“According to Russian government figures, the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces — an independent military service branch — have 332 ICBMs that carry a total of 1,092 nuclear warheads. These totals do not include Russian and U.S. bombers or submarine-launched missiles.” Unless I’m missing something of course the 332 ICBMs and 1,092 warheads don’t “include…U.S. bomber” — they are totals for Russia, not the US unless I’m missing something.

Yeah, heavy bombing sure did work in Viet Nam, didn’t it. DoD should have let the Army SF guys win that war from its beginning, as they were doing well until LBJ and Robert McNamara went nuts.

BOMBERS OPERATE FROM RUNWAYS, BIG REUNWAYS VUNRABLE TO MISSILE STRIKES. NO RUNWAY NO BOMBER. HAVE YOU FORGOTEN THAT MOST OF THE WORLD INCLUDING RUSSIA AND CHINA CAN BE STUCK BY SURFACE AND SUBSURFACE SHIPS WITH ICBM AND CRUISE MISSILES. A REAL BOMBER WITH NO NEED FOR MIDAIR REFUELING AND USED IN A FIRST STRIKE MIGHT BE HELPFUL. WHO WILL THE FIGHTERS FACE?
LAST BUT NOT LEAST WHERE WOULD THE FUNFING COME FROM FOR A LARGE FORCE OF BOMBERS. 19 B-2’S, 100 F-22 DOESN’T SOUND LIKE LOT. TO ME.

This gentleman cites numerous examples for the use of air power, unfortunately all of his evidence and examples are rooted in doctrine that is 60-90 years old. Despite the efforts of Mitchell during the interwar period of WWI and WWII it was still recognized that air power alone cannot win wars. You have to ask yourself is the Center of Gravity (defined by Clausewitz) physical or intangible. Can you force a dictator to capitulate based upon the fears of a population? I would argue no. In the end it will always require a joint effort between ground combat elements and shaping by air. The author states that the former Defense Secretary fought counterinsurgency between 2006-2011, as if to imply he pushed for this type of war. I would point out to the author the “Shock and Awe” campaign that opened the war was supposed to strike fear in the Iraqi leadership and push them to capitulate before the war started. This was an example of using air power and strategic bombardment. Ten years later we were using boots on the ground to win the will of the people in order to quell the violence. Yes we have had to eradicate poppies, teach women, and build schools. But this is the result of the Executive and Legislative Branch making the decision to commit national treasure and resources to impose our will on our enemy. Once that decision is made we have the obligation to break what we fix, as our former Secretary of State Colin Powell told the President prior to the start of the war. You cannot carpet bomb or use strategic weapons to win wars and walk away as if we have no obligation to put together what we broke. As we have seen in the Arab Spring diplomatically it is in our best interest to put an organization in place that is aligned with our National Security Strategy, otherwise we just wasted a lot of time and national treasure. I would ask the author to re-examine his beliefs on the use of air power and its ability to solely win wars. I am not averse to the use of the Air Force as a shaping arm of the DoD, but it is not the sole force that can win wars. If he feels the USAF is irrelevant in Operation Enduring Freedom and/or Operation Iraqi Freedom then he should have asked USAF leadership to get involved sooner vice snubbing the use of UAVs as they were offered by Secretary Gates early on in his tenure. It was not until the USAF realized they lacked a mission and risked getting cut fiscally in order to prioritize budgetary needs of the USMC and USA that the USAF got involved. There is not much use for Strategic Bombing in a counterinsurgency. I am sure Douhet would be most upset by this last comment, but it is a reality.

Tom Campbell. You are correct. It always was a “moneymaker” of a war. We had plenty of ways to win militarily, but those two, (LBJ & McNamara), and others were making too much money. Isn’t it just dandy that humans have such a love for money that they will let young men and women be killed in something as stupid as was this Viet Nam Police Action. ??? We, as a nation, should delete the 535 members of Congress, and start with all new blood, and enforce the U.S. Constitution, it’s Amendments, and The Bill of Rights. The Clintons, the Obamas, blah blah should be in prison. Yea, I know. Opinions are just like _ _ _ _ oles.

The author states that wars are won in the air. Which wars? Strategic bombing didn’t beat Germany; they increased economic production while being bombed. Strategic air power wins wars when the means (bombing) actually accomplishes the goal or ends. When it doesn’t, air power doesn’t win the war.

