Combat Pair: The Evolution of Air Force-Navy Integration in Strike Warfare

by Benjamin S. Lambeth

Overview

This report documents the exceptional cross-service harmony that the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy have steadily developed in their conduct of integrated strike operations since the first Persian Gulf War in 1991. That close harmony contrasts sharply with the situation that prevailed throughout most of the Cold War, when the two services maintained separate and unique operating mindsets and lacked any significant interoperability features.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780833042095
Publisher:	RAND Corporation
Publication date:	11/16/2007
Series:	Project Air Force
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	128
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

(Ph.D., Political Science, Harvard University) is a senior RAND analyst specializing in air power and international security who has flown in more than 40 different combat aircraft types with eight air forces worldwide over the past two decades. He is the author of The Transformation of American Air Power (Cornell University Press, 2000), winner of the Air Force Association's Gill Robb Wilson award in arts and letters for 2001. He is also the author of numerous other volumes, including Russia's Air Power in Crisis (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1999) and NATO's Air War for Kosovo: A Strategic and Operational Assessment (RAND, 2001).

Table of Contents

Preface     iii
Summary     vii
Acknowledgments     xv
Abbreviations     xix
Introduction     1
A Backdrop of Apartness     5
The Watershed of Desert Storm     13
Post-Gulf War Navy Adjustments to New Demands     17
First Steps Toward Integrated Strike-Warfare Training     27
Continued Sources of Navy-Air Force Friction     33
A Convergence of Integration over Afghanistan     45
Further Convergence in Operation Iraqi Freedom     55
Emergent Trends in Air Force-Navy Integration     65
A New Synergy of Land- and Sea-Based Strike Warfare     81
Future Challenges and Opportunities     89
Bibliography     99