On 28 February 2026, Iran launched Operation True Promise-4, a wave of ballistic missiles and drones into Israeli airspace. The strikes were launched in response to US and Israeli attacks on Iranian territory and saturated some of the world’s most heavily defended airspace, making successful interception increasingly difficult for their adversaries.
Iran entered the war with the most sophisticated ballistic missile arsenal in the Middle East, including the solid-fuel Fateh family, the hypersonic-adjacent Fattah-1 and older Shahab-3 variants. It launched more than one hundred heavy missiles in each wave; analysts called it ‘volumetric saturation’ – overwhelming the target with more missiles than any interceptor network could handle. Israel’s Iron Dome, David’s Sling and long-range Arrow defence systems constitute one of the most multi-layered air-defence networks ever deployed. However, by the end of the conflict, Israel had reportedly used approximately 81 per cent of its Arrow interception units. This was not due to a failure of the system, but because no defensive architecture could withstand such saturation for an extended period.
It highlights two important concepts regarding military capacity: first, magazine depth, the number of missiles and interceptors a state can maintain in the fight; and second, magazine breadth, its ability to use a diverse mix of capabilities against different threats at varying costs. Iran’s mix of new and old missiles gave it breadth, and its repeated missile salvos tested the depth of Western interceptor stocks.
Iran’s missile strategy exemplifies both dimensions. Iran’s more recent solid-fuel rockets, such as the Fattah-1 and Kheibar Shekan, were intentionally integrated with older, low-cost liquid-fuel missiles. This was not redundancy; it was design and strategy. The newer missiles do not technically qualify as hypersonic glide vehicles, but their manoeuvrable re-entry vehicles can jink at speeds over Mach 5 during the terminal phase, making them difficult to intercept with systems like THAAD and Arrow. Legacy missiles, meanwhile, tend to serve as expendable decoys, compelling the defender to use high-cost interceptors against low-cost projectiles. Early March strikes against Tel Aviv and Ben Gurion airports, followed by salvoes over northern and central Israel, have been assessed by open-source intelligence to be fired from cluster-type payloads on systems like Khorramshahr-4. Reportedly, these systems can disperse about 80 submunitions over a broad area, a tactic that can maximise damage under strained interception capacity.
Even US air power was not completely out of reach. For instance, a US F-35 jet conducted an emergency landing after being hit by Iranian fire during a combat mission. Although Iran did not prevail militarily, it showed that a state that has faced decades of sanctions and lacks a sophisticated air force could still impose significant attritional pressure on a technologically superior coalition through saturation attacks and cost-imposition asymmetry.
A US Air Force F-35 Lightning II aircraft takes off during Operation Epic Fury, 30 March 30 2026. (Source: Wikimedia)
The clearest evidence lies in Washington’s own ledgers. During Operation Epic Fury, the United States launched over a thousand Tomahawk-class cruise missiles and up to two thousand advanced interceptors. Costing approximately USD 15.5 million per interceptor, THAAD was used at a rate of somewhere between 190 and nearly 290 units, accounting for more than half of the system’s pre-war national inventory. Before the war, there were reportedly just 3,000 to 4,500 missiles in reserve, suggesting that a substantial portion of America’s stockpile may have been used in a single war against a non-peer adversary.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio highlighted that Iran had manufactured more than a hundred missiles per month, while the US has been manufacturing no more than a handful of interceptors in the same period. The Centre for Strategic and International Studies now estimates that it would take until late 2029 to restore THAAD inventories alone. In fact, the Pentagon’s budget for fiscal year 2027 requests 785 more Tomahawks, an admission that the war was not a temporary inconvenience but a structural vulnerability. That vulnerability does not stay contained and the implications extend beyond the Middle East.
These depletions have also led the Pentagon to rethink its Taiwan contingency plan, as diminished stockpiles may not be enough to maintain deterrence in both theatres. Throughout this period, China has also been accelerating its missile arsenal and area-denial systems while keeping an eye on the numbers. Consequently, a war in the Middle East may have opened a new window of vulnerability in the Taiwan Strait where the US faces a more capable adversary.
Western military powers have treated technological superiority as a substitute for numerical strength, assuming future wars would be quick and precise. Iran’s asymmetric strategy has taken advantage of this illusion by making the war unsustainably expensive rather than defeating Israeli or American air power. The repeated interception of USD 50,000 drones with USD 2 billion interceptors represent a disproportionate response, as the employment of expensive platforms against a low-cost threat does not constitute a strategic success. Although the US-Israel war against Iran offered a glimpse of this reality, a war over Taiwan, against a substantially larger adversary, would strain the Western magazine depth within just days.
This experience highlights the problem of magazine depth and magazine breadth. Relying on a handful of expensive, high-end interceptors is dangerous, as sustenance and adaptability are becoming crucial in the modern era.
Future deterrence is likely to depend on a combination of magazine depth and breadth. Consequently, advanced interceptors and lower-cost kinetic systems, AI-based battle management, electronic warfare, directed-energy weapons, and other layered defences that can withstand saturation attacks will define the future of warfare. For the U.S., emergency procurement of interceptors and missiles is already underway with both RTX and Lockheed Martin, but this is unlikely to provide a viable solution because of long production lead times and industrial constraints. For instance, the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile could take approximately 36 months for its first delivery; Patriot and THAAD could take about three years of production lead time, and the Tomahawk cruise missiles are expected to be delivered in March 2030. Thus, rebuilding stockpiles would take a long time, requiring flexible defence-industrial capacity. Key requirements include the cost-exchange ratio of new-generation defence technologies, left-of-launch networks that neutralise missiles before they hit the launch pad, and allied industrial ecosystems that can rapidly replenish stockpiles during war.
In an era of contested aerospace dominance, the most advanced weapons alone do not guarantee air superiority and strategic success. Rather, outcomes are increasingly shaped by the depth of available stockpiles, the breadth of defensive options, and the industrial capacity to regenerate combat power during conflict.
Ayeza Areej is a researcher at the Centre for Aerospace & Security Studies. A Gold Medalist in Strategic Studies from the National Defence University, her expertise spans military strategy, air and missile power, defence modernisation, emerging technologies, nuclear security, and the Revolution in Military Affairs. She has previously been affiliated with the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad, the Islamabad Policy Research Institute, and The Truth International, and has contributed to initiatives led by the ICRC and WWF.
Header image: A Kheibar Shekan missile at the Sacred Defence Week parade in Tehran in 2022. The Kheibar Shekan is an Iranian solid-fuel medium-range ballistic missile operated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Aerospace Force. (Source: Wikimedia)
By Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Jackson, PhD, USAF, and Major (ret) Wael al-Taki, LAF
2 August 2014: Hundreds of Islamic State and al-Nusra Front militants stormed Lebanese Army positions in the Bekaa Valley, fifty miles east-northeast of Beirut. Under relentless fire, Lebanese troops conducted a fighting withdrawal, calling frantically for reinforcements. Amid the chaos, the militants captured 36 soldiers, brutally executing at least four.
High overhead, 1st Lieutenant Wael al-Taki peered through the infrared camera on a Cessna 208B Grand Caravan – the same single-engine turboprop used by FedEx for rural package delivery. The Lebanese Air Force operated two such aircraft, both modified with surveillance gear. Only one, however, could carry a pair of AGM-114 Hellfire missiles – the same laser-guided missiles used by Apache attack helicopters and Predator and Reaper drones.
The Cessna required a crew of three: two pilots and a mission systems operator (MSO). Yet shortages of trained personnel forced al-Taki to act as both pilot and MSO, moving to the back of the aircraft after take-off to operate the mission systems while Lieutenant C.Y. took the controls.[1] A brigadier general from the operations staff took the other pilot’s seat, relaying strike approvals from the operations centre in Beirut.
Below, the militants surrounded a company of Lebanese troops, their withering fire wounding several soldiers, including the deputy commander. The Cessna banked toward the firefight. Al-Taki gripped the hand controller, aligning the crosshairs with the enemy fighters. He fired the laser designator. He had never fired a laser-guided missile before. In fact, no one in the Lebanese Air Force had ever fired one in combat. “I was just thinking of the guys down there, that someone should save them,” he later recounted. He stole a quick glance out the window as C.Y. jammed his thumb down on the firing button. With a flash, the Hellfire streaked off the launch rail – and into history.[2]
Lieutenant al-Taki’s Hellfire was the opening shot in Lebanon’s three-year air campaign against the Islamic State, culminating in Operation Fajr al-Jaroud, or ‘Dawn of the Hills,’ in August 2017. During that same period, Operation Inherent Resolve, the US-led coalition’s campaign in Iraq and Syria, hammered the Islamic State and other militant groups with over 24 thousand airstrikes from hundreds of the world’s most advanced warplanes, including fourth- and fifth-generation fighters, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and stealth bombers.[3] The Lebanese air campaign was exceedingly modest by comparison, yet it successfully rolled back the Islamic State’s western flank. Ultimately, Fajr al-Jaroud continued a pattern established over the previous two decades: modest US security assistance, combined with the ingenuity of Lebanese aviators, enabled the Lebanese Air Force to prevail under challenging battles against violent extremist groups.
A Bell UH-1H Huey II from the 11th Squadron participates in an exercise on the Hannoush Range. (Source: Author)
Rebuilding the Lebanese Air Force
Founded in 1949, the Lebanese Air Force once operated modern jet aircraft, including the de Havilland Vampire, Hawker Hunter, and Dassault Mirage III. American assistance began during the Cold War, with the US Military Assistance Program delivering six Hawker Hunters in 1963. However, a brutal sectarian civil war from 1975 to 1990 left the air force in ruins, forcing the reconciled government to rebuild it from scratch.[4]
Lebanon occupies strategic – and treacherous – terrain, wedged between Syria and Israel. Though the civil war ended in 1990, Syrian troops continued to occupy much of the country’s north until 2005. Israel invaded four times between 1978 and 2024, occupying southern Lebanon from 1982 to 2000.
The US had straightforward goals for supporting the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) after the civil war: building a non-sectarian national military would strengthen national cohesion and counter the influence of sectarian militias like Hezbollah. ‘The LAF is a key institution of Lebanese statehood,’ declared US Ambassador Elizabeth Richards in 2016. ‘It is Lebanon’s sole legitimate defense force and an essential element in exerting the state’s authority throughout all of Lebanon’s territory.’[5]
Between 1996 and 2001, Lebanon acquired 24 Bell UH-1H Huey helicopters from the US, most of which had been in storage since the end of the Vietnam War. Initially relying on pilots who had trained in the US in the 1980s, the Lebanese Air Force assigned 12 of the helicopters to the 11th Squadron at Beirut Air Base, eight to the 10th Squadron at Klayaat Air Base, 55 miles north-northeast of Beirut near the Syrian border, and four to the 14th Squadron at Rayak Air Base, in the Bekaa Valley, 30 miles east of Beirut. These simple utility helicopters became the backbone of the Lebanese Air Force – and its only combat aircraft – until 2007.[6]
The first battle for the rebuilt air force erupted on 31 December 2000, in the rural Dinniyeh region near Lebanon’s northern border with Syria. Approximately 150 militants from the al-Qaeda-aligned group Takfir wal-Hijra attacked a military checkpoint, killing four soldiers and capturing two. The LAF immediately launched an operation to rescue the captives and eliminate the militants.[7]
Brigadier General S.Y., then a major in the 11th Squadron, recalled first learning of the attack while at a New Year’s Eve party with his squadron in Beirut. The festivities had begun winding down at four o’clock in the morning when the commander of the air force suddenly burst in, his face pale. “Return to base immediately!” he ordered. The men thought he was joking—or drunk. Frustrated, he bellowed for them to obey his orders at once. “We learned the hard way that he meant business,” S.Y. said.[8]
Two hours later, the major lifted off from Beirut, leading four Hueys north along the Mediterranean coast to reinforce the 10th Squadron at Klayaat Air Base, closer to the scene of the action. Upon arrival, they found the base buzzing with activity: Two companies from Lebanon’s elite Ranger Regiment had already arrived, along with two mechanised infantry companies and an armoured platoon. The LAF planned to deploy the Rangers to assault the militants’ mountain stronghold, while the mechanised infantry and armour secured Klayaat.
The helicopter force split into an assault group of eight and a reserve group of two, the latter consisting of one aircraft for medical evacuation (MEDEVAC) and another equipped with two 7.62-millimetre door guns for armed reconnaissance. In the afternoon, two 14th Squadron Hueys arrived from Rayak to reinforce the reserve group.
At nine o’clock in the morning, with temperatures hovering just below freezing, the assault group launched for the target area. Situated 5,200 feet above sea level, the high-altitude landing zones limited each helicopter to carrying only seven Rangers with their heavy gear, instead of the usual eleven. “Navigation to the landing zones was the hardest part, as the air force still used primitive methods in those days,” recalled S.Y. “Our best navigational equipment were the terrain maps provided by the directorate of geographic affairs.”
The assault group split into two elements, each led by a 10th Squadron pilot familiar with the terrain. “We flew nap of the earth,” said S.Y., “using the deep valleys and low terrain features to remain hidden from enemy observation.” The first element landed to the south and southwest of the target, while the second landed to the north. The Hueys then returned to Klayaat for another load. In total, they lifted approximately 200 soldiers onto the battlefield. The rapid encirclement enabled by air power allowed the Rangers to crush the militants in just forty-eight hours. The Lebanese Army lost 11 soldiers killed in action, including one of the men taken captive during the initial checkpoint attack.[9]
The Lebanese Air Force Adapts
The Hueys played a significant role in the LAF’s next major battle a little over six years later. On 19 May 2007, four armed men from the Sunni militant group Fateh al-Islam robbed a bank in the town of Amyoun, thirty miles north-northeast of Beirut, making off with $125,000 in cash. Lebanese paramilitary police quickly identified the militants and tracked them to a house ten miles to the north in Tripoli. A firefight erupted, soon spreading to the nearby Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp, which served as Fateh al-Islam’s headquarters. Hundreds of militants stormed LAF military posts and checkpoints in the area, killing thirty-two soldiers, most of whom were asleep in their barracks. The LAF launched an all-out effort to secure Nahr al-Bared and neutralise the militants, leading to a nightmare scenario of urban combat amid the camp’s ramshackle buildings and narrow alleyways.[10]
The Lebanese Air Force initially restricted its support to MEDEVAC and overhead surveillance. However, just two months before the battle, Lebanon had acquired nine Aérospatiale SA.342L Gazelle light attack helicopters for the newly established 8th Squadron. Armed with 68-millimetre unguided rockets, HOT guided antitank missiles, and .50-calibre machine guns, the Gazelles provided Lebanese ground troops with close air support for the first time.
The urban assault bogged down around the militants’ final position, a veritable fortress of concrete rubble. The Gazelles’ light weapons proved ineffective. With casualties mounting, the Lebanese Air Force adapted by jury-rigging three of its Huey utility helicopters as bombers.
The Lebanese Air Force had a stockpile of 500- and 1,000-pound bombs left over from the 1960s. Mechanics cannibalised bomb shackles and pylons from scrapped Mirage fighter jets and attached them to a steering rod from a decommissioned navy ship. To evenly distribute the weight across the cabin floor, they mounted the rig on an armoured plate salvaged from an inoperative M-113 armoured personnel carrier. Each heli-bomber could carry a single 1,000-pound bomb slung between the landing skids or a 500-pound bomb on either side. Mechanics lengthened the landing skids to ensure sufficient ground clearance.
The heli-bombers went into action on 9 August 2007. Using civilian Garmin 295 handheld GPS units to pinpoint their release points, the crews dropped dozens of bombs, blasting a path for the ground troops. The innovative air support helped bring the battle to an end on 7 September.[11]
The siege of Nahr al-Bared proved a formative experience for the LAF, underscoring the need to modernise the air force with fixed-wing aircraft capable of providing intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), target designation, strike coordination, and close air support. This set of requirements roughly aligned with what the US Air Force (USAF) defined as light attack armed reconnaissance (LAAR). The US government offered to assist in this effort, eager to prevent Lebanon from becoming another active battlefront in the Global War on Terrorism.[12]
In 2009, the USAF provided Lebanon with a Cessna 208B Grand Caravan, funded through grant aid. Orbital ATK (later acquired by Northrop Grumman) reconfigured the Caravan as an AC-208 Eliminator, equipping it with a Wescam MX-15 electro-optical/infrared camera system, a microwave broadcast system for real-time video transmission, a weapons-grade laser designator, an infrared laser pointer, a flare dispenser, and launch rails to carry an AGM-114 Hellfire missile under each wing. A second aircraft arrived on 6 November 2013, configured solely for reconnaissance and lacking missile rails. A third aircraft, featuring a more powerful engine and a digital glass cockpit, arrived on 19 December 2016. The Cessnas were assigned to the 4th Squadron at Beirut Air Base.[13]
The Lebanese Air Force still had a handful of senior fixed-wing pilots who had flown Mirages and Hunters. However, without a fixed-wing pilot training program, it sent young lieutenants abroad to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States for flight training. Upon their return to Lebanon, they completed a short Cessna training course provided by Orbital ATK. According to US Ambassador Elizabeth Richard, these pilots built a solid reputation. “The LAF is recognized in the US for the quality of the officers and soldiers it sends to our training and education programs,” she said. “Lebanese students routinely finish at the top of their classes, earning ‘honor graduate’ recognition.”[14]
In addition to the grant aid, the US embassy facilitated $1.9 billion in foreign military sales (FMS) to Lebanon between 2014 and 2020, including the purchase of six RQ-11 Raven small, hand-launched UAVs and 1,000 Hellfire missiles – items paid for with Lebanon’s own funds.[15] The Lebanese Air Force also bolstered its rotary-wing fleet, acquiring 24 additional UH-1H Huey IIs from the US and nine Aérospatiale SA.330 Super Puma utility helicopters, license-built in Romania by Industria Aeronautica Romana. The Super Pumas were assigned to the 9th Squadron at Hamat Air Base, located 30 miles north of Beirut.[16]
An Aérospatiale/IAR SA.330 Super Puma modified as a heli-bomber completes a rocket pass on the Hannoush Range. (Source: Author)
The Long Campaign
These modest modernisation efforts took place as neighbouring Syria spiralled into chaos. Protests against dictator Bashar al-Assad escalated into civil war and eventually gave rise to the Islamic State. More than one million Syrian refugees poured across the border into Lebanon, with at least 137,000 settling in camps within the Baalbek-Hermel Governate, Lebanon’s northeastern-most region. The town of Arsal, perched above the Bekaa Valley on the slopes of the Qalamoun Mountains, had the highest concentration of Syrian refugees of any municipality in Lebanon, with 39,300 registered in four camps.[17] On 1 February 2013, a patrol from Strike Force, Lebanon’s elite counterterrorism regiment, came under attack while chasing a wanted terrorist near the outskirts of the town. The ambush killed Captain Pierre Bachaalani and 1st Sergeant Ibrahim Zahrman and wounded many others.[18]
The LAF found it increasingly challenging to operate near Arsal. Al-Nusra Front, al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, used the town as a base for smuggling men, weapons, and equipment into Syria. The group began expanding its reach into the Bekaa Valley through a relentless series of deadly suicide car bombings and mortar and rocket attacks. Meanwhile, the Islamic State took control of the mountainous region east of Ras Baalbek and al-Qaa.[19]
On 2 August 2014, al-Nusra Front launched an attack on the 8th Mechanized Infantry Brigade’s positions near Arsal. Over the next five days, roughly 700 militants from al-Nusra and the Islamic State joined the battle, resulting in the deaths of 19 soldiers, the wounding of 86, and the capture of 36. Special operations forces from the Ranger and Air Assault Regiments quickly deployed to reinforce the embattled Lebanese troops.[20]
Stationed 30 miles southeast at Rayak, the 8th Squadron launched its Gazelle attack helicopters to assist, relying on satellite imagery printed from Google Earth to orient themselves to the battlefield. The commander of the air wing at Rayak led the first mission, his helicopter armed with two .50-calibre machine guns. “When we arrived in the area, we did not know which military positions had fallen and the extent of the enemy’s penetration,” recalled his copilot, Captain M.B.[21]
Spotting a group of armed men, but unsure of their identity, the wing commander dove in for a closer look. Bullets from a Russian-built PK machine gun raked the helicopter. A round tore through the cockpit, destroying the collective lever and spearing through M.B.’s left hand. “I started bleeding, losing large amounts of blood,” he recounted. The wing commander took control of the helicopter and flew straight to the Dar al-Amal Hospital near Baalbek, where M.B. received emergency medical care. The wing commander then returned to Rayak, only to find that he could not shut down the engine. A bullet had damaged the fuel controls, forcing him to wait for the helicopter’s fuel tank to run dry before it finally shut down.[22]
Meanwhile, at Beirut Air Base, 1st Lieutenant C.Y., a Cessna pilot with the 4th Squadron, received an urgent call from base operations ordering him to prepare his aircraft and crew—himself as pilot, Lieutenant al-Taki as pilot and mission systems operator, and a brigadier general from the operations staff to coordinate with the operations center. “A few minutes later, we were ordered to take off, destined for the outskirts of Arsal,” he recalled. Lieutenant C.Y. was already well-acquainted with the area, having frequently surveilled it since the ambush on the Strike Force patrol the previous year. Yet amid the chaos of the mass attack, the fog of war had set in. “The attack on the military centers happened suddenly,” said C.Y. “We did not have all the information on the disposition of military forces, especially after several fell into the hands of the terrorists.”[23]
Establishing radio contact with the ground troops, C.Y. and his crew began scanning the battlefield through their camera, watching as militants overran one post after another. The defenders executed a fighting withdrawal, buying time until reinforcements could arrive. In the summer of 2014, the 4th Squadron had only two Cessna 208s, and the second aircraft had yet to be retrofitted to carry Hellfire missiles. That meant C.Y. and his crew were flying the only armed fixed-wing aircraft in the country. While the United States classified the AC-208 as an inexpensive armed tactical reconnaissance aircraft, for Lebanon, it was a strategic asset. It would take more than an hour to land, rearm, and return to the target area, so they had to carefully balance their ability to deliver aerial firepower with the need to maintain continuous ISR coverage. “Our plane was equipped with two Hellfire missiles,” said C.Y. “We were careful not to use them unless absolutely necessary.”[24]
That moment came when the militants encircled a company of Lebanese troops, wounding several with their relentless fire. “We saw through the surveillance camera a group of about ten armed men preparing to storm the center from the rear,” C.Y. recalled, “so we decided to intervene.” Watching the Cessna’s live video feed from the operations center, the LAF director of operations, along with the army and air force commanders, gave the green light for a strike. It would be the first precision airstrike in Lebanon’s history.