If the point was “SAC is required to ensure America can continue to deter opponents with nuclear weapons,” I can agree with that. But short of nuclear war, wars are won by finding a way to achieve the end. In most wars, it’s some combination of services. The end came for Germany when the Allies occupied Germany. In other wars, air or naval power proved dominant. We never know how a war will progress, and history proves a well balanced force normally wins over a less balanced force in a conventional fight.

Excellent article Bob. My only comment is that I would have preferred that you said openly that the politically correct idea of minimum collateral damage is absolutely idiotic and that we have to be prepared to kill as many people as necessary to win a war, in contrast to the current practice of engaging in combat for years, then walking away in defeat.

Stop asking for an airframe.
Ask for an effect. We replaced the B52 50 years ago with the minuteman missile.
Strategic Airpower is found in missiles, not manned aircraft.
All manned aircraft are inherently support to the Army and Navy and should belong to them.
The Air Force is no longer a warfighting organization, it is a flying club.

A Minuteman could only replace the B-52 in the nuclear role, and then it could only do that if we decided to abandon the idea of the nuclear triad, composed of land-based missiles, nuclear-armed bombers, and ballistic missile submarines.

Minuteman missiles didn’t bring North Vietnam to the bargaining table. Minuteman missiles didn’t put the Taliban to flight in Afghanistan. Minuteman missiles didn’t devastate the Iraqi Republican Guard as they sat in their trenches waiting for a frontal attack. B-52s have more roles today than were envisioned when they were built.

Another point: How do you tell your Minuteman that it was all a mistake, a false alarm, and they are to return to base?

I am sorry, I thought the discussion was STRATEGIC Airpower. Are we going to take about an Air Force designed for guerilla conflicts now? We can do this, of course. We can talk about using B1 bombers instead of single engine turbo props to provide CAS is a permissive environment. We can talk about conventional GLCMs to target fixed structures is cities for negotiating leverage. We can talk about how 2 armored corps did more damage in 16 hours than 2 months of bombing did. Well we did bring North Vietnam to the bargaining table. But was that the limit of the “EFFECT” we wanted? S. Vietnam might aruge that bringing them to the table wasn’t quite enough.
Recallability? What happens when your stealth bombers cross the ADIZ (or takes off, for that matter). Your enemy doesn’t know if they have been recalled.You are in a nuclear conflict with or without recall. And that is HOURS before TOT. Friendly missiles will launch hours AFTER your bombers CAN’T be recalled. The same can’t be said of the enemy’s.You can’t say unmanned bombers won’t work because you can’t guarantee comms and then justify manned bombers because they can be recalled. Either you can communicate or you can’t. Your justification exercises have become sloppy.
I’ll leave you with HAP Arnold “when satisfactory ground to ground missiles become standard equipment, the need for both air to ground and air to air weapons will be definitely decreased. Of great importance is the long range ground to ground guided missile. This will be the strategic long range bombardment airplane of the future”
We found uses for 750 irrelevent aircraft 60 years ago. That almost makes sense. We already bought them. But to replace manned aircraft that were designed for a very specific EFFECT, delivering nuclear weapons against the enemy’s Strategic COGs, is criminally stupid in this fiscal environment.If you want to talk about support to ground operations, lets do that. But then again, this would definately turn the thread in a purple direction.

Who said unmanned bombers won’t work? I didn’t. Unmanned vehicles are “recalled” every day to their air bases after carrying out their missions, whether armed or not. What I said was that a Minuteman can’t be recalled. It is on a one-way, irrevocable trip.

Your “enemy” CAN know if your stealth bombers have been recalled, (in what is a very hypothetical situation), if you have them turn on their IFF transponders. And at what point can’t bombers be recalled? Are you saying once they have penetrated enemy airspace you can’t recall them? As unlikely as any of these scenarios may be, remember they are all moot if we are talking about a Minuteman launch. Once it leaves the silo, that’s all she wrote.

And remember also that strategic air power need not be nuclear. Nor is a nuclear weapon always strategic. Conversely all manner of non-nuclear weapons could be considered strategic these days. Think of Stuxnet writ large taking down the entire financial underpinnings of our economy. How do you respond to such an attack, assuming you know its origin? Do you go nuclear? Do you deploy your own cyberweapon? Perhaps you use EMP weapons, deployed by manned bombers, that would take down that enemy’s electronic infrastructure as well. Now you have had a strategic exchange without nuclear weapons, but with its own brand of devastation with respect to aftereffects.

