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The Transformation of American Air Power. By Benjamin S. Lambeth. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000. ISBN 0-8014-3816-0. Photographs. Notes. Index. Pp. viii, 337. $29.95.
This is an important book, although not without flaws. Its central argument is that over the past two decades U.S. air power has experienced a qualitative growth arising from such advances as stealth, higher accuracy from standoff ranges, and greatly improved battlespace awareness (information dominance) which combine to make possible a far larger contribution to joint warfare than hitherto. The long simmering dispute over the efficacy of strategic bombing traditionally defined as attacks on an enemy's "population and urban industrial structure" is now "largely moot," the author contends, because of U.S. air power's newly acquired ability to "neutralize an opponent's military capability directly" (p. 7), a reversion to the Clausewitzian...