Assumption Testing: Airpower is inherently offensive

By Col. Maximillian K. Bremer • Kelly A. Grieco

January 25, 2023

Airpower has grown so lethal, and American airpower so dominant, that it has become Washington’s go-to weapon of choice. Therefore, as China races to catch up, many security experts argue that the American “bomber must always get through,” and the United States must spend whatever it takes to retain its military-technological edge. The core assumption of this view is that airpower is inherently offensive—the best defense is a good offense.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, however, air warfare favors defense over offense. Ground-based air defenders not only enjoy certain structural advantages—fighting on terrain more favorable to cover and concealment and tackling a simpler military problem—but they can also exploit the mobility, density, and expendability of modern air defense systems to deny air superiority, based on a volumetric defense, layering effects both laterally and vertically. The United States and its allies and partners ought to exploit these developments to full.

Rather than pursue an offense-first air superiority strategy, the United States and its allies and partners should adopt a strategy of air denial to deter and defend against adversary aggression.

Executive Summary

Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has pursued a grand strategy of liberal primacy reliant on power-projection capabilities, especially airpower. Overwhelming advantages in stealth aircraft and precision-guided munitions made it possible to reach deep inside enemy territory and strike quickly and cheaply at low risk of U.S. casualties. The assumption that airpower is inherently offensive — the best defense is a good offense — underlies much of American military activism. Many security experts believe that the American “bomber must always get through,” and the United States must spend whatever it takes to retain its military-technological edge. As China races to catch up, they argue, the United States must invest aggressively in new and emerging technologies for next-generation penetrating stealth aircraft and air-dominance capabilities to secure a military advantage.

Contrary to the conventional wisdom, however, the offense-defense balance in air warfare has mostly favored defense over offense since the introduction of radar in the early 1940s. Though the early airpower theorists envisioned a decisive battle for command of the air waged through aerial warfare — that is, combat in the air with fighter aircraft — ground-based air defenses, rather than aircraft, have since presented the major obstacle to offensive air operations. Critically, new and emerging technologies and tactics are likely to further strengthen the defender’s advantages.

The strength of defense also calls into question a derivative assumption that guides much of U.S. defense planning — that is, the United States must adopt an offensive air superiority strategy to succeed. For many in Washington, the bad news is that it will be increasingly difficult and costly for the United States to project airpower effectively, particularly compared to the last three decades of near-total rule of the skies. The good news, however, is that America’s main strategic rivals, China and Russia, face these same difficulties in projecting power.

A realistic assessment of modern airpower and the realization that it will be impossible for any nation to restore offensive dominance in the near term should inform U.S. foreign and defense policy, as follows:

The Department of Defense (DoD) ought to put the “defense” back in the National Defense Strategy, adjusting both its strategy and joint and service doctrine to exploit defense advantage, working together with its allies and partners to implement a strategy of air denial.
The United States Air Force should make air denial a core mission, assuming primary responsibility for air defense.
The United States needs to put itself on the right side of the cost curve with a more balanced mix of high-low capabilities. Specifically, the U.S. Air Force should prioritize the acquisition of a large number of relatively inexpensive uncrewed systems over the few and exquisite crewed aircraft and other platforms it continues to favor.
Given that these air-denial capabilities are relatively inexpensive and that uncrewed systems are simple to operate, U.S. allies and partners should assume the main defense burden. This would reduce both the need for direct American military support and the risks of escalation.

Introduction

In August 2020, the United States Air Force chief of staff, Gen. Charles Q. Brown, Jr., issued the scramble alert for his entire service: it must “accelerate change,” or risk losing air superiority to China in the Pacific by 2035.¹ “We cannot wait for a catastrophic crisis, whether it be sudden or insidious, to drive change for the Air Force and the Joint Force,” he warned, “If we do, it will be too late.”² Brown’s statement was a startling admission from the leader of the world’s most powerful air force.

During the last 30 years, the United States has quickly and easily gained air superiority over enemy battlefields and attacked enemy ground targets with few — if any — American casualties.³ The United States has rapidly projected military power on a global scale, both to reassure allies and impose its will on others. American airpower has become so lethal and precise — or many political leaders and defense pundits believe that to be the case — that airpower can achieve military victories and compel adversaries on its own without the need for costly and politically unpopular large-scale ground interventions.⁴ The United States wielded this asymmetric advantage in the sky to pursue a grand strategy of liberal primacy — intended to preserve American unipolarity and expand the liberal international order.⁵

That grand strategy rests, however, on a set of assumptions about the sustainability of American air dominance. The core underlying assumption is that airpower is inherently offensive — the best defense is a good offense. The Air Force’s new mission statement to “fly, fight and win … airpower anytime, anywhere” operates under that assumption.⁶ Many security experts believe that the United States can project airpower into key regions at relatively low cost and risk, effectively swooping in at a time of crisis or conflict. Because they assume air warfare favors offense over defense, they also assume that threats to American air dominance stem fundamentally from U.S. adversaries closing the technological gap and that such threats can be reversed by sustained and expensive investments in next-generation aircraft technology.⁷ Asked whether the United States could afford the cost, Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall responded, “Can the nation afford not to have air superiority? We have to have air superiority.”⁸

Are these core beliefs about the very nature and future direction of airpower still valid? Will the future of air warfare favor offense or defense? Will leveraging new technological advantages allow the United States to recreate the kind of air dominance it enjoyed during the last three decades, or at the very least restore some of that advantage? Or will the pursuit of American offensive air dominance prove unsustainable, if not unachievable? In other words, how solid are the assumptions upon which U.S. airpower doctrine and capabilities rest, and what does that mean for the grand strategy of liberal primacy which rests upon these assumptions?

These are high-stakes questions, the answers to which determine whether the U.S. Air Force anticipates change in the relationship between offense and defense and adapts accordingly to exploit it, or gets taken by surprise in a war that it expects its sixth-generation fighters and bombers will win, by penetrating enemy airspace and destroying enemy air defenses to gain air superiority. Therefore, the assumptions underpinning the employment of American airpower need to be ruthlessly and continually reexamined to test their validity.

Defense is inherently the stronger form of air warfare, and new and emerging technologies and tactics are only strengthening the defender’s advantage.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the authors of this piece argue that defense has the advantage over offense in air warfare. In the contest for air control, ground-based air defenders enjoy certain structural advantages: they operate on terrain more favorable to cover and concealment and have a simpler military problem to solve than attacking air forces. Defense is inherently the stronger form of air warfare, and new and emerging technologies and tactics are only strengthening the defender’s advantage. Air defenders can now exploit the mobility, density, and expendability of air defense systems to adopt a doctrine of “volumetric defense” — that is, defense in depth, implemented both laterally (planar distance, or range) and vertically (altitude). Volumetric defense is especially difficult for air offense to defeat because it is complex, multilayered, and robust to linear attacks.

The United States and its allies and partners ought to exploit the advantage of defense in air warfare to its full extent. The United States is on the strategic defensive in both Europe and the Indo-Pacific region, and it seeks to preserve the territorial status quo. If the U.S. Air Force moves away from the few and exquisite high-end fighters and bombers it continues to favor and invests instead in low-end, attritable capabilities, and employs them in a distributed way, future adversaries will have virtually no chance of mounting a successful offense. Conversely, if the U.S. Air Force clings to an offense-first, air-superiority mission, it risks experiencing catastrophic surprise in a future war.

This paper proceeds in five sections. The first section defines the terms “offense” and “defense” and explains the concept of the offense-defense balance. The second section develops and applies this concept to the air domain. The third section lays out the foundational assumption of airpower theory — offense dominance — with a discussion of the evolution of airpower concepts and doctrine. The fourth section argues that in the contest for control of the air between attacking aircraft and ground-based air defenses the defender has a structural advantage. It also suggests that new and emerging technologies are more likely to further enhance, rather than undermine, the power of defense in air warfare. Indeed, these technological advances open up new possibilities for air defense, specifically a defense-in-vertical depth doctrine, which makes it much easier to deny air superiority than to gain it outright. The paper concludes with a discussion of the policy implications of these findings.

