Air Power is Dead. Long Live the Air Power

Wonder weapons are fleeting. Only increased battlefield complexity endures

War is getting more complex as commanders have to incorporate more and more weapons into their operations; and do it faster to take advantage of fleeting opportunities as the enemy casts its vote, too. But revolutionary weapons are rare, usually just representing a momentary advantage in a void of enemy counter-measures.

We need a new understanding of air power:

Our current definition of air dominance does not translate into control over the air littoral. Yet, if the ultimate goal of air power is to enable and empower ground forces to defeat the enemy, then we must also dominate the air littoral. This is how we must re-conceptualize air power in the unmanned age.

And let’s be clear, manned fighters and stealth bombers still matter — probably more so than ever when you imagine what a war against China would look like. Yet, we must also accept that these advanced aircraft are designed to win a different kind of air war than the one being waged at treetop levels in Ukraine.

I was on this fairly early, calling in Army magazine for reusable fighter drones in the air littoral—what I called the "brown skies"—to lift the burden of air defense from the tip of the spear so they can focus on close combat with enemy ground forces:

Clearly, units at the company level and below need a better means of controlling their own brown skies airspace. Yet rather than burdening lower-level units with additional ground-based air defense gun and missile systems, air-to-air combat UASs would provide better air defense than either high-flying advanced fighter aircraft or distant higher-echelon air defense weapons that will have difficulty identifying and tracking small aerial threats--let alone engaging them--before the threats strike and return to enemy positions. ...

Much as Army units carry out their operations unaware of the battles taking place in the blue skies that keep enemy aircraft away from the battlefield, units maneuvering and engaging in direct fire can't afford to be distracted by fighting for the brown skies above them.

And I've wondered if we'd see miniature version of the high-altitude “blue sky” air campaigns:

Drones in all the domains will eventually just be one more weapon in a combined arms effort.

Indeed, the drones might fight low-level air campaigns in the "brown skies" just above forward combat units that look like "blue sky" Air Force campaigns with specialty drones for ground attack, recon, electronic warfare, intercepting enemy drones or protecting friendly drones, and maybe aerial refueling. You might even have recovery drones to pick up downed UAVs.

Yet I've also seen parallels with drone air power advocates and "victory through air power" theories. Not everybody on the battlefield can be a drone operator.

This claim that "everything is different now and nothing can stand before this new weapon" pops up periodically to promise a wonder weapon for easy victory (or rapid doom if the enemy gets it first).

And I suspect that air drone dominance in Ukraine is enabled by the rapid entry of those drones into a counter-measures void. In time, counter-measures will limit the effectiveness of small air drones. One, by making them more expensive and so less numerous to survive. And two, by driving them to higher altitudes just as conventional aircraft have been driven higher to survive in the face of ground-based air defenses. That will increase drone costs, too—and reduce numbers.

I mean, we've seen helicopters forced back from the front line, using terrain as protection since flying higher just makes them vulnerable, too. Can they survive as a close air support weapon? Or are they the cavalry of old, pursuing a defeated enemy or functioning as a mobile reserve to blunt an enemy penetration of your own lines with the enemy advancing beyond their dense air defense network?

I suspect that blue sky air forces will mostly merge with the brown sky air forces and be forced higher and farther back from the front where it will provide close air support for the ground forces.

And when drone counter-measures are stronger, artillery will regain some of its past dominance with the role of small, slow, and cheap drones largely carried out by loitering sub-munitions:

Will it make sense to rely on manpower-intensive drone units that launch short-range FPV loitering munitions all along the front? Or will it make more sense to mostly use missiles from ground, air, and sea launchers as well as air-dropped glide bombs? High-altitude balloons could be a launch platform, too.

These means of launching loitering munitions will provide the range to concentrate the loitering munitions and reach deep behind the lines, evading frontline short-range counter-measures.

Perhaps the remnant small, cheaper drones will mostly be intended to exhaust the magazines of active protection systems. Or to function as the cavalry of old, pursuing a beaten and retreating army to cut it down when it is most vulnerable.

Indeed, I think air power will be simply part of a Black Box of Effects that military commanders in all services will have access to:

In my ideal world, fire support is a black box where a call to destroy or suppress a target automatically calls in the appropriate weapon capable of taking out the target in a timely manner without the soldier making the support request even knowing what asset provided the support.

It could be a plane or space system out of sight, an attack helicopter, a ship or submarine offshore, a distant ground force missile or artillery asset, or even an 81mm mortar back at the company level.

If cyber weapons can suppress the target or add to the fires mission success--perhaps by negating point defenses against fires missions or information operations highlighting a path of retreat open to the enemy before the rounds hit to get them to retreat, for example--it is automatically plugged in to the mission.

Indeed, if the target is close to civilians, perhaps the call for fire support triggers automatic telephone warnings to civilian numbers near the target if there is time before the rounds need to hit.

And if there is automatic deconfliction between aerial assets and artillery to avoid the former being hit by the latter by being in the same air space, that would be great, too.

And it will all be part of expanded combined arms and joint warfare. War doesn't often get a revolution in military affairs. But it always gets more complex and harder to orchestrate into a coherent military effort. Artificial intelligence will be simultaneously indispensable for achieving that coordination in time to do any good gainst a thinking enemy; and a point of vulnerability that each side will target to enable their own complex operations to work.

NOTE: I made the image with the Substack capability.