My argument would be that you want options. You want a range of effects. You don’t want your strategic quiver to be filled solely with Minuteman missiles.

Nothing like a completely transparent defense of an utterly failed defense doctrine.

Massive Retaliation invited aggression. The history of the 1950s and 1960s, of which the author seems blissfully unaware, proves that “one size fits none defense planning” is a recipe for failure.

“My argument would be that you want options. You want a range of effects. You don’t want your strategic quiver to be filled solely with Minuteman missiles.”

That sounds awfully…Joint, if you ask me.

Options come at a cost. But if you are justifying next gen bomber by all the great things it can do conventionally and in support of ground operations, well, there goes the whole argument.

how much does one spend on, as you put it, “very hypothetical situations” If you want to talk strategic airpower, lets talk strategic airpower. If you want to talk cyber attacks and economic warfare we can talk that too. why could an EMP not be delivered via cruise missile? can you recall a nuke dropped from a bomber? no. so you are talking about 500 billion dollars for a 30 minute savings that does nothing to help your strategic deterrent and to conduct niche missions. a 20 bomber fleet is smart. fortunately we already have one. like the SR-71, JSARS and any number of low fleet count niche missions. But 200 stealth bombers. That passes no common sense test and you are asking for airframes and not for effects. self-justifying doctrine is self-justifying
.
stealth bombers with IFF. Not very stealthy now are they?

Why not? I’m just saying there’s good reason to have a manned or unmanned bomber in the future.

Of course options come at a cost. In a crisis, having options is priceless. Having no options may cost you your country.

I think your definition of strategic air power is not one with which I am familiar.

A Minuteman missile does one thing and one thing only. It is launched once, and when its warheads reenter the earth’s atmosphere, they rain nuclear fire upon an enemy. A Minuteman is the embodiment of being out of options. It has only one effect. In my opinion, a nuke is not the answer to every strategic question.

A bomber, on the other hand, can deliver a range of effects as varied as its payload.

A B-1, B-2, or B-52 can wage strategic warfare without using nukes. You seem to think strategic means nuclear. They are not one and the same thing. A strategic weapon is one that negates an enemy’s ability to make war. A strategic weapon could be a computer virus, or a rice fungus that wipes out an entire harvest, or a bioweapon mimicking a flu that kills 20 percent of its victims. Strategic air power need only drop ordnance that destroys an enemy’s ability to make war. That could mean an EMP weapon or weapons. It could mean bioweapons. It could mean a few bunker busters in a nuclear facility.

The “very hypothetical situation” I wrote about was a “Fail Safe” or “Dr. Strangelove” scenario, because while that is unlikely to happen, it would be impossible with nothing more than an arsenal of ICBMs. Or SLBMs, for that matter.

You have me at a disadvantage with respect to your mention of 30 minutes. I don’t know what you’re talking about there.

In answer to your question as to whether I recall a bomber dropping a nuke, well, I recall two bombers that dropped two atomic bombs to end World War II.

Finally, every B-2 Spirit has an IFF transponder. Most large aircraft do. The beauty of IFF is that your transponder doesn’t have to be switched on. American factories produce hundreds of police cars every year, yet they don’t roll out the doors with their sirens screeching and gumball lights wired to the “on” position.

The B-2 crew can flip a switch any time that they want to and go dark. Presto. Stealthy.

Justin,

While there is much to criticize about American Cold War strategy, I would argue that the Soviet Union didn’t need to be invited to be aggressive. Hungary, Belarus, Lithuania, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and several more countries can testify to that. Massive retaliation had nothing to do with Russian tanks rolling into Budapest and Prague. It did, however, arguably have something to do with Russian tanks not rolling through the Fulda Gap.

My definition of strategic airpower is the one we created the USAF to provide. In the powerful and simple words of Douhet “An Independent Air force is an offensive force which can strike with terrific speed against enemy targets on land or sea in any direction and can force its way through any aerial opposition from the enemy. An independent air force should always operate in mass and inflict the greatest damage in the shortest possible time.”

