| ID | 161292 |
| Title Proper | 100 years of the RAF |
| Other Title Information | perspectives on the past and future of airpower |
| Language | ENG |
| Author | Lawson, Ewan |
| Summary / Abstract (Note) | As the RAF celebrates and commemorates the 100th anniversary of its foundation as the world’s first independent air force on 1 April 1918, RUSI marks this event with a special edition of the RUSI Journal. When he established RUSI in 1831, the Duke of Wellington could not have envisaged the multi-domain nature of contemporary military operations, and indeed his great rival Napoleon had disbanded the French military balloon corps some 30 years previously. However, a glance at the archives of the RUSI Journal demonstrates an interest in airpower as part of the military instrument long before the founding of the RAF, with an unsurprising intensification through the First World War. The extent of the continuities as well as the dramatic change in military airpower can be seen in an article from 1914 which discusses the use of aircraft to rapidly remove wounded soldiers from the battlefield.1 In the twenty-first century, this took the form of RAF Chinook helicopters delivering Medical Emergency Response Teams directly to the battlefield in Afghanistan. The articles in this special edition do not seek to review the entire history of the RAF or indeed the military use of airpower, but rather engage with contemporary debates through a range of academic prisms and with insights from academics, practitioners and practitioner-academics. |
| `In' analytical Note | Rusi Journal Vol. 163, No.3; Jun-Jul 2018: p.10-11 |
| Journal Source | Rusi Journal Vol: 163 No 3 |
| Key Words | Airpower ; RAF ; 100 Years |