Air Space Power Journal Fall 05

Colonel Slife chronicles the influence of the late Gen Wilbur L. "Bill" Creech7a leader, visionary, warrior, and mentor7in the areas of equipment and tactics, training, organization, and leader development. His study serves both to explain the context of a turbulent time in our Air Force's history and to reveal where tomorrow's airmen may find answers to some of the difficult challenges facing them today. Colonel Slife, who addresses such controversial topics as the development of the Army's AirLand Battle doctrine and what it meant to airmen, is among the first to describe what historians will surely see in years to come as the revolutionary developments of the late 1970s/early 1980s and General Creech's central role. Creech Blue enlightens the Air Force on its strongly held convictions during that period and challenges the idea that by 1990, when Iraq invaded Kuwait, the Air Force had forgotten how to wage a "strategic" air campaign and was dangerously close to plunging into a costly and lengthy war of attrition had it not been for the vision of a small cadre of thinkers on the Air Staff. In exploring the doctrine and language of the decade leading up to Operation Desert Storm, Colonel Slife reveals that the Air Force was not as shortsighted as many people have argued.

This issue of the Air and Space Power Journal contains the following articles: The Portuguese Air Force: a Look Ahead; Origins of the Royal Bahraini Air Force; Coalition Perspectives on Airpower and Space Power; Effects-Based Operations and Counterterrorism; Effects-Based Operations: A Military Application of Pragmatical Analysis; Tomorrow's Air Warfare A German Perspective on the Way Ahead; Unmanned Aerial Vehicles/Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles: Likely Missions and Challenges for the Policy-Relevant Future; Air Superiority: A Sine Qua Non; Countering a Strategic Gambit: Keeping US Airpower Employable in a China-Taiwan Conflict; The Future of US Airpower on the Korean Peninsula; Toward Information Superiority The Contribution of Operational Net Assessment; Public Affairs and Information Operations: A Strategy for Success; Honoring a Fallen Airman and Introducing the Latest Chronicles; Centralized Execution in the Air Force; The Combat Aviation Advisory Mission in Iraq; Book Reviews.

As political and military leaders ponder the future of space operations, the time has come to frame propositions regarding space power. Specifically, the author seeks to answer the question, "What is the nature of space power?" Two points come immediately to the forefront of this work. First, space power is different from airpower even though both share the vertical dimension of warfare. Second, space operations have matured to a point wherein valid and unique propositions regarding space power are identifiable. The objective of this work is to stimulate discussions and encourage those who do not yet understand or appreciate the nature of space power in modern warfare