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From: HARPER%ccvax.ucd.ie@pucc.PRINCETON.EDU
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Questionable value of air superiority
Message-ID: <1990Aug28.042628.28858@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 28 Aug 90 04:26:28 GMT
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From: HARPER%ccvax.ucd.ie@pucc.PRINCETON.EDU
Most of the recent postings concerning the deployment of US air forces in
the gulf explicitly suggest that air superiority is tactically equivalent
to military victory.  There is no precedent for this claim among the wars
of the last fifty years.  The land war in Vietnam demonstrated that if a
nation was willing to endure tremendous casualties caused by air warfare
and continually bolster the land army that a winnable war could be fought.
My question, and doubtless an anxiety to US general staff, is whether the
modern US armed land forces are capable of fighting a sustained land war?
A survey of US forces in Germany, published in the Sunday Times some four
years ago, produced evidence of (a) gross unfitness, (b) unfamiliarity with
complex battlefield weaponery and (c) poor sense of tactics in 20% of the
forces studied.

While airpower may be a deciding factor in the outcome of any eventual gulf
war, it is unlikely to be the deciding one in the absence of major infantry
engagements.

Jerry Harper:
Computer Science Dept, University College Dublin, Dublin 4, IRELAND
harper@ccvax.ucd.ie