Defence and Freedom: Reviewing my theses on air power in light of the recent wars

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https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2016/07/theses-on-future-air-war-future-air.html

Well, how did they stand the test of time?

(1) Missiles such as Iskander, LORA et cetera can and should substitute and complement strike by combat aviation, particularly early in a conflict. They require much lower operating costs due to no flying hours required for training. At the same time they don't serve the officer corps' interests well because they're not 'sexy' like fighters and missile units require few officers.

This looks very fine, even though the recent reports about GPS guidance issues after two years of conflict restrict a bit what can be done with missiles.

(2) MEADS is overpriced nonsense. The IRIS-T-SL addition is actually interesting, but I greatly favoured the SAMP/T area air defence system (with by now substantial missile defence capability) as it could have been bought military off-the shelf after its introduction by France and Italy. VL MICA could have complemented it the way IRIS-T SL is a short(er) range missile component in MEADS.

MEADS has a ridiculous program cost: batteries planned for purchase ratio.

The CAMM ground variant may become another alternative if we regain senses and finally cancel MEADS after all.

MEADS was cancelled. Patriot looks better than I expected in Ukraine because PAC-3 actually performs well against SRBMs and the Russians are too stupid or too cowardly to effectively go after large air defence radars.

(3) Air power will compete with ground forces for airlift capacity, particularly early on in an unplanned hot conflict. It will also be very busy with its counterpart and ground-based air defences early on, and likely possess little ability to decisively affect ground operations in the first days or weeks. I think air power fanbois such as British folks who point at the theoretical load carrying capacity of 18 Brimstones under a Typhoon - theoretically enough to wipe out a tank company - would be very disappointed if modern combat aircraft were ever used in the anti-tank role against a great power's army.

The air/ground has certainly been unimpressive over Ukraine, but they don't use Western weapons. Brimstone was delivered to Ukraine for ground/ground use, but I have not seen much effect or praise for it.

6x3 Brimstone missiles under a Typhoon

Actual airbases in German: Path dependency rules!

(4) The German Luftwaffe isn't a necessity for NATO or EU or even only Germany, but -if done well- it can be useful because it would be (a) barely at a safe distance to survive a surprise attack and (b) barely still close enough to the Eastern frontier to help Poland and Lithuania from German airbases. The usefulness of airbases and auxiliary airfields in Eastern Germany is much higher than the West German ones'.

The Russians weren't able to fully suppress the Ukrainian Air Force. They waste missiles on irrelevant targets and had for two years of conflict a too long process from collecting sensor data to strike a fleeting target (such as a parked operational aircraft) on the ground. So I underestimated the usefulness of Polish airbases, but my point about the desirability of airbases in East Germany and Czech Republic stands.

(5) It's still up for debate whether the next fighter generation will be manned, unmanned or optionally manned, but this is missing much of future air war anyway (in my opinion). Traditional air war is about growing aircraft flying high and fast, while in future much of the air war may or will be about small, low-flying and short-ranged drones that may even mimic birds. Thousands of these could be unleashed into an area for attack and/or reconnaissance. It's not apparent that ground forces have adapted to this with appropriate changes in battlefield air defences, but it's astonishing to me how Western air forces appear to ignore the entire possibility and thus cede this probably more decisive air power element to the ground forces. Current fighter types and designs certainly don't incorporate counters; the missiles in use cost 10-100x as much as a small drone needs to cost.

I was proved correct.

(6) Air combat will consume a terribly high quantity of expensive missiles. The kill probability will be terrible (AMRAAM has a 50% pk track record, and that was gained in very advantageous situations). We may need more than 30 air combat missiles in stocks to kill a single top quality fighter, which means we should purchase 40+ missiles per air combat kill expected to be necessary. Foreign powers that shall be deterred are likely aware of this, and they're likely aware that such munitions purchases have a low priority in air forces that stare on aircraft quantities and where the officer corps in control doesn't benefit from higher ammunition stocks directly.

It appears that both Ukrainian and Russian combat aircraft have little air combat, as S-300 and S-400 area air defences repulse them so far back (above 200 ft) that they rarely come no escape zone ranges with hostile aircraft.

(7) It should be obvious once again by now, but let's spell it out: I think of air forces as bureaucracies. The caste in control is the officer corps. The junior officers are typically fine, but beginning approx. at Lt.Col. the officer corps begins to follow the descriptions of the principal-agent problem when it comes to resources.

I moved my blaming for poor decisions from the industry profit motive to the principal-agent problem in the bureaucracy (and its political overseers) years ago already.