Air warfare in the missile age /

Nordeen's useful book covers several air wars that have taken place since 1964. The author has interviewed a few participants and attended some briefings, but essentially he shows what can be done by the assiduous mining of publicly available sources, such as government documents and English-language technical periodicals. The book covers four series of air wars-Vietnam, Indo-Pakistan, Arab-Israeli, and the Falklands. In each case, Nordeen concisely lays out the background, the forces involved, the course of the war, and provides an analysis. There are useful data and many lessons to be drawn from the material presented, but readers must draw their own historical comparisons. What Nordeen says is not new, but he has put his arguments together clearly and allowed the salient lessons to stand out (e.g., that the gun is not obsolete in modern fighters or that wars can be won without practice). Sometimes the writing is rather colloquial, and the reproduction of some of the photographs leaves something to be desired. All readership levels.-R. Higham, Kansas State University