Air Power and War

Abstract

This chapter presents the introductory lecture of the Air Force Course by Harold George entitled “An Inquiry into the Subject ‘War,’” in which he introduces the controversial topic of whether air forces can win wars independently. He considers whether the advent of the airplane has changed the very nature of war or simply added a new weapon to the arsenal. Nations once fought with only armies and navies, where victory over the enemy’s forces was a necessary intermediate objective, an obstacle, the removal of which was required to overcome the enemy’s will to resist. George points out that modern civilization has made it advantageous to change how wars are waged. He argues that an industrial state is internally linked by a series of economic nodes vulnerable to disruption and concludes that air power can now attack the heart of a nation without having to first fight a war of attrition.