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27 Oct 2023

Pointless or Populism?

This article began as a response to Daniel Cook’s recent article on ‘Turning the Tap Off – Stopping the Flow of Pointless Jobs in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF)’ (Cook, 2023); as such, it will address some of the points raised in that article within the context a broader trend towards what I term ‘military populism’.

Space as a Strategic Geography

Pete Wooding
Australian Defence Force

Applying Wylie's Cumulative and Sequential Patterns to Air Operations

Applying Wylie's Cumulative and Sequential Patterns to Air OperationsPeter Layton

Middle Power Offensive Air Operations: Insights from Operation Rising Lion

Unlike defensive air operations which are reactive, offensive air operations are undertaken where and when an air force chooses.

Applying Wylie’s Cumulative and Sequential Patterns to Air Operations

Strategist Joseph Caldwell Wylie argued that strategies were implemented through two general types of operational patterns: (1) cumulative warfare, which involves “a collection of lesser actions” where tactical actions gradually built up to have strategic impact; and (2) sequential warfare, which is “a series of discrete steps” where each lead to the next; an example being the island hopping campaign across the Pacific during World War Two.

Book Review: Why Air Forces Fail: The Anatomy of Defeat

In Why Air Forces Fail: The Anatomy of Defeat (Higham & Harris, 2016), historians Robin Higham and Stephen Harris assemble a team of experts to investigate examples of failure and defeat in the application of air power. Overall, Why Air Forces Fail is an interesting and important book because it analyses the reasons why air forces have suffered defeat and failure. It draws some important lessons in this regard, and it provides an excellent resource for those studying air power.

David Hood