Originally Posted by Easy Street
...I won't contribute to the FJ vs RW vs AT debate other than to observe that the independent role of air power was exercised successfully over the 6 months of the Libya campaign. It was 'independent' in the sense that NATO air power operated independently of NATO sea and land forces...
How about the aircraft from
USS Kearsarge,
FS Charles de Gaulle and
ITS Garibaldi, each capable of flying more sorties and being more reactive than their land-based equivalents owing to their closer proximity to the target? Secondly, why don't you classify the TLAMs launched by ships and submarines as (maritime) air power too? Not identical missiles but they funtioned similarly to the Storm Shadows flown all the way from RAF Marham by Tonkas and launched (when the mission wasn't aborted at the last moment) from outside Libyan airspace. Thirdly, what about the attack helos from
HMS Ocean and
FS Tonnerre? Fourthly, what about the Air Direction services and firing of illumination rounds by the Type 42 destroyer
HMS Liverpool to facilitate air attacks? Fifthly, who possessed and exercised the only CSAR capability on Libyan territory? It was MV-22B Ospreys from USS Kearsarge supported by AV-8B Harriers from the same ship. I'm not knocking the contribution of any air force (it was a joint effort with ship-based aircraft) but the above statement is grossly inaccurate.
Originally Posted by Leon Jabachjabicz
Here's a good example of
strategic Air Power effecting a total outcome without any Navy or Army input...
And today's equivalent is...?
Strategic, yes, but I would no more classify the Enola Gay and its atom bomb as an example of strategic 'Air Power' than I would classify Trident as an example of strategic 'Maritime Power'. Like state-sponsored assassination, the use of strategic nuclear weapons is a political tool of last resort and its non-warfighting raison d'etre, use and effect extends far beyond any single environment.
However, I would equate a conventionally armed aircraft (fighter, bomber, UAV, etc.) with a conventional missile in being a useful and often interchangeable aerial component of a weapons system, be it air, land or sea-based.