When North Korean forces invaded South Korea on June 25, 1950, in a surprise attack, they awakened the United States to the dangers of brushfire war in the nuclear age. The earlier crisis of 1948 in Berlin, Communist successes in Czechoslovakia in 1948 and China in 1949, and news of the Soviet explosion of an atomic device in 1949, had prompted the National Security Council (NSC) to issue a secret directive, NSC-68, in April 1950. It judged the Soviet Union to be bent on world domination. NSC-68 called for a massive increase in defense spending of 20 percent of the gross national product if necessary, the development of a hydrogen bomb, and the containment of Communism. The sustained American-led buildup of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Europe was unmistakable evidence of containment, but Korea would be the first test of revitalized American resolve.

A heavy reliance on the nuclear strike force left the Air Force ill prepared to deal with a conventional war on the other side of the globe. Moreover, when Congress approved the use of force to repel the North Korean invasion on June 30, 1950, the absence of a formal declaration of war introduced the Air Force to the new tribulations of limited war. The few air combat units of Major General Earle Partridge's Fifth Air Force, the main combat force of Lieutenant General George Stratemeyer's Far Eastern Air Forces (FEAF), launched interdiction raids against advancing North Korean units from bases in Japan in an attempt to slow their headlong rush down the Korean peninsula. Armed reconnaissance by fighters against targets of opportunity increased their effectiveness.

The United Nations (U.N.) Security Council had called on member nations to aid South Korea on June 27, but for a time, the U.S. Air Force's thin aluminum line was the only help harassed American and Republic of Korean ground forces could expect. B-26s of the 3d Bombardment Wing from Johnson Air Base in Japan put the interdiction effort on an around-the-clock basis with night intruder operations beginning on the night of June 27. B-29s of the 19th Bombardment Group, based at Kadena, Okinawa, added heavy bombs the next day. Continuing interdiction strikes (40 percent of all missions) against overextended North Korean supply lines and desperate ground action supported by air strikes (60 percent of all missions) saved U.N. forces trapped in the Pusan Perimeter. This success in direct support of U.N. troops freed Air Force units for strikes against strategic targets in North Korea. Accurate bombing in all weather conditions and North Korea's small size allowed the B-29s to all but eliminate its industrial base by September 1950.

General Douglas MacArthur, named Commander in Chief of the U.N. Command in Korea on July 8, launched a surprise amphibious landing at Inchon on September 15, coupled with a U.N. drive north from the Pusan Perimeter, clearing South Korea of North Korean forces. In early October the U.N. changed its objective from saving South Korea to unifying all of Korea under a pro-Western government. Before the end of the month, as MacArthur's army approached the Yalu River separating China from North Korea, signs pointed to probable Communist Chinese intervention. The Air Force switched to interdicting the flow of men and materiel across the Yalu bridges. The freezing of the Yalu River in January 195 1, and rules of engagement that forbade American over flights of Chinese territory on the north end of the bridges, condemned the effort to failure. B-29s had to fly above 20,000 feet to escape antiaircraft artillery fire from the Chinese side of the Yalu, but they could not fire back. That altitude and bombs errantly falling on Chinese territory insured little success. Bombing became even more difficult when China escalated the conflict in November 1950 by sending Soviet-provided MiG-15 jet fighters, launched from safe sanctuary on lightning attacks against American aircraft, especially FEAF B-29s. The airspace just south of the Yalu River in northwestern Korea became known as "MiG Alley." The performance advantages of the MiG-15 in speed and altitude initially held sway over propeller-driven P-51 Mustangs (pursuit aircraft redesignated by the Air Force as fighters in June 1948), jet-powered F-80 Shooting Stars, and even newer F-84 Thunderjets.

Chinese Communist forces counterattacked on November 26, driving U.N. units back toward South Korea. For the U.S. Air Force, this meant a renewed concentration on interdiction, combined with a campaign to maintain air superiority against the MiG-15s. Air Force airlift brought 1,600 tons of supplies to Marines cut off at Changjin (more widely known by its Japanese name, Chosin) Reservoir and evacuated 5,000 wounded. After retreating, U.N. forces stabilized along the 38th parallel in early 1951 and the war deteriorated into a series of small, bloody battles, with no significant movement by either side. War objectives changed again. Peace talks opened in July 195 1. They were backed by a new American strategy to force high rates of attrition on the enemy. It would be up to FEAF, now under Lieutenant General Otto Weyland, and U.S. naval aviation to carry the war beyond the front, to pressure North Korea and China into a ceasefire, substituting air power whenever possible for ground operations that inevitably resulted in high casualties.

This strategy presented new threats and complications for the Air Force. Doctrine dictated strikes against the enemy's industrial fabric, but the bombing operations of 1950 had destroyed these limited North Korean targets. Industries supporting the Communist war effort, located in China and the Soviet Union, were off limits to aerial attack. The Air Force had to operate under the rules and restrictions of limited war and could not bring SAC's massive nuclear power to bear. FEAF B-29 Superfortresses, supported by tactical aircraft, bombed targets all over North Korea with conventional weapons, including radar-directed high altitude strikes against enemy troops forming for attack. They blurred the lines between tactical and strategic air power, proving the value of George Kenney's "seamless" approach.

After China's intervention, both the United States and the U.N. sought a more limited objective, that of a negotiated truce. Dissatisfied, MacArthur advised Congress that "there was no substitute for victory," and contradicted national policy. On April 11, 1951, President Truman fired MacArthur, replaced him with Matthew Ridgway, and in the process changed the nature of air warfare in Korea. The Air Force would still interdict the flow of supplies to Chinese units along the 38th Parallel and provide close air support to U.N. forces opposing them, but it would now also pressure the enemy into a settlement by inflicting maximum losses of men and materiel. The "police action" had become a war of attrition.

The Fifth Air Force's new commander, Lieutenant General Frank Everest, believed that interdiction was key to reducing the impact of Chinese offensives and U.N. ground losses. MiG-15s outnumbered F-86 Sabres over North Korea by five-to-one in 1951. Thus the Air Force's losses climbed as B-29s operated mainly at night. Complicating its air superiority campaign were air bases which the Chinese tried to build in North Korea to support their own forces and which FEAF was compelled to target. F-86s engaged MiGs in air-to-air combat and B-29s cratered the air bases' runways, forcing Communist jets to continue flying out of China and limiting their ability to challenge because of their short range. However, any bomb damage was quickly repaired by enemy labor units and necessitated continuous return missions. Interdiction, although costly, racked up long lists of destroyed trucks, trains, rail lines, and bridges, including the heavily-defended Yalu crossings. Nonetheless, supplies still reached Communist front lines in quantity by night. Medal of Honor recipient Captain John Walmsley, Jr., of the 8th Bombardment Squadron gave his life using his searchlight-equipped B-26 as a beacon to direct other B-26s while they bombed an enemy supply train on September 14, 1951. As it had in Operation STRANGLE in Italy during World War II, the Air Force learned that no air campaign was tougher than interdiction.

By the spring of 1952 the Chinese had won the battle of interdiction and the Americans had failed in their attrition strategy along the 38th Parallel. Communist representatives, first at Kaesong and then at Panmunjon, stalled peace talks and demanded mandatory repatriation for prisoners-of-war. General Weyland proposed to break the impasse by expanding the air war against North Korea. As U.N. casualties climbed and negotiations dragged on, the new American commander in Korea, General Mark Clark, accepted Weyland's proposal. In June 1952 he ordered the bombing of the Suiho Hydroelectric Complex, previously 46 off limits" and one of the largest facilities of its type in the world. It was a major exporter of electricity to Chinese industries across the border. A four-day onslaught over Suiho and other hydroelectric plants cost North Korea 90 percent of its power system. Through the remainder of 1952, the Air Force attacked 78 cities and towns identified as supportive of a number of military functions, chiefly supply; however, to limit civilian casualties and weaken morale it alerted their inhabitants.

