The history of air warfare is, almost by definition, one of unprecedented change. Only one hundred years ago, the Schneider Trophy was still the cutting edge driver for aeronautical challenge, and the silver biplanes of the RAF were utterly recognisable from the recent world conflict which was still shaping emerging air power doctrine. Today, the effects of another major European conflict are similarly shaping doctrine, requirements, and procurement decisions. As we await the outcome of the UK Government’s Strategic Defence Review, it is vital that right lessons are learned for modern Air Force operations and procurement, particularly that a proper understanding of modern air power is at the centre of the Review and resulting decisions.
Air Power vs Power from the Air
There is no doubt that the Ukraine conflict has fundamentally challenged assumptions about all forms of warfare, as the West’s training and technology comes into collision with a Russian Army that seems, in the early stages at least, to be fighting in much the same way as 1945, and a Russian Air Force that seems, again in the early stages at least, to be incapable of modern complex air operations.
Nor is there any doubt that the unstoppable march of technology has made its mark: “drones” have come of age after years on the periphery of warfare, and much is written about their potential for the future. That potential – indeed the reality – is clearly huge: the combination of unmanned aircraft and artificial intelligence will change warfare forever.
But it is important that we do not draw the wrong lessons from the conflict. There are plenty of those who say that “it is all about drones now”, that we need masses of cheap, off the shelf drones to flood a battlespace as we have seen the Ukrainians do. They further argue that procuring expensive, larger aerial platforms is an outdated mode of operating - simply investing in the past, listening only to fighter pilots who cannot face the reality that they are no longer needed.
This is an overly simplistic view. It stems from the age-old, but fundamental, failure to understand what air power is, conceptually, and what it offers. Above all, it is a misunderstanding of the difference between the tactical and the strategic: that air power is not the same as power from the air. As we move through the SDR into a world fundamentally reshaped by a major recent battlefield, it is vital that the basic lessons of airpower doctrine are retained, and vital that it is at the centre of the UK’s future defence posture.
The circumstances of the Ukraine war are, to an extent, unique. Both sides have failed to establish lasting air superiority, due to the effective use of advanced ground-based air defence systems - both the highly effective Russian systems on one side and the Western-supplied equivalents on the Ukrainian. These have significantly limited the operational freedom of both air forces.
Consequently, both sides have been required to fight in a way that is highly attritional, necessitating the use of vast numbers of low-capability, highly-attritable air platforms that can operate in a GPS-denied environment with a very high likelihood of elimination. In other words, neither side has chosen to fight in that way as a matter of strategic doctrine. They have been forced to fight that way because they have no other choice: because air power has been absent.
It does not follow that this is a likely outcome of a future peer conflict for the UK or NATO allies, and it most certainly does not suggest that it is desirable. Western militaries have long operated with the cornerstone of their strategic doctrine being the assumption of achieving rapid air superiority. The Ukraine conflict’s appalling attrition horrifically illustrates the profound operational constraints faced and consequent inevitable losses when air superiority is unattainable. Should NATO forces be unable to suppress enemy air defences to enable operation according to their doctrine, it would necessitate a comprehensive restructuring of forces, tactics, and operational planning. Changing to such a method of warfare would certainly entail huge increases in personnel and equipment to compensate for the absence of air dominance. From a political perspective, the inevitability of huge casualties in protracted conflict that would result would surely be politically and socially intolerable to Western publics, accustomed to the relatively low-cost engagements of recent decades, and with a very different attitude to the sanctity of human life than our adversaries.
Therefore, maintaining and developing the highest capabilities to secure and maintain air superiority under which Western armies can operate – not living in a dreamworld of vast armadas of cheap attritable drones alone – remains not only a tactical imperative but also a strategic and political necessity. That is what is at stake if we do not properly understand and invest in air power. But we must never lose sight of the operational benefits that full spectrum air power offers as distinct from mere power from the air. The argument that aerial warfare is shifting entirely towards drones is a fundamental misreading of the difference between tactical and strategic air power.
There is no doubt of the extraordinary role that drones now fulfil, but that is, as yet, largely tactical in nature. Indeed, they excel in ISR, targeted strikes, and attritional warfare against static or lightly defended targets. They add an area of operational threat – such as we see with the pursuing of individual Russian troops – that has not been present before. It is also the case that there has to be a cold hard appraisal of the survivability of crewed tactical platforms (and this applies to NATO’s A-10s and Apaches, as much as it does to the Ukraine conflict’s Ka-52 Alligators and Su-25s), but the application of tactical air support is wholly different from strategic air power.
