{"id":9680,"date":"2024-05-25T09:30:20","date_gmt":"2024-05-25T09:30:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/?p=9680"},"modified":"2024-05-25T09:30:20","modified_gmt":"2024-05-25T09:30:20","slug":"air-policing-on-taiwan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/2024\/05\/air-policing-on-taiwan\/","title":{"rendered":"Air Policing on Taiwan"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Air policing” was a term the British seem to have come up with after the Great War. Although using the new technology to keep the natives down started almost as soon as men could fly, the development of the concept owed more to Churchill’s enthusiasm for a way to control the Empire on the cheap and Trenchard’s need to find a role for the RAF now that the war was over. Omissi is the standard source.1<\/a><\/sup> He has all the stuff on the early efforts to intimidate Iraqis and Somalis and others from the air, as well as the early debates on how effective this could be. What I find interesting is how the technology’s role was fairly undefined at this point. Was the RAF supposed to morally intimidate primitives? Directly attack rebels (or people who looked like rebels from high altitude)? Map and survey remote areas? Drop leaflets? Would it work on the Irish? The line between war and policing, and domestic and colonial was not that clear. The RAF both delivered and dropped Conservative newspapers on\u00a0 British cities during the General Strike of 19262<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

This is something that has remained a debate down to the present. The promise that technology can control territory, hearts and minds gets made a lot. It also ties into a lot of bureaucratic politics. Do drones render the U.S. Air Force irrelevant<\/a>? Of course not. How would we have Top Gun without an Air Force?<\/p>\r\n

The reason I bring this up is that one of the most detailed studies of air policing is on Taiwan.\u00a0\u81fa\u7063\u7b2c\u4e00\u500b\u822a\u7a7a\u968a\u2014\u2014\u65e5\u6cbb\u6642\u671f\u8b66\u5bdf\u822a\u7a7a\u73ed\u7684\u6545\u4e8b1919\u5e74~1927\u5e74\u7684\u81fa\u7063\u5929\u7a7a<\/a> This seems to be a school project, and may owe something to \u66fe\u4ee4\u6bc53<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\r\n