This last explains in part why Goldwater-Nichols has had such a deep and far-reaching effect on our military. It is an effort to stomp out the desire of each service to think it is the end-all, and the others are around just to support them. Thus, in the traditional Navy view of the world, it’s “We like you all, but we are busy out here alone in the middle of the deep blue, so don’t bother to write except to send tankers and AWACS overhead.” The Air Force has those who see airpower as the only solution to all problems, but they want the Army to defend their bases and the Navy to make sure the JP-4 fuel tanker ships get to port. The Marines are most “ joint” of all; they need the Navy to get them there, they can’t survive without the Air Force’s lift and heavy support (they don’t have enough jets), and the Army is responsible for designing and acquiring their equipment. So the way they keep their bias alive is to make sure they always fight alone on some island somewhere without ever integrating into a larger picture.

Some of the more doctrine-laden ground people also talk about the strategic, operational, and tactical levels of war, so they can think in bins or boxes: “strategic” means whatever the President thinks about and does, “operational” is what the CINC thinks about and does, “tactical” is component-level-and-below thinking and doing.

To an airman this is meaningless. My tactical fighter (tactical), flying to Baghdad (operational), kills Saddam Hussein (strategic).

So finally, in talking about air plans or air operations, I keep as far from these words as I can. Airpower is essentially very simple: Aircraft can range very quickly over very wide areas and accurately hit targets very close to home or very far away. Nothing more. Nothing less.

★ These are the briefing elements Horner put together that afternoon at MacDill:

First came the basics: