CURSE YOU, RED BARON – UNDERSTANDING MODERN AIR COMBAT
Following my article on the India versus Pakistan long range air battle, I decided to make a deeper dive into the subject of air superiority to give TTP readers some better context for what that article discussed, and also to discuss air combat more broadly.
Between old movies and a lack of public information, one might assume that air warfare now might be similar to that of World War Two.
America’s sixth-generation fighter, the F-47, is rumored to be costing up to $300 million dollars for a single aircraft.
That’s on par with a small warship in cost. We have already planned sales of it to allies to make it cheaper, i.e. production of more of these planes lowers costs (?)
Now of all times, Americans need a working knowledge of this subject.
What is all this stuff?
How does it work?
Why does it matter?
Is air combat like those movies?
Why is it so expensive?
And will Snoopy ever beat the Red Baron?
First, let’s talk about “airspace.”
For your security, you want to control your own, and the airspace over any national interest you have.
In a war, you want the enemy’s airspace under control, too.
We call this “dominance,” the ability to control our own signals and objects in this domain and interdict those of a hostile power.
Airspace starts literally at the height of your lawn and goes all of the way up to beyond the Karman Line at 62 miles for practical purposes, where space begins.
From the ground to 5,000 feet, we have the domain of specialized attack aircraft, small planes, helicopters, and increasingly- the small drone.
It’s hard for the big airshow aircraft to operate down here, and it’s prime for those drones.
The secret is out. It’s dirty down here, with lots of obstacles and ground fire.
Enemy troops will seek promotion by shooting down your helicopter with their non-sporting rifle.
From 5,000 feet to 50,000 feet, this is where traditional military aircraft prefer to stay unless they are taking off, landing, or attacking something on the ground.
Up here, you worry about other aircraft and purpose-built anti-aircraft guns and missiles, as well as the environment—it’s getting cold and life-giving oxygen wanes.
Deadly hypoxia becomes a risk; those skies above are not friendly. But they are vital. Control this area, and you can fill the sky with aircraft that can pulverize anything below.
Once we get to over 50,000 feet to the Karman Line of space, we’re in a very hostile environment that’s got fewer occupants.
Jet powered aircraft rarely go above 60,000 feet, with the famous SR-71 Blackbird operating around 87,000 feet in its time.
Real outliers, such as the experimental X-15 rocket aircraft, managed 67 miles in 1963. Up here, air pressure decreases and conventional jet engines, aircraft control surfaces, and airframes have less air and pressure to fly with.
The space without any air above the Karman Line is important. It’s full of our satellites.
Without all of our satellites up there functioning, much of the day-to-day and military ability we and other countries have to navigate, control our weapons, communicate, and sense what is happening in the air or on the ground below could be taken down.
If a war starts and countries start plinking the other’s satellites, it will be a monstrous, expensive mess that will take years to recover from.
Whoever controls space can hold everything below hostage, and this will only become more true as time goes on.
The Aircraft:
Helicopters and drones most drones are smaller, harder to detect, and specialize in operating at very low altitudes.
Drones can hover, hide in ground clutter, and go into enclosed spaces.
They are fast, cheap, can be remotely flown, and are showing up in great numbers.
Operating them—or helicopters, which are much bigger but still operate close to the earth—requires a playbook different from that used for bigger “fixed wing” jets or propeller-driven aircraft mentioned earlier. Those other aircraft are…
Fighters (F/A-18, F-15, F-16, F-22)
Originally called “pursuit” planes, the fighter started as a fast and maneuverable gun-carrying plane that could bring its armament to bear quickly on an enemy and destroy them.
These got better and better, particularly with the jet engine and radars.
With the arrival of the guided missile, and cost cutters who hate a plane that only does one thing, these have evolved into “multi-role” aircraft that do everything, not just fight other planes. But they still get called fighters.
Speed and maneuverability still help you put guns or missiles on a target faster, but the latest missiles can actually fly off the launching plane and chase a target at an extreme angle… cued by the pilot’s helmet visor or their radar.
When at longer ranges, the electronics and missiles on these planes do most of the fighting.
