Naval Postgraduate School

Air Power in Irregular Warfare Naval Postgraduate School

Publisher Marketing: History is full of with examples of innovations that have proved essential to victory in war. Few innovations have provided the consistent and often decisive impact that air power has delivered in conflict. Across its relatively short history, the concept of air power has maintained a resiliency of innovation across the doctrinal, strategic, organizational, and technological levels. However, warfare itself has witnessed significant changes over the course of the last century. No longer is the classical, conventional state-on state conflict the principal method of combating one's enemies. In its place, irregular warfare (IW) has arguably become the norm in conflict today. However, we have yet to see air power applied to modern-era irregular conflicts with the same level of success achieved in past conflicts. This work examines the use of air power in IW in order to answer the following questions: What organizational forms are associated with the successful use of air power in irregular warfare? What technologies? What concepts of operations? What level of coherence between strategic and operational/tactical execution is associated with the successful use of air power in IW? And finally, what should the future role of air power in IW be?