Airpower remains the cornerstone of NATO’s military advantage, so maintaining the ability to win air superiority over peer opponents in a conflict is key to long-term deterrence stability in both Europe and the Pacific. This Whitehall Paper examines the various modernisation and future capability development efforts being undertaken within NATO, and analyses the major threat systems and overall modernisation trends of the West’s main peer-competitors – Russia and China. US airpower capability development efforts are increasingly focused on countering the growing challenge from the Chinese military in the Pacific. To meet this challenge, the Pentagon is planning to transform the way it operates across all domains over the next 15 years. New platforms, weapons systems and increasing automation of command and control threaten to leave NATO allies behind. Current acquisition and modernisation plans of European air forces may eventually close the capability gap with current US theatre entry standard capabilities, but by then the US will have leapt ahead once more. Furthermore, many of the airpower capabilities which the US is pursuing for the Pacific theatre are significantly less relevant for the demands of deterrence against Russia in Europe. Given continuing dependence on US enablers on the part of other NATO members, a significant divergence in capability plans threatens to undermine crucial Alliance interoperability if not recognised and managed early.

This book offers a thorough appraisal of Operation Allied Force, NATO's 78-day air war to compel the president of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic, to end his campaign of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. The author sheds light both on the operation's strengths and on its most salient weaknesses. He outlines the key highlights of the air war and examines the various factors that interacted to induce Milosevic to capitulate when he did. He then explores air power's most critical accomplishments in Operation Allied Force as well as the problems that hindered the operation both in its planning and in its execution. Finally, he assesses Operation Allied Force from a political and strategic perspective, calling attention to those issues that are likely to have the greatest bearing on future military policymaking. The book concludes that the air war, although by no means the only factor responsible for the allies' victory, certainly set the stage for Milosevic's surrender by making it clear that he had little to gain by holding out. It concludes that in the end, Operation Allied Force's most noteworthy distinction may lie in the fact that the allies prevailed despite the myriad impediments they faced.

Airpower Applied reviews the evolution of airpower and its impact on the history of warfare. Through a critical examination of twenty-nine case studies in which various U.S. coalitions and Israel played significant roles, this book offers perspectives on the political purpose, strategic meaning, and military importance of airpower. By comparing and contrasting more than seventy-five years of airpower experience in very different circumstances, readers can gain insight into present-day thinking on the use of airpower and on warfare. The authors, all experts in their fields, demystify some of airpower‘s strategic history by extracting the most useful teachings to help military professionals and political leaders understand what airpower has to offer as a “continuation of politics by other means.” The case studies emphasize the importance of connecting policy and airpower: operational effectiveness cannot substitute for poor statecraft. As the United States, its allies, and Israel have seen in their most recent applications of airpower, even the most robust and capable air weapon can never be more effective than the strategy and policy it is intended to support.

Between March and October 2011, a coalition of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member states and several partner nations waged a war against Muammar Qaddafi's Libyan regime that stemmed and then reversed the tide of Libya's civil war, preventing Qaddafi from crushing the nascent rebel movement seeking to overthrow his dictatorship and going on to enable opposition forces to prevail. The central element of this intervention was a relatively small multinational force's air campaign operating from NATO bases in several countries, as well as from a handful of aircraft carriers and amphibious ships in the Mediterranean Sea. The study details each country's contribution to that air campaign, examining such issues as the limits of airpower and coordination among nations. It also explores whether the Libyan experience offers a potential model for the future.

In the future, NATO forces must be prepared to respond quickly to events in regions within and beyond its borders. This research addresses how this requirement will affect the organization of NATO forces, particularly airpower, by postulating two scenarios that would stress NATO to the extreme: (1) an attack by Russia on Poland, and (2) a Syria-Iraq attack on Turkey. The author uses these scenarios to develop operational concepts and alternative organizations that would enable NATO airpower to adapt to the uncertain post-Cold War environment. The report concludes that NATO's air reaction forces should be fully established in peacetime, prepared for operations independent from existing command structures, and that the future viability of these forces depends primarily on U.S. contributions.

"An illustrated narrative history of NATO airpower, from World War II vintage aircraft and the Berlin airlift to stealth bombers and peacekeeping in Bosnia. There are photographs from the archives of the major NATO airpowers, celebrating the men and aircraft that have kept the peace in Europe."

The United States conducts air operations with other willing NATO allies, including non-NATO members. The objective of this background research for a larger RAND study, Interoperability: A Continuing Challenge in Coalition Air Operations, is twofold: (1) to help the U.S. Air Force identify potential interoperability problems that may arise in coalition air operations involving the United States and its NATO allies, as well as non-NATO countries, over the next decade and (2) to suggest solution directions to mitigate those problems. The study focus is on command, control, communications, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C3ISR) systems and out-of-NATO-area operations. The authors present a data-based historical overview of the U.S. experience in coalition operations with NATO allies up to 1999 and seek to provide a deeper understanding of interoperability through the answers to several key questions: For what missions is interoperability required? With which NATO allies is interoperability required? For what capabilities and services is interoperability required? Detailed case-study analyses of coalition operations in Southwest Asia, Bosnia, Somalia, and Rwanda identify key interoperability challenges and workarounds (short-term solutions) at the strategic, operational, tactical, and technological levels, and provide relevant lessons for meeting these challenges and improving the interoperability of U.S. and NATO air and C3ISR capabilities.