility Operations in Complex Humanitarian Emergencies provides just such an educational foundation for MAF war fighters charged with leading CHEs. She provides a superb synthesis of a dozen years of lessons learned from many resources and institutions, sifting through the tactical and operational lessons lear...

In this discerning assessment of Operation Allied Force (OAF), Lt Col Michael W. Lamb Sr. examines the myriad of lessons learned that have been written, and debated, from this campaign and synthesizes them into some golden nuggets for strategists and campaign planners. Indeed, there is much to be learned. From the beginning of the campaign, the military logic of OAF has been a matter of intense, even bitter debate. The problems and questions that arise from OAF are numer...

In Preventing Catastrophe: US Policy Options for Management of Nuclear Weapons in South Asia, Lt Col Martin J. “Marty” Wojtysiak, USAF, proposes a response to the dangerous proliferation of nuclear weapons in India and Pakistan. This paper highlights the threat in “The Nuclear Catastrophe of 2005,” a gripping projection of the worstcase scenario on the current realities of the Indian subcontinent. Written a year after the “catastrophe,” it vividly describes the events le...

Col Thompson, in his concentrated focus on China’s military space applications, examines PRC ground, space, counterspace, and space policy aspects. His principal findings: China has plans to construct a new launch site in the deep south; PRC telemetry, tracking and com-mand capacities are improving; China has the ability to conduct limited intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions from space; the PRC is pursuing a counterspace capability most likely using sa...

In this study Lt Col Joseph M. Codispoti, USAF, describes an emerging partnership between two long-time allies of the United States—Turkey and Israel. On the surface this Muslim-Jewish partnership seems unlikely, particularly on the fringes of the Arab world. A closer examination, however, reveals a number of mutual security interests and a shared sense of isolation at the crossroads of Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East. The Turco-Israeli partnership has importan...

In this paper, Lt Col Rex R. Kiziah, USAF, examines current US efforts to cooperatively develop and deploy with Japan and South Korea a theater missile defense (TMD) family of systems (FoS) in Northeast Asia. First, the author summarizes the US security strategy for the East Asia-Pacific region with emphasis on the importance of regional missile defense. Second, he characterizes the ballistic missile capabilities of North Korea and China, which constitute the primary thr...

Since the end of the Gulf War, the debate over whether there should be a separate space service, equal with the Air Force, Army, and Navy, has grown in proportion to the indispensable value of space operations to our nation’s defense. Increasing dependency on space-systems is a fact of military life. In this well-documented essay, Col Michael C. Whittington compares the leading arguments for a separate space force to the cogent arguments for an independent air force made...

Regardless of one’s views on the AEF, this paper presents points for discussion as the Air Force comes to grips with both the changing nature of future conflict and the Air Force’s ability to provide the National Command Authorities with a credible aerospace force. We encourage open debate on this critical topic.

In China as Peer Competitor? Trends in Nuclear Weapons, Space, and Information Warfare Lt Col Kathryn L. Gauthier analyzes the potential for China to emerge as a peer competitor of the United States in the coming decades. First, she examines two traditional pillars of national strength— China’s status as a nuclear weapons state and as a space power. Second, she then explores China’s growing focus on information warfare (IW) as a means to wage asymmetric warfare against a...

In this study Mr. James Lafrenz, a civil engineer in the Department of the Air Force, notes that American global security policy requires expedient responses to war, to natural disasters, and to problems between thes e two extremes. The Air Force owns the assets to make these responses, but our response forces are “concrete dependent” airplanes need hard-surfaced runways from which to operate. And where there is concrete, there are usually buildings. Will these buildings...

In this important study, Lt Col Wayne Johnson, USAF, argues that systematic tightening of interagency cooperation and better work on defining sensitive technology prohibitions are needed to maintain the US technological edge. He also maintains that the US government requires a new and disciplined export control process—not the current mosaic of rules, regulations, and perspectives that came out of the cold war, but a process that provides a revamped, systemic approach wi...

Colonel Felker’s paper espouses a practical theory of airpower based on the synergistic relationship among societal structure and lines of communications that comprise infrastructure. Rather than isolating different elements of society and their concomitant targets, the theory views targets in a more holistic way. Of note, the theory articulates a culturally based paradigm with airpower applied against the linkages within a society’s system processes, rather than a “one-...