Congratulations, You Have Air Superiority. Now What?

"To have command of the air is to have victory."[1] – Giulio Douhet

Introduction

Warfare on land has always been among the most horrific experiences a human being could go through. From ancient times, the warring sides sought ways of avoiding the specter of crushed limbs and pierced bodies that inevitably came with land battle. Single combat by champions was one ancient means of minimizing casualties for both sides that persisted through the millennia. Pre-modern generals could turn to negotiation and subterfuge to gain a victory without the necessity of a bloodbath. If a fight was necessary, commanders sought the dramatic, decisive battle that decided the war within hours.

Decisive battles were harder to come by once societies became industrialized, with the ability to field massive armies to fight total war. Instead, wars were increasingly decided by a series of brutal tactical encounters, as both sides sought to grind each other's forces down until they capitulated.[2] That process reached a ghastly peak in the trenches of World War One, and in the aftermath leaders looked to airpower as a way around land warfare which had become too costly. In 1921, Giulio Douhet published his seminal work arguing that airpower would make land armies irrelevant, and that victory could be gained by destroying civilian "vital centers."  

In the century since Douhet's book, ground formations are still a central component of warfare, but Western airpower has grown in capabilities and importance, transforming the way wars are fought. Countries like Israel and the US have been wildly successful in achieving air superiority. The last US soldier killed by enemy air attack occurred back in 1953, and the US has never even been in a position where an enemy plane was close enough for them to fire a surface-to-air missile at it. [3] Indeed, US Army doctrine has over the years has assumed air superiority. Israel has had its way with enemy air forces, and since the total domination of Syrian planes in 1982, it has enjoyed near total mastery of the skies.

It is clear that air supremacy is important, but why exactly? Is it enough to gain victory on its own? What does it enable? What is its relationship with other forms of military power, especially land power?

Airpower Applied: U.S., NATO, and Israeli Combat Experience, edited by John Andreas Olsen, seeks to clarify the potential and limits of airpower. It does this through four chapters on the American, NATO, and Israeli use of airpower, and one on the airpower profession itself. Each chapter is written by different authors. While the chapters are useful as standalone essays, they struggle to create a coherent whole beyond an in-depth survey of the use of airpower by the US and Israel.

Western Airpower from World War II to Present

"Chapter 1. America as a Military Aerospace Nation: From Pearl Harbor to Desert Storm," by past Air Force Historian Richard P. Hallion, investigates World War II (1939-45), Berlin Airlift (1948-49), Korean War (1950-53), Vietnam War (1960-75), Operation El Dorado Canyon (1986), Operation Just Cause (1989), and Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm (1990-91). It traces the development of US airpower from Kitty Hawk in 1903 to "the first air and space war," Desert Storm.

World War II was the first conflict in which no land or naval campaigns could be conducted without considering both the offensive and defensive air dimensions. It also proved the wisdom of the British approach of creating an independent air force, which had the institutional focus and wherewithal to fund the development of high-performance aircraft and game-changing technologies like radar. In addition, it revealed the importance of sound R&D, production, and doctrine, the lack of which led to crucial failures by otherwise capable forces like France, Japan, and Germany.

The use of airpower in Vietnam was especially instructive on the importance of clarity from political leadership on what constitutes victory, and the damaging effects of political interference in military decisions like target selection. Operation Rolling Thunder In 1965, designed as a limited air campaign to bring the North to the negotiating table, was a prime example of failure on these fronts. Three of the operation's five goals were psychological – affecting the will of North Vietnam's leadership, coercing the North to stop its aggression, and improving the morale of the South, in addition to creating a bargaining chip and reducing infiltration in to the South. Beyond these amorphous goals, it lacked defined and unified command and control structure. What's more, there was no updated joint doctrine for air operations, making it next to impossible to achieve units of effort. Washington made matters worse, with pervasive intervention by political leaders in tactical decision-making, especially in the famous weekly Tuesday targeting lunches in which approved target lists were made. Not surprisingly, Rolling Thunder failed to accomplish its stated goals, while costing the US hundreds of aircraft.

That being said, American airpower proved itself in many ways during the war. The US accelerated the development of precision munitions, which proved themselves against bridges, power plants, and mechanized assault. American airpower in Operation Linebacker I (1972) stopped the massive North Vietnamese invasion by destroying communications, supply columns, and forces.

Operation Desert Storm was a high point for Western airpower, especially precision strikes. Unfortunately, it created a false understanding that war could be "clean," with minimal civilian casualties. It also showcased the technological strides the US had made - the product of significant investment and effort - in GPS, communications, guided weapons, and sensors. 

