By the time Coalition ground forces moved into the Iraqi lines, we had clearly established control over most of the Iraqi Army, as was evident by the surrender of nearly 88,000 Iraqi soldiers. Most had not fired a shot.

★ Control can also be exerted on the environment.

For example, during the Gulf War, we made extensive use of electronic countermeasures (ECM) and anti-radiation missiles to exert control over Iraqi air defense radar sensors. The ECM hindered the effectiveness of individual radars and confused the long-range search radars used to cue the short-range, and more accurate, radars used to control guided antiaircraft missiles.

This war also featured a new and highly successful form of control, Stealth. The F-117 proved to be the only aircraft we could send into the air defense cauldron of Baghdad and be certain it would survive, and it could do that with unprecedented efficiency—that is, it did not require large support forces of air-to-air escort, ECM support jamming aircraft, and Wild Weasels carrying anti-radiation missiles, while its laser-guided bombs made it truly efficient in terms of targets destroyed per sortie.

The secret of Stealth: it controls its environment.

The F-117 can go anywhere its pilot commands, and it cannot be sensed by the enemy except visually, meaning that it flies only at night and/or during adverse weather. Though an enemy may be aware that an F-117 is present (he can, after all, see or hear bombs exploding), he cannot locate it with enough accuracy to shoot it down.

Stealth and supercruise will give the F-22 even greater control of the environment. With supercruise, F-22s will fly at supersonic speeds without using afterburner. Thus they can cruise at speeds above Mach 1 with their engines at fairly economical fuel flows. Flying that fast cuts down an enemy’s time for action once he detects you—and with Stealth, he will detect you very late in the game. Supercruise and Stealth also collapse the envelope for the employment of his weapons. An air-to-air missile shot from a tail aspect at a supersonic jet has a very small effective range, since the missile has to spend all its energy catching up.

With these advantages, F-22s will almost certainly achieve air superiority over enemy aircraft, and in turn this will permit the entire spectrum of the joint force’s non-Stealth aircraft to operate unhindered by enemy defenses.

★ Another good way to control the environment is by using information warfare—the current hot topic in military circles, and for good reason.