in reviewing a few points from the military history of the 20th century, within roughly a decade of the first flight of an airplane, aircraft were having an occasionally decisive effect on the battlefield. within four decades, a nation—great britain—secured its national survival through air warfare. by the midst of the second world war, three-dimensional attack (from above and below the surface) had become the primary means of sinking both vessels at sea and destroying the combat capability of armies on land. in fact, for the united states, this trend of inflicting losses and material destruction primarily through air attack continued after the second world war for korea, vietnam, the gulf, bosnia, and other, lesser, conflicts. in particular, air attack directed against land forces has been especially powerful in blunting and destroying opponents on the offensive, whether in older experience—such as confronting rommel in the western desert, or nazi armored forces trying to split the normandy invasion at mortain, or at the bulge (where german commanders credited allied fighter attacks on fuel trucks and supplies as being the decisive factor in halting their drive), in the opening and closing stages of the korean war, and confronting the 1972 north vietnamese spring invasion—or, more recently, in destroying the khafji offensive of saddam hussein in 1991. nato's reliance upon air power in the yugoslav wars was not surprising because from the very earliest days, the nato alliance saw air power as the linchpin of western military strength and the necessary offset to the warsaw pact's huge military forces.