During the early days of the first Iraq War, a video seemed to run continuously on television. In this video, a jet fighter launches a smart bomb. Moments later, it hits a ground target the size of a doorway, as the audio backing track explodes with the celebratory sounds of the American pilots and ground crew.
The scene in the video was some high order, whiz-bang stuff, offering, as it did, the tantalizing possibility that America’s future was one of remote control wars waged mostly from the air, with few, if any, casualties on the ground. Continue reading “The Allure of Air Power”