So a revival of great power competition means that the old air power-centric Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) was right all along? And the 1995 Deliberate Force operation was an early test proving the concept?
The RMA gained additional standing from Operation Deliberate Force, the NATO air campaign in Bosnia, in 1995. The 11-day action consisted almost entirely of airpower and imposed a cease fire on the Serb aggressors in the Yugoslav civil war.
The 11-day action was almost entirely airpower? I don't think so, as I wrote in this post originally written (but not accepted for publication) during the 1999 Operation Allied Force over the same area:
The seventh lesson [of an Air University study] is the most important yet is ill remembered. In May 1995, Croatia captured western Slavonia from the Croatian Serbs. Operation Storm, in which the Croatians took the Serb Krajina region of Croatia, followed starting in late July and relieved the Moslem Bihac Pocket in western Bosnia. In conjunction with the Croatian offensive, Bosnia too scored victories over the Bosnian Serbs as Deliberate Force delivered its signal. By mid-September 1995, the Croatians had regained their land and the Bosnian Serbs had the 70% of Bosnia they controlled reduced to 51 percent. Accepting NATO's peace plan that coincidentally allocated them 51% of Bosnia simply required the Bosnian Serbs to concede reality. Air power advocates seem to imply that the Bosnian and Croatian attacks were successful because of the NATO airstrikes. ...
In 1995, air power was the only military means acceptable to NATO countries. Croatia's forgotten army was decisive in that war. [emphasis added]
The "seem" part of the claim is long gone, I guess. The non-American ground offensive is truly forgotten.
Claiming air power won the 1995 campaign is kind of like noticing that the sun rises when the rooster crows, and concluding the rooster caused the sun to rise.
I once celebrated the Air Force embrace of supporting Army combat operations. Ground forces need a good Air Force in order to win, and we have a good Air Force. Ground support is useful and air support is vital. But air power can't do it all.
Sadly, it may be that a separate Space Force, by denying the Air Force an outlet higher, will lead the Air Force to look down and resume its campaign to claim it can win wars virtually alone instead of supporting the ground forces.
So here we are in 2019 and the limited 1995 NATO air campaign led by America is remembered as an early indicator of how air power can deliver victory. That judgment requires ignoring the Croatian ground offensive (planned by retired American officers) and to a lesser extent ignoring the Bosnian land gains.
New technology is supposedly bringing the decades-long "victory through air power alone" claim to the real world. I don't think so.
