In the past 20 years, and particularly since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the locus of air power as a major component of military campaigns, has shifted somewhat as the world realigns in the wake of the elimination of US-Russian confrontational diplomacy. Previously when Western political stability was maintained by the balance of force between US-led NATO and the Russian-led Warsaw Pact, air power could be characterised by the maintenance of large numbers of aircraft more or less symmetrically disposed on either side of the Iron Curtain.
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