Projecting power: QDR's aerospace imperatives

摘要

With the next congressionally mandated Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) lurking in the near future, our military services need to take stock of where they are, what they need to do their jobs and where they need to go from here. This article is intended to make a modest contribution to the Air Force's QDR preparation by presenting a few suggestions in the form of what I call the "aerospace imperatives." These are a set of central themes that I believe should guide the development of aerospace power for at least the next two to three decades. Unlike many similar discussions, I will not debate what the Air Force should procure - which fighter, bomber, satellite or communications system - but what considerations should guide those procurement and support decisions. I believe these suggestions should be intuitively obvious, at least to airmen, at our present state of political, doctrinal and technological evolution, but I believe they should still be clearly stated.