Contrarian View of Strategic Aerospace Warfare

This paper presents a new vision of strategic aerospace warfare that expands and looks beyond the traditional roles and missions of strategic aerospace forces. Current joint doctrine divides warfare into three separate levels: strategic; operational; and tactical. Actions in these levels are many times planned, prepared, and executed with very different emphasis on size, scope, and importance. This division of objectives has met with varied success throughout history with many tactical victories leading to strategic defeats. It is important to not disregard the lessons of history as the theory needed to operate effectively in 2025 is developed.The alternate future scenarios developed in the 2025 study suggest that the future will involve many different interconnected actors. Even in 2025, much of the general population may still not have access to communication systems. However, the leadership of most of these organized entities will. Understanding the effect of knowledge transfer systems upon the global system is the key to strategic warfare in 2025. As knowledge transfer systems expand, all leaders in the global community will have access to near real-time information. As a result, the boundaries between the current strategic, operational and tactical levels of warfare will fade, resulting in only one level of war--the strategic level.Strategic aerospace forces will be used to influence the "will" of the adversary's leadership. All actions will have some measurable effect due to the impact of information on the contextual elements that make up the leadership's decision making process. To successfully influence and maintain harmony in the global system of 2025, our aerospace forces must: View the world as a single system by expanding from a regional to global perspective. Recognize the strategic impact of daily operations and decisions on the global system. Create a leadership corps to be expert practitioners in the art of war. Reorganize for efficiency and creati