Air power provides decisive strategic advantages that – certainly at the moment – extend far beyond the capabilities of drones. Properly used, it can deliver air superiority, plus freedom of action for ground and naval forces, while denying the same to the enemy. Moreover, air power provides strategic deterrence, projects power at range and can even influence an opponent’s decision-making before conflicts even begin. Sustained, integrated, high-end strategic air power is rapid, flexible, and scalable. With it, you are able to deliver precision strikes, deep penetration into hostile territory, and sustained operations over vast distances. Crucially, air power enables multi-domain integration, linking air, land, sea, space, and cyber capabilities into one cohesive force. High-end, strategic air power confers the ability to dominate the battlespace, dictate tempo, and impose unacceptable costs on an adversary in ways that drones alone cannot achieve. More significantly, those who propose the “drones over everything” argument fail to account for the highly contested environments that we will see, where adversaries deploy advanced jamming, satellite denial, air defences, and counter-UAS systems that can neutralise swarms of low-cost drones.
Therefore, while drones will continue to play an ever more important role in modern warfare, they are complimentary to, not a replacement for, much more complex and capable “traditional” crewed platforms. They must be part of multi-domain forces, not a replacement for high-end combat aircraft, including electronic warfare assets as part of the package, all as part of a comprehensive air superiority strategy. The future of air power lies in integrated, multi-platform warfare, not a one-dimensional focus on cheap, disposable assets. They key to getting this right is understanding that taking the pilot out of such a high-end platform does not render the platform cheap or disposable. The cost comes with the capability.
So, the first requirement for the SDR must be a clear-sighted understanding of what air power as a strategic concept is, of the operational benefits that it brings, and how it is essential that the West continues to fight with it as an integral part of its force structure and concept of operations.
What Needs To Be Done Right Now?
Once we have accepted the need for air power not power from the air, we have to consider how we secure it. At the outset, it is essential to distinguish between the near-term and the longer-term, given the strategic circumstances that are more pressing than at any time since the 1930s.
In the short term, the increased money promised for European defence budgets must go to upgrading and making the absolute most of the fleets that we already have. Over the next two to three years, there may be too little time to bring on wholly new capabilities, never mind totally new platforms. Western air forces need to buy ammunition, spares, streamline and expand the output of maintenance contracts for the key fleets that are going to be the mainstay of any fighting output over the next few years.
To take a look specifically at the UK: focusing on maximising the combat power of the current Typhoon and F-35 inventory must be the immediate and urgent focus rather than waiting for future platforms. Above all, this means prioritising weapons integration, particularly stand-off munitions like SPEAR 3, to enable UK aircraft to engage high-threat targets from safe distances. Enhancing currently highly limited Suppression and Destruction of Enemy Air Defences (SEAD/DEAD) capabilities is critical, given the increasing reliance of adversaries on layered air defence networks - and given, as we have seen above, the existential challenge that this has faced to air power and to the West’s concept of warfare in Ukraine. Additionally, improving logistics, sustainment, and maintenance capacity would ensure higher aircraft availability than we have seen in some fleets in recent years.
Investing in advanced pilot training for high-intensity, integrated combat operations is another step that could and should be taken across NATO right now, to ensure crews are prepared for the challenges of contested airspace operations after years of air policing and close air support against low-tech adversaries. To bridge this proficiency gap, air forces (or in reality, the politicians for whom reaching for the grey-tail throttles is an ever-present temptation) should reduce discretionary commitments – such as counterterrorism deployments and diplomatic missions – which currently stretch resources thin. This realignment would allow for focused, large-scale warfighting training essential for maintaining readiness against high-threat scenarios.
Which links to the urgent need for increased specialisation across NATO members. Maintaining pilot proficiency across multiple mission sets is becoming increasingly challenging due to the demands of fast-jet operations and the complexity of modern multi-role aircraft, particularly the training demands. At the same time, the high cost of advanced munitions, particularly those needed for Suppression and Destruction of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD/DEAD) and long-range precision strikes means that simply trying to maintain full-spectrum capabilities across all nations may well now be unsustainable.