Or, if you prefer, Ira Eaker “What I want, what his country must have, is a strategic force of such size and composition that no enemy will ever date to launch that massive nuclear first strike. That is our highest national priority”
30 minutes is the time from receipt of launch orders to nuclear detenation fo rthe Minuteman system.
Options are not priceless. Options come at a very definable cost. The defense budget is not a Mastercard commercial.

There are many strategic weapons. the DIME model. However, Strategic Airpower is a very specific subset of our strategic capabilities. And we are talking about strategic airpower, are we not? The Air Force has benefited by defining strategic airpower as, “Whatever we say it is” So everything the AF has is strategic. Its CSAR helicopters are strategic, but Army Medevac are not. Its JTACs are strategic, but Forward Observers and JFOs are not. This is a hollow and intellectually dishonest construct designed not for warfighting but for justifying service parachialism.
Airpower is a weapon of deterrence that threatens unspeakable, unstoppable violence upon an enemy’s strategic centers of gravity. thats it.
The EBO idea of targeting specific war fighting capabilities means one must retain the ability and will to fight that war, on the ground, otherwise it is not with standing. AKA Joint. The theory of the Independent Air Force and Strategic Airpower isn’t about attriting warfighting capability, its about deterring the will to fight it. You speak of very small specific attacks with manned bombers which I agree with. I support the current idea of about 20 bombers (though more than 25% availability would be nice). I don’t support, because there is no need, a fleet of hundreds of bombers.

but take your stealthy IFF idea. We send 150 nuclear stealth bombers over china. do we pinky swear they ALL turned their IFF on. Once a nuclear armed bomber crosses ADIZ, we have crossed the rubicon. No nation, so provoked could be expected to not launch a retaliatory raid in such a circumstance. You would do well to review your game theory.
I am enjoying the discussion, however. Thank you for your well thought out (though I believe flawed) responses.

Let’s get back to first courses.

Your argument was originally the following, which all the ensuing comments have served to obscure:

“Stop asking for an airframe. Ask for an effect. We replaced the B52 50 years ago with the minuteman missile. Strategic Airpower is found in missiles, not manned aircraft. All manned aircraft are inherently support to the Army and Navy and should belong to them. The Air Force is no longer a warfighting organization, it is a flying club.”

It became obvious in subsequent emails that you believe strategic air power equals nuclear-armed air power. On that basis, you can argue that the Minuteman replaced the B-52. In my opinion you would be wrong, because land-based missiles are just one part of the nuclear triad, which exists for very good reason, but you’re free to make the argument.

I don’t agree with you, however, that strategic air power = nuclear. We have carried out strategic warfare without nuclear weapons. The 8th Air Force was doing that over Germany and LeMay’s B-29s were doing it over Japan, with GP bombs and incendiaries.

The vast majority of nuclear weapons are strategic. But not all strategic weapons are nuclear. Your Minuteman cannot truly replace a B-52, which can carry out the nuclear strike mission as well as a range of long range strike tasks, because the Minuteman can perform only one strategic mission, and others exist.

Right now, our nation continues to pull back from overseas bases. We’ve been seeing the effects of this withdrawal over the past 20 years, as we’re denied basing rights during conflicts, or overflight rights, or logistical aid. We increasingly face the tyranny of distance, and we need long range strike assets. The youngest B-52 is five decades old. The B-2 has earlier generation stealth, is a “silver bullet” asset, with only 20 in existence, and is now aging as well. A replacement to these assets has to be found because one doesn’t exist right now. A Minuteman does not replace a bomber, not in today’s world. In the 1950s, you could have made that argument. I don’t think you can now.

Strategic air power isn’t just about deterrence. It has to be about what happens after deterrence fails, as well. Which takes us back to the accepted definition that strategic warfare is that which takes away an enemy’s ability to wage war.

If you want to take out a nuclear facility before actual weapons are produced, and you don’t want to risk a nuclear war, bunker busters dropped from bombers are prime candidates for what would be employed on this hypothetical strike. You have just taken away a hostile nation’s ability to wage nuclear war. That, I would argue, is a strategic mission. That’s strategic air power.

Strategic, non-nuclear warfare. Nuclear missiles don’t work for that. By definition, they can’t.