Hallion stresses the important fact that the US lagged behind significant innovations until the Vietnam War. These include radar, turbojet engines, jet fighters, battlefield artillery rockets, ballistic missiles, and human-carrying spacecraft. From the Vietnam War, America's aerospace industry was an unparalleled leader in innovation. Now, however, her adversaries are closing the gap quickly. He argues that if the US is to retain its edge, it must recognize the importance of technological investment.

"Chapter 2. American and NATO Airpower Applied: From Deny Flight to Inherent Resolve," by Benjamin Lambeth, examines Operation Deny Flight (1993), Operation Deliberate Force (1995), Operation Desert Fox (1998), Operation Allied Force (1999), Operation Enduring Freedom (2001), Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003), Operation Unified Protector (2011), and Operation Inherent Resolve (2014-2016).   It was a period in which the tactical application of airpower continued to climb to new heights, operations were conducted with almost blanket air superiority, while the strategic effects of airpower were more qualified.

Operation Deny Flight, NATO's first air campaign, came just after the apex of airpower's might in Desert Storm. It was meant to enforce a no-fly zone over Bosnia and support UN troops there. But it quickly became clear it bore the trademarks of other half-hearted air campaigns without a clear and achievable political directive. UN restraints meant NATO aircraft could do nothing that would influence Bosnian Serb behavior, and in the operation's two years, there were only four CAS attacks (out of more than a hundred requests) and five precision air strikes.[4] The operation, in Lambeth's words, "was reminiscent of every bad strategy choice the U.S. government made throughout its long and costly misadventure in Vietnam."

Operation Deliberate Force against Bosnian Serb targets was the next step in NATO's campaign to support UN peacemaking efforts in the Yugoslav civil war.  UN demands for total precision and minimal  civilian casualties led to a situation in which each intended strike was personally vetted by the campaign's air commander. Even in these constraining conditions, the operation succeeded in accomplishing specific objectives short of war.

Desert Fox, the four-day 1998 CENTCOM-led bombing campaign against Saddam Hussein's regime to punish him for failing to meet the demands of WMD inspectors, was undoubtedly a tactical success, with no loss of US aircraft or civilian casualties. Still, it is not clear what the successful military campaign was meant to accomplish. The word that repeatedly cropped up from the US government was "degrade" – Iraq's WMD capabilities and military apparatus – which is a nebulous, impossible-to-measure term. The operation was "uncoupled from any coercive demands on Saddam," according to analyst Kenneth Pollack.[5]

The 1999 campaign to stop Serbian abuses in Kosovo, Allied Force, started with high hopes, but with the Clinton Administration publicly ruling out a ground invasion.  It soon became clear, however, that Slobodan Milosevic was not about to change course easily, especially when he knew that a ground invasion was off the table, and his forces could easily disperse and hide from attack. Bombing intensified, and new targets like media, oil refineries, and bridges were added to the list. It took 78 days of bombing for Milosevic to agree to a peacekeeping force, but the role of airpower in brining about that desired result remained a question. Did the Serbs simply agree to a ceasefire once they had achieved their goals? Was it the threat of a NATO or Kosovo Liberation Army ground invasion that forced Milosevic's hand? American commanders weren't shy about airing their grievances. Adm. Leighton Smith Jr., NATO commander during Deliberate Force, said it was "possibly the worst way we employed our military forces in history." 

American and NATO airpower achieved unprecedented tempo and jointness during the Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns. But it seems that these Western powers failed to learn lessons from the conflicts. Operations Odyssey Dawn and Unified Protector in Libya led to the fall of Muammar Gaddafi, but the ongoing civil war that has followed is reminiscent of the highly effective air campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq that left chaos in their midst, and gave terrorist organizations territory from which to launch attacks. Without a willingness to use ground troops – which the Obama Administration had absolutely no appetite for – NATO had little means of steering the post-Gaddafi outcome.

The American-led air campaign against ISIS was even worse. Lambeth calls the operation "overly measured, and halting" with "a conspicuous lack of evident seriousness and senior leadership determination."[6] Like in 1998, the word "degrade" was expressed by the Obama Administration as the goal, which telegraphed "his unwillingness to pursue anything more than a minimalist response to the spread of ISIS." Lambeth argues that the campaign was "mindless target servicing" with no overriding strategic course of action or well-defined goal. Political control over targeting has also hampered America's ISR/Strike platforms, restraints that are "without a doubt the most obsessively restrictive of any air campaign ever fought by a U.S. coalition."[7] Once a new American administration was in place after the publication of the book, and the military was freed to conduct a more aggressive campaign in concert with a ground invasion led by the Iraqi Army, Shiite miitias, and Kurdish forces, the ISIS caliphate has been destroyed in Iraq.