Instead, we should see a strategic return towards mission specialisation, where different European air forces focus on specific roles (such as the RAF’s air superiority prowess that was once so highly valued by the USAF), enabling more efficient resource allocation and improving overall readiness. To enable this, we should see enhanced coordination and burden-sharing across NATO to ensure that the alliance fields a well-balanced and effective force rather than duplicating efforts too thinly across multiple members.
Then there are critical enablers, without which no discussion of air power is complete. Logistics and aerial refuelling are essential to sustaining air operations, even over the European continent, to allow aircraft to project power over vast distances and remain on station. Advanced command and control systems and intelligence are the utterly essential prerequisite of any modern air campaign, ensuring that forces operate with real-time situational awareness and coordinated precision. As we have covered, airborne electronic warfare and suppression of enemy air defences (SEAD) will be ever more pivotal in contested environments. Space is now a critical operational domain in its own right, with satellite communications, early warning systems, and space-based ISR playing an increasingly central role in modern warfare – and rightly being recognised in armed branches of their own. These enablers are the foundation upon which air power rests, and it is vital that the SDR invests in them.
Finally – and this applies across the whole of European NATO as much as it does to the UK – it is imperative to address the vulnerability of air bases. The UK’s Main Operating Base Concept – in which decades of efficiency-led consolidation has led to the entire air mobility fleet being located on one runway, and the strike fighter fleet on five across three sites, and with inadequate hardened shelter capacity – is enough to keep anyone who cares about air power awake at night, given those few runways will all be “day one” targets for long-range strikes in any future conflict. Yes, the RAF and partner nations are working out ACE – Agile Combat Employment – concepts as we speak, but these must advance way beyond photoshoots of Typhoons on Norwegian roads. Winston Churchill once wrote “Strange as it may seem, the Air Force, except in the air, is the least mobile of all the services. A squadron can reach its destination in a few hours, but its establishments, depots, fuel, spare parts, and workshops take many weeks, and even months, to develop.” With what confidence could we truly say that those words are no longer true?
…and Next
If the SDR directs these steps to be taken in the near future, then we will be in as good place as we can be to face any threat in the next two to three years. But that does not mean that the work to develop effective air power in the decades to come can be allowed to lay in the bottom drawer. We need to continue to work on the new platforms, and we need to understand what kind of air power we need.
The first step is to understand what kind of war we are likely to face, and where. The American pivot to the Pacific is driven by strategic necessity and so will be the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) platform that – after some pausing recently – appears still to be being developed to meet it.
That is likely to be a large, oversize platform to meet those strategic needs. The vastness of the Pacific theatre requires crewed sixth-generation aircraft to offer a combination of range, stand-off payload, and stealthy operational flexibility that is essential for sustaining power projection over such distances. Moreover, having a person on board will allow an element of crucial redundancy: to allow for real-time decision-making in highly contested environments where electronic warfare and jamming will be trying to disrupt uncrewed systems. Furthermore, through a political and strategic perspective, the presence of such platforms – in a region where air superiority and strategic reach are critical – serves as a strategic deterrent, reinforcing the West’s ability to project power and reassure allies. So simply investing in such platforms will be key to maintaining stability and security for the US and her allies.
For all that Europe – and the UK in particular – may wish to be present for political reasons in the Pacific, the specific demands of air power in that vast theatre may well require an acceptance that the European NATO allies look after Europe whilst the Americans take on the Pacific.
The European theatre’s strategic challenges are different – to an extent – because of the greater ability to disperse forces across multiple airfields, relatively close to the targets, even keeping tanker lines well away from trouble. All of this makes interlinking systems between a greater number of platforms easier than in the far wider Pacific. But even then, we have to assume massive degrading of airfield capabilities on day one, so the dispersed operation options – Saab Gripen-style – considered above are of paramount importance not just for operations but for platform design.
But in both cases what will certainly be a heavily contested electronic warfare environment militates to some crewed capability certainly being required with integral AI and spiral development requirements, putting the UK’s GCAP / Tempest programme in precisely the right spot. Again, drones are an essential component of the future air power picture, but they must be seen as complimenting, not replacing manned options, for all that the USAF’s consideration of CCA’s for homeland defence illustrates the way in which these systems can augment capability and increase mass.
And How Do we Get There?
