America's Blind Spot: Airpower Hubris and the Maritime Reality We Can't Escape

For more than a century, airpower has promised a shortcut to coercion — a way to compel adversaries without committing ground forces, without accepting attrition, and without confronting the messy political realities that shape war. From Douhet to the drone age, the idea has been seductively consistent: strike key nodes, signal resolve, impose calibrated pain, and the enemy will fold.

Airpower’s tactical brilliance creates a false sense of strategic mastery. Its precision feeds a cognitive trap. And its visible effects — the strike videos, the battle damage assessments, the clean metrics — obscure the psychological terrain where coercion actually succeeds or fails. Precision munitions consistently hit their targets, giving a sense of achievement that can mask the deeper strategic and psychological components of coercion.

This is the heart of the problem: airpower encourages us to mistake what we can measure for what we can control.

The Dunning–Kruger effect — the tendency of people with limited understanding to overestimate their competence — is alive and well in modern airpower planning. The more precise our weapons become, the more we assume we understand the adversary’s psychology. The more data we collect, the more we believe we can shape escalation. The more we can destroy, the more we assume we can compel.

The ongoing U.S.–Israel–Iran confrontation exposes this illusion. Airstrikes have degraded Iranian assets, signaled resolve, and imposed costs. Yet Tehran has responded with dispersal, hardening, asymmetric retaliation, and calibrated escalation — all while preserving its regional influence and deterrence posture. Tehran has repeatedly shown that it is willing to absorb punishment to preserve its regional influence and deterrence posture.

This is not a failure of execution. It is a failure of assumption.

Iran’s leadership views regional influence, proxy networks, and deterrence credibility as existential interests. No number of precision strikes can coerce an adversary that believes its survival depends on enduring them. Airpower can punish. It can delay. It can disrupt. But it rarely compels — especially against ideologically motivated, decentralized, and resilient opponents.

If airpower tempts us with illusions of control, naval history offers a harsher truth: the sea still decides.

Across 250 years, maritime power — not rapid strikes — has shaped strategic outcomes. During the Seven Years’ War, Britain coerced France not by destroying fleets in dramatic battles, but by controlling chokepoints, strangling trade, and applying sustained pressure. As Daniel Baugh notes, coercion succeeded because Britain could “control maritime chokepoints, intercept supplies, and apply long‑term pressure.”[i]

The Union blockade in the Civil War was slow, imperfect, and grinding — yet it constrained Confederate strategy far more effectively than any single blow. Craig Symonds emphasizes that the blockade required “persistence, presence, and the ability to deny the enemy access to the maritime domain.”[ii]

The Pacific War reinforced the same lesson. Airpower mattered enormously, but it was sea control, amphibious operations, and cumulative maritime pressure that ultimately broke Japan’s ability to resist. Richard Frank’s account of Guadalcanal shows how the interplay of sea, air, and land operations gradually shifted Japanese expectations about the future.[iii]

The pattern is unmistakable: maritime coercion works when it shapes the environment, constrains options, and imposes long‑term costs.

Airpower can support this. It cannot replace it.

The U.S. Navy’s history is a chronicle of adaptation under fire. In the War of 1812, outgunned American frigates used asymmetric tactics to impose costs and shape British perceptions.[iv] The “New Steel Navy” fused technology with strategy, not technology alone. Mahan argued that sea power derived from commerce, bases, and the ability to shape global conditions — not from firepower in isolation.[v]

The interwar fleet problems forced the Navy to confront uncomfortable truths about carriers, submarines, and logistics. Fleet Problem IX revealed Pearl Harbor’s vulnerability. Fleet Problem XIII exposed the offensive potential of carrier aviation. Fleet Problem XVIII demonstrated the centrality of underway replenishment.[vi]

World War II validated these lessons brutally. The submarine campaign against Japan succeeded only after painful adaptation in torpedo technology, wolfpack tactics, and intelligence integration.[vii]

The Cold War’s Maritime Strategy coerced the Soviet Union not through rapid strikes but through sustained forward pressure, undersea dominance, and the ability to impose dilemmas across multiple theaters.[viii]

The Navy’s history is clear: coercion requires presence, endurance, and the ability to shape the environment over time.