Moving to the Israel Air Force (IAF), "Chapter 3. Modeling Airpower: The Arab-Israeli Wars of the Twentieth Century," by Alan Stephens, looks at Israeli airpower from 1948 until 1982. Stephens argues that Israel's consistent dominance over Arab adversaries stems from the formula identified by  the chief of staff of the world's first air force, the RAF's Hugh Trenchard: top-rate pilot's training, indigenous R&D, a skilled technicians corps, a strong national economy, and a quality educational system.

Several important points arise from the chapter. When Israel's enemies finally grasped they could not contend with the IAF in the air, they moved toward asymmetrical responses. These include hiding among civilians, developing rocket arsenals, tunnels, international terror, and more. In addition, we tend to think of air forces winning air superiority. The Yom Kippur War was a firm reminder that ground-based air defenses and armored formations can also control the sky.

Overall, this chapter doesn't offer much that is new to the Israeli practitioner. Moreover, the author's insistence on repeatedly accusing Israel of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in asides that don't have anything to do with airpower sticks out and only detracts from any argument he would like to make on airpower.

"Chapter 4. The Israeli Air Force and Asymmetric Conflicts, 1982-2014," by Raphael Rudnik and Ephraim Segoli (both former Dado Center researchers) is a crucially important chapter. It centers around dilemmas the IAF faced in adapting to an era of asymmetric wars after it had become a dominant force in fighting Arab states.

Many of the syndromes that affect the application of US airpower when it enjoys air superiority crop up in the Israeli case as well. Already by Operation Accountability in 1993, we see an aversion to ground invasion that became a decisive factor in campaign planning, the expectation that there would be minimal collateral damage, and micromanagement of tactical decisions by the political echelon which led to complications in carrying out attacks.

The authors argue very clearly that the senior leadership of the IAF – Eitan Ben Eliyahu, Dan Halutz, Amir Eshel - believed and argued openly that strategic air strikes could and should replace ground maneuver. The IAF also believed that it could become the leading service for the counterterrorism operations that Israel has fought since 2000. As the nature of Israel's campaigns changed, the air force displayed impressive intellectual and operational flexibility, even developing a concept for "holding territory" through sensors, which allowed it continuous observations of the battlespace.  

One is struck by the persistence of specific problems that resurface throughout the period. One is ongoing tension between Northern Command and IAF, which boiled over after the operations in Lebanon in 1993 and 1996. Northern Command felt the outcome strengthened and legitimized Hezbollah, while the IAF saw the air-led operations as highly successful.  The two bodies continued to talk past each other in 2006, and failed to engage in close planning and discussions, planning their missions almost independently.

Another problem that the IAF could not shake was the pattern of carrying out preplanned missions exceptionally well, but failing to follow up initial success. IAF operations in this period were marked by declining effectiveness after the initial strike.

A final challenge, and one that perhaps defines the IAF's struggle to this day, is the identification of viable targets despite consistently improving assault capabilities. This was evident in Operation Grapes of Wrath, and describes the rounds in Gaza as well. As Gen. Kobi Barak wrote in the Dado Center Journal vol. 11-12, "While we have improved the precision of our strike capability from GPS coordinates of eight digits to 10, 12, 14 even 15 digits (altitude), the enemy, in contrast, has succeeded in frequently escaping from these targets before they could be attacked. We destroy GPS coordinates, but struggle to hit the actual enemy."

The body of Airpower Applied is a useful reference for almost all the major operations undertaken by arguably the world's two leading air forces since the 1940s, with some useful commentary. But the most valuable analysis comes from the short afterword by Prof. Eliot Cohen. He recognizes the extraordinary military success that Israel and the US have achieved in the last seventy years, due in no small part to their air superiority. Cohen identifies the downsides of this success – that air superiority can cover up serious flaws, including logistical problems and unskilled ground forces. Moreover, he argues, it can make war seem easier than it is, and can give decision-makers an excuse to avoid the difficult and uncomfortable work of strategic thinking about objectives and how to achieve them. Much like the medic in basic training who offers Acamol and advice to drink more water no matter the problem, bombing can be seen as a cure-all for any "strategic ailment."

Cohen also points out that even with all that air superiority has done for Israel and the US, it was never able to deliver victory. Without ground troops seizing territory, or at least the threat of ground invasion, tactical success from the air did not turn into strategic success.

He argues that Israeli and American air superiority could be entering a period of growing challenge. Hezbollah UAVs and Hamas rockets have Israelis looking up again nervously; Chinese and Iranian surface-to-surface missiles threaten American air bases. Though air superiority will remain, air supremacy will not. The era of "airpower triumphalism" is over, writes Cohen, and now is the time for Western liberal democracies to continue to develop their technological and manpower edge for the new era.

