Since the unprecedentedly effective performance of the allied air campaign against Iraq during Operation Desert Storm, the role of American air power in future wars has become a topic of often heated public debate. In this balanced appraisal of air power's newly realized strengths in joint warfare, Benjamin Lambeth, a defense analyst and civilian pilot who has flown in most of the equipment described in this book, explores the extent to which the United States can now rely on air-delivered precision weapons in lieu of ground forces to achieve strategic objectives and minimize American...

This invaluable study provides a unique insider's view of the history of Soviet and Russian policy on nuclear weapons modernization and charts the future evolution of the Russian strategic arsenal. Using information that has only recently become available and introducing new, previously unknown data, Sokov concludes that the most important force behind the evolution of the Soviet and Russian strategic arsenal was the military itself, which sought to increase strategic stability by enhancing the survivability of weapons systems. The highly destabilizing posture of the 1970s and 1980s was, he...