In sum, the petroleum-based sector of a nation’s economy offers a large, vulnerable target for today’s air planner. By merging the lessons of the past with current and future trends, one can achieve immediate results and dramatically affect the out-come of war....

1 INTRODUCTION . . . . 1 2 UNLIMITED WAR AND OIL . . . . 3 Summary . . . . . 10 3 LIMITED WAR AND OIL . . . . . 11 Summary . . . . . 15 4 HYPERWAR AND THE FUTURE . . . . . 17 Summary . . . . . 27 5 CONCLUSION . . . . . 29 Notes . . . . . 31 BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . 39...

In this well-researched and insightful study, Lt Col Gregory A. Roman examines the relationships between military organizational hierarchies and the impact of battlespace information. Drawing on a sophisticated range of studies and data and using numerous illustrations, the author contends that the outmoded effects of traditionally centralized (and technologically proliferating) command and control orientations preclude the US military (and particularly the Air Force) from effectively applying and acting upon the benefits of information-age technologies in an age of information warfare. The author sees future warfare characterized by faster decision making, faster operational tempos, and a torrent of tactical battlefield information. These new realities necessitate greater decentralization of control, more flexible information gathering, and creative, nontraditional military organizational arrangements....

Technical innovation lies at the heart of the case for privileging airpower in the American way of war, but such innovation comprises only one of warfare’s seven vital contexts. The sheer complexity of war and warfare renders prediction, technological and other, a high-risk activity. The contexts of war and warfare are (1) political, (2) societal-cultural, (3)economic, (4) technological, (5) military-strategic, (6) geographical, and (7) historical....

DISCLAIMER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .ii ABOUT THE AUTHOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .v SUMMARY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .vii THE AIRPOWER ADVANTAGE IN FUTURE WARFARE: THE NEED FOR STRATEGY . . . . . . .1 Plan of Attack . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 Why this Study? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Airpower Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Issues and Arguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13 Future Warfare: Contextual Realities . . . . . 20 US Airpower Advantage in Future Warfare . . 30 NOTES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35...