Thinking about Air and Space Power in 2025: Five Guiding Principles.

摘要

The year 2025 is not far away. However, the coming years will doubtless surprise us since geostrategic or technological developments are so unpredictable. The air and space environment will certainly feature major breakthroughs that we must be ready to face. This article does not claim to treat this topic comprehensively; rather, it suggests a few principles that one can apply to support a view of the stakes for tomorrow's airpower. Preparing for the future is difficult. One must select the time frame in order to build an innovative but realistic and reachable vision. Economist Peter Drucker used to argue that the essence of planning is to make present decisions with knowledge of their futurity. Indeed, the years between now and 2025 have already been defined by a program of orders and deliveries that scales the format of military forces until 2020, within a given financial framework influenced by military forces. Consequently, any modification remains subject to the law of interconnectedness, whereby a new program must replace another one, or several, in order to avoid budgetary problems. Because such planning freezes capabilities until 2020, it takes on a budgetary character and limits strategic thinking to the time frame in question. Consequently, if we wish to go outside this framework, we must look beyond. The 2025 time frame is significant because it gives strategic thinking a renewed scope, keeping in mind the objective of shedding light on the future so we can better assess today's decisions.