C.Y. recounted what happened next: “We turned toward the target and launched the first missile, which took fifty-eight seconds to reach its mark, striking with precision and inflicting heavy losses on the attacking force.” The militants retreated into a nearby house. Circling overhead, C.Y.’s crew waited for them to regroup before launching the second missile. “We deliberately waited for all the terrorists to enter the building before firing,” he explained. “The Hellfire missile is most effective in enclosed spaces – such as rooms, buildings, and fortifications – rather than open areas.”[25]
The missile streaked off the launch rail, and one minute and twenty seconds later, it slammed into the house. The cement walls collapsed, and the house erupted in flames, fuelled by secondary explosions from ammunition stored inside. No one emerged from the inferno. The airstrike reversed the tide of the battle, forcing the militants to withdraw from around the besieged company.[26]
The combat debut of the AC-208 in August 2014 marked the LAF’s first use of precision-guided munitions and the first real-time broadcast of battlefield surveillance video. Meanwhile, the Hueys and Super Pumas transported troops and flew MEDEVAC missions, while Raven UAVs and the Cessnas provided ISR, and Gazelles and the AC-208 delivered close air support. These efforts helped halt the militant advance, but the LAF could not yet push them back, and a three-year stalemate ensued. Of the 36 Lebanese soldiers captured in the battle, the militants executed four, released seven, and exchanged 16 for thirteen jailed militants in a prisoner swap. Nine remained unaccounted for, presumably still held by the Islamic State.[27]
According to Captain G.A., another Cessna pilot in the 4th Squadron, “Our squadron participated in continual military operations from 2014 to 2017. The unrelenting bombing over such a long period of time helped to exhaust and demoralize the militants, as well as to destroy their logistical capabilities and their command-and-control centers.” In addition to Hellfire strikes, the Cessna crews provided observation and adjustment for artillery fire. According to G.A., “The targets we attacked varied from command-and-control centers and logistical points […] to tunnels dug in the mountains […] bulldozers used in digging tunnels and fortifying fighting positions […] and on one occasion, we targeted an Army M-113 armored vehicle which the militants had captured.” While they typically struck preplanned targets, the crews also often searched for targets of opportunity.[28]
In the summer of 2016, the Lebanese Air Force launched its largest coordinated airstrike on militant positions – an operation they viewed as their own miniature version of Desert Storm’s high-tech ‘Instant Thunder’ air campaign. “The raid lasted for about forty minutes,” recalled Colonel A.M., who helped plan the operation. The Cessna fired the opening salvo, striking the first two of eight preplanned targets: an Islamic State field command headquarters and a house sheltering a high-value target. Both missiles hit with precision. “No one left the targeted buildings,” A.M. stated, “so we considered the casualties as confirmed.”[29]
Follow-on attacks targeted enemy infrastructure, including lodging, water tanks, ammunition dumps, and vehicle yards. To bolster the air force’s limited firepower, mechanics from the 9th Squadron modified a Super Puma into a heli-bomber – similar to the Huey bomber experiment nine years earlier. They rigged a pair of steel I-beams through the cabin and mounted bombs or rocket pods on either side, creating a makeshift but effective strike platform.[30]
After the initial Hellfire strikes, the Cessna used its infrared laser pointer to mark targets for the helicopters and served as a tactical air coordinator, sequencing their attacks. The Puma dropped two 250-kilogram bombs, followed by the Gazelles strafing militants fleeing the bombing with .50-calibre machine guns and 68-millimetre rockets. Once the helicopters cleared the area, the Cessna called in artillery fire to finish the job. Throughout the operation, the Cessna and Raven UAVs provided continuous surveillance of the target area.[31]
While the LAF managed to contain the Islamic State and al-Nusra incursions into the Bekaa Valley, military and political leaders collaborated with their American counterparts to secure new equipment and training for a decisive operation to expel them entirely. For the air force, this included six Embraer A-29B Super Tucano light attack aircraft, which would equip the newly formed 7th Squadron. The Lebanese Air Force identified twelve of its top pilots to train on the Super Tucano at Moody Air Force Base, Georgia, under the USAF’s 81st Fighter Squadron. The first group of pilots departed Lebanon in February 2017, with the first two A-29s scheduled for delivery in October and the remaining four the following June. USAF Special Operations Command also planned to deploy a team of combat aviation advisors to Lebanon in 2018.[32] Meanwhile, in January 2017, al-Nusra Front merged with four other militant groups to form Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which dubiously claimed to have severed its ties with al-Qaeda.[33]
It remains a point of contention whether Lebanon’s ingrained political paralysis or a strategic decision to wait for new capabilities like the Super Tucanos delayed a decisive operation against the Islamic State. On 20 July 2017, the Iranian-backed Shia militia Hezbollah pre-empted the LAF by launching its own campaign to retake Arsal.[34]
For at least six years, Hezbollah had been deploying fighters to Syria as part of Iran’s efforts to bolster Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorial regime. A successful operation to expel HTS from Lebanon would not only serve Iran’s strategic interests but also undermine the LAF’s position as the nation’s principal security provider. From 21 to 24 July, Hezbollah seized more than 60 per cent of HTS-held territory, leading to a ceasefire on 27 July that allowed the remaining HTS fighters to withdraw into Syria. Hezbollah’s sophisticated propaganda apparatus flooded media channels with battlefield updates, maps, and footage highlighting combined arms operations involving infantry, artillery, and rockets. Press reports estimated that more than twenty Hezbollah fighters and 150 HTS militants were killed in the operation.[35]
The Lebanese government had no choice but to order an immediate offensive against the Islamic State positions north of Arsal – a far more challenging task given the rugged, defensible mountainous terrain – or risk appearing impotent compared to Hezbollah. The LAF assembled a frontline strength of 4,300 troops in the eastern Bekaa Valley, including the 6th Mechanized Infantry Brigade, the 1st Intervention Regiment, the Air Assault Regiment, one company from the 4th Intervention Regiment, and one company from the Moukafaha, a special operations unit under the Directorate of Military Intelligence. Another 4,250 personnel provided support, including elements of the 1st and 2nd Artillery Regiments with 36 155-millimetre howitzers.[36]
On 14 August 2017, the LAF initiated its opening manoeuvres, officially launching Operation Fajr al-Jaroud, or ‘Dawn of the Hills,’ on 19 August. That same day, Hezbollah and the Syrian Arab Army announced their own offensive on the Syrian side of the border, once again attempting to upstage the LAF. The simultaneous operations fuelled speculation of collusion between the LAF and Hezbollah. However, LAF leadership firmly denied such claims, emphasising that their only interaction with Hezbollah was limited to a deconfliction policy not unlike the one between US and Russian forces in Syria.[37]
Lebanese ground forces encountered improvised explosive devices (IEDs), fortified fighting positions, and suicide bombers, but years of sustained operations had already hollowed out the Islamic State’s defences. A steady barrage of air and artillery fire paved the way for the advancing troops. Over 11 days, the Lebanese Air Force flew 141 hours of combat missions. One of the seventy US military advisors in the country, observing the LAF’s coordinated use of ISR, precision air strikes, artillery, infantry, armour, and special operations forces, described the campaign as ‘twenty-first century maneuver warfare by a modern military.’[38]
Though delivery of the first two A-29s was still two months away, the 4th Squadron had received its third Cessna in December 2016, and all three aircraft were now configured to carry Hellfires. Additionally, the Lebanese Army fielded a game-changing new weapon it had received several years earlier from the Americans: M712 ‘Copperhead’ 155-millimetre laser-guided artillery rounds. Flying parallel to the gun-target line, the Cessna could use its laser designator to guide in round after round with deadly precision. During Fajr al-Jaroud, the Lebanese Army fired 130 Copperhead rounds, including a blistering thirty-three in just thirty minutes at the operation’s climax.[39]
The Islamic State’s position collapsed in mere days, shrinking to a pocket of just twenty square kilometres by 27 August – down from the 120 square kilometres it had occupied at the outset. However, the LAF never launched a final assault; with the operation proving a stunning success, an alarmed Hezbollah quickly intervened to negotiate a ceasefire, allowing the remaining Islamic State fighters to retreat into Syria in exchange for information on the nine LAF soldiers captured three years earlier. Though all nine had been killed, the deal allowed the LAF to recover their bodies. On 28 August, approximately four hundred Islamic State fighters and camp followers departed on buses for eastern Syria.[40]
Operation Fajr al-Jaroud killed more than 50 Islamic State fighters, at the cost of nine LAF soldiers killed and 100 wounded. For the first time since the civil war, the LAF successfully conducted a theatre-level joint operation, demonstrating its ability to effectively utilise US security assistance.[41] Yet, the success owed to more than just the two-week operation. “When the battle is discussed, many people marvel at the short period of time that it was limited to,” said Colonel A.M. “They do not realize that it came as a result of three years of continuous targeting that exhausted the terrorists’ infrastructure and killed many of them.”[42]
Lebanese Air Force aircraft in the hangar at Hamat Air Base, foreground, left to right: SA.330 Super Puma, UH-1H Huey II, SA.342L Gazelle; background, left to right: AC-208 Eliminator, A-29B Super Tucano, Bell 212. (Source: Author)
Conclusion
Hezbollah’s efforts to undermine and overshadow the LAF failed to erode its legitimacy as Lebanon’s principal source of security. The success of the joint operation against the Islamic State spoke for itself.[43] Despite limited resources, the Lebanese Air Force played a decisive role. From the Dinniyeh operation in 2000 to the heli-bombers over Nahr al-Bared in 2007 and the precision airstrikes in the Bekaa Valley from 2014 to 2017, Lebanese aviators found ways – often audacious improvisations – to mobilise air power against violent extremist organisations. What began as a force rebuilt around hand-me-down Hueys gradually evolved into a capable mix of helicopters, crewed fixed-wing aircraft, and UAVs performing ISR, light-attack, and mobility missions. This transformation depended on steady but limited US security assistance: surplus aircraft, grant-funded upgrades, foreign military sales, and training programs that produced a new generation of skilled aviators.
Yet US assistance alone cannot account for the LAF’s battlefield performance. At every stage, Lebanese officers, NCOs, and technicians adapted faster than their inventory changed. They welded together heli-bombers when they lacked aircraft capable of striking hardened urban positions. They mastered precision weapons that they had never fired in training. They built tactics around a single missile-toting Cessna, rationing its firepower while keeping it on station as the country’s only persistent ISR asset. They overcame shortages in personnel, spare parts, and navigational equipment through ingenuity, improvisation, and a deep sense of obligation to the soldiers fighting below.
By the time the Islamic State threatened Lebanon’s northeastern frontier, the Lebanese Air Force had become something unexpected: not a conventional air force in the American sense, but an adaptable, hybrid force optimised for Lebanon’s terrain, politics, and threats. Its air campaign from 2014 to 2017, though modest by comparison with the coalition’s industrial-scale air power in Operation Inherent Resolve, proved decisive along the Islamic State’s western flank, steadily degrading militant capabilities until Operation Fajr al-Jaroud finally drove them from Lebanese territory.
From its rebirth in the 1990s through its campaign against the Islamic State, the history of Lebanese air power demonstrates that modest US security assistance, when paired with Lebanese ingenuity, produced an outsized strategic effect. The Lebanese Air Force did not win battles because it possessed the most technologically advanced equipment, the largest fleet, or the most refined doctrine. It won because Lebanese aviators extracted maximum value from every aircraft, every munition, and every training opportunity. In doing so, they provided the Lebanese Army with the air support it needed to survive, adapt, and prevail against some of the most dangerous violent extremist groups in the world.
Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Jackson PhD is an Assistant Professor of History at the US Air Force Academy. He served as a U-28A instructor pilot, Combat Aviation Advisor, and Adaptive Precision Strike evaluator pilot in Air Force Special Operations Command, flying 236 combat missions and 125 combat support missions in support of Operations Inherent Resolve, Freedom Sentinel, Enduring Freedom, Enduring Freedom-Philippines, and Damiyan. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of Fallen Tigers: The Fate of America’s Missing Airmen in China during World War II (2021).
Wael Nawaf al-Taki is the manager of Strategic Defense Solutions, Ltd. He served as Chief of the Lebanese Air Force Operations Room and as an A-29 Super Tucano instructor pilot and squadron commander. In addition to flying more than 200 hours in combat operations, he spearheaded organisational and tactical reforms that enhanced air-ground integration within the Lebanese Armed Forces.
Header image: A Lebanese Air Force student prepares to fly the Embraer A-29B Super Tucano for the first time at Moody Air Force Base, Georgia (Source: US Air Force)
[1] The names of most Lebanese military officers have been withheld for security reasons.
[2] Major Wael al-Taki, oral history interview by Daniel Jackson, February 27, 2025.
[3] Department of Defense, ‘Operation Inherent Resolve: Targeted Operations to Defeat ISIS,’ Operation Inherent Resolve, 9 August 2017.
[4] National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 330, Military Assistance Program 1000 System Master File, 1986.
[13] Orbital ATK, Mission Systems Operators Manual: Lebanon Armed Caravan SN1239, 02TMAOP-002, Fort Worth, 2016; Stephen Trimble, ‘USAF orders 2nd Cessna Caravan for Lebanon,’FlightGlobal, 18 January 2012.
[17] Aram Nerguizian, The Lebanese Armed Forces, Hezbollah, and Military Legitimacy, Draft, (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic & International Studies, 2017), p. 9.
“If we cannot get the F-35, we will evaluate other options.” “There is no way we will step back from the S-400s.” “If the promises given to us are not kept, we will not approve Sweden’s NATO membership.” These are just a few of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s statements since Türkiye was removed from the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter programme in the summer of 2019, following Ankara’s decision to operationalise the Russian-made S-400 air defence system. However, despite years of bold rhetoric, Türkiye has yet to take meaningful steps toward modernising its ageing F-16 fleet, a gap that carries profound implications for regional competition and nearby conflicts. Despite setbacks over the past few years, Türkiye has gained significant visibility in the global security arena through its indigenously developed defence products. Its drones have played notable roles in conflicts in Nagorno-Karabakh, Ukraine, Syria and Libya, and were recently seen during the India-Pakistan border skirmishes. At the same time, Türkiye has expanded its defence exports to include light combat aircraft to Spain, corvettes to Pakistan and Malaysia, and various other complex systems. In parallel with these achievements, Türkiye launched its own fighter jet project, the Turkish Aerospace Industries KAAN, a fifth-generation, twin-engine stealth aircraft intended to become the future backbone of Turkish air defence. However, Ankara has acknowledged the challenges of developing a fully indigenous fighter jet. Beyond the immense financial burden and limited domestic technological expertise, political obstacles have also emerged. Most recently, Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan admitted that Türkiye has been having difficulty obtaining F110 engines from the United States, intended not only for prototypes but also for the first production batch of the KAAN.
