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PART II THE SELECTION OF OBJECTIVES V STRATEGIC CONCENTRATION 'All bombing, even when carried out on very distant and apparently independent objectives, must be co-ordinated with the efforts that are being made by the land or sea forces, both as to the selection ofobjectives and as to the time at which the attacks shall take place.... It is utterly wrong and wasteful to look upon them as entirely separate duties.'1 IN the first part of this book we have considered the measures necessary to create and maintain an air situation sufficiently favourable to enable us to direct the efforts of the air striking force to the achievement of the object in a land campaign. And it seems advisable to begin the second part, which is an examination of some of the methods by which that object must be achieved, by a brief restatement of the object itsel£ The object of the air force in a campaign of the first magnitude in which great armies are engaged is the defeat of the enemy's forces in the field, and primarily of his army. In any future war, which even more than the last is bound to be a war more of material than ofman-power, ofmachineryratherthan ofmuscle, this object covers a field much wider than it is the purpose of this book to explore in any detail. And although this wider aspect of the problem is of such vital importance that it must later receive more than a passing reference, the object at least of those air forces directly co-operating with the army in a theatre of war can be reduced to more narrow limits-to operate in such a way as most effectively to contribute to the overthrow of the enemy army in the field. This is not the place for a critical survey of the principles of war as codified and tabulated in the war manuals ofthe fighting services. Actually in the view of the present writer the whole matter has been overcodified, and the majority ofthe so-called I Marshal of the Air Force Lord Trenchard, Army QuarterlY, April 1921. 62 THE SELECTION OF OBJECTIVES principles of war are not principles at all. But there are three great fundamental rules which are really worthy of the title of principles, and are described in the Field Service Regulations as the principles of concentration, of offensive action, and of securiry. These are the real principles, of which the observance is essential to victory, and to ignore which is to court defeat. And all the other factors described as principles are surely only elements in these three. Thus mobility, economy offorce, and co-operation are elements without which concentration is impossible ; surprise and again mobility are essential ingredients in a successful offensive; and it should be clear from the foregoing chapters that the correct application of the principle of security depends upon a balanced economy of force.I The principles of security and of offensive action have already received due recognition in the first four chapters ofthis bookindeed the main burden ofthose chapters was that air superiority , which is a measure of security necessary to ensure freedom of action, can only be secured by the offensive. And it is now necessary to consider the principle of concentration, which in air warfare, even more than on land, is the foundation and corner-stone of sound strategy. This principle is described in the Field Service Regulations in the following words: 'The principle ojconcentration: The application of this principle consists in the concentration and employment of the maximum force, moral, physical, and material, at the decisive time and place (whether that place be astrategicaltheatre ora tactical objective).' The tactical aspect of concentration is considered in a later chapter in the light ofthe actual employment of the air force at the battle ofAmiens in August 1918; we are concerned here with concentration in the wider sense-with what may be described as the major strategy of air action in a land campaign.:z Now I See, for instance, p. 30 above. Z A condition which is often rather confusing, not only in air warfare, is the existence of what-for lack of a better expression-one may term double strategy and double tactics. Air warfare is not peculiar in this respect. This double nature of war has necessitated, long before the advent of aircraft, that complex range of definitions, from Imperial or Grand Strategy through thatvague border-landwhere minor (or battle-field...

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