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The Utility of Air Power: the Royal Air Force’s Contribution to the Defence and Security of the United Kingdom INTRODUCTION The term ‘air power’ encapsulates the way in which the behaviour of individuals, groups and states, or the course of events, can be influenced as a result of the military use of air and space. The inherent characteristics of air power mean that it is readily employable at any level or scale, from tactical actions, such as the immediate, precision firepower support provided to army patrols in Afghanistan by ground-attack aircraft, through to major air operations such as the Berlin airlift, which shaped the entire strategic calculus in Europe for a generation. These examples also demonstrate that while air power is exceptionally good at delivering precise and proportionate military force, its flexibility and speed of response mean that in some circumstances, it can be equally effective in making political points and providing policy options without recourse to weaponry or the physical destruction of targets: it can provide what Joseph Nye has described as ‘smart power’, rather than just ‘hard power’. Additionally, while air power is usually most effective when employed in conjunction with land and naval forces as part of a joint campaign, it has the unique ability to act alone and with discretion ‘over the horizon’, delivering force or providing influence where the potentially costly commitment of forces on the ground is either undesirable or impractical: a recent example is the air policing of no-fly zones over Iraq, which was conducted for the eleven years between 1992 and 2003 without a single casualty. British air power is primarily delivered by the Royal Air Force (RAF), complemented by the small, organic elements within the Royal Navy and the British Army which provide niche capabilities to their own services. The RAF was originally formed in 1918 after an independently commissioned report acknowledged that the provision of air po