Victory Through Air Power

THE CHALLENGE TO AMERICA

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The most significant single fact about the war now in progress is the emergence of aviation as the paramount and decisive factor in warmaking. There is still some difference of opinion as to the precise role of aviation in the immediate future, its relation to the older military services, its role in this or that specific battle or campaign. ( ... ) All experts agree that air power will play an ever more decisive part in determining the power balance among the nations of the earth. ( ... ) It is inescapable in the day - to - day news from every theatre of conflict.

Since world empires have depended throughout history on the available weapons of domination, the advent of this new weapon - swifter and more destructive than any in the past, equally potent on land or at sea - must affect fundamentally the pattern of life on our planet.

( ... ) This process, it is self - evident, involves the United States as intimately as it does any other great nation. A realistic understanding of the new weapon, of its implications in terms of national security, of its challenge to America, is not a matter of choice. It is the very condition of national survival.