American Military Aviation: The Indispensable Arm (review)

This is the second book in the Centennial of Flight series, under Roger D. Launius as general editor, who, while at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, inaugurated the series.

In only seven chronological chapters, Charles Gross's book covers nearly a century of American military aviation. The first chapter starts with attempts at flight before the Wright brothers, and the last chapter examines the air campaigns in the Balkans in the 1990s. To adequately discuss aviation over such a long time span, the author relies heavily upon the scholarship of many historians, which he scrupulously acknowledges in his introduction, narrative, extensive footnotes, and lengthy bibliography. As the series requires, he synthesizes the best literature in books, monographs, and journals and provides a well-organized, fast-paced, clear narrative for the general reader—and military historian.

The author strikes the right balance in selecting and organizing material and in evaluating the place of air power in national defense strategy. He analyzes aviation associated with the army, navy, marines, air force, National Guard, and reserves, while relating it to industry, technology, and national policy throughout the twentieth century. By focusing on the broad topic "military aviation," cutting across services and institutions, he presents a unique, up-to-date scholarly study on the subject.

His sustained inclusion of guardsmen and reservists in the volume gives the book a valuable "total force" characteristic. He reminds us that not until the Vietnam War did professional airmen, instead of volunteers and mobilized citizens, fly the bulk of a war's combat missions. He observes that after the Gulf War in 1991, the "silent call-up option," which side-stepped "politically sensitive mobilizations," allowed the air force to extensively use volunteer guard and reserve forces for contingencies and humanitarian missions throughout the decade (p. 275).

Although the author gives short shrift to important electronic warfare aspects of aviation, he thoroughly incorporates aerial refueling and airlift, known collectively as air mobility. His account of the C-141s and C-5s airlifting military supplies to Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur War is a gripping tale of aviation's effectiveness as a tool of U.S. foreign policy.

The author's assertion that today air power is the "indispensable arm" of America's military forces reflects balanced judgment about the nation's aerial weapon. He rightly views air power as playing the dominant role in Operation Desert Storm. He rejects, however, the claim that air power in 1999 during Operation Allied Force in Serbia and Kosovo independently forced Slobodan Milosevic to capitulate. He concludes, "Air power still works best in conjunction with armies and navies" (p. 7). He sees cruise missiles and air-refueled fighter-bombers with precision guided munitions as the key elements of contemporary American air power.