In Korea, as in World War II, the bombing of critical targets attracted the enemy's air force into the sky, where it could be engaged. Intelligence revealed that China had a thousand MiGs ready for combat and Fifth Air Force fighter squadrons, for the first time in the war, did not have to go hunting-the "game" came to them. A new version of the F-86, the F model, gave Air Force pilots superior performance to go along with their better training and tactics. In May and June 1953 the F-86Fs achieved a 133-to-1 advantage in combat kills over the MiGs. Individual scores rose, with Air Force Captain Joseph McConnell, a B-24 navigator in World War II, topping all pilots with 16 confirmed victories in only four months.

Three developments in 1953 brought peace to Korea. In March Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin, a major obstacle, died. In May, Air Force bombers increased the frequency of their attacks again, striking North Korean irrigation dams that, when breached, washed away railroads and highways and threatened the nation's rice crop. At the direction of President Dwight Eisenhower, Secretary of State John Dulles asked Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to warn China that the United States intended to use tactical and strategic nuclear weapons and might unleash SAC against Chinese cities if a settlement was not forthcoming. On May 27, 1953, China agreed to an armistice in Korea. It went into effect on July 27.

The Korean War should have taught the United States that nuclear weapons had limited use in conventional wars, but the appeal of the new hydrogen bomb, first tested in November 1952, and plans for a new all-jet intercontinental bomber, the B-52, continued to dominate strategic thinking. TAC sought a new generation of fighters (the "century series," including the F-100 Super Sabre, F-101 Voodoo, F-102 Delta Dagger, F-104 Starfighter, F-105 Thunderchief, and F-106 Delta Dart) with supersonic speeds, but also adapted them to carry tactical nuclear weapons. The Air Force realized that while turbojet technology was the future, it alone was no substitute for good training, tactics, and aggressiveness. Military casualties in Korea of over two million for both sides, including more than 54,000 dead Americans, belied the judgment that this was a "limited" war-Americans learned firsthand the costs of war in Asia. Air Force aircraft had dropped 476,000 tons of explosives to achieve a standoff. Korea exposed the Air Force to the reality of post World War II warfare, where conventional (non-nuclear) air power would be used to "influence" an enemy, not to destroy it.

After Korea, President Eisenhower told the JCS that the next war they planned would be nuclear. Conventional capabilities paled before super liquid deuterium bombs such as the Mark 17 (a 41,400-pound thermonuclear device). Only the Air Force B-36 Peacemaker and B-52 Stratofortress could carry the weapon. How to defend America against the Soviet Union's nuclear threat was the question of the day. Brushfire wars would be addressed when they arose, but, so the argument went, they should not occur under the threat of American nuclear retaliation. In January 1954, Secretary of State Dulles unveiled America's new defense strategy-the "New Look." The United States would deter any Soviet attack by threatening to destroy Soviet cities. Commanded by General Curtis LeMay, SAC would expand from 19 to 51 wings, armed with a new generation of smaller, but enormously destructive high-yield thermonuclear weapons. These wings would be placed on constant alert, based around the world, and eventually augmented by KC-135 turbojet Stratotankers to extend their aircrafts' range. In the mid-1950s the major portion of budgetary allocations to the Air Force went to SAC. This specified command, responsible for intercontinental nuclear retaliation, had become "an Air Force within an Air Force."

Besides acquiring such bomber aircraft as the B-52 Stratofortress and B-58 Hustler, the Air Force pursued missile development to support the "New Look." Beginning in 1946, Project MX-774 investigated the development of a 5,000-mile ballistic missile, however, the Scientific Advisory Group, formed by General Arnold, cautioned that atomic bombs were too large for any such delivery system and directed its efforts toward large, unmanned cruise missiles like the Snark. Ballistic missile development lagged until the test of the hydrogen thermonuclear bomb in November 1952 offered prospects of smaller warheads with greater power. Intensive research began in 1954, accelerating in 1956 when the DOD assigned the Air Force responsibility for all ground-launched missiles with ranges of more than 200 miles (later changed to 500 miles). Success with the liquid-propellant Thor and Jupiter intermediate range ballistic missiles (IRBMs, operational in June 1960 and April 1961, respectively) and Atlas and Titan I intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs, deployed from September 1960 to December 1962 and April to August 1962 respectively) came in time to carry a whole new generation of miniature nuclear and thermonuclear warheads. The solid-propellant Minuteman ICBM series followed, beginning in October 1962, and became the mainstay of SAC's missile retaliatory force. The U.S. Air Force was becoming an aerospace force.

Before ICBMs, manned bombers formed the strength behind the "New Look." Airmen had argued since World War I that air power was essentially offensive, but they were compelled to view it as defensive in light of the damage that resulted from the explosion of even one nuclear weapon. To detect incoming attacks, President Truman approved the Distant Early Warning (DEW) radar line which, with Canada's assent, was built across its northern territory beginning in 1954. To operate the line and coordinate their defensive forces, both the United States and Canada established on September 12, 1957, the bi-national North American Air Defense Command (NORAD). A generation of interceptor aircraft began service, beginning with the F-89 and F-100, succeeded by the F-102, F-106, and F-15. For a time anti-air defenses included surface-to-air missiles such as the Nike Ajax system. The development of several follow-up designs occurred, but none was deployed. In the early 1960s the Air Force reinforced NORAD with the Ballistic Missile Early Warning Systern (BMEWS) and, later, the Perimeter Acquisition Radar Characterization System (PARCS). An Air Force general officer historically has served as NORAD commander, operating from a command center inside Cheyenne Mountain near Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Because of its experience of World War II in Europe, the Air Force expressed little faith in the ability of America's defenses to stop a determined air attack, nuclear or otherwise. The only defense was deterrence, made possible by a protected force of bombers and missiles. Any strike at the United States would result in immediate, overwhelming retaliation and a smoking, radioactive wasteland. This "counter value" strategy targeted cities. Because accuracy was limited, especially with early model ICBMs, and thermonuclear warheads were few, the Air Force targeted large, easy-to-hit cities to inflict the greatest possible damage. A counter value strategy was at odds with the Air Force's traditional commitment to precision bombing, but consistent with Dulles's doctrine. Reliance on it and massive retaliation created three problems for the Air Force and the DOD.

The first problem had to do with the increasing vulnerability of manned bombers to improved enemy ground defenses when airborne and, when not, to a surprise nuclear first strike. The Air Force's solution to ground defenses was the production of standoff weapons (including the Hound Dog and eventually the SRAM short-range attack missile and ALCM air-launched cruise missile) to keep bombers at a distance from their targets. "Airborne alert" helped offset the threat of a surprise first strike against the United States. Beginning in 1957, part of SAC's bomber force always remained on ready alert, its crews on standby, poised to take off at a moment's notice; another was dispersed to satellite bases around the world, complicating Soviet targeting; while a smaller was actually airhome. The DOD's ultimate solution was the Triad, maintaining three primary nuclear forces, each with special advantages. The first element of the Triad was the manned bomber, important for its load-carrying and ability to be recalled once launched. ICBMs formed the second component. They were important for their speed, size, and, eventually, accuracy. Early ICBMs, the Atlas and Titan I, burned cryogenic liquid propellant and required extended launch preparations which rendered them vulnerable to a first strike. In the 1960s later model Titans Us employed storable propellants and, joined by the solid-propellant Minuteman, were placed in protective silos and capable of near-instantaneous launch. Submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), including the Polaris, Poseidon, and Trident, comprised the third component of the Triad. Able to roam the world's oceans, missile submarines represented the most survivable of the three legs. Although the sub-launched solid-propellant ballistic missiles at first lacked range and accuracy, technology soon removed these drawbacks.

