Square Pegs and Round Holes: Air Force Doctrine and the B-2 Bomber

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AFM 1-1 and the United States Air Force’s new vision paper, Global Engagement: A Vision for the 21st Century Air Force, allow significant flexibility in the employment of Air Force resources. However, as doctrine or the core for doctrinal development, both documents intimate significant flaws in the process of creating guidance from theory, then applying that guidance to warfighting. An incongruent relationship exists between the creation of formal Air Force doctrine and the development of operational weapon systems. More specifically, the Air Force’s inventory of long-range strategic bombers, although conceived as weapons of nuclear deterrence during the Cold War, must now fit within the parameters of post-Cold War air power doctrine. In the B-2 in particular, the Air Force justifies the existence of a platform not entirely compatible with its overarching doctrine of global reach, global power, and global attack–an aircraft whose technological advances belie anachronistic origins.