Every Man a Tiger Quotes

“When the Air Force nearly collapsed in the 1970s, he was one of the men who saved it, and rebuilt it in the 1980s, not just fixing the broken parts, but defining what an air force is supposed to be.”
― Tom Clancy, Every Man a Tiger: The Gulf War Air Campaign

“It’s a way to attack an enemy systematically—all over, all at the same time. And you can do real harm that way.”
― Tom Clancy, Every Man a Tiger: The Gulf War Air Campaign

“Some of the more doctrine-laden ground people also talk about the strategic, operational, and tactical levels of war, so they can think in bins or boxes: “strategic” means whatever the President thinks about and does, “operational” is what the CINC thinks about and does, “tactical” is component-level-and-below thinking and doing. To an airman this is meaningless. My tactical fighter (tactical), flying to Baghdad (operational), kills Saddam Hussein (strategic). So finally, in talking about air plans or air operations, I keep as far from these words as I can. Airpower is essentially very simple: Aircraft can range very quickly over very wide areas and accurately hit targets very close to home or very far away. Nothing more. Nothing less.”
― Tom Clancy, Every Man a Tiger: The Gulf War Air Campaign

“A superior fighter pilot is made up of one part skill, one part attitude, one part aggression, and one part madness.”
― Tom Clancy, Every Man a Tiger: The Gulf War Air Campaign

“It described a horse without telling the listener how he intended to use the horse.”
― Tom Clancy, Every Man a Tiger: The Gulf War Air Campaign

“In short, the briefing talked about things, the elements of airpower—numbers of aircraft and bases—but did not talk about the application of force and how it would be used to frustrate the enemy and accomplish the CINC’s military objectives.”
― Tom Clancy, Every Man a Tiger: The Gulf War Air Campaign

“but the point of any deployment was not the movement and placement of forces, but the way the forces could be brought to bear against a potential enemy.”
― Tom Clancy, Every Man a Tiger: The Gulf War Air Campaign

“The new system created by Goldwater-Nichols was not universally popular in the Pentagon, but the people in the field loved it.”
― Tom Clancy, Every Man a Tiger: The Gulf War Air Campaign

“The U.S. military must be able to project massive, shattering force quickly from many directions—land, sea, air, and space—which means, among other things, that service parochialism is an expensive and dated luxury. The new military mantra is “jointness”—all the services must be able to work together as well and as comfortably as with members of their own organizations.”
― Tom Clancy, Every Man a Tiger: The Gulf War Air Campaign

“Horner also, to quote John Paul Jones, has something a professional officer must have: “the nicest sense of personal honor.” Right and wrong are identifiable in Chuck’s universe, and separate. In a community where a man’s word is his life, Chuck Horner’s word is found in gold lettering on an adamantine wall of granite.”
― Tom Clancy, Every Man a Tiger: The Gulf War Air Campaign

“God’s will.”
― Tom Clancy, Every Man a Tiger: The Gulf War Air Campaign

“And then I realized it was what the Arabs call inshallah: “It is not mine to do; it’s mine to do the best I can; it’s going to happen according to God’s”
― Tom Clancy, Every Man a Tiger: The Gulf War Air Campaign

“you also learn a lot of things, because he’s a dazzlingly effective teacher.”
― Tom Clancy, Every Man a Tiger: The Gulf War Air Campaign