Aerial warfare is the use of military aircraft and other flying machines in warfare. Aerial warfare includes bombers attacking enemy installations or a concentration of enemy troops or strategic targets; fighter aircraft battling for control of airspace; attack aircraft engaging in close air support against ground targets; naval aviation flying against sea and nearby land targets; gliders, helicopters and other aircraft to carry airborne forces such as paratroopers; aerial refueling tankers to extend operation time or range; and military transport aircraft to move cargo and personnel.
A United States Air Force F-4 Phantom II releasing aerial bombs over a bombing range in Bardenas Reales, Spain in 1986
World War I fighter planes over Europe, 1915–1918
Strategic bombing is a systematically organized and executed attack from the air which can utilize strategic bombers, long- or medium-range missiles, or nuclear-armed fighter-bomber aircraft to attack targets deemed vital to the enemy's war-making capability. It is a military strategy used in total war with the goal of defeating the enemy by destroying its morale, its economic ability to produce and transport materiel to the theatres of military operations, or both. The term terror bombing is used to describe the strategic bombing of civilian targets without military value, in the hope of damaging an enemy's morale.
Tokyo after the massive firebombing attack on the night of March 9–10, 1945, the single most destructive raid in military aviation history. The Tokyo firebombing cut the city's industrial productivity by half and killed around 100,000 civilians.
A 1918 Air Raid rehearsal, evacuating children from a hospital.
German airship bombing Calais on the night of 21–22 February 1915
Ruins of Guernica (1937)