From 1963 to 1974, Portugal and its nationalist enemies fought an increasingly intense war for the independence of "Portuguese" Guinea, then a colony but now the Republic of Guinea-Bissau. For most of the conflict, Portugal enjoyed virtually unchallenged air supremacy, and increasingly based its strategy on this advantage. The Portuguese Air Force (Forca Aerea Portuguesa, abbreviated FAP) consequently played a crucial role in the Guinean war. Indeed, throughout the conflict, the FAP - despite the many challenges it faced - proved to be the most effective and responsive military argument against the PAIGC, which was fighting for Guinea's independence. The air war for Guinea is unique for historians and analysts for several reasons. It was the first conflict in which a non-state irregular force deployed defensive missiles against an organised air force. Moreover, the degree to which Portugal relied on its air power was such that its effective neutralisation doomed Lisbon's military strategy in the province. The FAP's unexpected combat losses initiated a cascade of effects that degraded in turn its own operational freedom and the effectiveness of the increasingly air-dependent surface forces, which felt that the war against the PAIGC was lost. The air war for Guinea thus represents a compelling illustration of the value - and vulnerabilities - of air power in a counter-insurgency context, as well as the negative impacts of overreliance on air supremacy.

Perhaps the greatest lesson the Israeli Air Force should have learned from the five-year campaign against Palestinian militants in the Occupied Territories was the danger inherent in planning from past success. It had long been accustomed to fight short, sharp, conventional wars. Operation Ebb and Flow demonstrates that the IAF understood urban COIN threats at least as poorly as its own role in combating them. Indeed, its overwhelming preference for the blunt application of kinetic force proved as beneficial to Palestinian terrorists as to Israel. More than any other instrument of Israeli power, the IAF united Palestinian militant groups; generated publicity and sympathy for those groups; provided incentives for terrorist recruitment; and polarized Israeli society to a degree unseen since the Lebanon War in the 1980s.