AIAA Dismisses Critique of Classical Flight Theory as Mathphobia

The AIAA reviewers of our article New Theory of Flight dismiss our criticism of the classical theory of flight by

• The classical theory of flight is one the most beautiful and subtle achievements of applied mathematics.
• The authors provide no documented scientific evidence to discredit the current state of the art.

But we are in good company in our criticism,  see Confessions on The Secret of Flight, all of which however is classified by AIAA as mathphobia:

• The response from the New York Times is merely irresponsible journalism, but undoubtedly an air of mystery does pervade flight, and the attempt to dispel it by simplified accounts does as much harm as good. The present authors may be innocent of mathphobia; nevertheless they unfortunately feed the flames of irresponsible journalism. All of the criticisms that  comprise Section I of their paper can be answered, and I will try to do this below.

Yes, it is true that the classical theory of flight has paralyzed modern aerodynamics by mathphobia, but it is not the criticism which is pathological. This is in fact acknowledged by the reviewers:

• The authors have put their fingers accurately on many of the defects in the truncated versions of aerodynamic theory that are now current. 

This alone could have motivated publication of our article, which however would be meaningless because

• ...all these difficult issues were struggled with years ago by the founding fathers of the subject, and resolved in completely satisfactory ways. 

But if everything was resolved by the founding fathers, what role has then AIAA to serve today?