The second problem created by a counter value strategy and massive retaliation had to do with the control and integration of diverse weapon systems into a single American war plan. In 1959 President Eisenhower ordered that a single integrated operational plan (SIOP) be adopted, which required coordination by the Army, Navy, and Air Force. The need for SIOP became apparent when in the late 1950s an investigation revealed that the military services had targeted Moscow with fewer than 170 nuclear bombs and warheads in case of all-out war.

The third problem had to do with intelligence. America's first steps into space, the "ultimate high ground," were associated with intelligence, surprise attack prevention, and nuclear war planning. The Air Force also sought to exploit space for communications, navigation, and weather forecasting.

Chuck Yeager and the XS-1 rocket aircraft, the first to break the sound barrier, began pushing back the aerospace frontier in 1947, as did other experimental aircraft that flew over 301,000 acres of desert testing ground in California at Edwards Air Force Base's Air Force Flight Test Center. The X-15 rocket airplane flew nearly seven times the speed of sound and seventy miles high in the mid-1960s-records that still stand for winged aircraft. In 1957 the Air Force began the Dyna-Soar program, later designated the X-20, to build a manned space boost glider/aerospace plane. Dyna-Soar was cancelled in 1963 in favor of a Manned Orbital Laboratory, itself scrapped in 1969 because automated satellites could perform the same missions. The flights of the X-aircraft, however, provided critical knowledge for manned space travel and for the special materials used in a new generation of aircraft, starting with the SR-71 Blackbird reconnaissance aircraft.

Strategic reconnaissance became the primary goal of space exploration. Fears of a surprise nuclear attack, based largely on the memory of Pearl Harbor, and the secrecy of events behind the Iron Curtain forced every administration after 1945 to seek information on the status and disposition of military forces inside the Soviet Union. Initially, U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy aircraft were deployed along its vast periphery to take photographs and intercept radio and radar signals. In early 1956 the Air Force launched 448 unmanned camera-carrying balloons from western Europe propelled eastward by prevailing winds. Although inherently random in their coverage, 44 were recovered and provided tantalizing glimpses of some 10 percent of the Soviet Union's land area. At the direction of President Eisenhower, the Air Force, with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation developed the U-2, a single-engine glider aircraft capable of flying above 70,000 feet and beyond the range of Soviet air defenses. Eisenhower authorized U-2 over flights across the Soviet Union beginning on July 4, 1956, but, fearing that they might become a casus belli, he limited their number. Fewer than 25 missions occurred before a Soviet surface-to-air missile downed a U-2 flown by Francis Powers on May 1, 1960. The resulting diplomatic crisis ended aerial reconnaissance flights over the Soviet Union. A more capable SR-71 Blackbird was soon available to replace the U-2, but by then safer "national technical means" were available for intelligence-gathering.

In part because of the Soviet Union's success with Sputnik in October 1957, President Eisenhower in early 1958 established within the DOD the Advanced Research Projects Agency, accelerating efforts to exploit space for reconnaissance purposes. The Air Force had begun investigating the use of satellites for this purpose as early as 1946, beginning actual development in October 1956 with a contract to Lockheed for the WS-117L (SAMOS) reconnaissance satellite. Dissatisfied with the technical prospects of the SAMOS, which transmitted images to Earth from space, in February 1958 Eisenhower approved Project CORONA, a CIA-Air Force effort to put into outer space a spy satellite capable of ejecting film capsules for retrieval on earth. The first CORONA satellite, known publicly as Discoverer, went into space on February 28, 1959, atop a modified Air Force Thor IRBM. After twelve consecutive failures, complete success came with number 14 on August 18, 1960. It provided analysts with film coverage of more of the Soviet Union than all of the U-2 flights combined. This first successful CORONA satellite ended the "missile gap" controversy, revealing that the Soviet Union possessed fewer IRBMs than the United States. Only a few SAMOS satellites were launched in the early 1960s. Designed to scan images in space and broadcast them as radio signals to receivers on the ground, SAMOS failed to return one usable photograph of the Soviet Union. Before leaving office in 1961, President Eisenhower established the National Reconnaissance Office to direct all U.S. reconnaissance efforts, with the Air Force and CIA participating. To provide satellite early warning of a nuclear attack, the Air Force also developed the Missile Defense Alarm System (MIDAS) and its operational successor, the Defense Support Program (DSP), that detected missiles within moments of their launch. DSP would later play a key role in detecting the launch of Scuds during the Gulf War.

After the discontinuance of the space reconnaissance mission, on March 28, 1961, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara assigned the Air Force responsibility for other DOD military space operations such as the worldwide Defense Satellite Communications System I (DSCS I). Twenty-six system satellites were launched from 1966 to 1968. Beginning in 1972, larger geosynchronous communications satellites reinforced the original DSCS 1, followed in the 1980s by a third generation of DSCS and in the 1990s by the Military Strategic Tactical and Relay Program (MILSTAR) system. Another key space flight project was the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) for monitoring weather conditions around the globe, with information transmitted to the Air Force's Global Weather Center at Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska. The Air Force tracked and identified space debris produced by space missions through the Space Detection and Tracking System (SPADATS). The service also held primary responsibility for launching all DOD satellites at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida (into low inclination equatorial orbits) and at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California (into polar orbits).

President John Kennedy initiated a more activist, interventionist national strategy in 1961, one that brought profound changes to the overwhelmingly nuclear-strike Air Force. The Kennedy administration authorized the expansion of the Air Force's ICBM arsenal to 1,000 Minuteman and 54 Titan IIs, deployed mainly at isolated bases in the north-central United States. The Navy nuclear component grew to 41 Polaris submarines, while the Army field forces eventually increased from 12 to 16 divisions and included a counterinsurgency capability. This expansion was intended to give the President increased flexibility in ordering a military response to international crises. In the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962, enormous American offensive power forced the Soviet Union to back down and prompted Secretary of State Dean Rusk to conclude, "We're eyeball to eyeball, and the other fellow just blinked." Kennedy had immense nuclear power at his disposal in confronting the Soviet Union over its nuclear missiles stationed in Cuba, but at the time he had few conventional options. His military choices were an invasion of Cuba, with no guarantees of success, or an all-out counter value thermonuclear war. After the crisis, won through a third alternative, a naval blockade referred to as a "quarantine," Kennedy hastened to adopt the "flexible response" as America's new war-planning doctrine. SIOP-63 introduced the potential for limited nuclear war, while preserving the possibility of an all-out counter value strike.

Even while the SAC-dominated Air Force eagerly adopted the Eisenhower administration's New Look structure, it also maintained forward-based units in Japan, Korea, Guam, the Philippines, and elsewhere on the Pacific rim. With almost 1,000 aircraft in place, these units came under the command of the Hawaii-headquartered Pacific Air Forces (PACAF), which replaced FEAF as the air component of the Navy-led Pacific Command in 1957.

By 1957 the U.S. Air Forces in Europe (USAFE) had built up an even larger forward presence to bolster NATO. With more than 2,000 assigned aircraft of all types (not including SAC bombers also deployed in theater), USAFE's network of 32 primary installations stretched from England to Saudi Arabia. Reflecting NATO's "sword and shield" policy, USAFE focused on nuclear strike and air defense roles. By the time of the Berlin crisis of 1961, the command had shrunk in size, but it was quickly reinforced by the largest deployment of tactical aircraft since World War II. After the crisis eased, USAFE began a 20-year effort to improve its conventional capabilities in line with the flexible response strategy, which NATO officially adopted in 1967.