The Offense-Defense Balance

The offense-defense balance — or the relative ease of conquering and defending territory — is a central concept in international relations and military affairs.⁹ The balance, at least as traditionally conceived, conceptualizes offense and defense in reference to territorial conquest, or the relative ease of taking territory and holding territory.¹⁰ Offense refers to military operations undertaken to destroy or neutralize an enemy’s military in order to seize its territory. Defense conducts military operations to hold back those attacking forces. These legacy conceptions reflect not only the central importance of land power — humans “live upon the land” — but also the theoretical origins of offense-defense balance theory.¹¹ It was put forward by army officers schooled by the Napoleonic Wars.¹²

More recently, however, scholars have begun to extend offense-defense theory to other warfighting domains, including cyber and space operations.¹³ Drawing on a popular definition of the offense-balance as a cost ratio — whether “states have to spend more or less than one dollar on defensive forces to offset each dollar spent by the other side on forces that could be used to attack” — strategists have recast the balance as the relative costs of offense and defense within a particular domain, given its unique attributes and the prevailing technology.¹⁴ The offense enjoys the advantage when it takes fewer resources to attack than defend against those attacks, whereas the defense has the advantage when the attacker must invest more resources than the defender to accomplish its objectives.¹⁵ The balance matters because it affects the likelihood of war: when offense has the advantage, states expect to win quick and easy victories. This belief in the power of offense makes wars of expansionism more attractive and feasible, intensifying arms races, creating first-strike advantages, and raising the risks of preventive and preemptive attacks. In contrast, when defense has a strong advantage, expansionism is costly and unattainable, effectively deterring would-be aggressors and leaving all states more secure.¹⁶

Conceptualizing the Offense-Defense Balance in Air Warfare

To apply the offense-defense balance to the air domain, it is necessary to identify the closest equivalent of conquering territory. “Conquering the air” is unlike conquest on the ground, because air forces, unlike armies, cannot permanently occupy their primary domain. They cannot live in the sky — aircraft and crews must eventually land to rest, rearm, and refuel.¹⁷ What air forces offer instead are speed, range, and flexibility, permitting the rapid concentration of forces from disaggregated locations.¹⁸ These important differences mean that “conquest” — or, in today’s doctrine, “control” — is exercised differently in each of these domains. In the land domain, the primary objective is to control territory, that is, for armies to take and defend territory. Control of the land domain is thus a function of the persistent occupation of territory, which confers freedom of movement to the occupying army while denying those same benefits to the enemy.¹⁹ Because the occupation of airspace is ephemeral, control of the air domain centers on a responsive presence. Put differently, control of the air domain is mainly a function of the ability of air forces to access and exploit the domain at a required time and place while denying those same advantages to the adversary.²⁰

Accordingly, the authors reconceptualize the offense-defense balance in the air domain as the relative ease of penetrating enemy airspace and achieving the “three freedoms” — freedom of initiative, freedom to operate, and freedom of maneuver — versus denying those same freedoms to the other side.²¹ This definition orients the offense-defense balance around the contest for control of the air — the core mission of air forces since the First World War and the closest aerial equivalent to territorial conquest. Current U.S. military doctrine acknowledges differing degrees of air control, ranging “from no control, to a parity (or neutral situation) wherein neither adversary can claim any level of control over the other, to local air superiority in a specific area, to air supremacy over the entire operational area.”²² Air forces typically aim to achieve at least localized air superiority, if not air supremacy, in order to fully exploit the skies.²³

To gain air superiority, an air force must take an offensive role, penetrating the adversary’s airspace to “neutralize, destroy, or temporarily degrade surface-based enemy air defenses by destructive or disruptive means.”²⁴ This suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD) mission requires defeating both the air-to-air threat — especially enemy fighter aircraft — and increasingly lethal surface-to-air threats.²⁵

In contrast, the defender’s goal is to “remain in the game,” to make the destruction of its air defenses a difficult and time-consuming task.²⁶ Defensive counterair operations range from passive techniques — such as dispersing, concealing, and moving air defense assets — to active measures to counter air and missiles threats, including fighter interceptions and surface-to-air missile engagements.²⁷ The defender seeks to disrupt or blunt the enemy’s air attacks and deny the use of the air to successfully attack targets in the air or on the surface. In other words, the defender’s goal is to deny air superiority to the attacking air force.²⁸

This dynamic gives rise to what Antonio Calcara and his co-authors term a “hider-finder” competition between air penetration and air defense. For both the attacker and the defender, this hider-finder competition entails finding targets while avoiding detection. The challenge of air defense is to acquire and engage incoming enemy air threats, while avoiding detection and suppression by enemy’s anti-radiation missiles, electronic warfare, cyberattacks, and direct attacks. The attacker faces its own hider-finder challenge: penetrating aircraft must avoid detection in a domain with few opportunities for cover and concealment, while searching for dispersed and concealed ground targets over enemy-defended territory.²⁹

In the authors’ conceptualization of the offense-defense balance, however, the ability to penetrate enemy air airspace is necessary but not sufficient to achieve air superiority, much as an attacker’s ability to launch a ground raid is not sufficient to conquer territory. The imposition of control in both domains requires the destruction or neutralization of the defender’s military forces, even if the exercise of that control looks different, given the unique attributes and technologies of each domain.

To assess the offense-defense balance in the air domain, the authors of this brief therefore ask three questions: 1) Is it easier to gain air superiority or deny air superiority to the adversary? 2) What is the cost ratio of offensive counterair operations to defensive counterair operations? and 3) Does geography and the prevailing technology of the time favor offensive counterair operations or air defense?

The Assumption of Offense Dominance in Air Warfare

Airpower theorists and practitioners have long held that offense has the advantage in air warfare. Early airpower advocates — Italian Gen. Giulio Douhet, the Royal Air Force’s Air Marshall Hugh Trenchard, and U.S. Army Air Corps Tactical School theorists — all believed airpower was inherently offensive in nature.³⁰ This faith in the power of offense derived from what Gen. Carl A. Spaatz termed “the peculiar quality of the air medium, the third dimension,” which allows aircraft to rapidly traverse terrain that would otherwise impede the movement of ground forces.³¹ Douhet postulated, “because of its independence of surface limitations and its superior speed — superior to any other known means of transportation — the airplane is the offensive weapon par excellence.”³² A century later, faith in the power of offense — what some have even called a “cult of the offensive” — remains firmly entrenched in the doctrine and ethos of U.S. and allied forces.³³

According to airpower enthusiasts, the characteristics of land warfare that lend to defensive advantage — that is, the ability to wait for a blow in a carefully chosen position — are absent from air warfare. Prussian general and military theorist Carl von Clausewitz famously argued, “The essence of defense lies in parrying the attack,” noting, “this in turn implies waiting, which for us is the main feature of defense and its chief advantage.”³⁴ Clausewitz’s conceptualization of the defense was not passive; instead, the defender was to wear down the attacker’s advance through careful preparation of the terrain, waiting until the tide had turned and then taking the counteroffensive.³⁵

Airpower theorists and practitioners reject Clausewitz’s advice in air warfare. First, they argue, a vast and featureless sky make it extremely difficult to bring heavy firepower to bear against attacking aircraft. “The air is simply too large, too expansive, to be treated as a terrain feature,” concluded future-Maj. Gen. Haywood Hansell in a lecture at Air Corps Tactical School in 1936. He added, “The air force can penetrate at will and proceed directly to its true objective. It is not necessary to fight an exhausting war in an effort to penetrate a barrier.”³⁶ Sixty years later, the noted airpower thinker Philip S. Meilinger reaffirmed this belief, writing, “There are no flanks or fronts in the sky, so an air defender has little chance of channeling [the] enemy into a predictable path so his defense can be more effective, or of building fortifications in the sky. It is virtually impossible to stop an air attack completely — some planes will get through.”³⁷ Simply put, air warfare offers no possibility to hold a prepared position or fortify the airspace, removing a traditional advantage held by defenders.

