Editorial Note: Led by our Editor Dr Mike Hankins, From Balloons to Drones produces a monthly podcast that provides an outlet for the presentation and evaluation of air power scholarship, the exploration of historical topics and ideas, and provides a way to reach out to both new scholars and the general public. You can find our Soundcloud channel here. You can also find our podcast on Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts.
2022 will mark the 50th anniversary of the LINEBACKER campaigns – the last major bombing campaigns of the Vietnam War. As such, in our latest podcast, we interview Dr Brian Laslie about his latest book, Air Power’s Lost Cause: The American Air Wars of Vietnam and his evaluation of the legacy of air power’s contribution to the Vietnam War.
Dr Brian Laslie is a US Air Force Historian and currently the Deputy Command Historian at North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and United States Northern Command (USNORTHCOM). He is also the Book Reviews Editor at From Balloons to Drones. A 2001 graduate of The Citadel and a historian of air power studies, he received his Masters’ from Auburn University Montgomery in 2006 and his PhD from Kansas State University in 2013. He is the author of Architect of Air Power: General Laurence S. Kuter and the Birth of the US Air Force (2017) and The Air Force Way of War (2015). The latter book was selected for the Chief of Staff of the Air Force’s 2016 professional reading list and the 2017 RAF Chief of the Air Staff’s reading list. He can be found on Twitter at @BrianLaslie.
Header Image: 3/4 front view of a US Air Force RC-130A of the 1st Aerial Cartographic and Geodetic Squadron parked on aluminium matting at Tuy Hoa Airbase in South Vietnam in 1970. (Source: NARA)
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