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Aether Journal Articles

  • Joint Taskforce Quartz: Through an Airpower Lens

    Joint Task Force Quartz provides lessons learned as the Air Force develops new operational concepts. In short, the command relationships must be built upon centralized command, distributed control, and decentralized execution all under the art of mission command.

  • A New Battle Command Architecture for Joint All-Domain Operations

    The Air Force must rapidly evolve beyond centralized combined air operations centers. This new architecture must adapt to ABMS and JADC2 developments, but given their slow evolution, the service must begin changing the architecture for command and control of aerospace forces now.

  • Accelerate Change and Still Lose?: Limits of Adaptation and Innovation

    Technological solutions do not always ensure success; calls for change provide terse nods to concepts and ideas while privileging more technological solutions. The services need a sound strategy to answer the requisite preliminary question of innovation or adaptation: we can, but should we?

  • The USAF at 75: Renewing Our Democratic Ethos

    The military plays a role in civics literacy and developing a democratic ethos. The US Air Force must draw upon its heritage, renewing a commitment to a democratic ethos that preferences service members’ obligation to the Oath of Office above partisan or personal interests.

  • Space Is a Warfighting Domain

    The assertion that space is a war-fighting domain has tremendous repercussions for force structure, budget decisions, public and international perceptions, and, on the culture of the newest military service.

  • Accelerate Change: Or Lose The Information War

    The Air Force must accelerate change or lose an information-cyber war that holds at risk American social, economic, and political cohesion. To win, the service must develop and promote strategists to seize opportunities in the cyberspace domain and information environment.

  • Winning a Peer War

    Attaining victory in a near-term peer war would pose extreme challenges and significant costs. But if such a conflict is still a decade away, America’s survival, and that of the West writ large, demands we find solutions now that will ensure victory.

  • Rethinking “Airpower versus Asymmetric Enemies”

    Effective airpower supports positive political goals and minimizes the risk of achieving the negative ones. The framework offers no guarantee of success or failure, but it does charge leaders who might apply airpower to think carefully before making that decision.

  • Air Power 2010–2020: From Helmand to Hypersonics

    Air power employment over the last decade yields lessons from challenging operations in complex environments. The West and its allies are at an inflection point in the employment and utility of air and space power no longer owning or dictating all the terms of the debate.