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United States Air Force expeditionary airpower strategy, 1946--1964

Posted on:2006-08-01Degree:Ph.DType:Dissertation
University:Kansas State UniversityCandidate:May, Michael PerryFull Text:PDF
GTID:1456390005994773Subject:History
Abstract/Summary:
Between 1946 and 1964, members of the United States Air Force developed an expeditionary airpower strategy. The intellectual and organizational development of this strategy came from a need to meet an increasing array of threats in developing regions around the world. This strategy had four overlapping areas of concern: contingency planning for warfare on the margins of the power of the Soviet Union; constant training to improve the immediacy and effectiveness of responding to a crisis; deployments in support, or as a demonstration, of national policy; and the efficient management and sustainment of deployed forces in the field.; Following disparate crises in early 1950s, President Dwight D. Eisenhower called for the creation of a mobile and flexible fighting force for operations short of general war. Despite internal murmurings, the Air Force organized the composite air strike forces primarily for use in limited military operations. However, the exigencies of preparing the Air Force for general war overshadowed the priority for limited war given to the composite air strike forces and taxed its ability to fight limited wars. This was evident during the United States intervention in Lebanon and the second crisis in the Taiwan Straits in 1958. To become more useful in full-spectrum warfare, the Air Force and the United States Army combined their forces for limited war into joint Strike Command. Despite showing promise for operations short of general war, structural and organizational problems doomed Strike Command.; Developing this strategy demonstrated the capabilities and disclosed the limitations of air power in the asymmetric warfare scenarios planned for and encountered between the Korean and Vietnam Wars. This evolutionary trajectory embraced four main themes, including the challenges of developing a new force concept, the application of firepower as an instrument of coercion, the development of integrated systems warfare, and the decisive nature of joint operations in asymmetric warfare.
Keywords/Search Tags:Air force, United states, Strategy, Warfare, Operations
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