Strategic Studies Quarterly

• 1. Introduction

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  Strategic Studies Quarterly arrived in 2007 with a simple but pointed mission: give the United States Air Force a rigorous academic platform for thinking through the hardest problems in national and international security. It was a peer-reviewed journal, which meant every piece that appeared in its pages had survived scrutiny from other experts in the field. The Air University Press, part of the Air Force's educational arm, took responsibility for putting it together. What questions did the journal set out to answer? How does a military institution sustain serious intellectual debate about strategy, not just tactics? And what happens to a publication when its moment passes and a new era demands a new kind of thinking?

• 2. A Platform for Strategy

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  Air University Press positioned the journal to explore issues of current and continuing interest to the United States Department of Defense and to America's international partners. That dual audience mattered. It meant the SSQ was not purely an internal house organ for Air Force planners, nor was it a purely academic exercise disconnected from policy. Editions arrived on a predictable cycle, dropping on the first day of March, June, September, and December each year. That regularity gave the defense and academic communities a reliable calendar for new analysis. Peer review was the quality gate, separating this publication from commentary or opinion journals and placing it alongside scholarly literature.

• 3. Issues and Answers

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  In early 2017, the journal expanded beyond its printed pages with the launch of "Issues and Answers," an online news talk show. The format brought in interviews and discussion panels featuring United States Department of Defense subject matter experts alongside outside academics. Moving into video and audio represented a deliberate reach toward audiences who might not read a quarterly journal cover to cover. Pairing practitioners from inside the defense establishment with scholars from outside it also reflected the journal's founding logic: that good strategic thinking requires both institutional knowledge and independent analysis working together.

• 4. Closing and a New Beginning

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  The final issue of Strategic Studies Quarterly appeared in 2021, ending a run that had spanned fourteen years. Air University Press did not simply close the chapter and move on. Shortly after the journal concluded, the Press launched a successor publication: Æther: A Journal of Strategic Airpower and Spacepower. The new title signaled a deliberate shift in focus. Where the SSQ had addressed national and international security broadly, Æther narrowed its lens to the domains where the Air Force operates and where competition was intensifying, airpower and spacepower. The name itself pointed toward that ambition, evoking the realm above the earth that had become as contested as any ground or sea.