Despite Türkiye’s long-standing ambition to build its own fighter aircraft, Turkish military planners have recognised since the late 1990s that the country would require an interim, or ‘gap,’ platform. As a result, Türkiye became one of the early participants in the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) programme, which later produced the F-35 Lightning II. In return for its early commitment, Ankara was contracted to purchase more than 100 F-35s and became a strategic industrial partner in the programme. Knowledge transfer from the JSF also enabled domestic programmes such as TÜBİTAK SAGE’s Stand-Off Missile (SOM), now one of the most critical assets in Türkiye’s strategic inventory.
Türkiye’s selection of the F-35 programme was not a surprise. Since joining NATO, it has relied primarily on American-made aircraft for its air force. Although Türkiye has operated helicopters from France, cargo aircraft from Spain and drones from Israel, its combat fleet has always been built around US designs, including the F-84, F-86, F-101, F-4 and F-5. Today, Türkiye operates the second-largest F-16 fleet in the world after the United States.
Even amid political friction with Washington, Türkiye stayed committed to its American-made fighter fleet for their battlefield performance and long-established logistics. They also carried symbolic weight as reminders of Ankara’s Cold War alignment. During the US arms embargo on Türkiye between 1975 and 1978, imposed after Türkiye’s military intervention in Cyprus, Ankara continued operating US aircraft by sourcing spare parts from Libya and purchasing used F-104s from Italy. A similar moment of tension came in 2003, when Türkiye refused to allow the U.S. to use its territory for the war in Iraq. During this period, the Eurofighter Typhoon consortium reportedly offered Türkiye an equal partnership in the programme. Yet, despite the attractiveness of the offer, Turkish decision-makers remained committed to the F-35 programme.
Türkiye has long been the second-largest standing military force in NATO and has been regarded as a strategic partner of the United States since the Korean War. Nevertheless, the relationship between Ankara and Washington has frequently been marked by political tensions. However, these disputes did not significantly alter Türkiye’s major defence procurement decisions, particularly concerning fighter aircraft. In practice, and despite political rhetoric about diversifying suppliers, Türkiye consistently relied on US platforms. However, Ankara’s removal from the F-35 programme in 2019 may mark a significant turning point. Türkiye can no longer rely on a simple reset with Washington to modernise its ageing fleet, especially as the strategic environment grows more demanding.
Since its removal, Türkiye has repeatedly signalled its desire to return to the F-35 programme. Turkish officials argued that the expulsion lacked legal basis, and President Erdoğan and his government suggested they were open to negotiating a resolution to the S-400 dispute. Meanwhile, Türkiye’s military establishment warned of a growing capability gap until the KAAN could enter service. Türkiye also expressed interest in acquiring new F-16s and modernisation kits as an interim solution, but the package has yet to be finalised. At the same time, the war in Ukraine, Israeli air operations in Syria and the region, and Greece’s modernisation of its air force have further accelerated Ankara’s search for a new fighter platform. These developments raise concerns about falling behind in the regional balance of air power and being unprepared for a potential spillover from nearby conflicts. As a result, for the first time in decades, Türkiye is actively pursuing a non-American fighter aircraft solution: the Eurofighter Typhoon.
Although Türkiye expressed formal interest in the Eurofighter a few years ago, the procurement process was blocked by Germany due to political disagreements. Following lengthy negotiations, the German government recently agreed to lift its objections, and a contract has now been signed. However, Türkiye now faces a delivery challenge. The most advanced version of the Eurofighter currently in production is Tranche 4, and the order backlog means new aircraft will not arrive before 2030. Because the Eurofighter is an entirely new platform for the Turkish Air Force, integrating it into doctrine, pilot training, and logistics will take significantly longer than adopting another US-made jet. To reduce the delay, President Erdoğan announced Türkiye’s intention to purchase used Eurofighters from Qatar and Oman alongside the 20 new Tranche 4 aircraft from the UK.
Ankara’s assertive pursuit of the Eurofighter highlights its growing concern over the balance of air power in its surrounding region. Despite significant advances in its drone fleet, including one-way attack drones and jet-powered unmanned systems, Türkiye understands that drones cannot fully replace conventional fighter jets in terms of deterrence and air superiority. Yet significant questions remain. Will Germany and other consortium members approve the transfer of Meteor long-range air-to-air missiles or Captor radar systems to Türkiye as well? Will Türkiye be permitted to integrate indigenous avionics and weapons into the Eurofighter? And how quickly can the Turkish Air Force develop the same level of operational proficiency it currently maintains with the F-16?
Ankara has now taken a decisive step away from decades of exclusive US fighter procurement. Whether the Eurofighter becomes a temporary gap-filler until the KAAN enters service, or the beginning of a long-term shift in Turkish defence strategy, remains to be seen. What is certain is that Turkish air power is at a strategic crossroads. Despite the uncertainties, the Eurofighter Typhoon remains the only available option to bridge the capability gap until the KAAN is operational or the F-35 dispute is resolved.
Ömer Ergün Özkan is a PhD candidate in the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Cincinnati. His research examines military effectiveness, the impact of emerging technologies on defence procurement, and the strategic use of unmanned systems in modern warfare. He is also a Research Fellow at the Linda Hall Library in Kansas City, Missouri. He can be followed on X as @ErgnZkan.
From the F-35 Lightning II to the F-15E Strike Eagles, even the most advanced aircraft are sitting ducks while they are on the ground. It should come as no surprise that the best way to defeat aircraft is to attack them when they cannot evade, fight back, or use any of their defensive measure – in other words, while they are not flying. This has been a truism throughout much of the history of air power. It led to the Japanese attacks on Hickam Field as part of the Pearl Harbor attack, the British Special Air Service (SAS) raid on Haggag el Qasaba, the Luftwaffe’sOperation Bodenplatte, and the Israeli success against the Egyptian Air Force in the 1967 War, among many others. In recent decades, the uncontested nature of US and Allied basing has allowed air forces to operate freely, launching sorties without significant risk to their home base and achieving dominance in the skies. Recent events have provided a stark reminder that, if the era of safe basing has not ended, it is rapidly drawing to a close.
Fire crews attempt to extinguish the last fires among burnt-out North American Mitchells of No. 139 Wing RAF at B58/Melsbroek, Belgium, after the major daylight attack on the airfield by Luftwaffe fighter-bombers (Operation BODENPLATTE). (Source: IWM (CL 1806))
The most important protection that the US and Allied bases have had was distance. Since the Second World War, air assets based in Western Europe and North America did not need to worry about aerial threats from adversaries in anything short of a great power (likely nuclear) war. In the post-Cold War world, this experience was further reinforced as the US and NATO adversaries of the period, such as Iraq and Serbia, lacked any real possibility of reaching homeland-based aircraft. While in Iraq and Afghanistan, air assets were forward deployed, the most rare and critical assets in the US inventory – many of which are no longer in production and would be exceedingly difficult to replace – including B-2s, B-1s, and RC-130s, stayed out of the enemy’s reach.
Individual terrorists might have been able to reach a base in the US or Europe, but robust homeland security infrastructure limited the extent to which these could have been coordinated. In addition, most domestically radicalised terrorists acted as lone wolves and, therefore, lacked the capability to cause significant damage to infrastructure and multiple platforms simultaneously. The lack of a real threat to home-based aircraft has been one of the unspoken advantages that uscore the US and NATO’s ability to achieve air superiority and global reach without incurring the expense of protecting their aircraft or critical aircraft infrastructure at home.
Three events from the last six months should serve as a stark wake-up call that the era of distance being the primary protection for critical assets may be coming to an end. In Operation Spider’s Web, the Ukrainian Security Service smuggled containers filled with short-range attack drones into Russia through commercial channels. They employed Russian civilian drivers who knew nothing of the nature of the cargo they carried to bring the containers to launch locations near Russian air bases, and Ukraine employed remote instructions to launch the attack.
The drone strikes caught the Russian airbases completely off guard, allowing Ukraine to target critical Russian assets in unprotected positions. The attack damaged or destroyed as many as 40 aircraft, including strategic bombers that formed part of Russia’s nuclear triad. Russia’s assumption that distance from the front and national air defence protected these assets was painfully shattered in the course of a single day.
During Operation Spider’s Web, an FPV drone targets a Tu-22 bomber at Belaya air base, 4 June 2025. (Source: Wikimedia)
This has not been the only instance of launching short-range attack drones at distant targets. As part of Operation ‘Am Kalavi,’ Israel smuggled precision-guided munitions (PGMs) into Iran and established both a small factory to build attack drones and a base from which to operate inside the country. This meant that in advance of the Israel Air Force (IAF) strikes in Iran, Israeli intelligence and special operations personnel on the ground could launch drones and PGMs to confuse and reduce Iran’s air defences, ballistic missiles, and command and control capabilities.
This Israeli operation differed from the Ukrainian one in both its methods of delivering weapons and the types of targets selected, yet the lesson is similar. The most critical assets required for the defence of the nation can now be targeted by air, regardless of their range, and national-level air defences are insufficient to keep a determined adversary at bay. It is easy to imagine the damage an adversary could inflict on the US force posture through attacks similar to those in Russia or Iran, targeting B-2s, B-52s, or even high-value, low-density assets like the RC-135 or the-be-deployed E-130J TACAMO fleet.
The presence of new aerial threats to aircraft based in the homeland does not negate new ways in which traditional threats might manifest. In June 2025, Palestine Action, at the time of writing, a proscribed terrorist group in the UK, infiltrated RAF Brize Norton and sabotaged two parked RAF Voyager Aircraft, the RAF’s sole type of tanker aircraft, which has been extensively supporting NATO’s Eastern Flank missions. The apparent targeting of the attack was based on misinformation or disinformation – that the Voyager Aircraft were being used in direct support of the Israeli military in its war with Iran.
There is no apparent evidence that this attack was organised or supported by a foreign adversary. Still, there is ample evidence that foreign adversaries have used social media to contact, organise, and perhaps even direct the actions of groups and individuals far from their borders in ways that were not available in previous decades. Adversaries will likely note the potential efficacy of using social media to spur domestic groups in the US or NATO countries to attack important air assets.
So, the threat landscape has changed. Distance is not the defence it once was. Now, aircraft at home – especially those that play singularly important strategic or operational roles now require a level of protection unseen in the US since the Second World War. There are two primary ways to achieve this: active protection measures and passive measures. Active measures include air and missile defences such as Centurion C-RAM and counter-drone electronic warfare or directed energy systems, which, to provide protection from surprise, must always be active as well as air patrols. This may potentially pose a particular challenge for basing in areas with congested civilian airspace.
The status and the quality of the active system are important, but so too is the density. There must be sufficient defensive systems at each airfield (and especially those with low-density assets) to prevent being overwhelmed in a strike or destroyed. There must also be enough to allow for maintenance without a serious reduction in defensive capability. Active defensive systems may also be vulnerable to electronic warfare and cyberattacks. These systems would also provide little aid in the case of a Brize Norton-style infiltration. This means that the active defences against aerial threats must be combined with robust ground security and patrols.
Passive defence measures mitigate the damage that either aerial attacks or infiltration can cause. The cornerstone of passive defence for airframes is hardening. While some NATO countries still have limited hardened shelters in the US and elsewhere, hardening would require not only a change in construction but a change in practice. Building hardened hangers (including top protection and/or perimeter and top netting) for critical assets would greatly complicate attacks by small, short-range UAVs by requiring them to carry a far larger explosive to breach the aircraft shelter. Such hangers, if locked down, would also raise the challenge for would-be infiltrators and give security forces greater time to respond. At the same time, their protection would only apply when aircraft are in shelters and not parked on outdoor ramps, as is often the case.
Alone, passive protection can do what active protection cannot. It provides protection twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, from both air attacks and ground infiltration. Unlike active protection, many forms of passive protection are immune to electronic warfare and cyber-attacks. Passive protection does not interfere with any other airspace activities and, once completed, is less susceptible to degradation in capability caused by personnel shortages.
