Earl Tilford: Seduction By Air ... Then and Now
[Dr. Earl Tilford is Professor of History at Grove City College and enjoyed an extensive military career in the U.S. Air Force. He is former director of research at the U.S. Army's Strategic Studies Institute, where he worked on a project that looked at future terrorist threats. He also authored three books on the Vietnam War and co-edited one book on Operation Desert Storm.]
Air power is seductive. From the Army Air Service’s Col. Billy Mitchell’s Winged Defense, written in the aftermath of the slaughter fields of the Great War, to U.S. Air Force Colonel John Warden’s The Air Campaign, first published in 1988, air power prophets have promised quick victories at low costs.
Following World War II, the Truman administration capped military spending at $12 billion and reduced the Army to 10 under-strength divisions, confident that America’s atomic monopoly would cow the legions of the Red Army.
When in June 1950 North Korea, undeterred by America’s atomic arsenal, attacked South Korea, U.S. forces found themselves woefully unprepared for conventional warfare. Soldiers and Marines paid the price in the Korean stalemate, suffering nearly 40,000 combat deaths.
After Dwight Eisenhower won the election of 1952, warlords in the Pentagon believed a five-star general in the White House would usher in an age of military bounty. Wrong. Eisenhower capped defense spending at less than $40 billion annually, reduced the Army from a Korean War high of 20 down to 14 under-strength divisions, and instituted a strategy of massive retaliation to forestall Soviet and Chinese aggression. Air power leaders maintained that nuclear weapons could deter both large and small wars and would be efficacious in any war should deterrence fail. Subsequently, the Air Force dominated the budget battles of the 1950s, garnering $17 billion annually while the Army barely managed $9 billion. In the last defense budget submitted by the Eisenhower administration, the budget for the Strategic Air Command (the Air Force’s command charged with the nuclear mission), was larger than that of the entire U.S. Army.
Meanwhile, in 1961 the Soviet Union shifted its strategy to support wars of national liberation, backing insurgencies throughout the post-colonial world.
President John F. Kennedy met this challenge by shifting U.S. defense policy away from massive retaliation towards flexible response and swinging from an air-power-centric strategy to a more balanced strategic paradigm involving larger ground forces. Kennedy also drew his “line in the sand” in South Vietnam...
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Air power is seductive. From the Army Air Service’s Col. Billy Mitchell’s Winged Defense, written in the aftermath of the slaughter fields of the Great War, to U.S. Air Force Colonel John Warden’s The Air Campaign, first published in 1988, air power prophets have promised quick victories at low costs.
Following World War II, the Truman administration capped military spending at $12 billion and reduced the Army to 10 under-strength divisions, confident that America’s atomic monopoly would cow the legions of the Red Army.
When in June 1950 North Korea, undeterred by America’s atomic arsenal, attacked South Korea, U.S. forces found themselves woefully unprepared for conventional warfare. Soldiers and Marines paid the price in the Korean stalemate, suffering nearly 40,000 combat deaths.
After Dwight Eisenhower won the election of 1952, warlords in the Pentagon believed a five-star general in the White House would usher in an age of military bounty. Wrong. Eisenhower capped defense spending at less than $40 billion annually, reduced the Army from a Korean War high of 20 down to 14 under-strength divisions, and instituted a strategy of massive retaliation to forestall Soviet and Chinese aggression. Air power leaders maintained that nuclear weapons could deter both large and small wars and would be efficacious in any war should deterrence fail. Subsequently, the Air Force dominated the budget battles of the 1950s, garnering $17 billion annually while the Army barely managed $9 billion. In the last defense budget submitted by the Eisenhower administration, the budget for the Strategic Air Command (the Air Force’s command charged with the nuclear mission), was larger than that of the entire U.S. Army.
Meanwhile, in 1961 the Soviet Union shifted its strategy to support wars of national liberation, backing insurgencies throughout the post-colonial world.
President John F. Kennedy met this challenge by shifting U.S. defense policy away from massive retaliation towards flexible response and swinging from an air-power-centric strategy to a more balanced strategic paradigm involving larger ground forces. Kennedy also drew his “line in the sand” in South Vietnam...