DRONES, THE AIR LITTORAL, AND THE LOOMING IRRELEVANCE OF THE U.S. AIR FORCE
DAVID BARNO AND NORA BENSAHEL
MARCH 7, 2024
SPECIAL SERIES - STRATEGIC OUTPOST
Today, the U.S. Air Force faces an almost-existential crisis. During the past several years, the service has been battered by the loss of its prestigious space mission to the nascent U.S. Space Force. It has also struggled to balance the continued acquisition of stunningly expensive new manned aircraft with the rapid developments in unmanned technologies, which are making pilots increasingly superfluous.
What a difference a few years makes. In 2016, we published a column entitled “The Catastrophic Success of the U.S. Air Force,” which argued that the service had completely dominated the air domain for so long that it was not fully prepared to fight a bloody war for control of the skies. But those days are long gone, thanks to the drone revolution.
The biggest problem facing the Air Force is that masses of uncrewed drones have now wrested command of the air away from manned aircraft in the skies above the modern battlefield. The drone revolution means that it will be very difficult, if not impossible, for the service to achieve air superiority in future conflicts — which has been the centerpiece of its mission for decades. Drones, not manned airplanes, now dominate the skies above ground forces fighting in Ukraine. The contested air littoral has emerged as a critical new subdomain of warfare. It stretches from the earth’s surface to several thousand feet, below the altitudes where most manned aircraft typically fly, and is now dominated by masses of drones. This is a paradigm shift of epic proportions, which will require the Air Force to fundamentally transform itself in a very short period of time.
https://warontherocks.com/2024/03/drones-the-air-littoral-and-the-looming-irrelevance-of-the-u-s-air-force/
