Battle Damage From the QDR

摘要

Some months before the 1991 Gulf War, a contemptuous Saddam Hussein said of his prospective foe, "The United States relies on the Air Force, and the Air Force has never been the decisive factor in the history of war." It was, to say no more, a gross error in judgment. US airpower, 79 percent of it from USAF, would soon eviscerate Iraq's military force. (See "The Strategy of Desert Storm," by John T. Correll, p. 26.) And the Gulf War was just the start; airpower would later prove to be a—and perhaps the—decisive factor in combat from Serbia to Afghanistan, from Bosnia to Baghdad.