Customer Reviews

Airpower in Small Wars (PB) (Modern War Studies)

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The ideal aircraft in a counter insurgency war has to be able to fly low and slow enough to detect the insurgents and terrorists. But also have the ability to stay over the target long enough to direct firepower on them, if not fire upon them. While being able to carry the ordnance and have the speed to avoid being hit by ground fire. Does this require several types of aircraft, or is there one that can do it all?

Airpower in Small Wars presents over nine examples of small wars by giving the background of each particular conflict or the origins of each insurgency. The US Marine Corps is credited in the introduction and following chapter, with having greater interest and experience in employing aircraft against insurgencies. While the US Army Air Corps (later to become the USAF) focused on strategic use of airpower. The USMC still emphasizes aviation in its support of ground units with its close-air support doctrine. (Combined Arms Operations).

From the conflicts presented in the book, high performance jet aircraft are not particularly a benefit in the Counter Insurgency or Anti-Terrorist campaigns. And helicopters, though very useful are sussceptible to ground fire and Shoulder fired surface to air missles and Rocket Propelled Grenades (RPGs).

The book also shows the interaction between the US and assisted countries with regard to supplying aircraft, supplies and training in relation to US foreign affairs policies.

Though recent US operations in Afghanistan and Iraq are not covered. The examples presented provide you a frame work to understand the current and past air operations in both countries. The peacekeeping mission in Somalia was not also featured but this is well documented in other books and a smilar analysis frame work can be applied.

It is the hope of the authors that this book may serve "to inspire other writers to take any one of the case studies as a starting point to more fully examine airpower in a specific conflict in much greater depth, then they will consider their book to be a very positive contribution to military and airpower history."

This was well researched, but despite the title, it did not focus nearly enough on airpower. I also agree with Mr. Cappelli's assessment in his review. There is, however, some knowledge to be gained from the book, as the reader is able to examine some small wars side by side and see which aspects of airpower have consistently worked and which have not. The biggest drawback is the amount of material one has to wade through in order to find the bits where airpower is discussed.

To the authors' credit, the chapter summaries are good, and their conclusions covered in the final chapter are on the mark.

Six years ago,when my peers and I were still largely focused on state-vs-state conflict, authors Corum and Johnson produced this superb text. It provides a solid historical context for airpower employment demanded by present and future US national security requirements.

The reader will quickly note that the book is not filled with gripping tales of air combat - and this is hardly coincidental. The great value of this work is instructional rather than entertaining. Yet, as a career military aviator, I found the text highly readable as well as illuminating.

I strongly recommend this book as a must-have "101" course for aviation and intelligence professionals from all services, particularly my own(USAF).

I bought this book after reading some of the brilliant articles written by James Corum for the USAF official magazine. I rate this book with only two stars, because if one knows the history of various insurgencies of the past, can easily avoid reading half of the pages.
Corum and Johnson did not go deep in details, so the book remains just a general historical overview of the phenomenon of airpower against insurgents, even forgetting some minor wars (Sri Lanka against Tamils, Russia against Chechens, Morocco against Saharawis and so on).
Moreover, in the chapter dedicated to Colombia the two authors give an explicit negative political judgement on Clinton politics and overtly claim an American military intervention in the ongoing Colombian civil war: mixing politics with an academic work is not a good thing.