What Should the Space Force Do? Insights from Spacepower Analogies, Doctrine, and Culture

2020 ◽  
pp. 153-180
Author(s):  
Peter L. Hays
Keyword(s):  
Air Force ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Tree Model ◽  
Royal Air Force ◽  
Separate Branch ◽  
The Right ◽  
Space Acquisition ◽  
The U.S

This chapter discusses opportunities and challenges facing the U.S. Space Force, a separate branch of the U.S. Armed Forces within the Department of the Air Force that was created in December 2019. Major initial priorities for the Space Force include developing space doctrine and incubating a space-minded culture; blunting counterspace threats; improving space acquisition; and accelerating creation of wealth in and from space. To assess the evolution of spacepower doctrine, the chapter uses Dennis Drew’s doctrine tree model and David Lupton’s four schools of thought about the strategic utility of space capabilities: sanctuary, survivability, control, and high ground. The chapter also addresses several cautions and concerns including the relatively small size of the Space Force; significant dissimilarities between creation of the U.S. Air Force in 1947 and the Space Force in 2019; unintended consequences in impeding airpower development from the United Kingdom’s creation of a relatively small and weak Royal Air Force in 1918; and potential concerns stemming from the highly politicized environment that birthed the Space Force. The chapter concludes by reminding readers that new organizations do not guarantee success and by urging application of the right lessons from past missteps.

The outcome of root canal treatment. A retrospective study within the armed forces (Royal Air Force)

BDJ ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 190 (3) ◽  
pp. 140-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Peak ◽  
S. Hayes ◽  
S. Bryant ◽  
P. Dummer
Keyword(s):  
Retrospective Study ◽  
Air Force ◽  
Root Canal ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Root Canal Treatment ◽  
Royal Air Force

Strategic and Organizational Conditions for Success

2020 ◽  
pp. 71-108
Author(s):  
Jon R. Lindsay
Keyword(s):  
Air Force ◽  
Royal Air Force ◽  
Air Defense ◽  
Organizational Conditions ◽  
Constrained Problem ◽  
Track Management ◽  
Information Practice ◽  
Open Archives ◽  
Abundant Data ◽  
The U.S

This chapter examines how a constrained problem and an institutionalized solution enabled the Royal Air Force (RAF) to successfully manage the air battle during the Battle of Britain. The RAF pioneered many concepts that the U.S. Air Force still uses today, including aircraft early warning, identification friend-or-foe, track management, aircraft vectoring, and operational research. The Battle of Britain is also one of the well-documented episodes in military history. Open archives, abundant data, and the electromechanical vintage of information technology make this case an accessible illustration of information practice in action. Britain won the battle because it put together a well-managed solution to the well-constrained problem of air defense. Germany, by contrast, met the inherently harder problem of offensive coercion with a more insular solution. The chapter first describes the historical development of the British air defense system, before looking at the “external problem” that Fighter Command faced during the battle and showing how the interaction produced “managed practice” that improved RAF performance.

Risk management of asymmetrical hearing impairment in an armed forces population

2000 ◽  
Vol 114 (5) ◽  
pp. 345-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. R. M. Caldera ◽  
C. R. Pearson
Keyword(s):  
Risk Management ◽  
Hearing Impairment ◽  
Air Force ◽  
Medical Records ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Royal Air Force ◽  
Sensorineural Hearing Impairment ◽  
Management Principle ◽  
Magnetic Resonance Imaging Mri ◽  
The Cost

The prevalence of asymmetrical hearing impairment in the entire service population (1490 individuals) of a Royal Air Force flying station was estimated from routine audiometric testing recorded in individuals’ medical records. Criteria for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanning to exclude the possibility of vestibular schwannoma were determined in accordance with the risk management principle that the cost of the screening should not exceed the value of the likely benefit. MRI scanning should be carried out in the presence of an asymmetrical sensorineural hearing impairment of (a) 15 dB or more at two adjacent frequencies, or (b) 15 dB or more averaged over 0.5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 8 kHz.

Aetiological Factors in Homosexuality as Seen in Royal Air Force Psychiatric Practice

1964 ◽  
Vol 110 (466) ◽  
pp. 381-391 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. J. O'Connor
Keyword(s):  
Air Force ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Psychiatric Practice ◽  
Royal Air Force ◽  
High Incidence

I have been interested in the conflicting attitudes of the legal and psychiatric branches of the Service towards homosexuality. The legal branch sees homosexuality as a crime which still carries severe penalties. As a Service psychiatrist I have been impressed by the seemingly genuine desire to be cured shown by many homosexuals who come to me for help and I was struck by the high incidence of neurotic symptoms in them. To find out how many of the homosexuals seen by me were ill and to learn about the aetiology of homosexuality as seen in the Armed Forces I compared 50 consecutive homosexuals with 50 neurotics picked at random from my out-patients during the same period (1958–59).

