You have to admit, as propanda goes, these are absolutely brilliant. At least your tax dollars are finally paying for something that works. Enter the Air Force’s current “a changing world” campaign. It is so rich with paradigm it’s hard to summarize in a short paragraph what they are putting forth. Suffice to say they are still thinking in terms of visualizing grid space (see it, identify it, destroy it, solve problem), which is a linear control model. Their slogan, “It takes air dominance to defend American in a changing world,” made me think about air from a elemental standpoint: mind, mental, airy, not the body.
Anyhow, have a look:
God’s angels? Interesting how the Air Force portrays itself as a kind of protective shield, but as the article below suggests, most future weapons systems are actually offensive in nature.
UPDATE: An astute reader has corrected me to point out that the video is for the Singapore Air Force. Goes to show the danger of being too shrill! But… it is interesting how moving image media have become such an international language. I suppose this message could also be targeted to international business travelers to assure them not to worry about Singapore (unlike other places in the world!).
According to Wired’s Danger Room, this scenario is sci-fi fantassy.
CyberCommand? Sounds like a saturday morning kid’s show. Given the military’s track record, they seem more interested in domestic dissenters engaging in their Constitutional right to be critical than real military threats. So I wonder if our friends at CyberCommand they reading posts like this, or those that actually pose a real threat? Again, the trope is technology is the solution for peace.
Do domination and freedom belong in the same sentence?
The snip that follows is from a great, detailed deconstruction of this ad campaign by an Air Force veteran. Click the article link below to read the full analysis.
Tomgram: William Astore, Coming Down to Earth:
Our capability to deliver damage and death across the globe — at virtually no immediate risk to ourselves — gives extra meaning to the words “above all.” But with great power comes great responsibility, a tagline I learned as a teen from Spider-Man comic strips, but which is no less true for that. The problem is that our “global reach” often exceeds the grasp of our collective wisdom to employ “global power” responsibly.
Listen to the Air Force’s own pitch for its “global reach” and “global power,” and you know that today’s service is indeed an imperial instrument focused on “power projection” and “dominance” (with nary a thought of how others may respond to being dominated). Worse yet, our “capabilities” have so detached us from delivering death that it’s become remarkably close to a video-game-like exercise.
That first ad is actually an ad for the Singapore Air Force that just happens to use the same tagline- Above All.