Airpower

OK, we've got a couple of more minutes.

I have to ask you about the RTX, the Pratt & Whitney decision to partner With Hermes, obviously an innovative hypersonics company, and we're going to have AJ Piplica on from Hermes on the AirPower show to talk about this deal a little bit.

So what is it, you know, as well as all the work that they're doing, because obviously their programs are moving ahead pretty quickly.

Anyway, I mean, what...

And I'm Vagamirati.

And every September, the AirPower World focuses on the Air and Space Forces Association's Airspace Cyber Conference and Trade Show outside Washington, D.C. Our team spent all three days at the conference and will review the show on this extended broadcast.

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Plus, we'll have this week's headlines in air power.

Laura, keep up the great work.

JJ, it's always a pleasure.

Thanks very much, and hope all of you have a great AirPower day.

Thanks, Fargo.

One, has the drones changed that so that's no longer the factor that it would be if there was a conflict? And then, much like Kyle did, let's jump to Iran.

We really have used air power there as a way to win the war.

We haven't necessarily done it, but we've used it.

Your view of both the change in the value of manned aircraft and looking at Iran today, have we got ourselves into a situation that we can't get out of because we depended too much on the air power? Wow, there's a lot to

unpack there.

Okay.

It's awful.

So now we're going to get to Ukraine.

But you also noted that Iran is no pushover.

Uh, air power is constantly evolving.

Um, I remember I started my career in the wake of, uh, Desert Shield and Desert Storm.

Uh, when I got to, uh, meet some of the giants, we had John Andreas Olsen on the program last week, uh, to talk about Chuck Horner, his great new book on Chuck Horner, on Desert Shield, Desert Storm.

I remember meeting Lieutenant Colonel Dave Deptula, uh, and Chuck Horner and all of these, uh, giants when I was, uh, and, uh, and have gotten to know other giants over the years, some of whom, uh, are Chiefs of Staff of the Air Force.

Um, from, from your perspective, sir, right, air power is continuously evolving, and the recent conflicts really have demonstrated a trend that has been emerging for some time.

You know, I remember talking to Dr. Eliot Cohen about this in the wake of the Gulf War survey, and Ben Lambeth, that, you know, at some point, the precision revolution will be turned on us.

So we are now seeing a democratization of air power.

Jointness is about achieving required effect, not institutional balance.

So we need to be more air-minded nations where airmen speak up and talk about what the air profession knows best, and that is to communicate to politicians and fellow service officers and the public what air power can and cannot

do.

From the Defense and Aerospace Report, this is the Air Power Podcast.

Powered by GE Aerospace, I'm J.J. Gertler.

And I'm Vagamirati, and retired United States Air Force General Chuck Horner was the Air Component Commander for one of Air Power's defining campaigns, Operation Desert Storm.

He's the subject of a new biography by Air Power strategist Dr. John Andreas Olson, who joins us to review General Horner's career and why Operation Desert Storm is still worth studying.

And Tobias Nagley of Air and Space Forces magazine joins us with a preview of what to expect at the Air and Space Forces Association's annual Air, Space, and Cyber Conference and Trade Show next week in National Harbor.

This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, read by Ted Leinhardt.

Chapter 2, Characteristics of Air Power.

Speed of locomotion is the predominant characteristic of air power.

Armies on the ground move two and a half miles an hour by marching and about twenty miles an hour on railroad trains.

A column of troops on one road twelve to fifteen miles long, which is the depth of an ordinary tactical division of infantry troops, requires about six hours or more to deploy on a front, that is, to prepare to fight.

This gives a chance to the air commander to concentrate immediately against him and to seek a decision with his main air force.

In our operations at Chateau Ferry, where we were greatly outnumbered by the German aviation and where spreading out or disseminating our air force in small detachments spelled entire defeat for us, we concentrated all the Allied bombardment aviation that we could collect, bombarded the town of Ferron-Tardenoy, which was a very important place for the Germans, to such an extent that they had to concentrate their pursuit aviation for the defense of this place.

We then brought a concentrated attack against their pursuit aviation at that place with our pursuit aviation, which in the end resulted not only in drawing the German pursuit aviation away from the vicinity of our ground troops so that it gave our observation aviation an opportunity to work, but also caused a very heavy loss to the enemy and ended in balancing the air power where the Germans before had entirely dominated.

Docent, Dr. Victoria Fedorchuk, is a senior lecturer at Air Operations Division at the Department of War Studies at the Swedish Defence University.

She teaches on air power and modern warfare, and her current research focuses on different aspects of the Russia-Ukraine war.

And we're so honored, so delighted to have you here, Dr. Fedorchuk, and I recently loved finishing reading your book, your excellent book with Routledge, The Russia-Ukraine War Towards Resilient Fighting Power.

Welcome to Deterrence Down Under.

A lot of NATO countries were doing that in the context of events in Ukraine.

Another thing, and this is probably me, me, me, me, but I always focus more on people because for me, from the perspective of the fighting power and its physical component, people are the most crucial ones.

I love technologies, I love aircraft, so air power is still my main thing, and I love what they do there, but I also know that when we don't have enough technologies, when we have certain scarcity, technologies in one domain we need to compensate with them in another and usually people are the ones who compensating for the lack of whichever resources that might be there so that's why for me any discussion ends up with focusing on training new people either expanding the numbers I mean, no one is talking about major mobilization or conscription per se, but expanding people across different tasks, across different roles in order to achieve whatever you try, whichever effect you're trying to achieve at a given time.

So that would be something I would definitely focus on.

On Wednesday, my interview with Dr. Daryl Bricker of Ipsos Public Affairs.

And then we go into the Air Power podcast, and then, of course, back to the Washington Roundtable.

So I hope everybody on the Roundtable has a great week as well.

And in the meantime, please take the opportunity to check out our award-winning weekly podcast, Cabot Ships, The Downlink, as well as the Air Power podcast.

Thanks again for joining us.

Have a great holiday weekend, and we'll see you again soon.

So the success in land operations was predicated on air superiority and that gave you the ability to move.

Now, of course, it's decentralization in a way of air power with drones, which is caveated that ability to move with the and with the all singing nature of surveillance, meaning that you've got a transparent battlefield.

I think what's interesting with the Crimea thing is that one of the theories of victory for Ukraine, particularly in terms of their 2023 offensive, was that if you could cut the land bridge to Crimea, and have dominance in the Black Sea.

And of course, the Ukrainians have pushed back the Russian fleet, can't be pushed back any further.

Wow.

So I wanna talk now about the elephant in the room, which is really, if we zoom out, this is a story about whether air power, light footprint on the ground, which is the way that the US military conducts operations now, whether that is strategically useful.

Like, does that achieve goals that the United States might want to have? And I think that's, that's really the big question.

Like, that's more important than drones here because you could get the same sort of dynamics with any form of airstrike, right? So there's a whole lot of folks now that are saying, you know, "Why are we doing stupid, foolish, and ridiculous wars?" But then also saying things like, "We'll never hesitate to kill America's terrorist enemies," right? So it's this tension, right? They're like, "We're not gonna do this."

And again, my opinions are my own.

They don't [chuckles] represent the Department of War and so on and so forth.

But I've written about this on the record, that it's fanciful to think that you would have strategically durable outcomes, a better peace, if you wanna talk about that in terms of the, uh, purpose overall of, of war-making, uh, with nothing but, but air power.

In fact, even the most staunchest of air power theorists going back centuries have talked about sort of the mutual constitution between air, uh, and ground maneuver.