‘STRATEGY’ IS ONE OF those words that is used so freely and within such a wide variety of contexts that its meaning might seem confused. There was nothing confused about its original Greek form, strategos, which simply meant the art of leading an army. Today, however, so-called strategies are claimed for an enormous range of activities. Businesses have strategies to sell their products; sporting teams have strategies to overwhelm their opponents; individuals have strategies for saving money, managing their social lives, sorting their music collections; and so on. Uncertainty can also arise from the somewhat casual way in which military actions and weapons systems are often called strategic, regardless of the circumstances in which they are being applied. Air forces provide a case in point. For years any target which was distant from an attacking aircraft's homebase almost automatically attracted the label ‘strategic’. Any bomber raid against an enemy's homeland was strategic, regardless of the target or the mission's objective, and an aircraft with four engines and capable of carrying a heavy bombload was always a strategic bomber. Conversely, smaller aircraft carrying lighter loads over shorter distances were routinely described as tactical, as were their missions, regardless of their objective. Yet from 1965 to 1972 during the US war in Indochina, ‘tactical’ single-engine F-105 fighter/bombers were used for ‘strategic’ missions in North Vietnam and ‘strategic’ multi-engine B-52 bombers were used for ‘tactical’ strikes in South Vietnam.