Combining Sequential and Cumulative Air Strategies for Victory: The Past Informs the Future

摘要

This study analyzes how sequential and cumulative aspects of air strategies interact to contribute to victory in war. The thesis uses as a point of departure the 1967 writing of Admiral J.C. Wylie, Military Strategy: A general Theory of Power Control. In this book Wylie describes two basic military strategies, sequential and cumulative. The sequential strategy consists of a 'series of visible, discrete steps, each dependent on the one that preceded it'. A cumulative strategy is 'the less perceptive minute accumulation of little items piling one on top of the other until at some unknown point the mass of accumulated actions may be large enough to be critical'. This study provides a preliminary analysis about the interaction of such aspects of air strategy by examining three historical campaigns: the Battle of Britain (from the German perspective), the Combined Bomber Offensive, and the Southwest Pacific Area campaign. The study outlines the historical context in which air strategies in these campaigns were conducted and describes the sequential and cumulative aspects of the air strategies. Next the thesis examines the nature of the relationships or interactions between both types of air strategies and whether those interactions contributed to achieving victory. The historical evidence from the three cases shows that each air strategy contained both sequential and cumulative aspects. Also, where the air planners appreciated the effects of both types of strategies, it was clear that there was an effort on their part to ensure the sequential air strategy aided the cumulative and vice-versa. Conversely, where the air planners had a more limited appreciation for the effects of the sequential and cumulative air strategies, the interactions between the two were negative. That is, the sequential strategy hindered the cumulative and vice versa. Here the negative relationship between the two strategies did not contribute to victory in the air campaign.