Second, airpower enthusiasts argue that the inherent range, speed, and flexibility of airpower makes waiting to parry the first blow an invitation to defeat. As H.G. Wells famously observed, “And in the air there are no streets, no channels, no point where one can say of an antagonist, ‘if he wants to reach my capital he must come by here.’ In the air all directions lead everywhere.”³⁸ Consequently, the defender has to protect everywhere, but, in dispersing air defenses, the defender becomes strong nowhere. In contrast, the attacker can rapidly concentrate at a chosen time and location with the advantage of speed and surprise to overwhelm the defender before it can react.³⁹ “To sit down on one’s own territory and wait for the other fellow to come, is to be whipped before an operation has even commenced,” U.S. Army Air Corps Brig. Gen. William “Billy” Mitchell warned in Winged Defense.⁴⁰

This creates a strong incentive to strike first — that is, to establish air superiority at the outset of operations. Contemporary airpower theorists and practitioners like John Warden and Lt Gen. David Deptula advocate conducting “parallel attacks” — the simultaneous application of force across the breadth and depth of a theater and all levels of war — to paralyze an enemy air force and thus gain superiority.⁴¹ Today, this notion of paralysis, that is, of overwhelming the enemy before it can react, is the basis of emerging Joint All-Domain Operations doctrine.⁴²

Why Air Warfare Favors Defense over Offense

The past, present, and projected future of air warfare cast serious doubt on the assumption of offense dominance. Air warfare has long favored defense over offense; emerging technological and doctrinal innovations will not only sustain but also strengthen the power of defense in future air wars.

Structural Explanation

In the contest for control of the air, defense enjoys inherent advantages over offense. Whereas defensive forces have one problem to solve — how to parry the blow from attacking aircraft —offensive forces confront both air-to-air and ground-to-air threats in the fight to gain and maintain air superiority. Flying through a mostly open and featureless sky, aircraft stand out easily on a range of increasingly diverse sensors and lose the element of surprise.⁴³ Stealth technology reduced the range of radar detection, but advances in radar systems, including VHF- and UHF-band radars, which both China and Russia have developed, have eroded this advantage.⁴⁴ “Platform stealth may be approaching physical limits,” the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency acknowledges.⁴⁵ Once detected, attacking aircraft are vulnerable to multiple threats; they might face not only surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft artillery but also intercepting aircraft and air-to-air missiles. Even if a fighter jet avoids a direct hit, it could still suffer catastrophic failure from the blast as well as fragment damage.⁴⁶ A mobile defender, however, can exploit the terrain for cover and concealment, making itself much harder to find and destroy.

Whereas defensive forces have one problem to solve — how to parry the blow from attacking aircraft —offensive forces confront both air-to-air and ground-to-air threats in the fight to gain and maintain air superiority.

These contrasting physical environments effectively simplify the defender’s information problem while complicating the problem for the attacker. The scholar Jon Lindsay argues that the difference was an important structural factor in explaining the Royal Air Force’s victory over the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain.⁴⁷ Put differently, the British had a significant advantage over the Luftwaffe because air defense constitutes a well-constrained and more easily solvable problem than an inherently difficult offensive air campaign. For all the changes in technology the last 80 years have brought, air defense continues to enjoy a structural advantage over offense.

Technological Explanation

Defense is not only the inherently stronger form of air warfare, but a combination of declining costs and technological advancements are also continuing to increase the power of air defenses, rendering them highly mobile, dense, and more expendable than the crewed stealth aircraft of attacking air forces. First, today’s air defense systems are increasingly mobile, making them more difficult to locate and destroy than their predecessors. Mounted on tracked vehicles, surface-to-air missile systems present fleeting targets for air attackers. After firing, the defender can turn off its radar, pack up, and drive away to hide in the ground clutter — forests, cities, etc. The U.S. Air Force has never fought an air war against a near-peer adversary equipped with an integrated and mobile air-defense system.

The few times the United States has confronted threats from mobile air defenses offer few reasons for optimism about the effectiveness of offensive air campaigns in locating and destroying mobile air defense assets. In the 1991 Gulf War, for example, the U.S.-led coalition quickly destroyed Iraq’s fixed air defense sites, but it failed to achieve even a single confirmed kill against Iraq’s truck-mounted Scud missiles.⁴⁸ During the 1998-99 Kosovo War, Yugoslavia’s mobile air defenses also largely survived NATO’s attempts to destroy them. By dispersing their assets and selectively emitting with their radars, Yugoslav air defenders remained a persistent and credible threat to NATO aircraft.⁴⁹ This deadly cat-and-mouse game between the ground defender and the crewed air attacker will only accelerate in the coming decades, due to the declining costs and widespread proliferation of mobile missile technologies.⁵⁰

Even more worrying is what could happen in a fight for air superiority against China, which possesses one of the largest advanced long-range surface-to-air missile arsenals in the world. Unlike in wars of the recent past, Chinese air defenders plan to employ mobile air defenses, including Russian-built S-300s (SA-20s) and S-400s (SA-21s) and domestically produced HQ-9 (CSA-9) and HQ-19 (CH-AB-X-02) systems with sufficient reach to deny U.S. aircraft the benefit of a high-altitude sanctuary.⁵¹ Russia has learned this lesson firsthand in the skies over Ukraine, where a mix of older, Soviet-era and newer, Western-built mobile surface-to-air-missiles have effectively denied air superiority, including at higher altitudes, to the Russian Air Force.⁵² The corollary for the United States and other air forces is that gaining and maintaining air superiority will become significantly more challenging and costly against a mobile air defender with new phased-array weapon systems. The price-per-potential kill heavily favors the defender, for example, using a $1-3 million missile to potentially shoot down the $250 million F-22 fighter or the $110-150 million F-35 fighter — much less “multiple hundreds of millions of dollars,” the expected cost of the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) fighter in the future.⁵³ Even the mere threat of targeting and strikes could be enough to deny air superiority to the U.S. Air Force in a future war.

Second, and adding to the mobility challenge, air defense networks are growing increasingly dense, with more types and greater numbers of weapons systems.⁵⁴ Clusters of emerging technological breakthroughs in robotics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, nanotechnology, additive manufacturing (3D printing), and material sciences, among others — the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution — now make it possible for air defenders to employ large numbers of small and cheap but lethal weapons.⁵⁵ In addition to truck-mounted surface-to-air missiles, attacking aircraft will encounter numerous radar-guided antiaircraft guns, shoulder-fired, man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS), small uncrewed aerial systems — often called drones — and loitering munitions. Indeed, this is not a new phenomenon; for example, relatively inexpensive anti-aircraft guns downed the majority of U.S. aircraft and helicopters lost in Vietnam.⁵⁶ Similarly, in Ukraine, Russian fighters and helicopters have incurred heavy losses from Western-supplied Stinger missiles and Gepard antiaircraft guns.⁵⁷ What’s different today is that the air attacker now has to penetrate into what Air Combat Command’s Gen. Mark Kelly described as “layer upon layer upon layer” of air defense systems.⁵⁸ Moreover, the air defender will soon have more than a numerical advantage; swarms of autonomous systems will also confer a qualitative advantage against air attackers fielding smaller numbers of expensive, hard-to-replace attacking aircraft.

Drone swarms could soon be used to hunt for attacking aircraft, dispersing widely across the airspace, quickly coalescing to strike a target, and then swiftly breaking off and dispersing until the next attack.⁵⁹ These tactics will pose a serious threat to aircraft, because, as defense analyst Paul Scharre explains, “rather than fighting against a formation,” the pilot “faces an insuppressible collection of targets that are, seemingly, everywhere and nowhere at once.”⁶⁰ For example, swarms of $10,000 loitering munitions might “mine” the airspace, lying in wait to collide with $100 million aircraft.⁶¹ China has showcased such capabilities in recent years, including a swarm test of 48 loitering munitions loaded with high-explosive warheads and launched from a truck and helicopter.⁶² Importantly, the low profiles and small signatures of these systems will make them hard for air attackers to detect before it is too late.⁶³

The air defender can leverage the advantages of mobility, density, and expendability against the air attacker to make the achievement and maintenance of air superiority prohibitively costly.

