Graduate Certificate in Air Warfare

This course addresses the application of strategy and process of the making of strategy, both of which deal with the preparation and use of military power to serve the ends of politics. The treatment is chronological, as determined by the various case studies, and two themes run throughout: the relationship of strategy and the strategic level of war to other levels of war, especially policy and the political level of war; and the difficulty inherent in the process of the making of strategy. Note: Not available for students who have previously taken MILS520.

This course is a study of the advent of air power and the changes it has wrought on the nature and conduct of war in the modern age. Topics include aviation's role in revolutionizing the battlefield by expanding the scale and scope of conflict from two to three dimensions. Special emphasis is on air power methods and strategy and geopolitical implications of air power's destructive capacity vis-a-vis civilian populations, economies, and collateral damage.

This course explores the strategic theories of airpower in terms of their origin, development, and future potential. Airpower concepts are considered against the backdrop of its history during the last century and the current scenarios in the 21st century. Students evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of strategic airpower as the appropriate support for surface forces or the independent key to victory in war.

This course seeks to explore the theory of tactical airpower beginning with an examination of the formative experience in North Africa during World War II, followed by an examination of how tactical airpower has been employed in the present, and concluding with an exploration of possible future uses of tactical airpower based upon analyses conducted during the course.

This course seeks to explore the future of airpower by examining its past as a means to assess how airpower might manifest itself in the 21st century. As we enter into the 21st century, pre-Cold War and Cold War paradigms that served to shape the evolution and character of airpower and air warfare are giving way to as yet to be clearly defined post-Cold War modalities.

This course considers the nature of future military conflict, the history of future war doctrine, and the impact of current conflict on the conceptualization of the "next war." Students examine current, past, and future low-intensity as well as high-intensity conflicts, and the appropriate use of military force in the power projection role to influence a diplomatic resolution to a conflict. Rogue nations, and related cultural clashes, and religious factors are related to planning for future war.