The advantages of hardening are why Norway has reopened its deeply buried aircraft facilities, and Switzerland never abandoned its facilities. The US and other NATO countries have built hardened aircraft shelters with top protection in the past, but ceased building them because the threat did not justify the cost of construction and challenges to aircraft maintenance in more confined spaces. As the operations in Iran and Russia, as well as the sabotage at RAF Brize Norton, make clear, the threat has changed.
In an ideal world, the US and NATO could still rely on the protection afforded by distance, but that is not the world of today. Failing that, the best possible way forward would be to combine active and passive defences to protect all critical assets, but this may prove unfeasible. While the solutions to the challenges posed may appear tactical, the implications of failing to implement new protection could be strategically catastrophic.
Whether the US and its Allies choose passive or active protection or a combination of both, the time has come to protect critical aircraft while they are on the ground so the Joint Force can count on them to be in the air. The US and its allies should take the opportunity to learn from the attacks on Iran and Russia and develop protection for their critical aircraft today or risk becoming a case study of regret in the future.
Dr Jacob Stoil is a military historian who is the US Army’s Research Professor of Middle East Security at the US Army Strategic Studies Institute. In this capacity, he advises the US Army and other organisations on Middle East policy, strategy, and lessons learned. Dr Stoil also serves as Chair of Applied History at the West Point Modern War Institute, Assistant Director of the Second World War Research Group (North America) and Trustee of the U.S. Commission on Military History. Jacob was a Senior Fellow of the 40th Infantry Urban Warfare Center and a co-founder of the International Working Group on Subterranean Warfare as well as an Associate Professor of Military History at the US Army School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS). He has published multiple policy and academic articles, which can be found in publications such as the International Journal of Military History, Wavell Room, and Modern War Institute. He can be followed on X as @JacobStoil.
Header image: Preparation of two Saab JA 37 Viggen under Töreboda arches as part of the Bas 60 (Flygbassystem 60), which was an air base system developed and used by the Swedish Air Force during the Cold War. (Source: Wikimedia)
Starting on 19 October 2023, the Houthi attacks against international shipping and Israel have seen many air power firsts. In their very first attack, the Iranian-backed Houthis employed attack drones against maritime targets, which eventually led to the first instance of the German Navy shooting down enemy aviation since the Second World War. Even more significantly, Houthi ballistic missile attacks against Israel led to the first combat interception in space. However, as much as things have changed, the strategic problem the Houthis present and the air-centric means that the US has chosen to oppose it, has a long history in the Middle East and raises questions about the strategic limitations of air power.
The Houthis sit aside a strategically critical sea line of communication (SLOC). In peacetime, between 10-15% of global trade and around 30% of global container traffic flow through the Suez Canal and into the Houthi crosshairs. Should a great power war occur, the significance of the waters of Yemen will only increase. The SLOC through the Red Sea represents the fastest way to move resources at scale from Europe to a Pacific theatre of operations and an essential alternative to the Panama Canal for transiting from the eastern seaboard of the United States to the Indian Ocean and Southwestern Pacific. These two factors mean that the US can little afford the Houthis and their Iranian backers to maintain their at-will blockade of these critical waterways. This same logic led the British Empire to take and hold Aden and launch military campaigns in the Horn of Africa throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Since the US is focusing its combat power on the Pacific and the European powers are most concerned with the threat to their borders, neither is looking for another long-term Middle Eastern entanglement, and so this is an unlikely approach. Instead, the Western allies have turned to an approach with a long history in the Middle East whenever an economy of force is desired – air power.
While by virtue of its strategic position and resources, the Middle East as a region is of critical importance to any modern state wishing to project power globally, most of its territory is not. Occupation is expensive and manpower intensive, and so since the 1920s, powers have attempted to ensure the security of their vital interests by following the mirage of strategic air power. In the Middle East, the basic idea has remained remarkably consistent. The strategic concept is that with air power, a country can conduct scalable punitive raids, which will either erode capability so a potential adversary cannot mount a significant threat, create deterrence by demonstrating the cost of threatening a strategically vital area, or finally weaken an adversary to the point a local rival can unseat them. In theory, this use of air power, a cross-domain version of the punitive expedition, allows countries to achieve and sustain their strategic objectives while not having to involve themselves in the costly and manpower-intensive business of occupying the hinterlands of the Middle East. The current US operations in Yemen appear to be the latest in this long history.
For decades, Israel pursued a similar policy known as ‘mowing the grass.’ In this mode of operation, whenever militant groups or adversaries escalated beyond a certain threshold, Israel would respond with an air campaign (supported at times by special operations and even limited ground forces). The purpose of these operations was to buy quiet. They did not attempt to change the fundamental dynamic that led to the escalation; instead, they tried to degrade enemy capabilities until the enemy (at least temporarily) no longer posed a credible threat and deter certain forms of future enemy operations. The air campaigns reduced the capabilities of Israel’s enemies. They forced them to spend resources on reconstitution. However, as is now abundantly clear, this did not stop Israel’s enemies from developing the capability to inflict significant harm, nor did it do anything to remove the motivation.
From their initial conception, these air-centric ‘mowing the grass’ operations acknowledged they could not achieve decisive results or a permanent effect. The strategic conditions meant it would always be worth it for the enemy to rebuild and try again. The damage might have been severe, but if it was in Iran’s interest to rebuild its capabilities, then the targeted groups like Hamas and Hezbollah would always be able to rebuild. Without large-scale ground operations and potentially long-term occupation, air power could only achieve a limited strategic effect within the larger geopolitical pressures shaping the Middle East.
The Houthis potentially find themselves in a similar situation to Hamas and Hezbollah facing the Israeli Air Force, which highlights one of the strategic limitations of air-centric campaigning. Turning maritime traffic away from the Red Sea SLOC requires minimal capability. If the Houthis present a credible threat and continue to target vessels, the maritime insurance market will keep many merchant vessels away. This lowers the level of capabilities to which the Houthis must rebuild to interdict the SLOC, as they only need enough to make maritime insurers nervous. The Houthis have also demonstrated to countries like China and Iran, who have been backing them, that they present a relatively low-cost option to complicating US global sealift – even during a time of war. Should the Houthis attack shipping during wartime, they would force the US either to divert precious naval and air power to tackle the challenge or slow global movement by avoiding the contested waters off Yemen. While devastating to the Houthis, the current air campaign is doing little to change either of these two realities. The Houthis’ strategic position is too important to their backers, the cost of closing the straits too low, and the ideology of the Houthis too absolute to be dissuaded by even the most effective air campaign alone.
There has been one recent exception to this pattern, which may provide a way forward for the US air campaign in Yemen. Since 7 October 2023, Israel launched an air campaign against the Assad government in Syria. The purpose of the campaign was not to remove Assad but to diminish the immediate risk Assad posed to Israel. Eventually, Israel added a covert operations campaign and ground offensive against Hezbollah, on whom Assad relied to keep his government in power. Taken together, this weakened the Syrian regime to the point that local Turkish-backed adversaries could overthrow it. Likewise, the Houthis have several regional enemies waiting in Yemen. The Houthis and their backers have managed to hold these enemies at bay. However, the severity of the US air campaign is such that it may hit a tipping point at which point the UAE and Saudi-backed forces in Yemen may take the opportunity to launch a ground offensive. If so, like Syria, it may be counted as a rare win for the strategic employment of air power in the Middle East, but only inasmuch as other forces on the ground are prepared to fight. If not, Yemen will prove a lesson that the Middle East has taught repeatedly – air power is useful, but by itself cannot change the strategic dynamics of the region.
Dr Jacob Stoil is a military historian who is the Research Professor of Middle East Security at the US Army Strategic Studies Institute, Chair of Applied History at the Modern War Institute, Senior Fellow of the 40th Infantry Urban Warfare Center, and Trustee of the U.S. Commission on Military History. He has worked extensively in the Middle East, including in support of Task Force Spartan. He has published multiple policy and academic articles, which can be found in publications such as the International Journal of Military History, Wavell Room, and Modern War Institute. He can be followed on X as @JacobStoil.
Header image: A US Navy F/A-18 fighter jet taking off at night before the 2024 Yemeni airstrikes, 12 January 2024. (Source: Wikimedia)
The Iranian HESA Saheed 136 suicide drone (unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)) entered the war between Ukraine and Russia with undeniable effects. The influence of the same Iranian drones on Red Sea shipping in 2024 is equally undeniable, as Houthi militias utilised drones to threaten world shipping the same way they threatened Saudi Arabian defences in prior years. Russia has purchased thousands of Shahed 136 drones and received training for Shahed 136, HESA Ababil-3 and Raad drones through Iranian proxies and military forces in Syria.[1] Thus, Iran has quickly become a drone exporter and power broker, using regional proxies to provide lethal drone firepower to hard-pressed governments in East Africa. Iran now employs drones as a foreign policy tool to demonstrate its viability as a significant influence and a capable partner in the Middle East, Europe, and Africa. Iran’s efforts have undercut Western security guarantees and exploited the weakness of Ethiopian and Sudanese governments engaged in their internal efforts to defeat insurgent forces. The 2024 Nigerien junta’s rejection of United States forces currently hosted in Niger, and the likely denial of the critical drone airbases therein, allows Iran to attempt to influence an African state that has chosen to sever ties with the West. Looking at the situations in Ethiopia and Sudan can assist with understanding how Iranian drone capabilities, cost, and performance have earned Iran a place at the table.
Iranian drones offer hard-pressed states much-needed reconnaissance and attack capabilities with no questions about employment doctrine or human rights guarantees. Iranian drones also give potential customers access to various platforms at costs below that of most conventional aircraft. Although costs vary widely depending on the source, an Iranian Saheed 136 goes for between $20,000-$40,000. Multi-role drones like the Mohajer-6 also have lower prices than Western drones.[2] Iran’s goal is not to displace China, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates as drone competitors in Ethiopia but to demonstrate its ability to compete successfully on the international stage and prove that its drones are effective options for potential international allies.[3] When Ethiopia needed drones in 2021, Iran could offer Ethiopia drones and munitions that helped defeat insurgents through precision strike and reconnaissance capabilities. However, Iranian assistance comes at a price for countries unwilling to risk extended diplomatic pressure. Despite being reported by Bellingcat at Semara airport in late 2021, by late 2023, Ethiopia’s two Iranian Mohajer-6 drones and their single ground control station (capable of controlling two drones at a time) were hard to find on overhead imagery. This is likely due to the drones and associated materials being pulled back under cover or into hangars until needed for operations. In contrast, Ethiopia’s Turkish and Chinese models have been seen in the open on the runways of at least two Ethiopian Air Force base runways. This may have been in whole or in part due to US protests to the UN about Iran’s violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2231 and the delivery of unmanned warplanes.[4] UN SCR 2231, although written as a diplomatic effort to find a solution to Iran’s nuclear issues, contains within the resolution Paragraph 6, Annex B that specifically enjoins all states to prevent ‘the transfer of arms or related material from Iran by their nationals or using their flag vessels or aircraft and whether or not originating in the territory of Iran.’ The transfer of drones falls within this set of restrictions. By transferring drones to Ethiopia, UNSCR 2231 was violated, with Iran and Ethiopia as knowing participants.
