Air Forces: The Next Generation

The use of air power, like any other military force, is now becoming increasingly complicated. Missions are changing: an increase in intrastate wars, the use of air assets against terrorism, and deployment of air forces to conduct military operations other than war, coupled with budgetary and personnel pressures, continue to affect a nation’s ability to maintain competency in the aeronautical sphere of operations. Further, the number and type of actors deploying air power have changed, as has the technology. Each forward-thinking air force needs to consider potential threat scenarios that are futuristic and require some degree of planning. This volume contains data on 14 nations and their attempts to modernize, mobilize, and keep ahead of their adversaries. Knowledge of other nations’ current force structure, doctrine, and threat environment, how their budgetary pressures are affecting their acquisition decisions, and whether they intend to seek interoperability provides valid and relevant information for your own aerospace capability program.

Amit Gupta is an Associate Professor in the USAF Air War College, Alabama. His writings have focused on arms production and weapons proliferation, South Asian and Australian security policies, Diaspora politics, as well as popular culture and politics. More recently he has written on the US-China rivalry and the impact of demography on US foreign policy. His articles have appeared in Orbis, Asian Survey, Security Dialogue, The Round Table, Mediterranean Quarterly, The International Journal of the History of Sport, and Sport in Society.  He is also the author or editor of seven books.

Sharad Joshi is an associate professor in the Nonproliferation and Terrorism Studies Program (NPTS) in the Graduate School of International Policy and Management (GSIPM), at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, Monterey. Dr Joshi’s research and teaching focuses on various facets of conflict, terrorism, and nonproliferation matters in South Asia. Dr Joshi holds a PhD from the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, and also served as a postdoctoral fellow at the Middlebury Institute’s Center for Nonproliferation Studies. He has also been associated with the institute’s Monterey Terrorism Research and Education Program (MonTREP) as a research associate, and interim director. He is also affiliated with Chatham House (UK) as an associate fellow of international security.

Gregory Alegi is a historian and journalist, with 35 years of experience in the aerospace, defense and security fields. He teaches Aerospace History at the Italian Air Force Academy (since 1998) and History of the Americas at LUISS University in Rome (since 2006). His extensive Italian and English writing includes La storia dell’Aeronautica Militare: la nascita (The History of the Italian Air Force: The Birth), winner of the ITAF Association Aerospace Book Prize in 2016. In 2015 he authored “The Italian Experience: Pivotal and Underestimated,” a chapter in Karl Muller’s Precision and Purpose: Airpower in the Libyan Civil War. He sits on the Board of Advisors of the Fondazione ICSA, for which he has authored research papers on the Italian defence budget and the F-35 programme. As a journalist, he is the managing editor of the monthly Aeronautica and sits on the strategic committee of Airpress and the editorial board of The Aviation Historian.

Peter Gray retired from the Royal Air Force in June 2008, having reached the rank of Air Commodore (1*), he took up the position of Senior Research Fellow in Air Power Studies at the University of Birmingham in 2008. He retired from Birmingham in 2018 and is now Honorary Professor of Air Power Studies at the University of Wolverhampton. Gray spent his early career as a navigator on the F4 Phantom aircraft and, more recently, commanded 101 Squadron flying VC10 K tanker aircraft.  He has spent two staff tours in the personnel field followed by a lengthy sojourn in the Cabinet Office, several appointments in the Ministry of Defence and has served as Director of Defence Studies for the Royal Air Force.  Gray is a graduate of the Higher Command and Staff Course and was assistant director on the 2001 programme. Gray holds degrees from the Universities of Dundee, London, Cambridge and Birmingham (PhD).  He is a Fellow of the RAeS and the Royal Historical Society. 

Ron Gurantz is assistant professor in the Department of Strategy at the Air War College. He joined the Air War College faculty in 2016, having previously taught political science at the University of California, Los Angeles. He holds a PhD and MA in Political Science from UCLA, and a BA in Political Economy from the University of California, Berkeley. His areas of specialization include crisis decision-making, deterrence, and air power. He is currently researching US air power in the Vietnam War, with a focus on threat credibility and military effectiveness. His previous research has examined the credibility of deterrent threats and the influence of domestic politics on the course of international crises.