Finally, because these systems are so cheap and quick to build, the air defender might be able to endure large-scale losses. State-of-the art military-grade systems will remain the foundation of effective air defense, but commercial “off-the-shelf” drones will increasingly offer an affordable and effective way to contest air control. They are highly capable, with improved range and flight times, as well as advanced sensors and waypoint navigation systems, which remove the need for line-of-sight communications and allow for real-time intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance.⁶⁴ They are also relatively low cost, ranging in price from a few hundred to a few hundred thousand dollars, depending on their capabilities. Moreover, 3D printing will allow air defenders to regenerate small aerial drone and other weapons capabilities quickly and field them as fast as the rate of attrition. This will complicate the air attacker’s ability to evaluate the effectiveness of its strategy because, unlike in past wars, it will not be able to simply assume that degrading enemy capabilities will render the air defender less effective over time.⁶⁵ In this operating environment, the air defender can leverage the advantages of mobility, density, and expendability against the air attacker to make the achievement and maintenance of air superiority prohibitively costly.

Doctrinal Explanation

This era of defensive weapons en masse opens new possibilities for airpower strategy and doctrine. Specifically, these technologies can underwrite an air-denial strategy based on volumetric defense.⁶⁶ A doctrine of volumetric defense employs defense in depth, both laterally (planar distance, or range) and vertically (altitude). Volumetric defense represents a complex adaptive system, involving “large numbers of parts undergoing a kaleidoscopic array of simultaneous nonlinear integrations.”⁶⁷ Unlike an integrated air defense system, which can be defeated by neutralizing the command, control, and communications system used to exchange information and direct targeting decisions, volumetric defense is resilient to collapse. Although the components of volumetric defense systems are mutually supportive, no part of the system is totally dependent on the others. Consequently, victory becomes much more difficult for the air attacker to achieve — it must defeat every layer of air defense, covering both different ranges and altitudes.

The era of precision weapons en masse opens new possibilities for airpower strategy and doctrine. Specifically, these technologies can underwrite an air-denial strategy based on volumetric defense.

For much of the last century, control of the air was won or lost in the blue skies — that is, the medium- and higher-altitude airspace where high-end fighters and bombers typically operate. If an air attacker gained air superiority in the blue skies, it typically amounted to control over all altitudes. Conversely, if an air defender succeeded in denying air superiority to an attacking air force, it generally conferred control over the altitudes below. The decisive battle occurred in the blue skies, whether that fight occurred between attacking formations and defending fighters, such as in the 1940 Battle of Britain, or between attacking aircraft and surface-to-air missiles, as in the U.S. wars in Iraq. Of course, air control was never absolute. For example, even though the United States had air superiority over the blue skies of Mosul, Iraq, in 2016-17, the Islamic State was still able to access and exploit the lower-altitude airspace, employing quadcopters loaded with explosives that killed or wounded dozens of Iraqi soldiers and nearly bringing operations to a “screeching halt.”⁶⁸

Recognizing that air control was mainly contingent on the outcome of the contest in the blue skies, however, air defenders had little choice but to adopt the air equivalent of forward defense. In land warfare, forward defense is a doctrine designed to hold a position, whatever the cost. The defender moves its forces rapidly from one sector to another to stop an attacker near to the front line. These forward units have significant tactical mobility, but their mission is to use that mobility to contain shallow penetrations. If the attacker is able to move deep into the defender’s rear, it is unlikely to encounter much resistance. In other words, the battle is won or lost near the initial line of contact.⁶⁹ Similarly, past air wars have been won or lost in the blue skies, at the outer altitudes of a defensive air perimeter.

Today, however, employing relatively cheap and mobile technologies like small drones, low-flying missiles, and loitering munitions, air defenders also present a serious threat to air control from below the blue skies. Put differently, even if fifth- or sixth-generation fighters and bombers manage to gain air superiority in the blue skies, the airspace below them will remain contested. That the fight for air control now occurs in three dimensions — in time, planar distance, and altitude — means the defender can exploit the vertical airspace in new and more effective ways, moving beyond a forward-defense doctrine.

A doctrine of volumetric defense — that is, defense in depth, executed both laterally and vertically — is now both feasible and highly effective. In land warfare, a defense in depth yields some ground to gain the advantage. The defender prepares a sequence of defensive lines or a series of strong points positioned throughout the area of operations, designed to delay and wear down the enemy and channel its forces into vulnerable positions. The primary objective is the destruction of the attacker’s forces, rather than the absolute control over territory.⁷⁰ Today, air defenders can employ a similar defense in depth approach, layering the effects of cyber disruptions, electromagnetic jamming, air-based air defenses, and ground-based air defenses in increasing degrees of strength, both horizontally, from deep-strike to close-in capabilities, and vertically, from the blue skies to the air littoral. Put differently, volumetric defense aims to push the attacking air forces outside their combat effective ranges, both laterally and vertically. The war in Ukraine offers a glimpse of this future, as the Ukrainians have imposed both altitude and range limits on Russia’s most advanced fighter jets, forcing them to operate mostly from outside Ukrainian airspace.⁷¹

Unlike a forward defense, this volumetric-defense approach holds the fight for control of the air littoral as at least equal to, if not more important than, the battle in the blue skies. The outer layer of air defenses consists of a mix of different cyber effects, sensors, platforms with air-to-air missiles, and ground-mobile long- and medium-range surface-to-air missiles — all of which support the approaches from the blue skies. The air defender will seek to deny air superiority to the attacking air force by remaining mobile and active. Employing “shoot-and-scoot” tactics both in the sky and on the ground, air defenders fire their missile and quickly turn off the radar and move away — making it difficult for air attackers to find and destroy them. This hunt will be even more challenging than in the past, because without the benefit of air superiority, attacking aircraft will be not only the hunter but also the hunted.⁷² As long as the air defender maintains an active and credible “force in being” — that is, it remains active and mobile — the air attacker will have to take that threat into account. As the war in Ukraine demonstrates, an attacking air force built around a small number of expensive and hard-to-replace crewed aircraft cannot sustain high numbers of losses.⁷³

To avoid these dangers, aircraft could try to fly low to evade radar detection, but that tactic will send them directly into the air littoral, which will be protected by a thick inner layer of air defenses, including thousands of antiaircraft guns, missiles, drones, and rockets. Critically, the air littoral confers a significant “home-court” advantage to air defenders; with their intimate knowledge of the local terrain, they can attempt to “lure” attacking aircraft into their air defense traps.

Ukrainian air defenders have used these tactics to inflict heavy losses on the Russian air force. “Ukraine has been effective in the sky because we operate on our own land,” Yuri Ihnat, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force explained, adding, “The enemy flying into our airspace is flying into the zone of our air defense systems.”⁷⁴ Early in the war, Ukraine might have used its Bayraktar TB2 drones — as they were becoming famous on social media for their strikes on Russian troops and convoys — as a “decoy” to draw Russian aircraft from the blue skies into the air littoral, where its defenders lay in wait to shoot them down.⁷⁵

The defender also has the advantage of position, as the compressed size of the air littoral restricts a pilot’s field of vision — making it harder to detect incoming threats — and reduces the window for deploying evasive countermeasures.⁷⁶ This high-threat environment is particularly demanding on pilots, who need to maintain a constant state of alert.⁷⁷ Bringing its firepower to bear, the air defender will thus turn the air littoral into a dense and lethal inner defense zone. The air defender will also counterattack from the air littoral, employing cheap and expendable uncrewed systems to put some enemy weapons and personnel out of action.⁷⁸

Moreover, the air attacker will not be able to avoid the air littoral if it wants to bring the full range of airpower capabilities — close air support, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, mobility, etc. — to bear on the battlefield. Even if an air attacker manages to gain and maintain air superiority in the blue skies, it will still need to address the contested boundary standing between its aircraft and friendly ground forces. It could attempt to use standoff capabilities to provide close air support to friendly ground forces, but that tactic lengthens the time during which enemy ground forces can move from one location to another. In other words, by the time the munition arrives there may be no target. Nevertheless, if gaining air superiority is a means to an end rather than an end itself, air superiority limited to the blue skies may not offer enough operational and tactical benefits to justify its expected costs in future wars.