Implications for the Future of Israeli Airpower

The values, economy, and technology of Western democracies have enabled countries like the US and Israel to build and maintain dominant air forces, based on skilled pilots, cutting edge systems, and massive government investment. But these Western societies have developed a characteristic that their enemies have taken notice of, and seek to exploit. Somali militia leader Mohammed Farah Aideed told an American official, "We have studied Vietnam and Lebanon and know how to get rid of Americans, by killing them so that public opinion will put an end to things."[8] Saddam Hussein ("Yours is a society which cannot accept 10,000 dead in one battle.") and Slobodan Milosevic (NATO is "not willing to sacrifice lives to achieve our surrender.") both thought they were immune because of Western sensitivity to casualties.

While they certainly were not immune, they were correct that America and its allies prioritized minimizing casualties, and prefer airpower-heavy campaigns in which they enjoy total air supremacy.

Israel's enemies have reached the same conclusion. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah pins his strategy in a future conflict on causing heavy casualties to IDF soldiers and Israeli civilians.[9] If Israel avoids ground maneuver and relies on airpower, Hamas and Hezbollah will present Israel with a dilemma. They will inflict pain on Israel's home front, while forcing Israel to inflict civilian casualties, and bear the brunt of international opprobrium.

Traditionally, air superiority has allowed Israel and the US to fight at the strategic level – by striking enemy C2 for example -  while the enemy is forced to try to gain victory while fighting at the tactical level. Allows us to fight at the strategic while forcing enemy to fight at tactical.  [10]  Now, Hamas and Hezbollah have flipped the script, and are increasingly able to fight at the strategic level with precision missiles while forcing Israel to try to string together a series of tactical successes  to stop them.

Facing this challenge, Israel's aversion to casualty-heavy ground maneuver has pushed it into operational concepts that reduce the effectiveness of both airpower and ground maneuver. Airpower can play an important role in defeating Hamas and Hezbollah, but not in isolation from other coercive instruments.[11] Airpower is far less successful when used alone, and measured through a binary lens. In Israel's coercion operations, it must be used synergistically with other forms of pressure, and measured as a component of a multi-faceted campaign.[12]

Israel must return to fundamental questions about airpower and air superiority. It must ask –  What does air superiority look like moving forward, and what exactly is it for? It's nice to fly above the enemy and "convert jet fuel into noise,"[13] but how exactly does the achievement of air superiority help Israel defeat the enemy's strategy?

Once Israel answers those questions, it needs political leaders who give clear objectives to the military, and don’t rely on airpower as a means of showing the public they are doing something without being certain what exactly they are trying to accomplish. Political goals like "degrading" and "improving deterrence" are indications of lack and determination at the highest levels, and point to an ineffective use of airpower in the absence of clear aims. Too often, airpower is seen as something like dating in the age of Tinder, "gratification without commitment," in the words of Eliot Cohen. [14]

"The power of an air force is terrific when there is nothing to oppose it," wrote Winston Churchill. Indeed it is. But that power won't lead to victory unless it is exploited by political leaders with the vision and the will to do so. 

 [1] Giulio Douhet, “Command of the Air,” in Command of the Air (Washington: Office of Air Force History, 1983), 25.

[2] COL Phillip S. Mellinger, "10 Propositions Regarding Air Power,"  Air Force History and Museums Program, 1995, pg 9 . .

[3]  Mellinger, "10 Propositions Regarding Air Power," pg .4.

[4] John Andreas Olsen ed., Airpower Applied: U.S., NATO, and Israeli Combat Experience, (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2017),  127.

[5] Olsen, Airpower Applied, 142.

[6] Olsen, Airpower Applied, 181.

[7] Olsen, Airpower Applied, 189.

[8]Daniel L. Byman & Matthew C. Waxman, "Kosovo and the Great Air Power Debate", 24(4) Int'l. Security 5 (2000). Available at: https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/2255  

[9]Ron Ben-Yishai, "Hezbollah's strategy: Rockets on Tel Aviv, raids on Galilee," Ynet, November 2, 2013. https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4343662,00.html

[10] Mellinger, "10 Propositions Regarding Air Power," pg. 10.

[11] Byman & Waxman, "Kosovo and the Great Air Power Debate", Int'l. Security.

[12]Byman & Waxman, "Kosovo and the Great Air Power Debate", Int'l. Security.

[13] Olsen, Airpower Applied, 128.

[14]  Eliot A. Cohen, "The Mystique of U.S. Air Power," Foreign Affairs, January/February 1994. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/1994-01-01/mystique-us-air-power