Book excerpt: Air power today dominates virtually all military operations, yet it remains the least well-understood form of armed force. Technical and tactical details of aviation forces are widely available, but few understand how such forces are best used in prosecuting defence and security policy. The Air Weapon seeks to address this deficiency by setting out the doctrines which guide the use of air power at the strategic and operational levels of war. It identifies what aviation forces can - and cannot - be used to achieve. It encompasses doctrines for war-fighting and also for war-prevention. And it suggests possible directions for future doctrinal development. Following a cohesive 'top-down' analytical path, the study deals with air power in the only viable way: as an integrated entity. The Air Weapon is perhaps the only all-encompassing high-level study of this critically important yet all-too-little-understood form of military power.