Policy Recommendations

Air defense has the inherent advantage over offense. The pursuit of technological “silver bullets,” anticipated to bring about a dramatic shift in favor of offense, will remain elusive. Many within the U.S. Air Force and the defense industry seem to take as an article of faith that massive investments in game-changing technology will sustain America’s offensive air superiority strategy. They will either find new ways to bypass enemy layered air defenses — B-21 stealth bomber — or attempt to transform today’s defense-dominant operating environment into an offensive one, employing new offensive-enhancing capabilities, including the Next Generation Air Dominance fighter and Joint-All Domain Command and Control. Unfortunately, the history of air warfare is littered by false promises of offense dominance based on changing technological conditions — after all, the Air Force’s original myth was that strategic bombers alone could win wars.⁷⁹

Moreover, the outcome of this quixotic quest has been an air force with exquisite capabilities but one that is small in size and thus dependent on precision to replace mass.⁸⁰ On average, successive generations of American warplanes cost two-and-a-half times more to acquire than those they replace. For example, the F-22 Raptor cost approximately $250 million apiece, far more than the $65 million F-15 Eagle it replaced — a nearly 400 percent increase. Paralleling this trend has been a steady rise in the operations and maintenance costs for these more complex systems. New aircraft also tend to take longer to develop and field: Whereas 15 different types of fighter and attack aircraft entered into U.S. Air Force service between 1946 and 1965, those numbers fell to five new designs between 1946 and 1985, and only two new fighter jets — the F-22 and the F-35 — during the last 30 years.⁸¹

This combination of rising costs and shrinking numbers points to the growing power of defense: American warplanes (and the weapons they employ) have had to grow exponentially more capable — and hence become more expensive — to locate and attack enemy air defenses with success. In the process the U.S. Air Force has had to prioritize capability over capacity, opting to employ high-end aircraft and precision weapons as substitute for traditional mass (superior numbers).⁸² Now, however, the Air Force finds itself at a crossover point, where exquisite capabilities cannot compensate for too few weapons. Forty years ago, Norman Augustine, former undersecretary of the Army, foresaw this moment, warning, “In the year 2054, the entire defense budget will purchase just one aircraft.” With a dose of sardonic wit, he continued, “This aircraft will have to be shared by the Air Force and Navy 3-1/2 days each per week except for leap year, when it will be made available to the Marines for the extra day.”⁸³ Alarmingly, the U.S. Air Force’s offensive bias now leaves it too small and fragile to win a war of attrition against a peer or near-peer adversary.⁸⁴

Instead of doubling down, the U.S. Air Force ought to turn its existing airpower paradigm on its head and exploit the defender’s advantage.

Put the Defense Back in U.S. Defense Strategy

The United States — alongside its allies and partners — should leverage defensive advantage with a strategy of air denial to deter and, if necessary, defeat aggressors in Europe and the Indo-Pacific. An air-denial strategy aligns well with America’s political and military objectives: to maintain the status quo and prevent the emergence of regional hegemons. This requires a defense and military strategy that discourages other major powers from pursuing a path of territorial expansion and military aggression.⁸⁵ Neither Beijing nor Moscow wants to start a war that it cannot win; the more that each country fears that prospect, the better deterred it will be.⁸⁶

To that end, the United States, alongside its allies and partners, needs to convince China and Russia that they cannot achieve a fait accompli by increasing the costs and uncertainty associated with their own military aggression. Given that offensive ground and maritime operations cannot succeed without traditional air superiority — something Russian forces have learned painfully during the last year — U.S. airpower strategy and doctrine should be oriented toward the goal of convincing Russia and China that they cannot gain air superiority.⁸⁷ If the mutual denial of air superiority is an advantage for the United States, as Lt. Gen. S. Clinton Hinote, deputy chief of staff for strategy, integration, and requirements of the U.S. Air Force, acknowledges, “then we need to have a military that can achieve mutual denial, even at the edges of the battlespace, even on the doorstep of our adversaries.”⁸⁸

Make Air Denial a Core Mission

Given the centrality of air defense and denial to the future of air control, the Air Force needs to make air denial a core mission. This calls for a review of the 1948 Key West agreement on service roles and missions to transfer responsibility for air defense and ownership of systems like the Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense from the Army to the Air Force.⁸⁹ The decision to give primary responsibility for air defense to other services has created perverse bureaucratic incentives for the Air Force to continue to prioritize offensive air superiority. It is time for a course correction. In addition, adopting a new mission will also require broader change for a service that is still enamored with fighter pilot culture and crewed aircraft.⁹⁰

Instead of small numbers of capable but costly high-end fighters and bombers, a strategy of air denial calls for a mix of crewed aircraft and large numbers of mobile surface-to-air missiles and antiaircraft guns, as well as uncrewed and autonomous systems. Air denial envisions employing sufficiently large numbers of smaller, low-cost weapons in a distributed way so they can survive the initial enemy air and missile strikes and still keep the airspace contested. Doing so requires building an air force that is mobile, dense, and expendable. “To have an affordable Air Force of reasonable size,” Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall acknowledges, “we’ve got to introduce some lower-cost platforms.”⁹¹ He wants the Air Force to embrace the crewed-uncrewed pairing concept, which calls for a single pilot to control multiple uncrewed aircraft.⁹² This is a step in the right direction, but it does not go far enough. The Air Force needs a more radical approach to meet future challenges — the vast majority of the service ought to be uncrewed aircraft and missiles in order to generate sufficient mass. Crewed aircraft should be the exception rather than the rule, used only where and when the political interests at stake and operational imperatives warrant the costs and risks of their employment.

A strategy of air denial also requires doctrinal innovation and adaptation. Instead of penetration and precision strike with crewed assets, the U.S. Air Force should employ new operational concepts and tactics to build a more distributed, mobile, and survival force posture. The Air Force’s Agile Combat Employment concept could support this effort, but such an effort would also require the logistics to support that concept and new swarming tactics of denial with thousands of cheap drones operating at relevant ranges.⁹³

Work with Allies and Partners

Given that air-denial systems are relatively inexpensive and simple to operate, U.S. allies and partners should be able to assume a significant portion of this defense burden. Instead of spending their relatively small defense budgets on high-end fighters, they could gain for more effective deterrent capabilities for their dollars with investments in mobile air defenses, missiles, and uncrewed systems. Strengthening their own deterrent postures would reduce, if not eliminate, the need for direct American military support. Equally important, employing these purely defensive systems would be significantly less escalatory than providing allies and partners with offense-oriented technology and capabilities for long-range strikes.⁹⁴

In both Europe and the Indo-Pacific, U.S. allies and partners should adopt air-denial strategies. Smart investments in relatively low-cost surveillance technologies, secure command and control, and more “roboticized firepower” should be the first priority.⁹⁵ U.S. allies and partners should also stockpile weapons, fuel, and other critical supplies to ensure they can remain in the fight. The location of those stocks will need to be hardened, buried, and dispersed to avoid destruction by an attacking air force’s bombs and missiles.⁹⁶ This will require substantial pre-conflict preparation and a collective effort to expand U.S. and allied industrial base capacity.⁹⁷ At the same time, U.S. policymakers will need to have frank conversations with U.S. allies and partners about the limits of American airpower. The heady days of uncontested American air dominance and expanding the liberal world order are over, and Washington and its allies and partners need to come to terms with that reality.

The United States still possesses the world’s most powerful and advanced air force, but it would be the height of strategic folly for it to continue to pursue an offensive air superiority strategy and thereby cede its greatest advantage — the strength of defense in 2lst-century air warfare — to its adversaries. Instead, it should embrace innovation — the Pentagon’s favorite buzzword of late—but real innovation. Doing so requires the adoption of a strategy of air denial to deter and defend against great power aggression and challenges to the international status quo.

Col. Maximilian K. Bremer, U.S. Air Force, is the director of the Special Programs Division at Air Mobility Command. The opinions expressed here are his own and do not reflect the views of the Department of Defense and/or the U.S. Air Force. Kelly A. Grieco is a Senior Fellow with the Reimagining U.S. Grand Strategy Program.

