From: ETH Zurich
According to Panayotis Yannakogeorgos and Adam Lowther, NATO’s 2011 air campaign in Libya confirmed the decisive role airpower can play in modern war. In their view, that’s good news for an alliance that is trying to maintain its relevance in a shifting and unstable world.
By Adam Lowther and Panayotis Yannakogeorgos
Understanding airpower
In the wake of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) fledgling victory in Libya, airpower has again moved into the limelight. Not since the air war in Kosovo (1999) has airpower played such an instrumental role in achieving American—and NATO—objectives. Whether Western-style democracy comes to power in Libya remains to be seen, but airpower enthusiasts have already learned an important lesson: airpower can play a decisive role in warfare. Even more dramatically, an alliance, whose relevance is coming into question, was able to perform such a feat. Operation UNIFIED PROTECTOR offered not only a victory but also an opportunity for NATO advocates to re-examine the relevance of airpower in the alliance as it tries to maintain significance in a world that, according to United States (US) Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, is pivoting toward Asia.[1]
When the United States Air Force (USAF) recently modified the definition of airpower to include air, space, and cyber power, many analysts viewed this change as a conflation of three distinct domains. However, in doing so, the Air Force emphasized that, unlike the other services, it considers space and cyber not as enablers of operations but as maneuver environments—that facilitate improved operations.
This broadened understanding of airpower has the potential to offer a new framework for employing it in ways not previously contemplated. For example, the defeat of integrated air defense systems by means of cyber power reflects the capability of this new conception of airpower.[2] It also gives airpower strategists the opportunity to consider new ways in which NATO air forces can employ cyber and space power to attain the global stability sought by the alliance.
Moreover, the USAF can now supply NATO with a new sine qua non that silences the chorus of NATO opponents who wish to further reduce America’s role in the alliance. To better clarify what we mean, let us offer a glimpse into the future as a way of explaining what a way ahead might look like.
Into the future
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