It is undeniable that Iran was willing to defy UN opposition to provide Ethiopia with drones; what is surprising is that Ethiopia chose to work with Iran despite being a US ally. Iran’s window of opportunity may have materialised partly due to the United States’ policy of not selling armed drones to allies without extensive vetting and Congressional approval.[5] In contrast, when Ethiopia’s military needed a rapid response and a technological solution to rebel threats, Turkey and China were already supplying to the African and Middle East markets. Although it is hard to gauge if Iran will be able to have the same influence that it had with Ethiopia in 2021, Iran could look to the situation in Sudan as another success in efforts to disrupt US regional goals and Western security assurances. As the United States attempts to counter drone proliferation, Iran displays technical and technological skills through its drone sales. Its drive for prestige and relevancy in the arms trade has been rewarded by the Russian and African adoption of Iranian drones to affect the sort of damage previously restricted to more conventional aircraft.[6]
Despite severing diplomatic relations with Iran in 2016, Sudan is interested in Iran’s assistance in combatting its main rival in the ongoing civil war, the Rapid Support Forces. Iran’s relationship with Sudan is evolving as Sudan’s government struggles against the rebel Rapid Support Forces, US sanctions, and a lack of international assistance. However, some countries, namely Iran and Turkey, have supplied Sudan with drones despite sanctions. In Sudan, as in Ethiopia, drones may be the factor that enables the government to contest and eventually defeat insurgents. The Sudanese government’s forces employ a variety of Iranian drones: the Ababil-3, Mohajer-2, Mohajer-4, and the latest Mohajer-6. These drones are part of Iran’s policy toolkit and have helped Iran maintain access and influence in Sudan despite Sudan becoming a signatory to the 2019 Abraham Accords, which included policies that were diametrically opposed to Iran’s stated interests.[7] Iranian interests in the region and globally can best be understood from a combination of Iranian policy goals: posturing Iran as an option to Western states for arms and technological assistance and providing an Islamic champion to former al-Bashir loyalists.[8]
Iran’s policy goals in Sudan include turning Sudan away from Saudi Arabia and UAE as part of Iran’s challenge to regional rivals.[9] Iran has exploited the Sudanese regime’s need for drone platforms, and news stories of alleged offers of additional drones and a helicopter carrier in exchange for a Port Sudan base cloud Iran’s history with Sudan. Iran can use drones to gain influence and restore Sudan as a partner in Iran’s ‘Axis of Resistance’ to the West.[10] The other obvious advantage of a Sudan-Iran alliance, from Iran’s perspective, is a scenario in which Iran could threaten Red Sea shipping and cause worldwide disruptions. An Iran-Sudan alliance would also sandwich Saudi Arabia between Sudan, Iran, and Yemen’s Houthi rebels. A Sudan-Iran diplomatic and defence alliance gives Sudan and Iran the tools to achieve their goals. Sudan’s Armed Forces-led government wants to extract concessions from the West, defeat the Rapid Support Forces, and establish itself as a drone power with the technological sophistication that implies. Iran continues to force the West to bleed resources to prevent a Sudan-Iran alliance from becoming a reality. The multiple threats to the Red Sea, combined with the ecological crisis that is challenging the Panama Canal’s shipping capacity, have great potential to cause Iran’s rivals severe economic and political embarrassment.
An Iranian HESA Ababil-3 drone. (Source: Wikimedia)
Iran has demonstrated their will to defy United Nations sanctions. It should be expected to do so in the future, especially if doing so will bring Iran revenue and influence with new diplomatic and defence partners. The recent coup in Niger demonstrates how Iran readily offered assistance and drones to the Nigerien junta despite ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States) sanctions. Other African states have similarly courted in Iranian efforts to bust United Nations sanctions. Burkina Faso and Zimbabwe, for example, for gold exports.[11] Iran has a valuable negotiating tool in the form of its family of armed drones. Sources including CNBC, Voice of America, senior Iranian officials, and the Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant claim Iran now has customers and interested countries (for example, Bolivia and Venezuela) across the world, with Iran claiming 22 interested countries and Israel as many as 50.[12] As of 2023, Venezuela manufactures armed Mohajer-2 surveillance drones and operates armed Mohajer-6 drones. Considering Iran’s support for terrorist organizations and their willingness to sell drones with little regard for the consequences, the risks of international disruptions grow with each country that adopts Iranian technology.[13] International sanctions have limited Iran’s ability to obtain and export parts for drones. Suppliers who provide clandestine support are thus complicit in Iran’s arms industry. Attempts to interdict drone deliveries to Iran’s allies have been ineffective because most users of Iranian drones choose to manufacture in-country or build drones from parts.[14] Drone sales have helped Iran gain partner states. Iran will take advantage of situations where Western partners have been rejected and ejected by their former regional allies or Western states have cut off diplomatic relations due to coups. Iranian influence across the Sahel will grow as states seek sources for drones, and states that have little to deter them will find Iranian drones to be an attractive combination of proven capability and low cost.
Iran is opportunistic, and the situation in Niger, where the regime has rejected the West and joined with the ECOWAS-spurning Association of Sahel States (AES), opens a new avenue for Iran to counter Western influence and gain new allies.[15] Niger is an attractive destination for Iranian influence because of Niger’s uranium deposits. Iran has been engaged in diplomatic exchanges with Niger, offering Niger an ally against the West as well as assistance in mitigating the effects of ECOWAS sanctions.[16] In April 2024, the news site Africa Intelligence reported that ‘Iran and Niger were negotiating for Niger to provide 300 tons of uranium yellowcake to Iran in exchange for drones and surface-to-air missiles.’[17] That alone would demonstrate the utility of Iranian drones as diplomatic bargaining tools. However, in March of 2024, Iran International News and the Wall Street Journal alleged that United States opposition to the trade was one reason for the Nigerien junta deciding to close the facility known as Airbase 201 in Agadez, Niger, a major drone base for counterterrorism operations in the Sahel.[18] Although the junta closed the airbase and ordered the United States to withdraw its drones, the decision was most likely driven by the need to demonstrate sovereignty and strength when the Nigerien junta was weak and under foreign pressure to change its policies. The developing ties with Russia and neighbouring junta-led states were also likely factors in the decision.[19] However, this development left a prime drone base in the hands of the Niger coup junta just as its relationships with Russia and Iran deepened. We can expect the Nigerien government to seek to take advantage of the $100 million facility at Agadez for new drones delivered by new security partners.
Niger still needs drones to patrol its vast territory and strike at terrorist groups. As Iran’s influence rises in Africa, so too may its drone presence in the service of governments where expediency is valued over human rights, transparency, and sustainability. Iranian drones are an effective policy tool, an asymmetric warfare solution scalable to many situations, and responsive to the needs of states and non-state actors. Iran’s drones will continue to create pockets of regional instability and serve Iran’s need for prestige, credibility, and allies for years to come unless countered by effective policies that neutralize Iran’s disregard for UN sanctions and undercutting of peace initiatives. The challenge for the US and its allies is not simply how to shoot down drones or where to direct diplomatic initiatives but to provide states with better options and to deny terrorists access to advanced systems. The United States is improving Counter-Unmanned Aerial Systems, but allies need assistance countering the whispers of a regime that offers advanced technology without warning of the inevitable repercussions.
Dr John Ringquist is a retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel, Africa Foreign Area Officer, and historian. He currently teaches at the Command and Staff School at the US Army Command and General Staff College. He has written about topics related to security, terrorism, and military history for various publications.
Header image: An Iranian HESA Ababil-3 UAV at an arms expo in Iran. (Source: Wikimedia)
For almost a decade, the US Air Force (USAF) has recognised the need for remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) aircrew to conduct ‘dwell.’ [1] Dwell is the Department of Defense (DoD) term for the time between deployments, typically used to restore unit cohesion, conduct training, and support servicemembers’ requirements. Operational experience and research showed that RPA squadrons, despite not physically leaving their home station during combat, also required time in dwell. However, the studies advocating RPA dwell focused on the benefits of time spent out of combat, with few authors studying combat performance. As a result, the studies missed a key point: continual combat operations, even with brief respites, force RPA squadrons and aircrew to divide their attention between traditional peacetime and wartime duties.
An unfocused squadron cannot mission plan with partners, fly operational missions, or conduct high-end training or rehearsals, leaving RPA squadrons persistently underperforming in combat. While RPA aircrew may reap some peacetime benefits from short dwell cycles, the RPA enterprise will only improve operations by adopting the same dwell model as the rest of the USAF.
A Brief History of RPA and Dwell
In 2015, the USAF conducted a wide-ranging study into the morale and retention problems in the RPA community, focusing on aircrew flying the MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper. Known as the Culture and Process Improvement Program (CPIP), the study revealed that RPA morale was most affected by continuous combat operations, preventing time away for personal and professional reasons. Unbounded combat operations and the associated rotating work and sleep schedules damaged the health of RPA aircrew, dramatically increasing fatigue, alcohol usage, and medication compared to other USAF career fields.[2] Accepting the CPIP results, the USAF agreed to implement a combat-to-dwell cycle by 2024 for its RPA aircrew.[3]
The study’s mandate to focus on morale biased its recommendations. CPIP recommendations focused on improving aircrew welfare instead of operational performance, a conclusion that also affected follow-on civilian research. For example, a recent Government Accountability Office report on RPA staffing and dwell cited 21 articles; 17 were related to psychological health or well-being, while only one focused on operational effectiveness.[4] In both military and research circles, a consensus developed that aircrew needed a ‘break,’ causing leaders to eschew traditional dwell models and leave RPA aircrew with far too little time out of combat.
Traditional platforms have an established dwell model based on when a unit deploys. DoD policy sets a goal of a 1:3 deploy-to-dwell ratio; in other words, for every month a unit spends deployed, it should spend at least three months in dwell. The USAF expanded on DoD guidance with its Force Generation Model, which formalised a 24-month model with a maximum of 6 months in combat. RPA aircrew, who conduct combat missions from their home stations, fell into a grey area in both policies. The lack of specific guidance presented a problem in managing combat deployments for RPA aircrew.
An MQ-9 Reaper sits on the 361st Expeditionary Attack Squadron flightline at an undisclosed location, 6 August 2022. The 361st Expeditionary Attack Squadron operates the aircraft in support of Operation INHERENT RESOLVE. (Source: Wikimedia)
Initial Implementation
On 1 October 2020, the 20th Attack Squadron at Whiteman Air Force Base entered a 60-day reconstitution period, the first-ever protected dwell time for an RPA unit. Colonel Timothy Monroe, the 25th Attack Group commander, wrote that dedicated time out of combat was a ‘paradigm shift’ that would ‘have a significant impact to an adversary’s calculus.’ He was quickly proven correct when the hard work of squadrons in reconstitution set up equally unprecedented MQ-9 deployments in Romania and Japan over the next three years. Even with a short amount of time in dwell, MQ-9 units executed a paradigm shift from counterterrorism in the Middle East and Africa to strategic competition in Europe and the Pacific.
While the first MQ-9 dwell programs have shown impressive results, they have limited goals – rotating four squadrons implies a deploy-to-dwell ratio of 1:0.3, well below the DoD and USAF deploy-to-dwell goal of 1:3. A lower ratio means less training. Before a 6-month deployment, a fighter squadron receives a minimum of 18 months of training. An MQ-9 squadron starting the same 6-month deployment gets only two months of training – about one-tenth the time to complete similar training requirements. The unusually short training period also created new challenges and amplified existing structural problems in the RPA community.
Before initial dwell implementation, MQ-9 pilots and sensor operators completed mission qualification training and did not train again until they became instructors – one of the most underappreciated facts about RPA aircrew. Additionally, most mobility and big-wing aircraft have an aircraft commander that can debrief co-pilots, and most fighter aircraft has a flight lead that can debrief wingmen; MQ-9 aircrew have neither. When entering dwell, the lack of training experience and a senior/junior crew model forces squadrons to task their instructors to oversee every dwell sortie. As a result, MQ-9 instructor pilots and sensor operators are severely overtasked during dwell, leading to burnout, low morale, and poor training quality.
Depiction of deploy-to-dwell ratios (Source: Author)
Finding the Right Ratio
One barrier to decreasing MQ-9 deploy-to-dwell ratios is that dwell is normally justified in keeping US military members at home. DoD dwell policy explains a 1:3 deploy-to-dwell goal in part to ensure that servicemembers ‘do not spend extended periods of time away from their homeport, station, or base.’ MQ-9 aircrew never leave their base and return to their homes after each day of flying. Further, other communities (such as special operations forces) are chronically over-deployed. Even if studies continually demonstrate the need for RPA dwell, the lack of a physical departure from home stations challenges improved deploy-to-dwell ratios.
The requirement for traditional deploy-to-dwell ratios is evident in a day in the life of RPA aircrew. Today, pilots and sensor operators show up to work with many responsibilities. First, they fly for at least some portion of the day, conducting operational and combat missions globally. Second, they fulfil administrative responsibilities; all but the most junior aircrew have additional duties, from supervising airmen to administering annual evaluations to planning the squadron holiday party. Third, the aircrew accomplishes their training requirements. Because squadrons spend almost all their time in active operations, they must conduct basic combat training, training to make new instructors, and training on emerging tactics and technology while in combat. Fourth, the aircrew participates in mission planning, briefs, and debriefs internally and with outside agencies. To be clear, when RPA aircrew are flying, they do not do other work. Nevertheless, as soon as they leave the cockpit, their attention is pulled in three different directions.
