Airpower in the War against ISIS chronicles the planning and conduct of Operation Inherent Resolve by U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) from August 2014 to mid-2018, with a principal focus on the contributions of U.S. Air Forces Central Command (AFCENT). Benjamin S. Lambeth contends that the war’s costly and excessive duration resulted from CENTCOM’s inaccurate assessment of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), determining it was simply a resurrected Iraqi insurgency rather th...

America’s second war against Iraq differed notably from its first. Operation Desert Storm was a limited effort by coalition forces to drive out those Iraqi troops who had seized Kuwait six months before. In contrast, the major combat phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 was a more ambitious undertaking aimed at decisively ending Saddam Hussein’s rule. After several days of intense air strikes against fixed enemy targets, allied air operations began concentrating on Iraqi ground troops....

Is it possible for two combatants who possess equally strong air forces to conduct limited warfare by restraining air operations? In Restraining Air Power, Robert C. Owen and contributing authors aim to answer this question by providing theoretical and empirical assessments of restrained air warfare through five historical case studies since 1945. Through an objective analysis of the past, this collection evaluates the principles of escalation and escalation management in conventi...