Theater Air Reconnaissance Operations PDF Download

"In the early years of military aviation, reconnaissance was quickly and universally identified as an invaluable role for airmen. Military commanders and political leaders alike have long been interested in following Sun Tzu's advice to prevail by knowing the enemy and knowing oneself. Yet in recent years, many voices have questioned the need for deliberate and specialized aerial reconnaissance as American strategy returns its focus to great powers and readiness for high-intensity conflict. Some believe the availability of other persistent means of gathering information, or the option to instrument lethal forces with sensors, signal the obsolescence of reconnaissance as an air mission. As the Air Force evaluates these claims and searches for a perfect approach to intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, it may be helpful to turn to history. This paper reviews the history of aerial reconnaissance in the European Theater of World War II, an unequivocally high-intensity fight against peer forces of a great power. The project aims to explain why the Anglo-American Allies developed evolved their use of air reconnaissance in such a markedly different way than did the Germans. The Allies relied on air reconnaissance as a strategic guide to operations, while the Germans largely used it as a tactical force multiplier. The study draws upon a mixture of secondary sources and firsthand accounts of combat, reconnaissance, and intelligence practices of the three great air powers in the west - the United States, Great Britain, and Germany. The pre-World War II conceptions of warfare and reconnaissance of each power are surveyed, along with their interwar dispositions toward reconnaissance and military intelligence. Finally, the paper covers select strategic developments during the war that drove each power toward their respective wartime uses of air reconnaissance. Ultimately, organizational factors in each military, their preferred warfighting approaches, and limitations presented by the type of war facing each belligerent combine to explain their differing treatments of reconnaissance."--Abstract.