Extensive research demonstrates the challenges of this type of multitasking. On the individual level, multitasking increases stress, decreases productivity, and increases the number of errors in completed work; one study demonstrated that multitasking functionally lowered workers’ IQ by ten percentage points.[5] Organisational multitasking, in which an organisation’s focus is split between multiple critical tasks, has similar effects. Research demonstrates that multitasking organisations deliver results slower, less consistently, and of lower quality than their focused counterparts.[6] The structure of RPA squadrons makes this problem more challenging; with a 24/7 mission, most of the squadron is divided into three shifts and rotating workweeks that prevent clear delineation of administrative, training, and combat duties. As a result, RPA squadron constructs that attempt to do all things at once are structured to underperform continually. Studies even demonstrate that RPA aircrew weigh their ‘deployed in-garrison status’ and ‘extra duties/administrative tasks’ (i.e., multitasking peacetime and wartime responsibilities) as higher operational stressors than combat and weapons employment.[7]
To return a squadron’s attention to its combat or operational mission, future RPA dwell programs must provide enough time out of combat to accomplish peacetime responsibilities. Before a manned squadron deploys, its members take the time to complete most training, administrative responsibilities, and professional requirements. RPA aircrew must do the same before beginning a ” deployment into operational flying. There is no data on how long this would take RPA aircrew, but it is reasonable to assume that it will be roughly the same as their manned counterparts.
With non-flying responsibilities accomplished outside combat missions, RPA squadrons could re-focus on combat operations. That same RPA pilot or sensor operator with four responsibilities in the legacy model would now have two: mission planning or execution. No key squadron personnel would conduct offsite development during high-priority operations. No pilots would be worrying about getting off shift in time to catch a flight to their wedding in four days.[8] In short, the RPA enterprise would flip its most important script: while combat operations are normal and training is abnormal today, the future must make training normal and combat a critical exception.
Depiction of RPA squadron responsibilities (Source: Author)
Conclusion – The Way Forward
Integrating RPA into a 1:3 deploy-to-dwell cycle faces serious but surmountable challenges. There are only three ways to improve a deploy-to-dwell cycle: create more squadrons, increasing the number of personnel out of combat; re-task (i.e., ‘redeploy’) some MQ-9 units from combat to training; or restructure squadrons to reduce overhead and free up personnel for training. Each of these three approaches poses its own challenges, as resources are limited, demand for MQ-9s is already more than the USAF can produce, and adjusting well-established personnel constructs carries risk. However, the idea that ‘risk is rarely mitigated, just transferred’ applies here. The RPA enterprise transfers risk to combat missions by not accepting risk in resourcing dwell.
Increasing time in dwell also increases the demand for training resources. More time in training means more flying hours at home, which requires more aircraft, cockpits, and (most importantly) maintainers. Even relatively banal problems like a chronic lack of desks and computers become acute when aircrew are in cockpits less and in offices more. The USAF is looking to save money in the MQ-9 program, but the relatively small costs of properly equipping its aircrew will pay returns in the long run.
Innovative solutions to resourcing dwell could be an entire article; the more critical starting point for the discussion is setting a requirement. As long as RPA aircrew are attempting to conduct missions while distracted by administrative responsibilities, if they are hampered by missing key personnel, and as long as they attempt to execute two important tasks simultaneously, they will not perform at the level expected of USAF aviators. The RPA enterprise must make another paradigm shift by integrating into the USAF dwell model, focusing on combat, and improving its performance just as the United States has faced its greatest strategic challenge since the end of the Cold War.
Major James ‘Hot’ Schmitt is a senior remote pilot in the United States Air Force with more than 2,500 combat and combat support hours in the MQ-1 and MQ-9. He has supported operations in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, including a recent deployment as the Chief of Weapons and Tactics for Air Forces Central at Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar. He is a graduate of the US Air Force Weapons School and currently works on the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations staff at Headquarters Air Force.
Header image: An General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial vehicle flies a combat mission over southern Afghanistan. (Source: Wikimedia)
[1] RPA is the USAF term for large, medium-altitude uncrewed aerial systems, sometimes also referred to as UAS or drones, to emphasise the role of the remote crew flying the aircraft.
[5] Molly Russ and Derek Crews, ‘A Survey of Multitasking Behaviors in Organizations,’ International Journal of Human Resource Studies 4, no. 1 (2014), p. 139.
[6] Janice Alquizar, ‘Multitasking of Teachers in the Contemporary Settings: Boon or Bane?” (Dec 2018), p. 35.
[7] Wayne Chappelle et al., ‘Symptoms of Psychological Distress and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in United States Air Force “Drone” Operators,’ Military Medicine 179, no. 8 (2014), p. 67.
Established in 2016, From Balloons to Drones is an online scholarly platform that analyses and debates air power history (including aviation history), theory, and contemporary operations in their broadest sense, including space and cyber power. To date, we have published over 250 articles on various air power-related subjects.
Since its emergence at the start of the 20th Century, air power has increasingly become the preferred form of military power for many governments. However, the application and development of air power are controversial and often misunderstood. To remedy this, From Balloons to Drones seeks to provide analysis and debate about air power through the publication of articles, research notes, commentaries, book reviews, and historic book reviews – see below for a description of the range of articles published.
The study of air power is to be understood broadly, encompassing not only the history of air warfare, including social and cultural aspects, but also incorporating contributions from related fields, such as archaeology, international relations, strategic studies, law and ethics. Possible subjects to be explored might include, but are not limited to:
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A US Air Force Fairchild C-119B Flying Boxcar air-dropping supplies near Chungju, Korea, in 1951. (Source: Wikimedia)
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Submissions should be submitted in Word format and emailed to the address below with ‘SUBMISSION’ in the subject line. Also, please include a 50-100-word biography with your submission. References can be used, and please be careful to explain any jargon. However, if you are unsure if your idea fits our requirements, please email us with ‘POTENTIAL SUBMISSION’ in the subject line to discuss.
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Header image: A Panavia Tornado GR4 of No. IX(B) Squadron on a training sortie in preparation for deployment to Afghanistan, c. 2012. (Source: Wikimedia)
Editorial Note: Led by our Editor Dr Mike Hankins, From Balloons to Drones produces a monthly podcast that provides an outlet for the presentation and evaluation of air power scholarship, the exploration of historical topics and ideas, and provides a way to reach out to both new scholars and the general public. You can find our Soundcloud channel here. You can also find our podcast on Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts.
In our latest podcast, we are joined by General Larry O. Spencer, former Vice Chief of Staff of the U. S. Air Force. He recounts his journey from being raised in Southeast Washington, D. C. to enlisting in the U. S. Air Force and eventually rising through the ranks to become one of only nine African Americans to wear four stars. General Spencer’s background as a support officer in an organization that tends to favour pilots and aircrews brings a different lens through which to look at the USAF and the use of air power.
General (ret’d) Larry O. Spencer served as Vice Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force until his retirement in 2015. As VCSAF, he presided over the Air Staff and served as a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Requirements Oversight Council and Deputy Advisory Working Group. He assisted the Chief of Staff with organising, training, and equipping 664,000 active-duty, Guard, Reserve, and civilian forces serving in the United States and overseas. Spencer was born in Washington, D.C. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in industrial engineering technology from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, and was commissioned through Officer Training School in 1980 as a distinguished graduate. Spencer has commanded a squadron, group and wing and was Vice Commander of the Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center. He was also the first Air Force officer to serve as Assistant Chief of Staff in the White House Military Office. In addition, he served as the Comptroller and then Director of Mission Support (A7) at a major command; and held positions within the Air Staff and Secretary of the Air Force. Before becoming VCSAF, Spencer was Director, Force Structure, Resources and Assessment, Joint Staff, the Pentagon, Washington, D.C.
Header image: General Larry O Spencer outside his family home in Washington DC, 30 July 2015 (Source: United States Air Force)
Air superiority needs to be conceived as a political condition that begins in peacetime, not merely a wartime operational pursuit. Perceiving air superiority in this way will make connections to the ordinary peacetime conditions political actors like the United States seek, resulting in military strategy, targeting, and weapons acquisition more in tune with national policy. This commentary piece is an essay based on a comprehensive study on the relationship between military means and political ends. Typically, examinations of air superiority start with discussing airframes, basing, technology, and tactics. This proposal, however, begins with the issues of legitimacy and norms and suggests ways of achieving air superiority rooted in peacetime operations. It concludes that a mix of manned and unmanned fighter aircraft is the best means of achieving this national policy.
An Essential Condition
Airliners require airspace free of the threat of missiles, drones, and gunfire before they even consider flight. Conversely, military pilots prefer unimpeded airspace in which whatever fire an enemy can send their way is insufficient to cause more than an occasional loss through which they can fly their missions without substantial interference and complete their missions. If the stakes are high enough, aircrews will press forward despite losses to hostile fire. Those can increase to the point that only the most necessary missions will justify prohibitive losses.
Air superiority is the general term used to describe these varying grades of airspace control. The condition is normally conceived in operational and physical terms: is a sector of airspace permissive enough for operations to be completed without too many losses? How many aircraft can one lose before it becomes too difficult to dominate a sector of airspace? Can a military actor achieve air superiority by shooting down a number or a percentage of aircraft?
More abstractly, one can relate air superiority to achieving a military strategy. For instance, Great Britain did not achieve air superiority over south-eastern England in September 1940 when its shoot-downs of Luftwaffe aircraft reached an arbitrary threshold. Instead, Britain gained air superiority when Germany could no longer proceed with its agenda of invading the United Kingdom; inflicting losses was just an intermediate step for the Royal Air Force. As a result, the British achieved a favourable outcome even though losses to enemy aircraft continued.
A Function of Governance
One can best perceive of air superiority as a political act and consequence. Since the ultimate goal of politics is to decide who governs where, how, and under what terms, the most helpful way to conceive of air superiority is as a political act. A state should ask whether its norms, rules, power, and assumptions govern what happens in the air when determining the safety within the airspace in which its national interests lay. These concepts take us into the realm of sovereignty: who or what has ultimate authority. For example, the Soviet Union was not completely sovereign over its airspace in 1983 when it shot down the Korean airliner flight 007 because of standards of international behaviour. It had the capacity to shoot down intruding airliners, and it could have continued to shoot down airliners for some time without much exertion. Instead, Moscow found itself condemned for shooting down an aircraft that should not have been where it was in the first place because international norms had already labelled what the Soviets did as illegitimate. The Soviets had violated a norm that really did not need to be codified: you just do not shoot down civilian airliners full of people. Because international discourse had long since settled that issue, the Soviet Union was condemned for its action. Arguments such as, ‘It’s over our territory,’ or, ‘warnings are all over air navigational charts; they simply should not have been flying there,’ carried insufficient weight. Furthermore, the issue had already been decided years before the incident through international law and had nothing to do with aircraft capabilities or weapons loads. The Soviets did not recognise that air superiority was ultimately a political issue, not an issue of military power, and they did not have ultimate authority over the concept.
An F-15 Eagle banks left while an F/A-22 Raptor flies in formation en route to a training area off the coastline of Virginia, 5 April 2005. (Source: Wikimedia)
Formulation
Norms, discourse, legitimacy, and governance, should be the starting points for understanding air superiority; machines such as aircraft, surface-to-air missiles (SAMs), drones, or satellites are tools that may or may not ultimately determine the legitimacy or reality of airspace control. Furthermore, since military force is a subset of information warfare, political actors can largely determine the legitimacy of airspace control before a shooting war is even contemplated, thus predetermining a significant portion of the consequences of hostile actions before they are initiated. States already pursue these conditions by flying between China and Taiwan or over the Sea of Okhotsk. Because airforces – and more ideally, civilian airliners – normalise these flights by making them regularly, they have become legitimate. Because international rules are related to air superiority, both should be considered cohabitants on the same continuum, like radio waves and light waves on the electromagnetic spectrum.
The achievement of air superiority thus begins in peacetime with the establishment of what is legitimate behaviour. Therefore, China understands this and is trying to construct airspace sovereignty over the western Pacific Ocean with manufactured islands, agitation over centuries-old, discredited maps, and military power: air sovereignty constructivism, if you will. Of course, nearby actors such as Vietnam, Taiwan, and the Philippines, cannot give in lest they normalise China’s aggression, but they do not have sufficient power to resist militarily.
