The Icarus Syndrome: The Role of Air Power Theory in the Evolution and Fate of the U.S. Air Force.

• Author: Murray, Williamson

Carl builder of the rand Corporation has written a controversial study of the decreasing influence of air power theory on the culture of the United States Air Force. In effect he argues that the air force has lost its bearings since its creation at the start of the Cold War. Unless it finds some reasonable intellectual direction and reconceptualizes its role in national security, Builder argues, it is in danger of disappearing entirely, as the other services assume the missions and purposes for which the air force was created. To a great extent this charge hits the mark, but it reflects a symptom rather than die illness itself.

This could have been an important book, particularly as new leadership assumes control of the air force. Unfortunately, Builder's account of air power theory is devoid of a solid historical context, misses a substantial body of evidence that suggests that the record is even worse, and ends with ahistorical and implausible claims about the direction in which the world is moving as it enters the twenty-first century. Thus, two separate forces pull at the reviewer: on one hand, the need to suggest the general inadequacies of Builder's research, methodology, and understanding of the dimensions of the problem; on the other, a desire to sketch out why in the larger sense Builder is right in arguing that die air force is currently close to intellectual and spiritual bankruptcy, and that only a massive effort to alter its "corporate culture" will change the course on which it is currently embarked: disestablishment as an independent service.

Certainly, something has gone seriously wrong with the institution's internal compass. I remember encountering a marine officer during the mid-1980s at the Naval War College who questioned a lecture I had given on the driving belief of airmen in the 1920s and 1930s in the crucial importance of air power to America's strategic future. "But sir," he commented, my fiancee is an air force pilot and I know lots of air force officers; they are wonderful people. But when talk mm to war and tactics and operations, their eyes glaze over and they quickly move on to discussions of their careers, or what the airlines are offering. They certainly aren't anything like the airmen whom you described in your lecture." Builder attempts to explain how the service lost that driving belief in its mission as a combat organization.

Unfortunately, though, Builder suffers from some of the same ignorance of history of which he accuses the air force. He has presented a hurried, slapped together product that contains nothing in the way of original primary research and little serious analysis. The sections dealing with the development of air power theory in the 1920s and 1930s, and the discussions of air operations in World War II, largely consist of quotations strung together. Even Builder's knowledge of secondary sources is sketchy. His main sources are Michael Sherry's tendentious study of the use of American air power and the memoirs of various officers and policymakers. He draws on little of the substantial rethinking that has occurred about the strategic bombing of Nazi Germany during World War II. It is not that his account of the development of air power theory and its impact on World War II is wrong, but that it fails to tell us much that is new or interesting. Worse, as Builder moves into the post-World War II period his understanding diminishes, and what he fails to understand lies at the root of the present problems: airmen have consistently rejected the evidence of past experience, virtually from the first moment that they thought about developing the airplane as a particular form of war.

Theory Without Evidence

Air power theory in the 1920s and 1930s centered on an explicit claim that World War I had no relevance to the next war. Air power advocates argued that they would dominate future conflict precisely because they would remain...