This flexibility increased the Air Force's responsibilities, which now ranged from waging all-out nuclear war to supporting the Army in limited conflicts. Tragically, the lessons of Korea had to be relearned in the skies over Vietnam. During the French Indochina War, as early as 1954, the JCS considered Operation VULTURE, in which the U.S. Air Force would be deployed to save the French army at Dien Bien Phu. The operation would involve nuclear and conventional bombing around the isolated French garrison. President Eisenhower vetoed this proposal, concerned, like General Omar Bradley during the Korean War, that this was "the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy." The Geneva Agreement of 1955 left Vietnam divided at the 17th Parallel into the Communist north under Ho Chi Minh, and the pro Western south, under Bao Dai and Ngo Dinh Diem. The desire to contain the spread of Communism brought about America's involvement in Vietnam. When President Kennedy declared that the United States would "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty," the stage was set. The Taylor-Rostow mission of October 1961 investigated the situation in South Vietnam and proposed the use of American air power against North Vietnam. Between 1965 and 1974 the United States would drop three times as many bombs in Southeast Asia as it did in all of World War 111, but victory would prove even more elusive than in the Korean War.

Driven by its nuclear strategic bombing doctrine, the Air Force was ill-prepared for a limited war in Vietnam. Air Force training, technology, and strategy focused on general nuclear war with the Soviet Union. F-105 Thunderchief "fighters" had been designed to carry tactical nuclear weapons in an internal bomb bay, but were forced into use in Vietnam carrying 750-pound high-explosive bombs. F-104 Starfighters, the fastest fighters in the world, were designed to intercept Soviet bombers, but lacked the range and dog fighting ability to compete for air superiority over North Vietnam. Fortunately for the Air Force, the Navy had begun the development of two superb fighter-bombers, the F-4 Phantom Il and the A-7 Corsair 11, better suited to combat, although the absence of a machine gun in the former aircraft limited its usefulness as an air superiority fighter until the arrival of the gun-equipped E model.

U.S. Air Force aircrews flew combat missions in South Vietnam before 1964, but only if accompanied by South Vietnamese aircrews. The Gulf of Tonkin incident involving the Navy destroyers C. Turner Joy and Maddox in August 1964 resulted in a nearly unanimous Congressional vote of support for President Johnson "to take all necessary measures to prevent further aggression." As in Korea, however, there would be no declaration of war. Neutral sanctuaries in Laos and Cambodia would be off-limits to aerial attack for much of the conflict. Targets close to China and in Hanoi and Haiphong would also be off-limits for fear an expanded fight would lead to a direct confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union and China, with the possible result of a nuclear holocaust. Vietnam would be another limited war. National objectives were, for the military, exasperating: "Don't lose this war, but don't win it, either." As President Johnson stated: ". . . not now, or not there, or too much, or not at all." The strategy was designed to hold off North Vietnam until South Vietnam became a viable nation able to defend itself The Air Force would fight two wars-one against internal subversion by South Vietnam-based Viet Cong, the other against North Vietnamese aggression.

The Air Force initially intended to destroy North Vietnam's industrial fabric and then to interdict its supplies to Viet Cong units in South Vietnam by attacking its railroads and ocean shipping and mining its harbors. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Maxwell Taylor vetoed the air plan, however, because it might prompt Chinese or Soviet intervention. Like that in Korea, the strategy in Vietnam was to punish the enemy until it agreed to a ceasefire and peace, not to provoke the Chinese or Soviets.

The Air Force, they stated, would provide close air support for Army units operating in South Vietnam. The sustained bombing of North Vietnam began when circumstances changed in South Vietnam. On February 8, 1965, Operation FLAMING DART I launched tit-for-tat retaliatory bombings in response to enemy attacks on American installations in South Vietnam. Such an attack on the Pleiku Special Forces base resulted in limited air strikes against oil supplies and naval bases in North Vietnam. The strikes were intended to deter the enemy with the "potential" of American air power.

These circumscribed efforts gave Ho Chi Minh time to construct perhaps the strongest air defense network in the world at the time. Eventually, it included over 8,000 antiaircraft artillery pieces, over 40 active surface-to-air missile (SAM) sites, and over 200 MiG-17s, -19s, and -21 s. Continued Communist ground action in South Vietnam brought the Air Force into the teeth of this network. Operation ROLLING THUNDER began in March 1965 and continued until October 1968. It was a frustrating air campaign marked by limits at every turn, gradualism, measured response, and, especially, restrictive rules of engagement. Doctrine drove the Air Force to strike against industrial web, but Air Force and Navy aircraft would be bombing a nation with a gross national product of $1.6 billion, only $192 million of which came from industrial activity. Like those of Korea, the industrial sources of North Vietnam's power were in China and the Soviet Union, beyond the reach of American air power.

ROLLING THUNDER's initial targets were roads, radar sites, railroads, and supply dumps. Because of bad weather the first mission of March 2, 1965, was not followed up until March 15. The Johnson administration did not permit attacks on airfields until 1967. SA-2 surface-to air missile sites went unmolested; North Vietnam was permitted to establish SAM sites, and only after missiles were launched from them could they be attacked. Another rule restricted operations in a 30-mile zone and prohibited operations in a 10-mile zone around Hanoi. In 1965 and 1966 165,000 sorties against the North killed an estimated 37,000, but the war intensified in the South, with 325,000 American troops stationed there by the end of 1966.

In the summer of 1964, the JCS had proposed a list of 94 strategic targets as part of an intensified bombing campaign over which President Johnson and his advisers maintained careful control, assigning targets during Tuesday luncheon meetings at the White House. They doled out enough to pressure Ho Chi Minh but too many to prevent peace negotiations or to invite Soviet or Chinese intervention. Of the many bridges bombed, the two most famous were the Thanh Hoa bridge eight miles south of Hanoi and the Paul Doumer bridge in Hanoi itself. Both were critical to transport supplies flowing from China into North and South Vietnam. Hundreds of bombing sorties conducted over several years failed to bring down the solidly-built Thanh Hoa bridge. When the Johnson administration finally permitted the bombing of the Doumer bridge in 1967, fighter-bombers quickly dropped one span. After several weeks, repair crews put the bridge back into operation and it had to be bombed again. Over France in World War I, American airmen contested with Fokkers for air superiority and over Germany in World War 11, with Focke-Wulfs and Messerschmitts. Over Korea they fought MiGs. Over North Vietnam they fought fewer MiGs as the struggle became primarily directed against surface-to-air missiles and antiaircraft artillery. When the Johnson administration approved the cessation of bombing north of the 19th parallel in the spring of 1968, North Vietnam agreed to negotiate. Peace negotiations began in Paris in November 1968, and the United States halted ROLLING THUNDER. The JCS then limited Air Force operations in North Vietnam to protective reaction missions. Aircraft would conduct reconnaissance and would strike only if attacked.

Meanwhile, in South Vietnam, the ground war worsened. In 1965 American commander, General William Westmoreland, oversaw the change of commitment in South Vietnam from a coastal enclave strategy for the protection of large cities, to direct ground involvement ("search and destroy" missions) into the interior after Communist forces in a massive campaign of close air support and interdiction. By 1968 over half a million American troops were engaged. Again, as it had in Korea, American strategy called for substituting air power for ground action whenever possible to reduce Army casualties. Ironically, while dropping less than one million tons of bombs on North Vietnam, the enemy, the United States dropped more than four million tons on South Vietnam, the ally. When Westmoreland ordered a major offensive into the "Iron Triangle" northwest of Saigon, more than 5,000 Air Force tactical strike sorties, 125 B-52 strikes, and 2,000 airlift sorties paved the way.

