The dirigibles, or Zeppelins, of WWI were failures, and for many of the reasons that LT Hogg puts forth. It should be noted however, that the US Navy made excellent use of blimps during the Second World War in anti-submarine patrols.

Nevertheless, Hogg’s denouncement of aviation as an effective tool of war is flawed; he relies too much on anti-aircraft weapons. As was seen throughout the Second World War, anti-aircraft artillery was effective, it never placed arial targets beyond the reach of aviators.

When combined with fighter aircraft, anti-aircraft defenses were often quite formidable. Bogg’s citing a War Department study expressing a 25% loss-ratio in many cases was too optimistic. Several of the US Army Air Force raids into Germany suffered 25% loss rates per day. In fact, the US 8th Air Force suffered the largest losses in the entire war, regardless of theater. And yet, not a single American (or British, for that matter) bombing force was ever turned back by German air defenses.

And the airplane was the equal of the ship. Witness the Japanese sinking of the HMS Prince of Wales and the HMS Repulse on 8 DEC 1941. It should be remembered that the Prince of Wales survived battle with the German Battleship Bismarck, after the Bismarck sank the HMS Hood.

The subtext of Hogg’s article is still seen today; armies and navies are obsolete. We know this to be false. No one would argue against the statement that the US Air Force is far and away the world’s most technologicaly advanced air force in the world. Moreover, it is likely that the USAF will remain the dominate air force in the world for generations to come. The same can be said of US Naval Aviation as well. Indeed, a single Carrier Air Group or its Air Force equivelent would likely prove sufficient to any task required in support of US or Allied ground forces.

Yes; ground forces. Even today in Iraq and Afghanistan air supremecy is a secondary effort to “boots on the ground” exigiencies of the fight. I submit that without any land forces involved in either campaign whatsoever, that both Hussein and the Taliban would still be in power in their respective nations.

Hogg also wrote that victory is achieved by “subjugating (and enemy’s) armies”. This is incorrect. Wars are won when one nation has destroyed their opponents will to fight, not their ability to do so. The German Army of World War One was still an effective fighting force when the Armistice was signed. However, Germany had lost the will to continue the war well before November 1918. Certainly the Japanese military had been virtually anihilated before Hiroshima, but as Hirohito, et al, still had the desire to fight, the war continued until Nagasaki. Even then, mid-rank Japanese Army officers attempted a coup de etat in order to prevent the Japanese Emperor from surrendering.

The US Military was never defeated in Vietnam, despite some crippling obstructions placed in its way by Washington. But as 1969 turned into 1970, the US had lost the will to fight, so the war ended with the Paris Accords, in lieu of military victory for either side. It should be noted that despite the overwhelming political advantages held by Hanoi, it was only after the Linebacker II operations, where the US Air Force was for the only time in the war able to bring it full arsenal, sans nuclear weapons, to bear against North Vietnam. Hanoi agreed to peace within thirty days.

And yet that war was a victory for the North. Hanoi had the political will to wait until they could take on the South Vietnamese Army without US intervention, and when North Vietnam invaded the South, its victory came swiftly as the South Vietnamese lacked the will to fight on their own.

There is an on-going struggle between aircraft designers and the counterparts in the realm of anti-aircraft artillery, and the balance tips towards one side or the other regularly. In the Yom Kippur war, Israel’s Air Force destroyed the air and land forces of Egypt and Syria. In the 1973 Six-Day War, Egyptian Air Defense Artillery, most notably its missile force, literally decimated the Israelis. In either event, it was the Israeli Army that won the fight.

No one system or force will be the “end all and be all” for any nation as it prosecutes its wars. Rather, it the combined efforts of that country’s diverse military arms working in concert to destroy their enemy’s will, not ability, to fight, that will decide the contest.

In his seminal work: “On War”, the Prussian theorist Carl von Klauswitz postulated that “war is politics by other means.” Politics is based on will. It is for that reason, too, that Hogg’s arguments about what a given operation would or would not cost is also flawed. No war has ever been won by the country that “fought it on the cheap.” Britain gave away practically her entire empire to the United States in order to afford the material needed to continue the fight against Nazi Germany. Frankly, from a purely economic statement, Britain lost WWII. By the time the war finally ended, the British economy was in ruins, and to this day, neither Britain nor France has ever fully recovered. Yet both nations were winners in WWII. They both had the will to pay and price (as JFK put it) in order to win.

Hogg should have placed less reliance on technology, and more on human will. It is a lesson to be heeded in every war in every place.