Toward an Air and Space Force: Naval Aviation and the Implications for Space Power: Cadre Paper No. 5

Publisher Marketing: The challenge of transforming the US Air Force into a truly integrated aerospace force is a pressing issue for our service. In Toward and Air and Space Force: Naval Aviation and the Implications for Space Power, Lt. Col. Mark P. Jelonek uses the historical analogy of the US Navy's integration of aviation during the interwar period as a possible model for the comprehensive integration of space into the operational Air Force. Defining integration as "the evolutionary process by which a new technology (aviation in the Navy and space power in the Air Force) becomes an inseparable part of the military service," Colonel Jelonek describes the various policies pursued by the sea service to integrate aviation into the fleet. He contends that five policies proved indispensable to that process: 1) promoting broad understanding of aviation within the naval establishment; 2) demonstrating that aviation enhanced rather than threatened the battleship's place as the premier naval weapons system of the day; 3) creating a career path that allowed aviators to attain senior ran; 4) ensuring that aviators remained fully conversant with surface operations; and 5) incorporating aviation into naval war games. Arguing that similar practices could facilitate metamorphosis of the Air Force into a true air and space force, Jelonek employs the integration policies pursued by the interwar Navy as a device for measuring the Air Force's progress in integrating space into its own operational mainstream. He finds such progress has been uneven at best and cites as major impediments the lack of an official plan for air-space integration, the suspect (to aviators) operational credibility of many space officers, and an institutional tendency to mistake technological adaptation for organizational transformation. The author's proposals for overcoming these difficulties and for promoting the full integration of space power - and space power practitioners - merit serious reflection. Contributor Bio:  Air University Press Walter Gary Sharp Sr. serves as a senior associate deputy general counsel for intelligence at the US Department of Defense, where he advises on legal issues related to intelligence, covert action, intelligence and counterintelligence policy, intelligence oversight, information security, information sharing, security classification policy, information operations, and computer network operations. Prior to his appointment, Dr. Sharp served as an associate deputy general counsel for international affairs at the Department of Defense; the director of legal research for international, comparative, and foreign law at the Law Library of Congress; the director of global and functional affairs within the Bureau of Legislative Affairs at the State Department; and a principal information security engineer at The MITRE Corporation. A veteran with 25 years of service, Dr. Sharp retired as a decorated US Marine Corps lieutenant colonel with prior enlisted service. His military assignments include commanding officer of a field artillery battery, senior prosecutor, deputy legal counsel to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and international law adviser for the commanding general of the Unified Task Force in Somalia during Operation Restore Hope. Dr. Sharp's military decorations include the Defense Superior Service Medal, and his many awards for writing excellence and academic achievement include the Judge Advocate General's School Alumni Association Annual Professional Writing Award and an American Bar Association Award for Professional Merit. Dr. Sharp is the author of numerous articles and three books: UN Peace Operations (1995), CyberSpace and the Use of Force (1999), and Jus Paciarii (1999). He serves as an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center where he currently teaches a counterterrorism course, The Law of 24. He has also taught graduate-level seminars on United Nations peace operations and international peace and security. He lectures internationally in universities and other diverse public forums on wide-ranging topics of international law and national security law, such as international peace and security, conflict management, and peacekeeping operations.