2011 Air & Space Highlights: Author John Olsen's Global Air Power

Colonel John Andreas Olsen will present his critically acclaimed book Global Air Power at the 2011 Air & Space Conference and Technology Exposition!

Global Air Power provides insight into the evolution of air power theory and practice by examining the experience of six of the world’s largest air forces—those of the United Kingdom, the United States, Israel, Russia, India, and China—and of representative smaller air forces in Pacific Asia, Latin America, and continental Europe.

Olsen explores how various nations have integrated air power into their armed forces and how they have applied air power in both regular and irregular warfare and in peacetime operations. In his forum, he will cover the organizational, professional, and doctrinal issues that air forces confronted in the past, the lessons learned from victory and defeat, and emerging challenges and opportunities.

Olsen is both an author and an active-duty colonel in the Royal Norwegian Air Force. He is also the dean of the Norwegian Defence University College, head of its division for strategic studies, and visiting professor of operational art and tactics at the Swedish National Defense College.

He began his military career as a radar technician at the Air State Sørreisa in 1989. Olsen served as a project officer in Oslo between 1995 to 1997; as assistant principal teacher of air power by the Air Force Academy between 2000 and 2003; and then liaison officer at the Norwegian Embassy in Berlin between 2005 and 2006.

In 2010, Olsen was appointed deputy commander and chief of the NATO Advisory Team at headquarters in Sarajevo, where he heads the team assigned to prepare Bosnia-Herzegovina on the status of membership candidate in NATO.

His other works include:

• The Evolution of Operational Art: From Napoleon to the Present (2010)
• A History of Air Warfare (2009)
• John Warden and the Renaissance of American Air Power (2007)
• Strategic Air Power in Desert Storm (Studies in Air Power)  (2003)
• Asymmetric Warfare (2002)
• A Second Aerospace Century (2001)

In 2010, Olsen also received the Gill Robb Wilson Award (Civil Air Patrol’s (CAP) highest award for senior member professional development).

Olsen's session will be Monday, Sept 19, from 4 to 4:45pm (times subject to change.) Check out the Air & Space agenda for more details. Also, make sure you come down to the Expo floor and get your copy of Global Air Power signed!