Thanks Joe for sending this article.
A must read from Politico....a tidbit but make sure you read the entire article...its a primer on how airpower alone will never win wars.
Absent a coup or lucky air strike that takes out Qadhafi, success requires what all other wars demanded: a competent, reasonably armed and well-led ground capacity. In the Libya case, this will require time, money, equipment and leadership with far more on-the-ground NATO assistance. For those who think otherwise, they would do well to recall the conclusion Johns Hopkins University strategist Eliot Cohen — the director of the U.S. government’s Persian Gulf War evaluation — made in Foreign Affairs in 1994: “Air power is an unusually seductive form of military strength, in part because, like modern courtship, it appears to offer gratification without commitment.”
In Libya, gratification will not suffice.
its amazing this debate keeps coming all the time, people believe that air forces will be the only instruments of war. Undoubtedly they are indespensible and critical, but there will always be a need for boots on the ground. i remember reading about concerns when air forces made huge efforts during WWII and the cold war was supposedly going to be fought by air forces alone, soliders (and marines :)) would not be needed, well 60 years later soliders and marines are still proving them wrong.
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