Operations included an extensive defoliation campaign (RANCH HAND) in which C-123 Providers and other transports sprayed 19 million gallons of herbicides over the jungles that provided convenient hiding places for Viet Cong guerrillas and North Vietnamese regular units out to ambush American ground troops. The overwhelming firepower brought by America to Vietnam gave Air Force airlift a major role in the war. Because jungle roads were rarely safe, Allied forces called on Army helicopters and Air Force C-47 Skytrains, C-119 Boxcars, C-123 Providers, and C-130 Hercules to move mountains of supplies around South Vietnam. C-141 Starlifters and C-5 Galaxies, augmented by commercial airlines, helped move in personnel and critical supplies from the United States.

Despite the fact that many targets were obscured much of the time by Vietnam's triple canopy jungles, the key to limiting ground casualties was close air support. As in earlier wars, the solution was to drop more bombs to inundate an area. Carpet bombing by B-52 Stratofortresses, each dropping up to 108-- 500- and 750-pound bombs, was the favored technique. Directed by LORAN, occasionally to within one thousand feet of American units, these ARC LIGHT missions flew at 30,000 feet. Bombs fell without warning. After the war, Vietnamese who survived this deluge described the ARC LIGHT experience as the most terrible they had faced. Another technique involved employing newly developed gun ships, including the AC-47 Spooky (known popularly as Puff the Magic Dragon), AC-1 19 Shadow, and AC-1 30 Spectre. The latter carried four 7.62-mm machine guns and four 20-mm cannon, each firing 6,000 rounds per minute, and 40-mm and 105-mm cannon. Orbiting over enemy concentrations at night, they covered the jungle with a rain of projectiles, well-appreciated by American soldiers nearby.

Again, as it had in Korea, the Air Force in Vietnam learned that the most difficult function of air power was interdiction; its major effort involved interdicting the flow of enemy troops and supplies down the Ho Chi Minh trail through Laos and Cambodia into South Vietnam. Many targets were merely geographical coordinates superimposed over the vast green jungle of Southeast Asia. Others were the smoke and dust kicked up by enemy forces as they moved down the trail by day. At night, they were campfires, hot engines, and other man-made infrared signatures picked up by airborne sensors. Fighters soon compelled the enemy to move only by night, when guns ships took over. But using $10 million aircraft to destroy $10,000 trucks was no solution. Three Soviet ZIL-157 six-wheel drive trucks or 400 bicycles carrying 75 pounds each could provide the fifteen tons of supplies to Communist forces in South Vietnam each day. More came from plundered American and South Vietnamese storehouses.

On January 30, 1968, enemy units launched the Tet Offensive, striking cities and other targets throughout South Vietnam. In February alone, Air Force units launched 16,000 strike sorties in support of ground operations, helping to blunt the offensive. The focus of the Air Force's operations, however, was the besieged firebase at Khe Sanh, where 6,000 Marines faced three North Vietnamese divisions. President Johnson told General Westmoreland that he did not want another "damn [Dien Bien Phu]." Air power would have to hold off Communist attacks. Three months of Operation NIAGARA totaled 24,000 fighter-bomber and 2,700 B-52 strikes, 110,000 tons of bombs, and nightly assaults by gun ships. Additionally, the Air Force airlifted 12,000 tons of supplies to the surrounded Marines. Air power guaranteed that there would be no repeat of the French disaster at Dien Bien Phu.

The Tet offensive proved a military defeat for the Communists, who lost between 50,000 and 80,000 soldiers, but it represented a political victory that galvanized the antiwar movement in the United States. It led many other Americans to question the war's objectives, especially in the face of General Westmoreland's announcement just before its launching that he could see "the light at the end of the tunnel." The Tet offensive (and a poor showing in the New Hampshire primary) convinced President Johnson not to run for reelection. It also brought to the Oval Office a new president, Richard Nixon, committed to ending American involvement in the war and turning it over to the South Vietnamese. F-5 Freedom Fighters strengthened the South Vietnamese Air Force while Nixon withdrew American ground units. On March 30, 1972, the North Vietnamese Army invaded South Vietnam with 12 divisions from the north and west. Although South Vietnamese forces were no match for the invaders, the Spring offensive was a major miscalculation. American ground forces were gone, but U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy aviation remained. For the first time in the war, the Air Force was up against the kind of conventional war it could win. Eighteen thousand fighter-bomber and 1,800 B-52 sorties stiffened South Vietnamese resolve. In the desperation of the moment, fighter pilots found themselves aiming 2,000pound laser-guided bombs at Communist tanks-not cost effective, but effective nevertheless. The massive employment of air power bought more time for South Vietnam.

Although American air power had repelled the invasion, implications for Nixon's Vietnamization strategy were clear. American hopes for ending the war revolved around the Air Force's applying greater pressure on North Vietnam to influence its negotiators to return to the Paris peace talks. The LINEBACKER I bombing campaign from May to October 1972 was a major escalation of the war and included the mining of Haiphong and other ports. Bridges that had resisted bombing now fell before precision laser-guided and electro-optically-guided bombs. Before LINEBACKER, peer pressure and pride drove American aircrews, even as they asked: "What the hell is this all about?" During LINEBACKER they had a clear and limited objective-forcing the regime in Hanoi back to Paris.

In Paris some progress was made, but in December 1972 Communist negotiators became recalcitrant. Their delaying tactics prompted President Nixon to order the most concentrated bombing campaign of the war-LINEBACKER II. For I I days beginning on December 18, with a Christmas break, SAC B-52s struck at rail yards and other targets in the outskirts of Hanoi and Haiphong. On the first mission, 129 B-52s penetrated the area, supported by a wide array of Air Force and Navy aircraft. F-4s dropped chaff in wide corridors. EB-66s, EA-3s, and EA-6s jammed enemy radar with electronic countermeasures. F-105 Wild Weasels with Shrike radar-seeking missiles attacked enemy radar sites. SR-71s provided reconnaissance. EC-121s fed early warning information to the attacking aircraft. F-4s, A-7s, and F-Ills struck airfields, storage sites, and other precision targets. F-4s flew MiG suppression. KC-135s orbited over the Gulf of Tonkin, ready to feed thirsty jets. This was the air war the Air Force had wanted from the beginning. A B-52 tail gunner shot down a MiG on the first night, but 200 surface-to-air missile launches claimed three B-52s-the first 3 of 15 lost.

By December 27 North Vietnam had depleted its supply of SA-2 missiles and much of its antiaircraft ammunition. Interdiction strikes against rail lines and bridges coupled with mines in Haiphong Harbor prevented resupply from China or the Soviet Union. By December 30, LINEBACKER II had destroyed many industrial and military targets in the Hanoi and Haiphong area, although its major impact was on North Vietnam's morale. To Captain Ray Bean, an F-4 crewman imprisoned in the "Hanoi Hilton," the B-52s "got the attention of the North Vietnamese" because the United States seemed to have forsaken precision attacks on purely military and industrial targets in favor of "wholesale destruction." North Vietnam witnessed the path of devastation a single B-52 could create, especially in an urban environment. Its negotiators returned to the peace talks, agreeing to a cease-fire in January 1973 and signing a treaty in April. Before the year was out Congress cut funds for Southeast Asian operations and passed the War Powers Act, which limited the President's options.

