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§ 91. Need for an Independent Combatant Air Fleet. The subject of aeroplane tactics, or air tactics, may be said to lie wholly with the future. Hitherto the aeroplane has acted in its combative capacity as an individual unit; there has been no systematic co-operation between a number of machines for the organised destruction of the enemy aircraft, such as could be described as tactics in the military sense.

Before we can usefully discuss the present branch of the subject we must look forward to the time when air fleets or squadrons will be organised for the purpose of operating together according to some well-understood, or prearranged, scheme as combatant units. We have already defined the duties of attack and defence by air against the air forces of the enemy as constituting the secondary function of the Aeronautical Arm. This being the mainspring from which the tactics of the air must derive its motive, we require to take for our foundation the material provided by our previous consideration of the primary function of the Arm.

The initial condition of the problem, then, is that both combatant armies are provided with reconnaissance machines of two types, namely, the long-distance or strategic scout—an unarmed machine built for speed and endurance, and the tactical scout, probably mounting a