Combat Pair: The Evolution of Air Force-Navy Integration in Strike Warfare

This report documents the exceptional cross-service harmony that the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy have steadily developed in their conduct of integrated strike operations since the first Persian Gulf War in 1991. That close harmony contrasts sharply with the situation that prevailed throughout most of the Cold War, when the two services maintained separate and unique operating mindsets and lacked any significant interoperability features.

This report documents the exceptional cross-service harmony that the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy have steadily developed in their conduct of integrated strike operations since the first Persian Gulf War in 1991. That close harmony contrasts sharply with the situation that prevailed throughout most of the Cold War, when the two services maintained separate and unique operating mindsets and lacked any significant interoperability features.

(Ph.D., Political Science, Harvard University) is a senior RAND analyst specializing in air power and international security who has flown in more than 40 different combat aircraft types with eight air forces worldwide over the past two decades. He is the author of The Transformation of American Air Power (Cornell University Press, 2000), winner of the Air Force Association's Gill Robb Wilson award in arts and letters for 2001. He is also the author of numerous other volumes, including Russia's Air Power in Crisis (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1999) and NATO's Air War for Kosovo: A Strategic and Operational Assessment (RAND, 2001).