Two years later North Vietnam launched a final offensive against a South Vietnam operating without American air support. After 55 days, on April 29, 1975, Saigon fell. In Vietnam, the United States lost 58,000 men and women. The war helped cause a decade of inflation and alienated a generation. The Air Force had invested over 1.2 million fixed wing sorties, 6.2 million tons of explosives, 2,118 dead, 599 missing in action, and 2,257 aircraft (at a cost of $3.1 billion).

The Air Force learned the dangers of political and military micro-management, of gradualism, and of being used to influence the conduct of America's enemies instead of defeating them. Restrictive rules of engagement caused aircrews to die and left little room for initiative. "Route packages," artificial divisions of North Vietnam in which Air Force and Navy aircraft operated separately, guaranteed a dilution of effort. A generation of future air leaders came away convinced that "body counts," sortie rates, and tons of bombs dropped were all poor means for judging air power's effectiveness. They also relearned the importance of air superiority, but with a twist-air superiority now involved not only overcoming an enemy's air force; it involved also overcoming an enemy's air defenses on the surface. Air power had to be focused, united, and coordinated in what was termed "jointness" after the war.

Most of all, the Air Force learned the dangers of strict, uncompromising adherence to doctrine. In the years after Vietnam a new generation of air leaders realized that the Air Force had focused almost exclusively on the strategic bombing of industrial chokepoints without regard for the character of the society to be bombed or the type of war to be fought. Training, technology, and doctrine revolved around the destruction of a developed nation's industrial fabric or the nuclear destruction of a nation's cities. The Air Force had become imprisoned by a doctrine established in the years before and after World War IL Applied against undeveloped states such as North Korea and North Vietnam, each equipped and supplied by other countries, and unable to use nuclear weapons because of the Cold War and moral considerations, strategic bombardment and its related strategies did not prevail.

President Kennedy's flexible-response nuclear war-fighting doctrine of the early 1960s lacked the technology to match its vision of many options adapted to meet the varieties of Cold War crises. Advances in geodesy and cartography and the integrated circuit developed in the early 1960s for missile and satellite guidance systems, significantly improved missile accuracy. Decreased CEP (circular error probable-die radius of a circle in which at least 50 percent of the targeted missiles would hit) meant that warheads could be smaller. New warheads could be sized to detonate at kiloton or megaton ranges independently. Because they were smaller and lighter, more warheads could be mounted to each ICBM and SLBM. In the early 1970s the DOD developed MIRVs (multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles), allowing three or more warheads on each ICBM and SLBM. The Air Force's arsenal did not rise above 1,054 ICBMs; many now carried three MIRVs (Minuteman III) as opposed to earlier models that carried a single Minuteman I or 11 warhead. Strategic launchers remained static, but warheads multiplied.

Although Secretary of Defense McNamara introduced "counterforce" targeting in 1962, the improvement in CEP and dramatic increases in the number of nuclear warheads in the American arsenal of the 1970s encouraged the Air Force to return to the more traditional practice of bombing precise military targets instead of counter value cities. Counterforce targeting identified enemy military and industrial chokepoints---command centers, military industries and bases, and ICBM silos. Whatever the targets selected, in the 1960s political leaders adopted a doctrine for deterring nuclear war known as "assured destruction," i.e., the capability to destroy an aggressor as a viable society, even after a well-planned and executed surprise attack on American forces. This doctrine held that superpower strategic nuclear forces would be sized and protected to survive a nuclear attack and then to retaliate with sufficient force to ensure a level of destruction unacceptable to the other side. With such retaliatory destruction assured against an aggressor, no rational Soviet or American leader would consider starting a nuclear war. On May 26, 1972, the United States and the Soviet Union signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, which limited both sides to two ABM sites each to protect the national capital and an ICBM complex. The treaty reinforced the continued effectiveness of assured destruction in deterring war in the face of new, destabilizing ABM weapons. SALT I, the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty which was signed at the same time, limited the numbers of nuclear weapons with the objective of obtaining a verified freeze on the numerical growth and destabilizing characteristics of each side's strategic nuclear forces.

The Nixon administration adopted counterforce targeting beginning with SIOP 5 of 1974. The Carter administration expanded it with Presidential Directive 59 and SIOP 5D. Counterforce, however, offered an option to assured destruction of a limited, prolonged nuclear war based on accurate attacks with limited collateral damage while maintaining a creditable second strike capability. In an address on March 23, 1983, President Ronald Reagan proposed replacing the doctrine of assured destruction with one of assured survival, in the form of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), SDI was to focus on the development and deployment of a combination of defensive systems such as space-based lasers, particle beams, rail guns, and fast ground-launched missiles, among other weapons, to intercept Soviet ICBMs during their ascent through the Earth's outer atmosphere and their ballistic path in space. While the ABM Treaty restricted various methods of testing SDI weapon systems, the end of the Cold War and collapse of the Soviet Union removed the justification for the level of research and development associated with this project, although research continued at a much reduced level under the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization.

Beginning in March 1985, Soviet Communist Party General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev initiated major changes in Soviet-American relations. 'Me Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in December 1987 eliminated short-range nuclear missiles in Europe, including Air Force ground-launched cruise missiles stationed in the United Kingdom. Gorbachev's announcement in May 1988 that the Soviet Union, after nine years of inconclusive combat, would begin withdrawing from the war in Afghanistan, indicated a major reduction in Cold War tensions, but it provided only a hint of the rapid changes to come. Relatively free and open Russian elections in March 1989 and a coal miners strike in July shook the foundations of Communist rule. East Germany opened the Berlin Wall in November, which led to German reunification in October 1990. A coup against Gorbachev in August 1991 by Boris Yeltsin, led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and its replacement by the Commonwealth of Independent States on December 25, 1991.

This chain of events brought major changes to American nuclear strategy. Under START 1, the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty signed by the United States and the Soviet Union in July 1991, the Air Force will be involved in reducing to a level of 6,000 total warheads on deployed ICBMs, SLBMs, and heavy bombers. START II, signed in January 1993, will reduce (upon entry into force) total deployed warheads to a range of 3,000 to 3,500. The resulting force structure (determined during the Nuclear Posture Review process overseen within his department by then Secretary of Defense Les Aspin), will ultimately lead to the deployment of five hundred single warhead Minuteman III ICBMs, 66 B-52H and 20 B-2 heavy bombers. Ninety-four B-1 heavy bombers will be reoriented to a conventional role by 2003, in addition to all Peacekeeper ICBMs being removed from active inventory through the elimination of their associated silo launchers. The Air Force, by Presidential direction in September 1991, notified SAC to remove heavy bombers from alert status. SAC was subsequently inactivated several months later in June 1992. U.S. Strategic Command replaced Strategic Air Command, controlling all remaining Air Force and Navy strategic nuclear forces.

Rebuilding the conventional Air Force after Vietnam began with personnel changes. The Vietnam-era Air Force included many officers and airmen who had entered its ranks in World War II. President Nixon ended the draft in 1973 in favor of an "all volunteer" American military. The Air Force attracted recruits as best it could, but encountered problems with the racial friction and alcohol and drug abuse that reflected America's social problems. Enough Vietnam career veterans remained, however, to direct the new service and institute changes, one of the most noticeable of which was more realistic, and thus more dangerous, combat training. In combat simulations Air Force pilots flew as aggressors employing enemy tactics. By 1975 their training had evolved into Red Flag at the U.S. Air Force Weapons and Tactics Center at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, in which crews flew both individual sorties and formations in realistic situations, gaining experience before they entered actual combat.

