A Theory of Air Power

I finished Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book, “The Bomber Mafia”, in less than a day. Then I bought 10 more copies to hand out as Christmas presents.  It’s not a difficult book to read if you’ve spent four decades tied to the United States Air Force (USAF) with many of your formative years spent inside the Strategic Air Command (SAC).  During that time, I had the chance to personally weigh the morality of high-altitude bombing as an offensive first use weapon or better as part of the strategic triad of nuclear deterrence.   Sadly, due to Saddam Hussein’s aggression against Kuwait our country went kicking and screaming into the first Gulf War.  In those early days (circa 1991) we ushered in the first war-time use of the Global Positioning System (GPS) and it’s timing to aide precision bombing (more on timing in a bit).  The mighty B-52 bomber, getting old at the time, still in noble service to our Country now another 30 years later.  In 1991 it became new again with the technology that enabled those new GPS guided munitions.  GPS brought about a Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) for those who study such things.  The pinnacle of air power envisioned by the Bomber Mafia.

Beyond his great storytelling, if you are a military history buff (no pun intended) you should read other recorded military history--not Gladwell’s.  Gladwell doesn’t write for historians. He writes for a more general audience to learn a few things about the human condition.   The stories Gladwell tells in “The Bomber Mafia” have been told before in much more depth, in numerous books, and in many Hollywood movies.  The simple insight that Gladwell delivers on the human condition is that some military leaders are profoundly moral who strive to reduce the atrocities of war based on their decisions. Other leaders are great tacticians.  These tacticians can execute a plan of action and solve a set of complex military problems through operational art regardless of the technology focused primarily on effect. Finally, Gladwell also tells us, that some military leaders are just plan sadistic. In this manner Gladwell captures the richness of human behavior, our idiosyncrasies, and our strengths and weaknesses.  He doesn’t pass judgment.  He just puts it out there for you to consider the right and wrong of it all.

Anyone in the military should have studied WW II in great depth.    Anyone who considers themselves well-read should also know about the great works of fiction coming out of WW II.   Novels such as Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut, and Catch 22 by Joseph Heller to name the best—in my opinion. Some recent histories include stories of courage and the many thousands of personalities of that infamous era.  For instance, the story of Louis Zamperini the Olympic athlete who’s his trials and tribulations with the B-24’s in the Pacific were told by Laura Hillenbrand in “Unbroken”.  WW II will continue to be studied by historians for the length of human existence. In time most will end up being a mere chapter in a high school history book.  That is, unless, great stories and anecdotes told by great authors and storytellers like Gladwell (and Hillenbrand) persist.  

As to the sheer horrors of war, Gladwell does more than just hint about them.  He discusses the development of napalm and it’s effective use against the dense, tinderbox homes in Japan where 100,000 died in a single firebombing raid on Tokyo.   He glosses over the firebombing of Dresden, Germany the topic of Vonnegut’s nightmare, attributing only 25,000 to that conflagration. Although the number who died in Dresden is disputed and arguably higher.  Japan is significant in that Curtis Le May did not stop with the firebombing of Tokyo.  He went on to firebomb as many as 67 additional Japanese cities each with a similar outcome.  Most of the population of each city was decimated.  A fact that gets whisked away in the days after the nuclear missions to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In firebombing Gladwell tells the story of human babies igniting on the backs of their fleeing mothers as the hellish furnace of the conflagration consumed every life in its path.  In addition to the horrors of firebombing, in the nuclear conflagration the horrors of radiation sickness would soon materialize.  Like Vonnegut, you cannot not read these passages and find any nobility in war.  The book “War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning”, written by Chris Hedges in 2002, is tells us perhaps, why humanity wages wars. Gladwell reminds us why we must continue to find ways to solve our differences peacefully even in the midst of wanting to strike out against those who oppose us, conquer us, or would lead us into tyranny.

To be sure Gladwell makes a few technical errors and errors of historical fact.  But that does not detract from the story of what happened.  This is not a revisionist history of WW II aerial bombing as some of military critics of his work have stated.  These men existed.  These bombing missions happened.  The results are historical fact, Germany was defeated.  Japan surrendered. Those who push revisionist, anything, really don’t understand what history books are trying to deliver to the future.  