Notes

1
Note: Gen. Charles Q. Brown, Jr., Air Force Chief of Staff, Accelerate Change or Lose (Washington, DC: United States Air Force, August 2020), https://www.af.mil/Portals/1/documents/csaf/CSAF_22/CSAF_22_Strategic_Approach_Accelerate_Change_or_Lose_31_Aug_2020.pdf.
2
Note: Amy Hudson, “Air Force Leaders: ‘We Are Out of Time,’ China Has Caught Up,” Air & Space Forces Magazine, Sept. 20, 2021, https://www.airandspaceforces.com/air-force-leaders-we-are-out-of-time-china-has-caught-up/.
3
Note: Benjamin S. Lambeth, The Transformation of American Air Power (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000); Phil M. Haun, Colin M. Jackson, and Timothy P. Schultz, Air Power in the Age of Primacy: Air Warfare since the Cold War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2022).
4
Note: Eliot A. Cohen, “The Mystique of U.S. Air Power,” Foreign Affairs Vo. 73, No. 1 (January/February 1994), 109-124; Helene Dieck, The Influence of Public Opinion on Post-Cold War U.S. Military Interventions (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2015); Mike Benitez and Mike Pietrucha, “Political Airpower, Part III: Boots on the Ground,” War on the Rocks, Jan. 31, 2017, https://warontherocks.com/2017/01/political-airpower-part-iii-boots-off-the-ground/; James Igoe Walsh and Marcus Schulzke, Drones and Support for the Use of Force (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2018).
5
Note: On post-Cold War U.S. grand strategy, see Stacie E. Goddard and Ronald R. Krebs, “Legitimating Primacy after the Cold War: How Liberal Talk Matters to U.S. Foreign policy,” in Nuno P. Monteiro and Fritz Bartel, eds., Before and after the Fall: World Politics and the End of the Cold War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 132-150; Barry R. Posen, Restraint: A New Foundation for U.S. Grand Strategy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014), 1-20; Hal Brands, Making the Unipolar Moment: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Rise of the Post-Cold War Order (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016). For incisive critiques of liberal primacy, see Posen, Restraint; Michael Mandelbaum, Mission Failure: America and the World in the Post-Cold War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016); Stephen M. Walt, The Hell of Good Intentions: America’s Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2018); Patrick Porter, The False Promise of Liberal Order (Medford, MA: Polity Press, 2020).
6
Note: Tech. Sgt. Joshua Dewberry, “Air Force Unveils New Mission Statement,” Press Release from Secretary of the Air Force Public Affairs, April 8, 2021, https://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/2565837/air-force-unveils-new-mission-statement/.
7
Note: This is also referred to as overmatch. See Evan Montgomery, “Unpacking Overmatch: Three Crucial Questions about U.S. Military Superiority,” War on the Rocks, July 6, 2018, https://warontherocks.com/2018/07/unpacking-overmatch-three-crucial-questions-about-u-s-military-superiority/.
8
Note: Stephen Losey, “U.S.AF eyes NGAD deliveries by 2030. Can it be come?” Defense News, Sept. 27, 2022, https://www.defensenews.com/air/2022/09/27/the-air-force-wants-to-start-delivering-ngad-by-2030-can-it-be-done/.
9
Note: As Keir Lieber explains, “The terms ‘offense’ and ‘defense’ refer to actual military actions, not the political intentions, goals, or objectives that motivate military action.” See Keir A. Lieber, “Grasping the Technological Peace: The Offense-Defense Balance and International Security,” International Security Vol. 25, No. 1 (Summer 2000), 71-104. Defining the balance in terms of “relative ease” of offense and defense derives from Robert Jervis, “Cooperation under the Security Dilemma,” World Politics 30 (January 1978), 187.
10
Note: In his seminal work, George H. Quester thus concludes the “territorial fixation then logically establishes our distinction between offense and defense.” See George H. Quester, Offense and Defense in the International System (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1977), 15. Other scholars have since conceptualized the offense-defense balance in largely territorial terms. See Jack S. Levy, “The Offensive/Defensive Balance of Military Technology: A Theoretical and Historical Analysis,” International Studies Quarterly Vol. 28, No. 2 (June 1984), 219-238.
11
Note: Julian S. Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy, reprint (Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval Institute Press, 1988), 16; John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., Inc, 2003), 83-137.
12
Note: Antoine-Henri Jomini, The Art of War, trans. G.H. Mendell and W.P. Craighill (West Port, CT: 1971 [1862]); Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989 [1832]).
13
Note: Notable examples include Lucas Kello, “The Meaning of the Cyber Revolution: Perils to Theory and Statecraft,” International Security Vol. 28, No. 2 (2013), 7-40; Jon R. Lindsay, “Stuxnet and the Limits of Cyber Warfare,” Security Studies Vol. 22, No. 3 (2013), 365-404; Rebecca Slayton, “What Is the Cyber Offense-Defense Balance? Conceptions, Causes, and Assessment,” International Security Vol. 41, No. 3 (2016), 72-109; Brad Townsend, “Strategic Choice and the Orbital Security Dilemma,” Strategic Studies Quarterly Vol. 14, No. 1 (2020), 64-90; Brad Townsend, Security and Stability in the New Space Age: The Orbital Security Dilemma (New York: Taylor & Francis, 2020).
14
Note: Robert Jervis, “Cooperation under the Security Dilemma,” 188.
15
Note: See Charles L. Glaser and Chaim Kaufmann, “What Is the Offense-Defense Balance and Can We Measure It?” International Security Vol. 22, No. 4 (1998), 44-82; Sean M. Lynn-Jones, “Offense-Defense Theory and Its Critics,” Security Studies Vol. 4, No. 4 (1995), 660-691; Karen Ruth Adams, “Attack and Conquer? International Anarchy and the Offense-Defense-Deterrence Balance,” International Security Vol. 28, No. 3 (2003), 45-83. Important critiques of the offense-defense balance literature include Stephen Biddle, “Rebuilding the Foundations of Offense-Defense Theory,” The Journal of Politics Vol. 63, No. 3 (2001), 741-774; Kier A. Lieber, War and the Engineers: The Primacy of Politics over Technology (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008).
16
Note: Stephen Van Evera, “Offense, Defense, and the Causes of War,” International Security Vol. 22, No. 4 (1998), 5-43.
17
Note: Phillip S. Meilinger, “Ten Propositions about Airpower” (Washington, DC: U.S. Air Force Office of History, 1995), 2.
18
Note: Giulio Douhet, The Command of the Air, trans. Dino Ferrari (Washington, DC: Office of Air Force History, 1983), 7-9.
19
Note: Clausewitz, On War, 285.
20
Note: U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joint Publication JP 3-30, Joint Air Operations (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 2019), ix.
21
Note: Richard P. Hallion, “Control of the Air: The Enduring Requirement,” Air Force History and Museum Programs, Bolling Air Force Base, Washington, DC, September 1999, https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1004&context=usafresearch.
22
Note: U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joint Publication JP 3-30, Joint Air Operations, ix.
23
Note: Joint Publication JP 3-01, Countering Air and Missile Threats, defines air superiority as “that degree of control of the air by one force that permits the conduct of its operations at a given time and place without prohibitive interference from air and missile threats.” The highest level of control of the air is air supremacy, wherein the enemy is “incapable of effective interference within the operational area using air and missile threats.” See U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joint Publication JP 3-01, Countering Air and Missile Threats (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 2017), I-4.
24
Note: U.S. JCS, Joint Publication JP 3-01, Countering Air and Missile Threats.
25
Note: James M. Holmes, The Counterair Campaign: A Short Guide to Air Superiority for Joint Force Commanders Maxwell AFB, AL: Master’s Thesis, School of Advanced Airpower Studies, 1995), https://media.defense.gov/2017/Dec/29/2001861996/-1/-1/0/T_HOLMES_COUNTERAIR_COMPANION.PDF.
