Immaculate Warfare: Participants Reflect on the Air Campaigns over Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq

This volume of essays-written by military officers who analyzed the intelligence, planned the missions, and flew the planes over Iraq, Kosovo, and Afghanistan-offers the most penetrating look to date at the realities of American precision air power.

When the gun-camera footage from air strikes during the Gulf War reached America’s television screens, people awoke to the astonishing accuracy and power of smart weapons. Yet ten years’ experience has taught what these remarkable weapons can and cannot do, and now, as American policy makers look to them to win the global war on terrorism, it is essential to understand the promise and the limits of immaculate warfare. This volume of essays-written by military officers who analyzed the intelligence, planned the missions, and flew the planes over Iraq, Kosovo, and Afghanistan-offers the most penetrating look to date at the realities of American precision air power.

Topics include:

* The political context of using force from the air

* The theoretical considerations involved in the use of air power to coerce an enemy

* An insider’s view from General Clark’s headquarters as he commanded the Kosovo war effort

* The tensions between civilian and military leaderships during the Kosovo war

* Precision weapons and the paradoxes their use involves

* The debate surrounding when precision weapons ought to be employed