Airpower is peculiar in many ways. An old saw has it that a bomber is a thunderbolt, contained in an eggshell, invisibly tethered to a base. It captures some important truths: Aircraft can deliver tremendous violence from a platform that is intrinsically vulnerable, and that requires a well-protected base and skilled maintenance staff, the unsung heroes of air operations. More than that, airpower is unusual: Unlike land or sea forces, airplanes can linger (loiter is the technical term) over a target for only a brief period of time. Simultaneously, however, it is enormously flexible. Airpower can be massed over one target today and over another hundreds of miles away tomorrow.
These qualities of concentration, speed, and flexibility have shaped how air forces—above all the few air forces capable of waging air campaigns—think about airpower. Most air forces are capable of raids, intense but brief assaults lasting a few hours. Very few are capable of thinking about campaigns, meaning sustained air attacks over a period of weeks or months intended to achieve large and lasting effects on the ground. The United States Air Force is the preeminent air force of that kind.
Even for the United States, air campaigns have been relatively rare. During World War II, the bomber offensives against Germany and Japan occurred in tandem with extensive operations on land and sea and competed with them for scarce resources. In Korea and Vietnam, most air operations aimed to support troops in contact with the enemy, either directly (dropping bombs on enemy infantry engaging our troops) or indirectly (attacking their supply lines). Independent air campaigns against industrial production or rear areas such as ports have had mixed results. The 1991 Gulf War, with 38 days of air operations preceding a four-day ground offensive, was unusual. Even then, most of the flying done by the United States and its allies was directed against Iraqi forces, particularly those deployed along the Kuwaiti border, and only a small fraction went against so-called strategic targets in Iraq, such as telecommunications, electricity, or its nuclear program.
From the American point of view, the present war is the first sustained air campaign since 1991. Operation Midnight Hammer, the one-day attack on Iran’s nuclear program, was essentially a large raid, an intense but brief set of attacks. In 2003, ground operations began at almost the same time as air operations. This is something different.