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What History Tells Us About Trump’s Plan To Defeat Iran By Air

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President Donald Trump called for Iran’s “unconditional surrender” on March 6. But can he do that with U.S. air power alone? The answer is likely yes — if the Iranian people themselves are also the “boots on the ground.”

Air power advocates have promised decisive results since the Italian general Giulio Douhet authored “The Command of the Air” in 1921. Douhet theorized that, after achieving “command of the air,” air power could target an enemy’s “vital centers” to shatter morale and to force rapid capitulation.

Nazi Germany tested this idea when it terror bombed Rotterdam in the Netherlands during its 1940 offensive against France and the Low Countries, killing 1,150 people and accelerating the surrender of Dutch forces the same day.

Yet subsequent efforts to use aerial bombing for rapid effect in World War II failed — until the U.S. forced Imperial Japan’s surrender by dropping two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

This was largely because gaining “command of the air” was much easier said than done, and because bombing wasn’t very accurate.

In fact, the highest-ranking American officer killed in the European theater, Lt. Gen. Lesley J. McNair, was killed by the American heavy bombers of the Eighth Air Force in support of U.S. ground troops. The bombs fell short, killing more than 100 American soldiers and wounding more than 500.

Bombing accuracy is measured in circular error probable (CEP), which is the number of bombs that have a 50 percent chance of landing within a certain radius.

In WWII, U.S. bombers could achieve a CEP of 3,300 feet, meaning about 9,070 bombs totaling 2,268 tons of ordnance were needed to destroy a small target, such as a critical section of a bridge.

Less than a decade later, due to........

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