Ever since its founding in 1948, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea has maintained an aggressive and bellicose international security posture. Today, fully two decades after the end of the Cold War, North Korea's external defense and security policies look arguably more extreme and anomalous than ever.

In a new report on the troubling future of the U.S. Air Force, AEI defense scholar Mackenzie Eaglen examines how the defense cuts cripple air power as a component of our defense system and explains why serious investment in the Air Force is crucial to U.S. military strategy.

Warfighting is becoming more risky as authoritarian regimes modernize their forces. If the United States wants to retain the ability to respond successfully to crises across the globe with a leaner and more cost-effective force, then our leaders must recognize that maintaining control of the air is the starting point for U.S. military supremacy.

As Washington considers slashing $500 billion from the defense budget over the next decade, the lessons of Libya should give pause to anyone whose plans will reduce the U.S. military's ability to control the air.

The smallest and oldest Air Force in U.S. history needs to get bigger and newer, quickly. Without an Air Force capable of responding to multiple crises around the world—and almost every major conflict in history has played out on more than one front—the Obama administration’s new strategy is a recipe for decline. 

To defend US interests in the Asia-Pacific region, policymakers must ensure the nation has the necessary air power capabilities to contend with the vast distances, limited basing options, and pronounced threat to assured success.

Conventional wisdom holds that the Navy and Air Force escaped the budget drill mostly intact while the Army endured the bulk of cuts. But the truth is that all of the services are shrinking and aging under the Obama budget.

The New Start arms-control treaty will cripple America's long-range conventional warhead delivery capabilities, severely limiting America's ability to fight small-scale conflicts.