Although it forms a critical component of the response, resisting China’s aggression and preserving airspace freedom does not begin with building powerful air forces. Regional powers must perpetuate an ongoing narrative about what is legitimate in the airspace off the coasts of Asia. When they make violations of their airspace by Chinese military aircraft actions that are automatically condemned; for example, they will have contributed to a powerful foundation for air superiority. Grassroots rhetoric condemning Chinese production of runway cratering missiles, not to mention artificial islands, would further contribute to the discourse of air superiority. So, the first component of air superiority operations would be to create a norm of, ‘this is simply the way things are; this is what is appropriate.’ For instance, international airspace is accepted, and air defence identification zones extend only as far as radar coverage from one’s mainland (generally around 200 miles). When no one, or at most, only China, questions that assertion, those states will have added to the legitimacy of their own defensive military aggression if it is ever necessary. Nurturing this narrative does not carry prohibitive costs, but it requires constant attention and never ends.
This endeavour’s more deliberate components include international agreements, international organisations, multinational military exercises, and air sovereignty flights. Conducted as a diplomatic-information campaign, these activities can predetermine who will be the victim and who will be the aggressor if armed conflict erupts. Indeed, ensuring that one’s state achieves victim status and is not labelled the aggressor is the most critical goal in the discourse of air superiority. Victims have very liberal rights to self-defence during war, while aggressors may not have any rights. Therefore, possessing the legitimate right of self-defence when protecting airspace is critical and begins in peacetime. States should make maintaining that status an ongoing component of their grand strategy and ensure that illegitimate power is the only means available to actors like China and Russia.
Ultimately a determined aggressor will not care. International opprobrium, condemnation, and even new enemies who wage war against the aggressor state may not be enough to dissuade a political actor from taking what he wants by force. However, if the revisionist power wins that battle over airspace, it will find itself in a weakened condition for resisting the international opprobrium that would follow. Ideally, regional actors will possess enough military power to persuade an aggressor to not go to war in the first place or fight him to a standstill if war comes. The question of what the best hardware is for accomplishing that goal is one that states must answer the first time correctly.
Prior to Weapons Acquisition
The most important question surrounding the hardware of air superiority is not which machine will shoot down the most enemy aeroplanes or missiles. Instead, one should ask political questions addressing legitimacy, deterrence, which governs where and how, and gaining victim status. Covering those bases will function as force multipliers to the combat capabilities of one’s air and space forces. States should opt for a mix of capabilities—not for operational reasons or the ability to achieve high kill rates of invading aircraft and missiles, although necessary. Instead, the capabilities must further political goals. Air capabilities need to be able to deter, reaffirm legitimacy, confer aggressor status on the state that is attacking, and wreck the aggressor’s strategy. From there, one should construct a system of sufficient lethality to preserve or regain air superiority. Furthermore, an air force should pursue air superiority as a component of governance, not merely as a military operation.
Surface-to-air missiles may be the best starting point because they are inherently defensive. A PAC-III missile cannot attack China from South Korea or anywhere else, for that matter. SAMs are legitimate because they operate from within a country or one of its warships. They are not aggressive since they are defensive weapons. An enemy must attack them, often as the first step in an airstrike; thus, SAMs force the enemy into labelling himself the aggressor and your state the victim, giving the attacked country the power that comes to a victim in today’s discourse. But an air force can use up its SAMs quickly. Suppose the enemy still has offensive power after the defender fires off its last missiles. In that case, the defender will be in a precarious state, and victim status and the legitimacy of his cause may be so much rhetoric.
The SAM’s stablemate, antiaircraft artillery, can cause great destruction to an attacker. As inherently defensive weapons, they are legitimate and not a weapon of aggression. They need to be able to detect and hit enemy missiles and aircraft; however. Otherwise, their use conveys the image of mindless firing and panic. Since the geographic coverage of each piece is quite small, they are tertiary weapons.
Cyber weapons should be a component of air superiority hardware. Few things could be better than somehow switching off or wrecking enemy hardware from within, for instance, but to my knowledge, computer viruses do not yet cause circuit boards to melt themselves. A force struck down with computer viruses can clean out the malicious software, and even examine and exploit it for a counterattack. For that reason, cyber weapons are one-shot pieces of software. They can help defeat an enemy onslaught, but they can also help an enemy strengthen his network defence because the attack exposes a weakness.
Space-based weapons have the potential to dominate the airspace below, but they have problems when it comes to legitimacy, deterrence, and labelling. If a country flies a space laser over its enemy to protect international airspace, it does so intrusively, confusing the world audience as to who the aggressor is. Placing a satellite armed with defensive weapons could give the appearance of a constant offensive threat overhead. Damocles would not be a politically helpful label for an armed satellite.
An F-35C Lightning II assigned to the VFA-101 launched off the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) flight deck on 4 September 2017.
Weapons Have Differing Meanings
There is currently a rush to build unmanned aircraft that either function as remotely piloted vehicles or as autonomous aircraft flown by artificial intelligence. They are less expensive, there is no pilot to be killed or captured, and their swarms can overwhelm defences or attacking strike packages. Drones, however, can only extend firepower, not legitimacy. Squadrons of drones either convey the seriousness of large groups of appliances or the sinister capability of robots; fiction writing has already determined many of the meanings we attach to drones. It will be challenging for drones to be perceived solely as defensive and fully legitimate, and their deterrent effect may be less. One of the components of deterrence is forcing the enemy to attack and kill your people and your territory if they wish to attack. Thus, an enemy is less likely to attack an ICBM in a silo, for example, than a ballistic missile submarine; land-based ICBMs enhance deterrence. Furthermore, people, not machines, need to govern airspace. People are more legitimate than machines, and people, not machines, can be victimised. Drones can threaten, but unlike manned aircraft, they cannot coerce in a way that is seen as legitimate. Drones will be most effective in furthering a political narrative when retained as adjuncts – extra shooters – to manned aircraft.
Because of the politics of air superiority, its optics, the issue of legitimacy, the need to convey political will and commitment, and the different meanings attached to manned aircraft and autonomous aircraft, a great need remains for men and women to fly the aircraft and man the SAM sites that achieve air superiority. Skin in the game is necessary because an aggressor will be less inclined to shoot down a manned aircraft than a drone. The people of a country will be up in arms if one of their piloted aircraft is shot down during a crisis, but if one of their drones is shot down, how should they react when an armed appliance has been destroyed? Drones will provoke, but fighters with a human at the controls can deter, signal, provoke, defend, escort, and assert international norms. While drones can provide more tactical firepower, only manned fighters can function as political weapons. Indeed, fighter aircraft that cannot be used against surface targets unless they spend six months in a depot undergoing conversions may be in the national interest to a far greater degree than a multi-role aircraft. It may even be in the national interest to produce a follow-on to the F-22 that can only be used as an air-to-air weapon.
Air Superiority without Bombing China
A capability to achieve air superiority over eastern Europe or the western Pacific without needing to carry out bombardment missions against Chinese or Russian SAM sites or airbases is most attractive politically as well as militarily; an ability to dominate airspace with a mix of manned and unmanned fighter aircraft without the assistance of aircraft attacking targets on enemy territory gives several advantages to political leaders. First, such a capability remains a defensive, legitimate political act of governing airspace and defending airspace. Such aircraft cannot attack their adversaries and thus are less escalatory. They can complete the mission of air sovereignty over their own territory or within international airspace. Proposals of bombing Chinese or Russian airbases in defence of Taiwan or the Baltic states are asinine. When one is bombing Russian airbases, one is attacking Russia, a Russia with a nuclear arsenal. Airfield and SAM site attack strategies, operations, and capabilities were essential when deterring the Warsaw Pact during the Cold War. They may be a requirement against peer states when a geopolitical relationship is going down the tubes, but bombing Chinese or Russian airfields constitutes poor politics for the United States and its allies except in the most extreme circumstances. An offensive capability and strategy in defending friends along the Asian periphery will lead to a war that worsens conditions, rather than a settlement in which those areas are governed in ways that respect the sovereignty of smaller states and international law. An offensive-defensive strategy will erode the victim status regional actors can easily retain if they emphasise an airspace politics of live and let live.
Developing the best new aircraft, SAMS, and directed energy weapons for shooting down enemy aircraft and missiles must not be procurement’s starting point for maintaining air superiority over the western Pacific. Again, air superiority is a political act, a contest of who governs the western Pacific in this instance, and how. What characteristics will the machines employed to carry out that task needs with that goal in mind? Because of the lethality of SAMs, air-to-air missiles, cyber weapons, and guided ballistic missiles, aircraft must be excellent technologically, but not for the sake of fielding the most advanced technology. Because of the political goals of the United States and its allies, the weapons should be defensive. An F-22, for example, is ideal for this mission because it does not possess much of an air-to-ground bombardment capability. That trait is a political advantage because the capability, intentions, and rhetoric are all congruent with a policy goal of governance and air defence. Since F-22-type aircraft do not support a ground attack strategy well, they are politically ideal for preserving air superiority. Several wings of American and allied F-22s and Next Generation Air Dominance Fighters (NGADs) would have the ability to defeat Chinese assets. Since they do not have the range to penetrate deep into Chinese territory, they threaten China less and match the political rhetoric of the United States and its friends more. Most importantly, highly-capable fighter aircraft can achieve air superiority solely in international airspace – the ideal location for exerting air sovereignty.
Because of the political goals behind its existence, the NGAD should be designed as a single-purpose, air-to-air combat-only fighter with a person in the cockpit. It does not need the capability to penetrate deep into Chinese or Russian airspace to destroy surface targets because that capability will not match up with any of the United States’ political goals. Why should the United States and her friends must have the capability to destroy SAM sites and airfields on Russian or Chinese territory? For that reason, the NGADs should be forward deployed, not F-35s. Keep the offensive capabilities of F-35s away from our adversaries. That will support American rhetoric and strategy, and their transfer forward in a crisis will help diplomatic efforts if it ever comes to that.
Air defence NGADs should be the forward-deployed aircraft because they can survive airspace infested with long-range Chinese SAMs fired from warships and long-range fighter aircraft far better than variants of the F-15 or F/A-18. The most advanced legacy airframes – including those not yet manufactured like the F-15EX – would only function as SAM sponges in the western Pacific and have no business flying in this theatre unless Chinese air capabilities have significantly been diminished. Even though it is more survivable against SAMs than legacy aircraft, the F-35 is not ideal for this mission because its offensive capabilities run counter to the policy and narrative desirable for governing the airspace over the western Pacific. Furthermore, it is too slow to run down and destroy the fastest Chinese fighters; it cannot engage and disengage at will like an air superiority fighter needs to do. However, given the low numbers of extant F-22s, F-35s must participate in the air-to-air battle in this scenario for the next several years. Finally, the NGAD should be designed as an aircraft carrier-launched aircraft and then equip both the US Navy and the US Air Force. Aircraft designed for carrier operations can be flown from land bases, but aircraft designed for runway operations cannot stand the stresses of carrier catapult launches and arrested landings. The NGAD should not be multi-role, but it will be multi-service. Furthermore, if it does its job well, it will not need to carry bombs because peer adversaries will not continue offensive warfare if they have lost command of the air.
Policy Goals, Grand Strategy, Narratives, Military Strategy, then Weapons Acquisition
The way to determine what kind of new technology to acquire for deterrence and war is not to first pursue the most advanced technology conceivable. However, the military strategy that results from a defence review may require just that. States need first to decide what they want. What political world do they want to live in? How can they use force, diplomacy, acquisitions, deterrence, legitimacy, and narratives to reach that world without stumbling into a major war – or winning if war breaks out? Air superiority starts with political goals, not technology, doctrine, or operations. Such an approach will significantly improve the United States’ opportunities for maintaining an international order conducive to the ideals and interests of itself and its friends. The capabilities of its military hardware will then be congruent with its peaceful rhetoric.
Dr Michael E. Weaver is an Associate Professor of History at the USAF Air Command and Staff College. He has authored five air power articles and a book on the 28th Infantry Division. His second book, The Air War in Vietnam, is due out in the fall of 2022. Weaver received his doctorate from Temple University in 2002, where he studied under Russell Weigley.
DISCLAIMER: The views expressed herein are those of the author alone and do not reflect the views of the Department of Defense, the U. Air Force, or Air University.
Header image: An F-15EX Eagle II from the 40th Flight Test Squadron, 96th Test Wing out of Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, flies in formation during an aerial refuelling operation above the skies of Northern California, 14 May 2021. The Eagle II participated in the Northern Edge 21 exercise in Alaska earlier in May. (Source: Wikimedia)
