The inability of Russia, which has Europe’s biggest air force with roughly 600 warplanes, to operate freely over Ukraine has caused consternation not just for Vladimir Putin’s generals. It has also sparked concern among Western strategists, who have long planned on the assumption that they could gain and maintain control of the skies, protecting friendly troops and raining down bombs and missiles to defeat far larger enemy ground formations. During the two Gulf wars, for example, coalition aircraft penetrated Iraq’s integrated air defences and tore apart Saddam Hussein’s armoured divisions well before they could engage American or British ground troops. Yet now that anti-aircraft missiles have grown more effective, and at the same time small and cheap drones have proliferated across battlefields, some worry that the West’s dominance of the air may be coming to an end.

“In my three and a half decades in uniform, I do not think I’ve seen a more challenging strategic environment,” said Sir Richard Knighton, the head of the Royal Air Force (raf). “We largely enjoyed air supremacy…That is not going to be the case in the future.” This is of particular concern should America and its allies have to fend off an attack by China to take control of Taiwan or by Russia on a member of nato.

China and Russia both field complex, multilayered air-defence systems that stitch together a variety of advanced sensors and surface-to-air missiles (sams). Although such layered air defences date back to the cold war—and proved brutally effective in downing Israeli jets in the Yom Kippur war of 1973—newer digital technologies that allow radar to operate across multiple frequencies have improved detection ranges, including against stealthy aircraft. Longer-range missiles equipped with better guidance seekers can now threaten aircraft hundreds of kilometres away.

The smaller ones can stop, set up, fire and leave in a matter of minutes. Western air forces have struggled to defeat mobile air defences in the past. In 1999 dispersed Serbian sams proved a thorn in the side of nato aircraft, even downing a stealthy American f-117 Nighthawk. But now, rolling back air defences “the size, depth and complexity of those of Russia or China would most likely take weeks and possibly months of full-scale warfighting”, argues a report from the Royal United Services Institute (rusi), a think-tank in London.

To be sure, no defences are impenetrable. In October Israel is thought to have used stealthy f-35s to destroy Iran’s Russian-made sams, allowing strikes from missiles fired by non-stealthy planes. In a fight in the Pacific, America would probably defang Chinese air defences by assembling large “strike packages”. These would contain electronic attack planes and f-35s that would jam or hack radars and sam systems, opening a temporary corridor for long-range missiles or stealth bombers like the b-2 Spirit and the new b-21 Raider. Fighters would have to circle protectively. Yet America can no longer count on gaining “ubiquitous air supremacy for days and weeks on end”, said General David Allvin, the head of the us Air Force (usaf), earlier in 2024. Instead, strategists talk of gaining brief “windows of dominance”.

Even this would be beyond the capabilities of most other Western air forces, which are short of radar-homing missiles and the intensive training needed for suppressing enemy air defences. Were America to be distracted in Asia, or to refuse to come to Europe’s aid, Europe’s air forces would struggle to “establish air superiority over territory contested by Russia or any other state-opponent with mobile sams”, argues Justin Bronk of rusi.

Grounded

Equally worrying is whether Western aircraft would even survive the opening strikes of a war to get into the air to fight. Although outmatched in the air by Russia, Ukraine has nevertheless been able to use cheap drones to destroy Russian planes on the ground nearly 600 kilometres from Ukrainian-held territory. In October Iran lobbed ballistic missiles at Israeli air bases, damaging buildings, taxiways and runways. Finland and Sweden practise operating from dispersed and rugged bases, but their model is hard to copy. Many nato forces fly planes designed to operate from well-equipped bases.

The threat is particularly acute in the Pacific, where America has consolidated many of its planes at a small number of bases, such as Kadena in Japan or Andersen in Guam. A war game by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, an American think-tank, found that in a war over Taiwan, Chinese missiles would probably destroy hundreds of American, Japanese and Taiwanese planes on the tarmac. America wants to disperse its planes. But that would complicate logistics by requiring people, fuel and parts to be shuttled around the vastness of the Pacific.