26
Note: In other words, the air force aims to remain a “force in being.” See Maximilian K. Bremer and Kelly A. Grieco, “In Denial about Denial: Why Ukraine’s Air Success Should Worry the West,” War on the Rocks, June 15, 2022, https://warontherocks.com/2022/06/in-denial-about-denial-why-ukraines-air-success-should-worry-the-west/.
27
Note: U.S. JCS, Joint Publication JP 3-01, Countering Air and Missile Threats.
28
Note: On air denial, see Maximillian A. Bremer and Kelly A. Grieco, “Air Denial: The Dangerous Illusion of Decisive Air Superiority,” Atlantic Council, August 30, 2022, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/content-series/airpower-after-ukraine/air-denial-the-dangerous-illusion-of-decisive-air-superiority/.
29
Note: Antonio Calcara, Andrea Gilli, Mauro Gilli, Raffaele Marchetti, and Ivan Zaccagnini, “Why Drones Have Not Revolutionized War: The Enduring Hider-Finder Competition in Air Warfare,” International Security Vol. 46, No. 4 (2022), 130-171.
30
Note: Douhet, The Command of the Air; Russell Miller, Trenchard: Father of the Royal Air Force (London: Orion Publishing, 2017); Phil Haun, ed., Lectures of the Air Corps Tactical School and American Strategic Bombing in World War II (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2019).
31
Note: Gen. Carl A. Spaatz quoted in Charles M. Westenhoff, Military Airpower: A Revised Digest of Airpower Opinions and Thoughts (Maxwell AFB, AL: Air University Press, 2007), 53.
32
Note: Douhet, The Command of the Air, 28.
33
Note: John R. Carter, Jr., Airpower and the Cult of the Offensive (Maxwell AFB: Master’s thesis, School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, 1998), https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA391659.pdf.
34
Note: Clausewitz, On War, 379.
35
Note: Clausewitz, On War, 680.
36
Note: Haun, ed., Lectures of the Air Corps Tactical School and American Strategic Bombing in World War II, 37.
37
Note: Meilinger, “Ten Propositions about Airpower,” 6.
38
Note: H.G. Wells, The War in the Air (New York: MacMillan Co., 1907), 253.
39
Note: Meilinger, “Ten Propositions about Airpower,” 6.
40
Note: William Mitchell, Winged Defense: The Development and Possibilities of Modern Air Power—Economic and Military (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2010 [1925]), 199.
41
Note: John A. Warden, III, “The Enemy as a System,” Airpower Journal Vol. IX, No. 1 (1995), 54; David A. Deptula, Effects-based Operations: Change in the Nature of Warfare (Arlington, VA: Aerospace Education Foundation, 2001), https://www.airandspaceforces.com/PDF/DocumentFile/Documents/2005/EBO_deptula_020101.pdf.
42
Note: Air Force Doctrine Publication 3-99/Space Doctrine Publication 3-99, The Department of the Air Force Role in Joint All-Domain Operations (Washington, DC: U.S. Air Force/U.S. Space Force, November 2021), https://www.doctrine.af.mil/Portals/61/documents/AFDP_3-99/AFDP%203-99%20DAF%20role%20in%20JADO.pdf.
43
Note: Mark Denny, Blip, Ping, & Buzz: Making Sense of Radar and Sonar (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007); Nicholas J. Willis, Bistatic Radar (Troy, NY: SciTech Publishing, Inc., 2005).
44
Note: See Carlo Kopp, “Evolving Technological Strategy in Advanced Air Defense Systems,” Joint Force Quarterly No. 57 (2010), 86-93; Konstantinos Zikidis, Alexios Skondras, and Charisios Tokas, “Low observable principles, stealth aircraft and anti-stealth technologies,” Journal of Computations & Modelling Vol. 4, No. 1 (2014): 129-165.
45
Note: Michael Peck, “Limit Reached: What if Existing Stealth Fighters Cannot be Improved Upon?” The National Interest, February 13, 2021, https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/limit-reached-what-if-existing-stealth-fighters-cannot-be-improved-upon-178131.
46
Note: Benjamin S. Lambeth, Kosovo and the Continuing SEAD Challenge (Washington, DC: RAND, 2002), 12–14.
47
Note: Jon R. Lindsay, Information Technology and Military Power (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2020), 71-108.
48
Note: Thomas A. Keaney and Eliot A. Cohen, Gulf War Air Power Survey, Vol. 2 (Washington, DC: Office of the Secretary of the Air Force, 1993), 181-191; United States General Accounting Office, Operation Desert Storm: Evaluation of the Air Campaign, GAO/NSIAD-97-134, June 1997, https://www.gao.gov/assets/nsiad-97-134.pdf. William Rosenau, Special Operations Forces and Elusive Enemy Ground Targets: Lessons from Vietnam and the Persian Gulf War (Washington, DC: Rand, 2002), 40-44.
49
Note: Timothy L. Thomas, “Kosovo and the Current Myth of Information Superiority,” Parameters Vol. 30, No. 1 (Spring 2000), 13-29; Benjamin S. Lambeth, NATO’s Air War for Kosovo: A Strategic and Operational Assessment (Washington, DC: Rand, 2001).
50
Note: See Thomas G. Mahnken, “Weapons: The Growth and Spread of the Precision-Strike Regime,” Daedalus Vol. 140, No. 3 (2011), 45-57; Emmanuelle Maitre and Lauriane Héau, “Current Trends in Ballistic Missile Proliferation,” HCoC Issue Brief, September 2020, https://www.nonproliferation.eu/hcoc/current-trends-in-ballistic-missile-proliferation; Paul von Hooft and Lotje Boswinkel, Surviving the Deadly Skies: Integrated Air and Missile Defence 2021-2035 (Hague: The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies, Nov. 2021), https://hcss.nl/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Integrated-Air-and-Missile-Defense-HCSS-Dec-2021.pdf.
51
Note: Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2022 (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 2022), 61, 82-83, https://media.defense.gov/2022/Nov/29/2003122279/-1/-1/1/2022-MILITARY-AND-SECURITY-DEVELOPMENTS-INVOLVING-THE-PEOPLES-REPUBLIC-OF-CHINA.PDF.
52
Note: Justin Bronk, Nick Reynolds, and Jack Watling, The Russian Air War and the Ukrainian Requirements for Air Defence (London: RUSI, November 2022), https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/special-resources/russian-air-war-and-ukrainian-requirements-air-defence; Bremer and Grieco, “In Denial about Denial.”
53
Note: Dan Grazier, “Selective Arithmetic to Hide the F-35’s True Costs,” Project on Government Oversight, Oct. 21, 2020, https://www.pogo.org/analysis/2020/10/selective-arithmetic-to-hide-the-f-35s-true-costs; Steven M. Kosiak, Is the United States Military Getting Smaller and Older?: And How much Should We Care? (Washington, DC: Center for a New American Security, 2017); and Kyle Mizokami, “The Air Force’s Secret New Fighter Jet Will Be Wildly Expensive,” Popular Mechanics, May 5, 2022, https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a39881271/air-force-secret-new-fighter-jet-will-be-wildly-expensive/.
54
Note: Marcus Weisgerber, “U.S. Officials Not Ready to Dismiss Russia’s Anti-Aircraft Missiles Despite Shortcomings in Ukraine,” Defense One, March 10, 2022, https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2022/03/us-officials-not-ready-dismiss-russias-anti-aircraft-missiles-despite-shortcomings-ukraine/363037/.
55
Note: T. X. Hammes, “Technologies Converge and Power Diffuses: The Evolution of Small, Smart, and Cheap Weapons,” Cato Institute Policy Analysis, No. 786 (2016); T. X. Hammes, “Cheap Technology Will Challenge U.S. Tactical Dominance,” Joint Force Quarterly No. 81 (2016): 76–85.
56
Note: Kenneth P. Werrell, Archie to SAM: A Short Operational History of Ground-Based Air Defense (Maxwell AFB, Alabama: Air University Press, 2019), 117-119, 137-138.
57
Note: Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali, “‘Risk Worth Taking’: U.S. Rushes MANPADS to Ukraine Despite Proliferation Concerns,” Reuters, March 11, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/world/risk-worth-taking-us-rushes-manpads-ukraine-despite-proliferation-concerns-2022-03-11/; Dan Parsons, “Ukraine Situation Report: More German Gepard Air Defense Gun Systems on the Way,” The Drive, Dec. 2, 2022, https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/ukraine-situation-report-more-german-gepard-air-defense-gun-systems-on-the-way.
58
Note: “Watch, Read: Kelly and Whiting on Combat Air and Space Forces in the Fight,” Air and Space Forces Magazine, March 13, 2022, https://www.airandspaceforces.com/watch-read-kelly-and-whiting-on-combat-air-and-space-forces-in-the-fight/.