In my opinion, we need a new bomber, whether manned, unmanned, or optionally manned, for the types of strategic missions that we will be faced with in the future. Not to mention the tactical ones, since our premier tactical strike aircraft has an unrefueled combat radius of 800 miles, and it has become blindingly obvious that a couple of long-range AAMs on the market are meant specifically to take out assets like tankers.

I am not here to get into newly created debates over other issues that are only meant to obscure the original one laid out above, such as Ira Eaker’s, Giuilo Douhet’s, or the Air Force’s definitions of what is strategic; circular logic on doctrine; or service parochialism. I’m here to discuss whether the bomber has been replaced by nuclear missiles. I say no.

And I will emphasize again that options are priceless.

DEWS.
In the span of 3 years, we have gone from a 20KW, 500m Raytheon mortar killer to a 50KW 1.5km Rheinmetall rocket killer to a 100KW, 10km Northrop capability to destroy TBMs like the Frog, SCUD or SS-21. With a coherent beam of light.
Now add to this hunting weapons.
Which are turbine, not rocket, propelled and hence can be pushed forward a BRL standoff release point, preemptively, rather than miss-ile sprint across a 100km transit at Mach 5, only to mess up their ONE chance to hit a fleeting/stealthy target.
TurboSAMs having the best of both fixed wing and missile based characteristics in: reengagement after a missed pass, 10 mission recoverability and cheapness of self-seeking (no engagement radar limits to signature detection threshold). All in one.
Because they ditch the bus vehicle for an integral ability (10ft, 250lb MALI flies further than a 14ft, 985lb, Phoenix) which means that 3.2 billion for a wing of 40 Su-35 now buys you 1,500 T-SAMs and 200, 5 ton truck mounted, catapults.
And finally Cyber.
Which may ride an HPM/HERF lethal capability of it’s own but whose intent, ultimately, is to deny all netcentric synergies as comms which are not line of sight directionally encompassed in a 10cm laser. CEC for the services warfighters is essential. And the Chinese hack our defense industrial databases on a daily basis to gain insights into how our GTW free-air transmissions are vulnerable.
Airpower will still be essential to -attempt- to exploit.
Simply because the leverage you gain from rear area attacks that break up enemy force marshaling areas and deny them logistics as industry are constants of needful interdiction to allow independent friendly massing at weak points.
But these airpower assets will have to be low and sneaky as CM/UAVs or high and hypersonic as aeroballistics.
Because those will be the only way to target and engage by saturation with throwaway platforms a threat which shoots back with fiber optic digital diode pumped lasers that cost pennies on the dollar compared to an SA-15 or SA-20.
Largely because I don’t believe that the tactical arena will remain presence-tenable in another 20 years, I do believe that carrier strike is still valid, for the simple reason that it’s technically easier to go 5,500nm at Mach 10 than it is to (XTV-2) attempt a FOBS type FALCON launch at Mach 25 from CONUS.
But even then, the principle drivers will be value defined.
Blow up a Chinese factory by slinging a MARV’ing KEM shower across half a time zone and you hostage all their remaining wealth base to a willingness to back off on say Taiwan.
While conserving the 200-500 million dollar _theater not tactical_ (no escorts/no rollback) strike asset from even S300V level ‘terminal’ defenses.
At the same time you can push the carrier far enough out into the Blue Void that weapons like the DF-21D can be engaged with midcourse intercept as ‘outer air battle zone’ long-period attrition by the likes of SM3IIb using missile trap CG/DDG under the likely flightpaths.
Rather than wait for the ASBM to saturate a terminal defensive layering of THAAD/ERINT equivalent SM-3IIa.
If you can’t find or hit the Archer, it’s still better to shoot the arrow than the shotgun warhead which busses out a hundred, homing, mini-KEMs, 200,000ft and Mach 8 over the target group.
Here is where manned airpower will restabilize it’s advantage of a FUEL TANK vs. solid pour rocket as endurant _range overmatch_ against missiles.
Launch from the ECS and land in Al Udeid. Launch from the SCS and land in Osan. And you have just criss-crossed the Near Peer with a certain awareness that they are touchable for any bad act they engage in.

With regard to the previous post, we did not make this up. There really are people who talk and write like this. Many professionals in the military field would probably understand a lot of this but I doubt if anyone, anywhere, understands all of this. The writer is both knowledgeable and opinionated — both very good things — and I would love to see a version of his comments that is easier to understand.