Up close, traditional fighter pilot skills and fighter characteristics are still important in order to win the air battle, but getting close is getting more and more dangerous with these newer missiles.
When you don’t even have to point the fighter’s nose at the other plane, someone wins quickly and someone else dies.
Bombers (B-1, B-52, B-2)
The major powers still have them. These are purpose-built planes to release bombs and (later) missiles over or at a distant land or sea target.
They can do tremendous damage if they can be protected or undetected long enough to release their weapons.
Our most famous example is the old “Stealth” B-2, with the B-21 Raider replacing it.
Support aircraft (RC-135, KC-135, C-130, C-5, C-17)
These include tankers that can refuel other planes and helicopters.
Also important are airborne command-and-control, electronic warfare, and intelligence aircraft, and cargo planes that haul war material.
These tend to be slower, unarmed, and sitting ducks if successfully targeted.
Slickly named others, and specialized aircraft:
Navy F/A-18 Hornet designations mean “fighter/attack.”
A-10 Thunderbolts are specialized ground-attack planes that perform “close support” for ground troops.
The F-111 Aardvark, which turned into the FB-111, started off as a fighter (it was terrible) and became a bomber that had its most famous mission over Libya in 1986.
Which brings us to the weapons they carry.
Guns
Machine guns are still used on helicopters.
For “fighters,” automatic cannons in the 20-to-30-millimeter range are standard.
The six-barreled U.S. M-61 Vulcan is standard on U.S. fighters and can dump 100 cannon shells a second into a target. Certain whiz kids think missiles will someday replace guns, but it hasn’t happened and probably won’t.
Missiles
They are tiny aircraft launched by bigger aircraft.
They have limited fuel and their ability to reach a target is dictated by speed, maneuverability, where they took off from relative to the target, and how well they navigate.
They come in different sizes and the best ones are also the most expensive ones—you don’t want to waste them. Cheap ones are $500,000 a shot.
Air to air missiles are guided by their own small onboard radar, the radar of the launching aircraft by data link, reflected lasers, or a thermal seeker that homes in on the infrared radiation of the target.
Like the missiles themselves, countermeasures to stop them constantly evolve.
Certain lasers can blind an infra-red guided missile seeker.
Any electronic signal can be jammed, deceived, or even hacked with a plane’s electronic countermeasure pods.
Some radars can be used to attack a missile’s electronics, or the launching aircraft’s systems.
Infrared-guided air to air missiles (called “heaters”) can be deceived by flares, decoys, weather, rapid maneuvers, background radiation on the ground, and by reducing the thermal radiation an aircraft emits- like with special paints.
Radar-guided missiles can be defeated similarly; jammed or decoyed, or confused by ground clutter or expended “chaff” material that reflects radar waves like electrical snow.
Better electronics are smarter at ignoring the tricks.
Missiles that are fired at land or sea targets home in like guided bombs (below), use inertial navigation systems, radar, or infrequently infra-red seekers.
Guided bombs
The U.S. and its allies use the JDAMS, which uses GPS signals to steer a bomb to a point.
Israel does it also with their SPICE system.
Older and still useful bombs include TV guided, laser-guided, and thermal seeker head guided bombs that home in on or are guided to a target image.
Some can self-guide. Other times, it helps to have a second crew member on the plane.
This guidance is a force multiplier just like with missiles, and makes a bomber hundreds of times deadlier than the ones in World War Two.
A B-52 can fly over an area and chuck out 70,000 pounds of guided bombs that will find their points of aim to within 6 feet. Get a B-52 over your head, and this is the end of your battle. Your only possible chance will be to hide in a cave while the rain of bombs decimates your force.
Picking a fight with a power that has air superiority over you is a bad idea; Palestinians and Hezbollah and Iran, we’re looking at you all.
Unguided rockets and bombs. The first types of launched air weapons.
They work as long as you aim well. Unlike the guided weapons, these can’t be jammed. Most everything else—including GPS systems—can be.
All of these aircraft—in addition to worrying about the other side’s aircraft, need to worry about what we call anti-aircraft weapons.
These are land, vehicle-carried, and ship-based equivalents of the previously discussed weapons and go by names like “Triple-A” (anti-aircraft-artillery), “SAMs” (surface to air missiles), and SHORAD (short range air defense).