59
Note: See Christian Brose, “The New Revolution in Military Affairs: War’s Sci-Fi Future,” Foreign Affairs Vol. 98, No. 3 (May/June 2019): 122–34; Paul Scharre, Robotics on the Battlefield, Part II: The Coming Swarm (Washington, DC: Center for a New American Security, 2014); Paul Scharre and Michael D. Horowitz, An Introduction to Autonomy in Weapon Systems (Washington, DC: Center for a New American Security, 2015); M.L. Cummings, Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Warfare (London: Chatham House, 2017); Paul Scharre, Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2018); and Benjamin M. Jensen, Christopher Whyte, and Scott Cuomo, “Algorithms at War: The Promise, Peril, and Limits of Artificial Intelligence,” International Studies Review Vol. 22, No. 3 (2020): 526–50.
60
Note: Scharre, Robotics on the Battlefield, Part II, 29.
61
Note: Leslie F. Hauck III and John P. Geis II, “Air Mines: Countering the Drone Threat to Aircraft,” Air and Space Power Journal Vol. 31, No. 1 (2017), 28; Ashley May, “Drones Can Do Serious Damage to Airplanes, Video Shows,” USA Today, October 17, 2018, https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/nation-now /2018/10/17/drones-crashing-into-airplanes-quadcopters-damage-video/1657112002/.
62
Note: David Hambling, “China Releases Video of New Barrage Swarm Drone Launcher,” Forbes, October 14, 2020, https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2020/10/14/china-releases-video-of-new -barrage-swarm-drone-launcher/?sh=3121d6892ad7.
63
Note: Thomas Newdick, “Inside Ukraine’s Desperate Fight Against Drones with MiG-29 Pilot ‘Juice,’” The Drive, Dec. 13, 2022, https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/inside-ukraines-desperate-fight-against-drones-with-mig-29-pilot-juice; Katrina Manson, “Low cost warfare: U.S. military battles with ‘Costco drones,’” Financial Times, Jan. 5, 2022.
64
Note: Dan Gettinger, The Drone Databook Update: March 2020 (Hudson, NY: Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College, 2020), https://dronecenter.bard.edu/files/2020/03/CSD-Databook-Update-March-2020.pdf.
65
Note: Maximillian Maximilian K. Bremer and Kelly A. Grieco, “The Air Littoral: Another Look,” Parameters Vol. 51, No. 4 (2021), 74.
66
Note: Bremer and Grieco, “Air Denial.”
67
Note: John H. Holland, Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1992), 184. See also Frans P.B. Osinga, Science, Strategy, and War: The Strategic Theory of John Boyd (New York: Routledge, 2007).
68
Note: David Larter, “SOCOM Commander: Armed ISIS Drones Were 2016’s ‘Most Daunting Problem,’” Defense News, May 16, 2017, https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/sofic/2017/05/16/socom-commander -armed-isis-drones-were-2016s-most-daunting-problem/.
69
Note: Timothy T. Lupfer, The Dynamics of Doctrine: The Changes in German Tactical Doctrine (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute, 1981); John J. Mearsheimer, Conventional Deterrence (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983), 48-50; Biddle, Military Power, 47-48.
70
Note: Ariel Levite, Offense and Defense in Israeli Military Doctrine (New York: Westview Press, 2019), 127.
71
Note: Sophia Anekl, “Russia Is Holding Back on Using Its Most Advanced Fighter Jets over Ukraine Because It’s Scared They’ll Get Shot Down, UK Intel Says,” Business Insider, January 9, 2023, https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-limiting-its-advanced-combat-jets-to-russia-airspace-2023-1.
72
Note: Bremer and Grieco, “In Denial about Denial.”
73
Note: Bremer and Grieco, “Air Denial.”
74
Note: Marie Varenikova and Andrew E. Kramer, “How Ukraine’s Outgunned Air Force Is Fighting Back Against Russian Jets,” New York Times, Mach 22, 2022.
75
Note: Aaron Stein, Twitter post, March 12, 2022, accessed January 3, 2022, https://twitter.com/aaronstein1/status/1502663396591906822.
76
Note: Bremer and Grieco, “Air Littoral,” 73.
77
Note: For a similar argument about the maritime littoral, see Yedidia Ya’ari, “The Littoral Arena: A Word of Caution,” Naval War College Review Vol. 48, No. 2 (1995), 3.
78
Note: Pjotr Sauer, “Ukraine Missile Strike on Russian-Held City of Makiivka Kills Scores of Troops,” Guardian, January 2, 2023.
79
Note: Tami Davis Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare: The Evolution of British and America Ideas about Strategic Bombing, 1941-1945 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002).
80
Note: Mark Gunzinger, “Affordable Mass,” Air & Space Forces Magazine, Nov. 5, 2021, https://www.airandspaceforces.com/article/affordable-mass/.
81
Note: Kosiak, Is the United States Military Getting Smaller and Older?, 7.
82
Note: Rebecca Grant, “The Second Offset,” Air & Space Forces Magazine, June 24, 2016, https://www.airandspaceforces.com/article/the-second-offset/.
83
Note: Norman R. Augustine, Augustine’s Laws and Major System Development Programs (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983), 55.
84
Note: Conrad Crane, “Prepared to Die: A Return to Attrition in Contested Airspace,” Atlantic Council, August 30, 2022, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/content-series/airpower-after-ukraine/prepared-to-die-a-return-to-attrition-in-contested-airspace/.
85
Note: Eldridge A. Colby, The Strategy of Denial: American Defense in the Age of Great Power Competition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021); Eric Heginbotham and Jacob L. Heim, “Deterring without Dominance: Discouraging Chinese Adventurism under Austerity,” Washington Quarterly Vol. 38, No. 1 (2015), 185-199.
86
Note: Mearsheimer, Conventional Deterrence.
87
Note: Richard Saunders and Mark Souva, “Air Superiority and Battlefield Victory,” Research & Politics Vol. 7, No. 4 (2020), https://doi-org.aufric.idm.oclc.org/10.1177/2053168020972816.
88
Note: Greg Hadley, “Superiority Could Benefit U.S. in Future Conflict, Top USAF Planner Says,” Air & Space Forces, Sept. 6, 2022, https://www.airandspaceforces.com/mutual-denial-of-air-superiority-could-benefit-us-in-future-conflict-top-usaf-planner-says/.
89
Note: Kenneth W. Condit, History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: The Joint Chiefs of Staff and National Policy, Volume 2 – 1947–1949 (Washington, DC: Office of Joint History, Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1996), 95–96.
90
Note: Michael W. Hankins, Flying Camelot: The F-15, the F-16, and the Weaponization of Fighter Pilot Nostalgia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2021).
91
Note: Abraham Mahshie, “Kendall: Air Force Has an ‘Affordability Problem’ As It Tries to Meet Capability Gap,” Air & Space Forces Magazine, June 1, 2022, https://www.airandspaceforces.com/kendall-air-force-has-an-affordability-problem-as-it-tries-to-meet-capability-gap/.
92
Note: Stephen Losey, “Air Force Aims to Sharpen Vision for Teaming Pilots with Drones,” Defense News, March 18, 2022, https://www.defensenews.com/air/2022/03/18/air-force-aims-to-sharpen-vision-for-teaming-pilots-with-drones/.
93
Note: Joseph Trevithick, “Massive Drone Swarm over Strait Decisive in Taiwan Conflict Wargames,” The Drive, May 19, 2022, https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/massive-drone-swarm-over-strait-decisive-in-taiwan-conflict-wargames.
94
Note: Ellen Mitchell, “U.S. Mindful of ‘Escalation Risks’ in Giving Ukraine Rocket Systems,” The Hill, June 1, 2022.
95
Note: Peter Wilson, “Will Roboticized Firepower Replace Manned Airpower?” Atlantic Council, August 30, 2022, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/content-series/airpower-after-ukraine/will-robotized-fire-power-replace-manned-air-power/.
96
Note: See, for example, Andrew Erickson and Gabriel Collins, “Eight Points on the Porcupine: More Ukraine Lessons for Taiwan,” War on the Rocks, April 18, 2022, https://warontherocks.com/2022/04/eight-new-points-on-the-porcupine-more-ukrainian-lessons-for-taiwan/.
97
Note: Frank Hoffman, “American Defense Priorities after Ukraine,” War on the Rocks, January 2, 2023, https://warontherocks.com/2023/01/american-defense-priorities-after-ukraine/.

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