But all of this is a pipedream unless we have a laser focus on the steps that must be taken in order to create this wide, high-end capability.
Most obviously, this means getting the procurement right. As the House of Commons Defence Select Committee (HCDC) heard when I was a member, the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP) must avoid the pitfalls that plagued Typhoon: delays, cost overruns, and export restrictions. The 2035 in-service target is ambitious, and meeting it will require empowered delivery structures, committed multi-year funding, and a clear export strategy to keep costs under control and sustain the UK defence industry. Critically, it must build in “spiral upgrades” from the beginning, allowing it to enter service in a “good enough for now” configuration but making ongoing upgrades as easy and quick as possible to keep pace with the breathtaking trajectory of technological change. We cannot allow bureaucratic inertia and fragmented decision-making to take hold. Only in this way can we get what we need: a GCAP that will be delivered on time, on budget, and with the agility to evolve alongside emerging threats.
Equally, the new UK government must commit to the Integrated Procurement Model, a fundamental shift in the UK’s defence acquisition strategy, building on years of investigation and reporting from the HCDC and others. It aims to break the cycle of years of failed procurement strategies by accelerating the delivery of military capabilities by fostering earlier and deeper collaboration between military and industry. By involving end-users from the outset, the IPM is set up to ensure that equipment is tailored to operational needs, reducing delays and cost overruns. The new government must fully commit to this model to avoid past procurement inefficiencies and to deliver cutting-edge capabilities on time and within budget.
This will be vital to ensure the industrial capacity without which no air power concept for the future can take flight. And behind all of this is the critical importance of people and skills. The GCAP programme is about so much more than just a “thing with wings”. It is utterly essential to the UK’s industrial capacity, to the wider supply chain, and to the skills base without which the country will be utterly dependent upon others – like it or not.
And as would be expected from an old lawyer, we need to do the work on the legalities and ConOps (Concept of Operations) that will be required in a new age of air power, as technology advances ever faster, and involves humans less and less. Clearly, the reliance on remote control makes systems inherently vulnerable to electronic warfare, jamming, and cyber interference. This is an existential threat to their effectiveness in the highly contested environments that we should expect to see. The obvious answer is to build in greater autonomy, to allow drones to operate without continuous human input: navigate in GPS-denied environments and make mission-central decisions in real time. However, we are only in the foothills of addressing the profound legal and ethical dilemmas posed by true operational autonomy, not least because there is no fully fleshed-out ConOps in place among NATO Air Forces for their use.
To give this a bit of colour: consider who is responsible when an AI-driven drone makes a lethal mistake? Or how do we ensure compliance with international law when human oversight is reduced or removed? As autonomy advances, policymakers and military leaders – and, yes, the lawyers – must navigate these challenges carefully, balancing the operational advantages of autonomous systems with the imperative to maintain legal and political accountability alongside operational decision-making that is both ethical and effective.
Finally, interoperability and alliances are more important than ever. No NATO nation – with the possible exception of the US – can expect to fight a peer adversary alone, and the ability to integrate seamlessly with allies, both in terms of equipment and doctrine, is a fundamental requirement for credible deterrence and combat effectiveness.
On that note: I have not addressed the transatlantic travails of recent weeks in any detail. This is deliberate. There is no question that Europe and the UK must spend much, much more on defence. The recent move to 2.5% is an improvement, if nowhere near enough, but it may be all that the Government is able to deliver, politically, in the time available. A significant chunk of this must go on building and improving domestic defence industry. That is essential, because a Europe that is able to stand on its own two defensive feet is a Europe that will be able to reassure an America that is tired of asking for them to do more to provide for their own defence, only to be ignored. By spending more, and investing in our own industry and capabilities, not only will we be prepared for whatever cold winds blow from the East – particularly if America is distracted by the Pacific – but it makes it less likely that we will have to face them without our closest allies. It is difficult to see a world in which Europe can quickly replace American intelligence, command and control and logistics support, even if it wanted to, nor the unique capabilities and matured technology – not to mention the sheer mass – that is in the gift of America alone. But it should not want to, and should not try to. NATO, together, has unparalleled air superiority, particularly against Russia. For all the shocks of recent weeks, the strategic interests and commonality of culture and outlook between the North Americans, the Five Eyes and the Europeans are as one. In the face of a more challenging world than we have ever seen, and with unprecedented threats: the wings of the west must fly together.
