11/22 Air Power as a Tool for Political Signalling

One in western Asia by the targeted killing of Al-Qaeda head Ayman al-Zawahiri by an unmanned combat air vehicle; the second is the visit of the US Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, to Taiwan amidst direct and heightened tension between China and Taiwan and an indirect one between China and the United States of America. [...] It requires to be appreciated and learned with the holistic approach that such precise achievement of an objective would not have been possible in the absence of a medium of air and the utilisations of all the tools of air power, which makes it mostly results-driven as desired. [...] Use of Air Power in Earlier Operations The usage of air power technology in the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, an Iranian major general, on January 3, 2020, while he was on his way to meet Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul- Mahdi in Baghdad is an outstanding case study for air power enthusiasts to enhance the understanding of ISR&T for an effective outcome of the stated objectives. [...] In a different operation, the Predator drone was used in a similar manner to hunt down Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a follower of Bin Laden, in Iraq in 2006, and assisted in directing the fighter planes to destroy him.9 Not to mention, a B-29 bomber named Enola Gay took off from the island of Tinian in the Northern Mariana Islands and headed north-northwest toward Japan on August 6, 1945, and bombed the. [...] The two events highlighted in the write-up, followed by the actions taken by China and Taiwan, are the direct result of the various facets of air power in shaping the global order, not only in the military but also in the global geopolitical domain.