This study is about time; more specifically it is about the tensions generated by conflicting considerations of time. As the opening statement from a 1936 Command and General Staff School manual illustrates, time-induced tensions between political and military imperatives have long characterized warfare. Even as political and military leaders have recognized the problem of these tensions, they have searched for ways to mitigate and overcome their effects. From the first moment man began to grasp the military implications of airpower, it has had a special appeal as a potential solution, but it was only the potential about which theorists could...

Viewing time as a nonspatial continuum in which events occur in a sequential, irreversible order as determined by time is the first step in conceiving of time as the fourth dimension. One can describe and define something fairly accurately through the spatial dimensions of length, width, and height, but to place it in its complete context, one must also describe its place in time. Since such a description usually involves a measurement, it is also consistent with the assumption that time can be observed and measured. Because time constitutes a fourth dimension, it is also a perspective from which one...

The dramatic Israeli air strike that began the Six-Day War of 1967 seized the public imagination and remains to this day an enduring image that leaps to mind when one brings up the war. The persistence of that image is in many ways proper, for it was through these initial air strikes that the Israelis achieved air superiority and paved the way for the quick victory which followed in a matter of days. Given the strength of that picture and the seemingly simple beauty of what happened, it is tempting to admire the Israeli achievement briefly, make a few appropriate...

In the Falklands War, Great Britain unexpectedly found itself stretching its NATO-oriented air and sea power to the limit in an effort to recover a group of islands which, although much closer to Argentina, nevertheless lay at the limits of Argentine air and sea power. Distance translated into time, and time remained a problem for both sides throughout the war. For the British, the problem consisted of deploying a task force thousands of miles to accomplish a limited, but daunting objective in the brief time that international and domestic political support afforded. It was a mission fraught with risk, and...

The Gulf War resembled the Falklands War in that the US found itself in an unexpected military confrontation which would require it to employ its forces in a theater thousands of miles away on very short notice. As in the Falklands War, political pressure would force action before military leaders were ready, and airpower would play a prominent role as a result. The Gulf War, however, was fought on a scale which would dwarf the Falklands War, and airpower’s contribution to overcoming the problem of time was appropriate to that scale. In the Gulf War, airpower would strike before coalition...

Time-induced tensions between political and military imperatives were evident in the Arab-Israeli War of 1967, the Falklands War, and the Gulf War. Analysis to this point has also indicated that airpower played a role in resolving these tensions. Although the study has elaborated in detail on how airpower resolved these tensions, it has yet to offer a general explanation of how airpower overcomes such conflicts; however, a unified analysis of the evidence can assist in identifying this mechanism. This chapter offers such an analysis as well as defines the mechanism which emerges from it. In this study, a global view...

In addition to revealing a time-based strategy as the mechanism for overcoming time conflicts between political and military imperatives, the evidence also points to the prominence of airpower’s role in that strategy. This link between time-based strategies and airpower has important implications for both the airpower theorist and the airpower strategist. It is the job of the airpower theorist to plumb the meaning and relevance of this relationship between airpower and time-based strategy and to continue interpreting its implications for airpower as well as its utility in guiding future action. Evaluating the usefulness of the time perspective, interpreting the relationship...