The vulnerability of air bases to enemy attack and sabotage had long been the Achilles heel of land-based air power. In western Europe, living under the threat of a massive Warsaw Pact air offensive and land invasion, the U.S. Air Force spearheaded an active program to improve the survivability and readiness of air bases. The effort was marked by the construction of thousands of reinforced concrete aircraft shelters and other hardened facilities, alternate runways, rapid repair elements, chemical weapons protection, and a host of other defensive measures.

The Air Force's post-Vietnam rebuilding also involved applying improved technology. The battle for control of the skies over North Vietnam underscored the need for a dog fighting aircraft that featured maneuverability before speed--one armed with missiles and cannon. Begun in the late 1960s and operational in the mid-1970s, the F-15 Eagle and the F-16 Fighting Falcon filled this need. The struggle against radar-guided antiaircraft artillery and surface-to-air missiles in Vietnam encouraged the Air Force to pursue stealth technology utilizing special paints, materials, and designs that reduced or eliminated an aircraft's radar, thermal, and electronic signatures. Operational by October 1980, both the B-2 stealth bomber and the F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter featured detection avoidance.

Other Vietnam War technologies included precision guided missiles; and bombs. From April 1972 to January 1973 the United States used over 4,000 of these early "smart weapons" in Vietnam to knock down bridges and destroy enemy tanks. Continued development of laser-guided bombs and electro-optically-guided missiles offered the prospects of pinpoint, precision bombing on which traditional Air Force doctrine rested-the destruction of chokepoints in an enemy nation's industrial web with economy of force and without collateral damage. These technologies, which afforded a strike precision far beyond that available to earlier air power thinkers, sparked a revision of the traditional doctrine of strategic bombing. This revision took two forms. First, the Air Force, to overcome numerically superior Warsaw Pact forces, cooperated with the Army in updating the tactical doctrine of Air Land Battle promulgated in Field Manual 100-5 in 1982. The Air Force would make deep air attacks on an enemy army to isolate it on the battlefield, conduct battlefield air interdiction (BAI) to disrupt the movement of secondary forces to the front, and provide close air support (CAS) to Army ground forces. The Air Force procured the A-10 Thunderbolt II CAS attack-bomber in the 1970s to support such missions.

Second, the Air Force pursued a new approach to conventional strategic bombing doctrine in the fertile atmosphere of the post-Vietnam era. Key leaders in the effort were Generals Charles Boyd and Charles Link and Colonel Dennis Drew. Strategic bombing doctrine of the Air Corps Tactical School, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam had relied on carpet bombing to saturate linear chokepoints, with industry as the key. Colonel John Warden's ideas in the Gulf War relied on precision munitions to attack an expanded complex of targets. He viewed an enemy nation's war-making capacity in five concentric rings. The center ring consisted of its civilian and military leadership, the first ring out, its key production sources, the second ring out, its transportation and communication infrastructure, third ring out, the will of its population, and, the last ring, its military forces. An air attack on these would be "inside-out" warfare, starting from the center and working outward. The first objective of an air war would be to seize air superiority followed by attacks on an enemy's leadership and other vital centers. Colonel John Boyd focused on "control warfare" and "strategic paralysis" by loosening the observation, orientation, decision, and action loops (the "OODA Loop") that maintained the "moral-mental-physical being" of an enemy nation.

Participation in three crises in the 1980s allowed the Air Force to test these new ideas and technologies. Operation URGENT FURY (October 1983) rescued American students and restored order on the island of Grenada. In this operation the Air Force primarily transported troops and cargo, but discovered problems with command, control, planning, and intraservice and interservice coordination. President Reagan called on England-based F-I I Is to strike against Libya on April 19, 1986, in support of his policies to counter state terrorism. Operation ELDORADO CANYON exposed continuing difficulties with target identification and intelligence, punctuated by some inaccurate bombing. Finally, Operation JUST CAUSE in 1989 again tested air operations, this time in Panama. The Air Force provided the airlift for troops and supplies, although the F-I 17 Nighthawk stealth fighter made its debut when it and an AC-1 30 Spectre gunship intimidated Panamanian troops loyal to the dictator Manuel Noriega.

The U.S. Air Force found itself in a third major war since 1945 when, on August 2, 1990, forces led by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, seized Kuwait and began a conflict that differed considerably from those in Korea and Vietnam. The ending of the Cold War had eliminated concerns about an expanded war and the client support Iraq might have expected from the Soviet Union. Flexibility of doctrine, technology, leadership, and training allowed the Air Force to adjust to the unique components of the Gulf War-a desert battlefield, a loosely united coalition (including several Arab nations desiring minimal damage to Iraq), and an American people strongly opposed to a prolonged war and resulting heavy casualties. A first phase, Operation DESERT SHIELD, the defense Saudi Arabia and its huge oil reserves, began on August 6, when Saudi Arabia requested American assistance. Two days later F-15C Eagles from the First Tactical Fighter Wing, supported by E-3B Sentry airborne warning and control aircraft, arrived in the Persian Gulf-a first step in the rapid relocation of one-quarter of the Air Force's total combat inventory and nearly all of its precision bombing assets. Military airlift, including the Civil Reserve Air Fleet, rapidly moved 660,000 Coalition personnel to the area, although most supplies and equipment came by sea. Turbojet-powered C-141 and C-5 military transports operating between the United States and the Persian Gulf carried ten times more tons of cargo per day than all of the piston-engine transports designed for commercial traffic carried during the entire Berlin Airlift. That distance insured that U.S. Air Force KC-135 and KC-10 tankers would play a critical role in a war that required more than fifteen hundred aerial refuelings per day. Fortunately, Operation NICKEL GRASS, the aerial resupply of Israel during the October 1973 War, had revealed the need to equip Air Force C-141 cargo aircraft with in-flight refueling capabilities, extending airlift's range in time for the Gulf War.

The second phase was Operation DESERT STORM, the liberation of Kuwait and the reduction of Iraqi military capabilities, especially its nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. The U.N. coalition opposing Hussein depended primarily on air power to hammer enemy forces and achieve its objectives while minimizing casualties. The U.S. Air Force flew nearly 60 percent of all fixed-wing combat sorties in support of DESERT STORM, dropping 82 percent of precision guided weapons.

The air offensive began at 0238 local time, January 17, 1991, with night attacks on Iraqi early warning radar sites, Scud short-range ballistic missile sites, and communication centers, including the internationally-televised attack by two F-1 17A Nighthawks on the so-called AT&T communications building in downtown Baghdad. Air Force and Navy cruise missiles hit additional targets, including government buildings and power plants. It was the beginning of a thirty-eight day aerial offensive consisting of four phases: a strategic campaign against Iraq, an air superiority campaign, an effort to weaken Iraqi ground units in Kuwait, and, eventually, close air support for the ground offensive. Over 2,000 combat aircraft in the Coalition inventory struck targets in all four components to be struck simultaneously. Contrasted sharply with the 12 sorties Eighth Air Force launched on August 17, 1942, in its first strike against German targets in World War II, the Coalition flew 2,759 combat sorties on day one of the Gulf air offensive.

The air war defied easy analysis because of simultaneous strikes against targets in all of Warden's concentric rings. In past wars identifiable campaigns were mounted against various kinds of targets-ball bearing, aircraft assembly, oil production, transportation, irrigation, power dams, or interdiction, but in the Gulf War such attacks and more were mounted concurrently. Unlike AWPD planners of 1941, Gulf War planners did not have to choose between target categories-they selected targets from among all categories. Coordinating the two or three thousand sorties required per day was the responsibility of Lieutenant General Charles Homer, the Joint Force Air Component Commander (JFACC). He controlled all aircraft in the theater except those of the Navy in sorties over water, those of the Marines supporting their own ground units, and helicopters flying below five hundred feet. The lesson of conflicting responsibilities, priorities, and command and control represented by the "route packages" of Vietnam had been learned well. Despite problems with intelligence and communication between the diverse Coalition air forces, never had there been such a carefully directed air campaign.