In a Flat Spin

1983 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 496-500
Author(s):  
J. E. D. Williams
Keyword(s):  
Air Force ◽  
Applied Mathematics ◽  
Royal Air Force ◽  
Pure Mathematics ◽  
The Right

An announcement of Wing Commander Anderson's recent death appears on another page. Mr William's spirited criticism of Anderson's ‘Rotations in Navigation’, and by implication his more recent note on Coriolis (May 1983 issue), was of course written before the sad news was known. It is published here without modification (and in spite of the author's offer to withdraw it) as would undoubtedly have been Wing Commander Anderson's wish.At the end of the last war Wing Commander E. W. Anderson was one of the most distinguished practising navigators in the Royal Air Force. ‘Andy’, as he is known to so many, has since become navigation's leading exegete through his work in this Institute, his articles, lectures and books. ‘Rotations in Navigation’, however, has got him in a flat spin. The reason why has wider implications worth examining.Andy starts by suggesting that the difficulty of explaining Coriolis ‘may be due to the intellectual danger of trusting mathematics without making sure that the right circumstances surround the formulae which emerge’. This observation illustrates how well one can write English without saying what one means. Circumstances, right or wrong, cannot surround a formula although the statement a formula makes may be irrelevant to our circumstances. It is precisely because pure mathematics is the language, as Russell put it, ‘in which we do not know what we are talking about or care whether what we say about it is true’, that applied mathematics is the language in which we are obliged to say what we mean or be seen to use the language wrongly.

LAWRENCE RICKARD WAGER (1904–1965): A DISTINGUISHED GEOLOGIST WHO HELPED TO PIONEER AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHIC INTERPRETATION FOR ALLIED FORCES IN WORLD WAR II

2019 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-73
Author(s):  
EDWARD P. F. ROSE
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Air Force ◽  
Standard Operating Procedure ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Second Phase ◽  
World War ◽  
Skaergaard Intrusion ◽  
Royal Air Force ◽  
The University

ABSTRACT ‘Bill’ Wager, after undergraduate and postgraduate studies at the University of Cambridge, became a lecturer at the University of Reading in southern England in 1929. He was granted leave in the 1930s to participate in lengthy expeditions that explored the geology of Greenland, an island largely within the Arctic Circle. With friends made on those expeditions, he became in June 1940 an early recruit to the Photographic Development Unit of the Royal Air Force that pioneered the development of aerial photographic interpretation for British armed forces. He was quickly appointed to lead a ‘shift’ of interpreters. The unit moved in 1941 from Wembley in London to Danesfield House in Buckinghamshire, known as Royal Air Force Medmenham, to become the Central Interpretation Unit for Allied forces—a ‘secret’ military intelligence unit that contributed significantly to Allied victory in World War II. There Wager led one of three ‘shifts’ that carried out the ‘Second Phase’ studies in a three-phase programme of interpretation that became a standard operating procedure. Promoted in 1941 to the rank of squadron leader in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, he was given command of all ‘Second Phase’ work. Sent with a detachment of photographic interpreters to the Soviet Union in 1942, he was officially ‘mentioned in a Despatch’ on return to England. By the end of 1943 the Central Interpretation Unit had developed into a large organization with an experienced staff, so Wager was allowed to leave Medmenham in order to become Professor of Geology in the University of Durham. He resigned his commission in July 1944. Appointed Professor of Geology in the University of Oxford in 1950, he died prematurely from a heart attack in 1965, best remembered for his work on the igneous rocks of the Skaergaard intrusion in Greenland and an attempt to climb Mount Everest in 1933.

scholarly journals The outcome of root canal treatment. A retrospective study within the armed forces (Royal Air Force)

BDJ ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 190 (3) ◽  
pp. 140-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
J D Peak ◽  
S J Hayes ◽  
S T Bryant ◽  
P M H Dummer
Keyword(s):  
Retrospective Study ◽  
Air Force ◽  
Root Canal ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Root Canal Treatment ◽  
Royal Air Force

Securing Asia for Asians

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simeon Man
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
South Korea ◽  
East Asia ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
The United States ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
World War ◽  
The Military ◽  
The U.S

This chapter describes the U.S. buildup of the armed forces of allied nations in East Asia immediately following World War II, focusing in particular on South Korea. The United States justified militarization in the name of teaching Asians how to defend their newly acquired freedom from communism, and, more broadly, of building an Asia for Asians. The chapter argues that this effort carried unintended consequences, as the attempt to incorporate “free Asians” into the U.S. military empire simultaneously heightened the specter of subversive Asians within the military and in the United States in the 1950s.

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