Today’s strategic environment mirrors earlier eras of great‑power rivalry. China has built the world’s largest navy by hull count, expanded its maritime militia, and militarized artificial islands. The Office of Naval Intelligence notes that China’s navy has “expanded its operational reach, improved its readiness, and integrated advanced systems across all domains.”[ix]

Russia has revitalized its submarine force. Iran has refined its asymmetric naval doctrine, emphasizing dispersed platforms and harassment tactics. The Defense Intelligence Agency reports that Iran’s naval strategy focuses on “asymmetric tactics, dispersed platforms, and the ability to impose costs through harassment and disruption.”[x]

This is not an airpower problem. It is a maritime one.

Sea control, forward presence, and the ability to project power across oceans remain the backbone of deterrence. Airpower cannot secure sea lanes, escort convoys, counter maritime militias, or hold open chokepoints. It cannot reassure allies through presence. It cannot impose sustained pressure on adversaries who operate from the sea and beneath it.

The rapid convergence of unmanned systems, AI, hypersonics, cyber tools, and space‑based sensors is transforming warfare. But it is also accelerating the cognitive trap that has plagued airpower for decades.

The more complex the system, the easier it is to overestimate our understanding of it. The faster the decision cycle, the easier it is to misinterpret signals. The more precise the weapon, the more tempting it becomes to believe precision equals control.

History warns otherwise. The interwar period saw navies misread the implications of carriers, submarines, and radar.[xi] The Revolution in Military Affairs promised information dominance — only for Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria to reveal the limits of technological determinism.

The danger today is not that the Navy will fail to innovate. It is that it will innovate without humility.

As the Navy approaches its 250th anniversary, it faces a strategic environment that demands clarity, not wishful thinking. Great‑power competition is maritime at its core. The world’s most dangerous flashpoints — the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea, the Red Sea, the Arctic, the North Atlantic — are maritime theaters.

Airpower will remain essential. It will strike, support, surveil, and shape. But it cannot coerce alone. It cannot replace the psychological, political, and operational effects of persistent maritime power.

The U.S.–Israel–Iran conflict underscores this reality. Airstrikes can impose costs, but they cannot alter Tehran’s worldview. Precision can punish, but it cannot compel. Technology can accelerate decisions, but it cannot guarantee wisdom.

If the United States wants to deter great‑power rivals, reassure allies, and shape the international order, it must embrace maritime realism — the recognition that coercion is a long game, not a quick strike. The Navy’s history shows that coercion succeeds when it shapes the environment, limits adversary options, and sustains pressure over time.

Airpower can support this. It cannot substitute for it.

The future of American coercion — and American stability — will be decided not in the skies, but on, under, and across the world’s oceans.

James M. Deitch served as the Motor Transport Operations Chief for 6th Motor Transport Battalion, 1st Fleet Service Combat Support Group during Operation Desert Storm from 1990 to 1991. He served in the Marine Corps from 1984 to 1996.

[i] Daniel Baugh, The Global Seven Years War (Pearson, 2011), 287–292, 301–305.

[ii] Craig Symonds, The Civil War at Sea (Oxford University Press, 2012), 112–118, 145–150.

[iii] Richard B. Frank, Guadalcanal (Random House, 1990), 233–240, 518–525.

[iv] Ian Toll, Six Frigates (W.W. Norton, 2006), 312–345.

[v] Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History (Little, Brown, 1890), 25–89.

[vi] Thomas Hone, Norman Friedman, and Mark Mandeles, American & British Aircraft Carrier Development (Naval Institute Press, 1999), 112–145.

[vii] Clay Blair, Silent Victory (Naval Institute Press, 1975), 423–468.

[viii] John Lehman, Oceans Ventured (W.W. Norton, 2018), 73–118

[ix] Office of Naval Intelligence, China’s Navy: A Modern Maritime Force (2024), 12–18, 32–37, 44–49.

[x] U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, Iran Military Power (2024), 28–35, 52–57.

[xi] Williamson Murray, Military Adaptation in War (Cambridge University Press, 2011), 36–41