Stop Judging Airpower Against Missions It Was Never Assigned

This Forbes opinion piece argues that the common claim 'airpower alone cannot win a war' is a misleading cliché that misjudges military effectiveness. The author contends that modern warfare requires applying appropriate capabilities to specific political objectives, not testing airpower against tasks like occupation that it was never designed for. The article critiques recent commentaries that declared airpower failed in the Iran war, asserting that such judgments wrongly define victory only as territorial conquest or regime change. Instead, the author argues airpower is effective for limited objectives like degradation, denial, coercion, and generating diplomatic leverage. The piece uses the 2003 Iraq invasion as an example where ground forces also failed to achieve stable political outcomes, concluding that success should be measured by whether military choices align with political goals, not by narrow slogans.