They are usually radar or infra-red guided with some having hybrid systems.
All are sufficiently lethal that if we’d gone to war with the Soviets in the late 1970s, they might have shot our entire air force down in thirty days unless we found game changers.
The Soviets and their disciples learned to combine all of these anti-aircraft systems into an air defense network with powerful radars.
One partial fix was “stealth” technology, which came out of research by a Russian scientist. We learned ways to reduce a plane’s radar visibility (radar cross section—RCS).
You usually can’t erase your signature, but you can make it harder for radars to see and follow, particularly in a sky full of jamming, radar chaff, and decoys.
Another enabler was hard won experience, research, and development in electronic warfare.
With stealth technology and electronic superiority, our warfighters learned to bring different aircraft, electronic systems, space assets, and intelligence assets working together to defeat air defenses.
The path was lubricated by a lot of spilled American blood, and blood of our allies, in the twentieth century’s wars and hard work between them.
The culmination of these efforts was seen in the successful 1991 Gulf War air campaign.
What comes out of this?
Simply, the side that does all of this stuff better can target the enemy’s air assets and clear the skies of them, and then proceed to piecemeal whatever is on the ground or in the sea below.
The seat of purpose is down there. Air is just air. The whole point is to control what’s beneath it.
The fighters and multi-role aircraft clean up the skies and get rid of the enemy with support assets helping.
Once the aerial enemy is beaten back, the bombers can bomb and the fighters that are multi-role can spend more time hitting things on the ground or sea.
This culminates with only your aircraft over the battlespace, which really helps your ground forces take that ground or your naval vessels to take control of the sea.
But… there is always a “but”….
Most of this picture right now was painted in the last century with legacy systems, planes, and tactics that originated there.
The pinnacle U.S. F-15 first flew in the 1970s, as did the F-16.
The B-52 has been around since 1947 and has been upgraded.
Due to rapidly changing technology and limited government budgets, the equations of what works best are still evolving, but until the Ukraine War, they appeared to just be an outgrowth of what was.
And suddenly, everything changed.
Remember those pesky little drones that merited only a mention earlier in this article? They are changing warfare.
It may be impossible to make cool fighter pilot movies due to them if something doesn’t give.
The Ukraine War showed that everything about warfighting—everything, is evolving; perhaps faster than the old traditional powers can keep up.
Drones are observing the battlefield, finding the enemy, and acting like guided missiles; attacking literally everything that the enemy has without air strike plans, air tasking orders, or “bomber generals.”
They are flying into big airplanes on their base runways and destroying them.
They are targeting individual tanks and troops; even flying right into the foxholes and vehicle hatches.
They can spot for artillery way faster than humans can.
They are so small they evade most large sensors and anti-aircraft systems.
All of the great powers are spending late nights at the drawing boards trying to figure out what to do about these threats.
The Ukrainians couldn’t be bothered that air wars are supposed to be fought by big Cold War legacy air forces, and Russia’s low aircraft numbers meant they went drone shopping too—in Iran, of all places.
The Ukrainians and Iranians are turning drones out in massive numbers in underground workshops.
And the mayhem is everywhere.
Drones are taking off, going where they please, and either ramming into whatever they were aimed at or dropping a bomb on it.
Just try asking Kenny Loggins to make a soundtrack for that. These drones can do things that other aircraft cannot, and those other aircraft and defenses designed to stop bigger aircraft can’t stop them effectively.
No one is safe.
So far, these drones still aren’t able to deliver massive firepower as quickly as traditional air forces, nor control the upper portions of the airspace.
Big air forces can destroy a lot of stuff a lot faster than drones can, so the traditional planes and weapons still matter.
But everyone knows these tiny, remotely-flown or soon to be automated drones are getting more lethal, and are going to stay around and fill important niches, even as major powers go into a full court press to find ways to stop them or limit their influence.
What will air combat look like in ten or more years?
The powers that figure out the right answer will reap great rewards.
And the rest—and their citizens—will discover that everyone is a target in an air war.
Mark Deuce has had a life-long career in community law enforcement. He is the author of Deuces Wild for TTP.