The Air Force’s Leap of Faith into Strategic Thinking

Warfare and Aerospace Strategy Programme (WASP)

Abstract

The Warfare and Aerospace Strategy Programme (WASP) is a Professional Military Education (PME) programme of the Indian Air
Force (IAF) initiated on the directions of the Chief of Air Staff (CAS) in 2022. It is a 17-week programme with an aim to promote critical
thinking at the strategic level. The intention is that these ‘critical thinkers’ should be able to blend military strategy with statecraft
and provide cogent inputs for policy-making. The pedagogy is based on intense reading of 250-300 pages per day followed by a
discussion on the material that has been read. The discussion is guided by a Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) expert who has
recently read the book and he provides a varied perspective to the discussion. The programme has five modules