Now a little more about the book.  The Bomber Mafia grew up in Maxwell AFB, Alabama, by military aviators believing several things.  First, they believed that air power could help bring wars to a close faster.  The method theorized was the precise aerial bombardment of strategic targets and choke points that could cripple an adversary's ability to wage war.  The doctrine of strategic bombardment to crush those critical nodes of production and transportation is sound provided effect can be delivered precisely.  That doesn’t preclude the use of boots on the ground or naval blockades or the coming requirement to own the high ground in space.  In the 1940’s space was the domain of HG Wells. And as for air power, it was a pipe dream back then.   Second, these air power theorists believed the use of area bombardment was morally obtuse. Decimating a country’s population to include the non-military, the civilians, the elderly as well children is a pretty evil enterprise no matter whose side you are on. As the 3rd Reich hit out at England during the Battle of Britain, many English, of course quickly overcame their squeamishness about bombing populations as they themselves were the target of the German evil.  You can almost hear the English pragmatism in doing unto the Germans which was being done unto them.  This is of course why leadership should always be sane and moral. You can’t let emotionalism govern a country.  

Gladwell is light on air power doctrine as it would take volumes to really dive into it.  Instead, he focused on those two competing methods of aerial bombardment through the eyes of Curtis LeMay and Haywood Hansell.  Where, may I ask, is Giulio Douhet, Billy Mitchell, or the modern-day John Boyd and John Warden?    Hansell was basing aerial bombardment on strategy and morality.  LeMay was getting the job done.  These are not mutually exclusive.  But it’s worth noting that in general, air power is an RMA, it just took 80+ years for air power to hit it’s stride after it’s invention at the start of the century.  Gladwell spends time on the technology of the Norden Bombsight.  A closely guarded secret.  The bombsight was a marvel of technology akin to the first maritime chronometer.  Essentially a highly accurate clock with a telescope.  Daytime was a must.  Straight an level flight at a precise altitude was a must.  Straight into the target was a must.  With all those in order, the bomber would look through the bomb sight and with many adjustments made for every variable Norden could think of, precisely drop the bombs at the right time.  The math worked, with this proper clock, the bomber could time the release of altitude to hit a pickle barrel on the ground.  Reality was something completely different.  In fact, bombers could still not hit the broad side of a barn, or many barns, or the farm or many farms.  For numerous reasons, the bomb sight simply didn't work as promised.  Theory would have to wait.

This is a lesson for the current technology mafia who believes with unwavering optimism that the RMA before us, has to do with software and networks.  That somehow the Internet is an RMA by itself.  The theory behind that RMA started 25 years ago with chorus of networks being the solution with network centric warfare (NCW) being the crowning achievement.  Since that RMA was never achieved it’s now been augmented with the refrain that faster agile software development will deliver the heretofore unachievable.  It’s now referred to as the kill-webs as opposed to NCW but at the end of the day, it’s still not an RMA.  You don’t achieve combat power with a network even with the faster software a network can enable.  There is no warfighting energy contained in a network no matter how many nodes exist.  Further, if you connect everything, apart from being supremely difficult, you introduce an information problem that still, no matter how many temporal increments of Moore’s law we advance through, the information problem will remain intractable or in the parlance of computational complexity, NP-Complete. Wait, Artificial Intelligence.  Wait, quantum computing. Keep waiting, and good luck.  Instead of waiting on magic, what’s fascinating in Gladwell’s pages is the way Curtis LeMay overcame the greatest technology of the day, that wasn’t working, to force a winning outcome.  All the technology in the world (at the time) and the B-29 couldn't overcome the lack of an accurate bombsight.  The bombsight that would enable precision, high altitude bombing, was in reality unobtanium. In essence, a unicorn.  In the presence of the unobtanium, LeMay moved away from precision, high altitude, daytime bombing of strategic choke points and completely changed the tactics.  Instead, he went with low altitude, area bombing, and introduced napalm because he knew that flammable tinderbox houses in densely populated areas of Japan would be the target.

What allowed this change was the flexibility in the operational art of war with LeMay not tied to one doctrine of aerial warfare, but rather a doctrine of solving problems faster than your adversary can react.  Flexibility is the key to Air Power (Douhet). React faster than your adversary (Boyd).  This is the insight that Gladwell is writing about.  Though it may be hard for the average reader to ferret out without deeper history.  There is more here, but I've written enough.  Read the book.  It's less than 200 pages.   I’m going to start with 5-Stars because I love this book.  I’m going to deduct 1-Star for several technical errors and 1-Star for missing the attribution of other great air power theorists.  I’m going to add back 1-Star for the part of history often glossed over, specifically, that LeMay bombed 67 Japanese cities in total.  Capitulation without the atomic bomb was at hand.   The argument for use of the atomic bomb was that boots-on-the-ground would be necessary for the win but cost an ungodly number of American lives in the assault.  It's not at all clear that would have had to happen. Air power might have succeeded without the nuclear boost…at this point we will never know. 4-Stars for Gladwell’s jaunt into air power for those who believe in a strong Air Force and air power theory.