A Quote by Carl Andrew Spaatz

The first and absolute requirement of strategic air power in this war was control of the air in order to carry out sustained operations without prohibitive losses.

Carl Andrew Spaatz

Quote Topics

Absolute Air Air Power Carry Control First Losses Operations Order Out Power Requirement Strategic Sustained War Without

Quote Author

Carl Andrew Spaatz
June 28, 1891 - July 14, 1974

Desert Storm was a war which involved the massive use of air power and a victory achieved by the U.S. and multinational air force units. It was also the first war in history in which air power was used to defeat ground forces.

Merrill McPeak

Relying exclusively on air power has limits: planes are effective against fixed strategic targets, like petroleum storage, bridges, and command bunkers; but even then, air power rarely succeeds by itself in destroying a regime's ability to command and control its forces.

Michael Ignatieff

Victory, speedy and complete, awaits the side which first employs air power as it should be employed. Germany, entangled in the meshes of vast land campaigns, cannot now disengage her air power for a strategically proper application. She missed victory through air power by a hair's breadth in 1940. . . . We ourselves are now at the crossroads.

Sir Arthur Harris, 1st Baronet

Only air power can defeat air power. The actual elimination or even stalemating of an attacking air force can be achieved only by a superior air force.

Alexander P. de Seversky

Retention of operational control of its air is important to the Corps' air-ground team, as air constitutes a significant part of its offensive firepower.

Keith B. McCutcheon

Air superiority is a condition for all operations, at sea, in land, and in the air.

Arthur Tedder, 1st Baron Tedder

When the United States first went into Afghanistan in 2001, it devastated the Taliban and Al Qaeda in a matter of weeks using only a few hundred C.I.A. and Special Operations personnel, backed by American air power. Later, when the United States transitioned to conventional Pentagon stability operations, this success was reversed.

Erik Prince

When you have a script where we say we are just going to do air operations alone within the territory of Iraq, what happens is the forces then that we want to target will move their forces, colocate with hospitals, schools, embed themselves to be very, very difficult to conduct air operations against.

Ryan Zinke

I am able to take a wire line and go into the air and define the air without stealing from anyone. A line can enclose and define space while letting the air remain air.

Ruth Asawa

We need to do whatever is necessary to utterly defeat ISIS....We're not using our overwhelming air power. We're not arming the Kurds. Those need to be the first steps. And then we need to put whatever ground power is needed to carry it out.

Ted Cruz

The first time I flew, it was being alive. Nothing was pressing under me. I was living in the fullness of air; air all around me, no holding place to break the air spaces. It's worth everything to be alone in the air, alive.

William Wharton

It's not as "cheap" as it's put out to be. One predator drone in one day of activity supposedly needs 168 people... to carry out the day's operations... They crash a lot. So when you calculate their costs, consider that the Air Force has said about a third of their drones have crashed.

Medea Benjamin

Air forces offered the possibility of striking a the enemy's economic and moral centres without having first to achieve 'the destruction of the enemy's main forces on the battlefield'. Air-power might attain a direct end by indirect means - hopping over opposition instead of overthrowing it.

B. H. Liddell Hart

Using overwhelming air power to utterly and completely destroy ISIS. To put things in perspective, in the first Persian Gulf War, we launched roughly 1,100 air attacks a day. We carpet bombed them for 36 days, saturation bombing, after which our troops went in and in a day and a half mopped up what was left of the Iraqi army.

Ted Cruz

Without mountains the air could not be purified, nor the flowing of the rivers sustained.