If they do get airborne, America’s fighters, bombers and support aircraft would then have to contend with a stiff opponent. China’s air force is now thought to churn out stealth fighters faster than America does. Although the quality of Chinese pilots is debated, the radar and weapons bolted to their aircraft are increasingly seen as top-class. China fields “long-range air-to-air missiles that have a greater range than American missiles and continues to develop even more advanced capabilities,” notes the China Aerospace Studies Institute, a research arm of the usaf. China’s pl-17 for example, a 400km-range air-to-air missile, is designed to strike well beyond the front lines, turning American “enablers”, such as aerial tankers or command-and-control planes, into juicy targets.

All these threats come at a time when Western air fleets are stretched thin. nato air forces have shrunk since the end of the cold war (see chart). In theory, aircraft and the weapons they carry have become far deadlier, so fewer of them may be needed to strike a given number of targets. But many air forces, in a bid to cut costs, have followed that logic to the extreme, says David Hiley of Renaissance Strategic Advisors, a defence consultancy. “One of our greatest vulnerabilities is…too few aircraft [and] too few people to fly them.”

Between the end of the cold war and 2022, the number of fighters in the usaf fell from 4,321 to about 1,420, reckons the Mitchell Institute, a think-tank. That is well below what is needed, reckons General Mark Kelly, the recently departed head of usaf’s Air Combat Command. The Air Force is also weakened by dismal “readiness”, a measure of how many planes can fly. Decades of hard flying in the Middle East on constrained budgets have led to planes being cannibalised for spare parts. “We literally ate the muscle tissue of the air force,” the general lamented.

Squeezed defence budgets in Europe have cut air forces to the bone. A British parliamentary report from 2023 starkly noted that the “uk simply [has] too few combat aircraft to credibly deter and defend against aggression.” European air forces have also been tight-fisted about training for high-intensity missions. Some pilots fly a mere 80 hours a year, though nato stipulates that pilots need at least 180. The lack of a serious threat since the cold war’s end means exercises often emphasise “flight safety at the expense of pushing aircrew, aircraft and weapons systems to their limits”, notes Mr Bronk.

Meanwhile, the costs of buying and operating high-tech aircraft have ballooned. America’s f-35 programme, key to the modernisation of many nato and allied forces, is now more than a decade delayed and some $209bn over budget, according to the Government Accountability Office. Even souped-up versions of older models are pricey. The f-15ex, the latest variant of a fighter designed in the 1970s, will cost $90m compared with around $60m (adjusted for inflation) in 1998. Some worry that the cost of programmes in America and Europe to build sixth-generation fighters may be so prohibitive that only small numbers are bought.

Drone troopers

Some argue that stealthy jets are too expensive and should be replaced by swarms of cheap drones. Less drastic are plans to build cheaper uncrewed systems that could accompany a crewed fighter into battle. In April, the usaf awarded the first batch of contracts for its Collaborative Combat Aircraft (cca) programme, which will produce more than 1,000 advanced drones. Such drones ought to be what military types call “attritable”, meaning that they are cheap enough that they can be lost in large numbers. Their first iterations will probably perform basic tasks, such as scouting, refuelling planes or hauling air-to-air missiles that fighter jets would guide to their targets.

But the costs of even these seem to be inexorably rising. ccas need to be fast and have long ranges in order to keep up with crewed fighters. They probably also need some stealth to avoid detection. And they will need robust communication links that are not easily jammed. None of this is cheap. For now, the usaf wants to keep the price below $30m each, around a third of the cost of an f-35. That might be considered attritable—but only just.

Others think the West should instead embrace the small-drone revolution. The war in Ukraine has shown that small drones can challenge traditional notions of air power, wresting parts of the air away from manned aircraft, albeit at lower altitudes, contesting what some strategists are calling the “air littoral”. That might work over cramped battlefields in Europe or the Taiwan Strait, but small drones would lack the range to cross the Pacific, for instance.

Western air forces are still the best in the world. But they should brace for change. “The way air forces once looked at air superiority is no longer applicable,” cautions Greg Malandrino, a former us Navy fighter pilot now at the Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, an American think-tank. “The epic age of Western air dominance…has closed.” ■

Excerpts: The Economist