Some Thoughts on the Development of Airpower in A.A.S.S.I.

Heavier-then-air aircraft i.e. aircraft or airplanes are a fairly recent innovation in the A.A.S.S.I. background although the principles of flight have been well understood since Antiquity. Innovation in aircraft design lead to the development of lighter-then-air travel becoming widespread before the 19th century, via the medium of hot air balloons and those using later lifting gas of superior performance such as hydrogen and helium gas.

Further experimentation lead to the development of blimps, semi-rigid and rigid dirigibles or airships. Attempts to develop steam powered aircraft however were something of a dead end as the particularities of steam engines fire boxes and boilers do not lend themselves to air travel, although air plane designs powered by steam ball/accumulators did enjoy some success as they dispensed with furnaces and boilers altogether, but often these designs lacked extended endurance in flight and were subject to varied power plant performances at different altitudes and atmospheric pressures. Both early observation balloons, early airships and aircraft played a innovative although often mixed part in land and sea warfare through several wars including the Napoleonic Era and later wars such as the Crimean War and the American Civil War, as did the fast emerging sky ship technologies.

As if the 1880s, air power of all three types: airplanes, dirigibles/airships and sky ships, are integrated into the various countries militaries, although no one as yet has all three weapons systems in an separate national air force, most aircraft or airships are part of either a given army or navy's branches, while sky ships still tend to be the preserve of most navies, except in one of two rare cased of land locked countries, which have no regular naval forces save perhaps riverine forces.