Progressive Doctrine

Following the war the views of air leaders like Spaatz, LeMay, Eaker, and Hansell solidified into doctrine for the new U. S. Air Force. Much of that doctrine reflected the progressive ideals that airmen had possessed before the war, and many airmen believed the war validated those notions. Their convictions, strengthened by the attainment of service autonomy soon after the conflict, made World War II a template for “victory through air power,” and that template highlighted the belief that bombing had scored a knock­out blow in the Pacific. Major General Fred Anderson typified the perspective of many postwar air leaders in a letter to Spaatz eight days after Nagasaki: “I wish to congratulate you and your staff on your superior handling of the final stages of the strategic war against Japan. I wish to congratulate you upon proving to the world that a nation can be defeated by air power alone.”11

Most airmen thought that America’s vast superiority in strate­gic bombers and atomic bombs assured that future wars would be quick, cheap, and efficient compared to the savagery that had killed tens of millions from 1939-45. Even in the aftermath of the Korean War—a “limited” conflict that did not conform to air­men’s expectations—the progressive notions underpinning Air Force doctrine remained little changed from the ideals espoused at the Air Corps Tactical School. The authors of the 1955 edition of the Air Force’s Basic Doctrine Manual anticipated a conflict with the Soviet Union but were mindful of the recent experience in Korea. Regardless of the type of conflict that next emerged, they believed that air power would decide it quickly and efficiently. They noted: “War has been characterized in the past by a general pattern of events in which military forces were engaged in an ex­tended struggle of attrition in surface battles. With air forces and modern weapons systems available, it no longer is necessary to defeat opposing armed forces as a prerequisite to conducting ma­jor operations directly against an opponent either in his sovereign territory or in any other locality.”12 The manual further stated: “Of the various types of military forces, those which conduct air operations are most capable of decisive results. .. . They provide the dominant military means of exercising the initiative and gain­ing decisions in all forms of international relations, including full peace, cold war, limited wars of all types, and total war.”13 The total war with the Soviets never materialized, but eight years of limited war in Vietnam produced no substantial changes to the Air Force’s progressive mindset. The 1984 edition of the Basic Doctrine Manual stressed that “aerospace forces have the power to penetrate to the heart of an enemy’s strength without first defeating defending forces in detail.”14 The manual identified the enemy’s heart as a “selected series of vital targets,” which, if destroyed, would wreck the enemy’s capability and will to fight.15 Of the ten possible targets listed, six were components of a na­tion’s industrial apparatus. The manual also noted that strategic bombing could occur successfully “at all levels of conflict,”16 an obvious reference to Vietnam and President Richard Nixon’s De­cember 1972 bombing of the North that many airmen believed produced the Paris Accords a month later. LeMay expressed that conviction when an interviewer asked him in 1986 if America could have won in Vietnam. “In any two-week period you want to mention,” he answered.17 LeMay believed—as did many other airmen—that the political controls restraining much of the bomb­ing in the North had prevented air power from producing a rapid, inexpensive victory much earlier in the conflict.18

For air commanders today, the political restrictions inherent in limited war are givens, yet service doctrine continues to stress a progressive viewpoint. The current edition of the Air Force’s Ba­sic Doctrine Manual, written in 2003, lists “strategic attack” first among a list of seventeen “air and space power functions.”19 The manual further emphasizes that strategic attack not only gives the United States a unique capability to defeat an enemy without bloody ground combat, but also provides the means to transform the character of war itself:

Air and space power is inherently a strategic force and an offensive weapon. Unlike other forms of military power, air and space power may simultaneously hold all of an enemy’s instruments of power at risk—military, economic, and diplomatic. Employed properly, it offers the capability of going to the heart of the enemy sources of strength, avoiding prolonged attrition-based surface combat operations as a precursor… . Strategic attack, as envisioned today, is more than just a function—it is also a different approach for thinking about war. It is the manifestation of the Airman’s perspective: thinking about de­feating the enemy as a system.20