Air superiority came quickly, as Saddam Hussein ordered his air force not to compete for command of the skies. His plan was to absorb any air blows and force the Coalition into bloody trench warfare, in the "'mother of all battles." Losses to Coalition attackers on the first night were limited to one Navy F/A-18. Considering the quantity and quality of the forces arrayed against Iraq, Hussein's withholding of his Air Force was perhaps appropriate. Coalition air forces shot down only 32 of 700 fixed-wing combat aircraft in the Iraqi Air Force (27 by the U.S. Air Force), although they destroyed many more on the ground. There would be no air aces in this war. Rules of engagement that allowed the firing of missiles at enemy aircraft beyond visual range aided Coalition success against the few Iraqi jets rising to do battle. Pressed by U.S. Air Force attacks on their protective shelters, more than one hundred Iraqi aircraft fled to safety in neutral Iran. The struggle for control of the air was primarily against Iraqi ground defenses, which absorbed many Coalition strikes. These included 122 airfields, 600 hardened aircraft shelters, 7,000 antiaircraft guns, and 200 surface-to-air missile batteries.

Never had the world seen such a variety of bombing targets and aircraft. Air Force crews dropped laser-guided bombs down air shafts in hardened buildings and on oil tank valves when Saddam Hussein ordered millions of gallons of oil poured into the Persian Gulf. They "plinked" tanks with laser-guided and electro-optically guided bombs and missiles. They carpet-bombed Iraq's Republican Guard divisions from high altitude in B-52s. Coalition aircraft, including more than 70 distinct types from ten countries, struck at command, control, and communications centers, bridges, oil refineries, air defense facilities, radar sites, nuclear weapon production facilities, chemical and biological production facilities, electrical production facilities, weapons production facilities, missile launch sites, ports, and others. There were plenty of targets. The initial INSTANT THUNDER air plan for the strategic bombing of Iraq identified 84 to be hit in less than a week. By the start of the air war on January 17, however, the Coalition target list had increased to 481, compared to the 154 of World War II's AWPD/1.

The most sensitive targets were in Baghdad, defended by the heaviest concentration of antiaircraft weapons. The world press observed Coalition strikes there and reported collateral damage and civilian casualties with special interest. General Homer limited these most dangerous and most critical attacks to Air Force F-117 stealth fighters flying by night and Navy Tomahawk cruise missiles striking by day and night. The stealthy F-117 Nighthawk fighters proved most valuable to Coalition success, bombing 40 percent of strategic targets in Iraq while flying only 2 percent of combat sorties. Their favorite weapon was the laser-guided bomb, which although amounting to less than 5 percent of all bombs dropped, accounted for most of the key targets. Precision guided munitions and F-1 17s proved their value as "force multipliers," increasing the impact of the bombing campaign. Their strikes were not completely free of political interference, however, as President Bush made Baghdad off limits to bombing for a week after two laser-guided bombs hit the Al Firdos Bunker on February 13, a command structure also used as an air raid shelter by civilians. The attack left hundreds dead.

The Iraqi army mounted Scud surface-to-surface ballistic missiles on small, mobile launchers. Hidden in civilian traffic, and fired at night, the Scud counteroffensive proved nearly unstoppable, although Iraq launched only eighty eight of these weapons during the war. One Scud landed in Dharan, Saudi Arabia, and killed twenty-eight American soldiers, the deadliest single action for the United States during the war. Like the V-1 and V-2 weapons of World War II, Scud missiles caused a major diversion of sorties from the air offensive. The Coalition leadership diverted 22 percent of its sorties from strategic targets to eliminate the politically significant Scud missile attacks on Israel and Saudi Arabia, but the mission proved impossible.

The Gulf War demonstrated the vital importance of the U.S. Air Force's Space Command. Organized on September 1, 1982, it provided a first look at what warfare would be like in the twenty-first century. The Air Force began launching satellites of the Navstar Global Positioning System, made famous simply as GPS, in 1973, but GPS was not fully operational until after DESERT STORM. Nonetheless, signals from the constellation of available GPS satellites provided Coalition forces information about Iraqi Scud Missile position, altitude, and velocity with unparalleled accuracy during most hours of the day. DSP satellites furnished early warning of launches, while DSCS satellites ensured secure communications between the Gulf, the United States, and facilities all over the world. These satellite systems were controlled through the Consolidated Space Operations Center at Colorado Springs, Colorado, and the Satellite Control Facility at Sunnyvale, California.

When General Norman Schwarzkopf launched the "100-hour" DESERT STORM ground offensive on February 24, 199 1, his forces met little resistance. Air power and total command of the air made possible the maneuver warfare of Schwarzkopf's "Hail Mary"--the employing of American Army and Marine and Arab ground forces in a direct assault on Kuwait while Coalition armored units looped around it to cut off enemy forces retreating into Iraq. Three thousand air sorties that day provided air support, but found few tactical targets-the air campaign had worked. The greatest threat to ground troops that day was friendly fire. On the first day of the Battle of the Somme in World War 1, British casualties amounted to 57,000, including 20,000 killed. On the first day of the Gulf War ground attack, Coalition casualties totaled 14, including 3 killed. Over the next several days the Air Force focused its attention on battering the Republican Guard divisions held in reserve in southern Iraq and interdicting the flood of Iraqi units retreating from Kuwait. The most visible of these efforts was the bottleneck created on the highway northwest out of Kuwait City, in what was called the "highway of death." The strategic bombing campaign continued through the one hundred hours of the ground offensive, including a last effort to destroy Saddam Hussein's bunker sanctuaries. Early in the morning of February 28 President Bush and the Coalition unilaterally declared a cease fire. Despite flying 37,567 combat sorties, the Air Force lost only 14 aircraft to hostile action (all from ground fire)-testimony to the professionalism, training, technology, leadership, and doctrine of the post-Vietnam U.S. Air Force.

With the end of the Cold War, the Air Force adopted a new doctrine--Global Reach-Global Power'. Released in June 1990, it prompted the first major Air Force reorganization since March 1946. Under Chief of Staff General Merrill McPeak, Strategic Air Command and Tactical Air Command were deactivated on June 1, 1992. Many of their assets were incorporated into Air Combat Command, headquartered at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia. The new organization represents the "global power" portion of the new Air Force, controlling ICBMs; command, control, communication, and intelligence functions; reconnaissance; tactical airlift and tankers; fighters; and bombers. Air Mobility Command and its in-flight refueling assets headquartered at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois, replaced Military Airlift Command as the "global reach" portion of the Air Force, controlling strategic airlift and tanker forces.

Global Reach-Global Power and a new doctrinal manual issued in March 1992, AFM 1-1, Basic Aerospace Doctrine of the United States Air Force, represent an Air Force committed to matching aerial forces with changing circumstances, drawing on nearly 100 years of experience. The Gulf War, like previous wars, demonstrated that the technology, leadership, training, strategy, and tactics employed for a specific set of conditions and circumstances in one war would not necessarily guarantee success in the next. An innovator behind fighter tactics in the Vietnam War, Colonel Robin Olds, concluded from his own experience that "no one knows exactly what air fighting will be like in the future." The U.S. Air Force proved decisive to victory in World War II and in the Gulf War and to separation from the limited conflicts in Korea and Vietnam. Future conflicts will bring new challenges for air power in the service of the nation.