Air Power

THE IMPORTANCE OF AIR POWER IN THE UK’S DEFENCE AND SECURITY POLICY

British air and space power is defined as ‘the ability to project power from the air and space to influence the behaviour of people or the course of events’. Around 30% of the globe is land and 70% is water but the air covers both and therefore air power is absolutely essential in enabling all campaigns to be conducted successfully.

British air and space power capabilities are divided into four fundamental roles:

Role 1: Control of the Air and Space

It is the first duty of any state to protect its airspace and a post 9/11 world is much more complex in this respect.  Imagine how little would be the reaction time of a Boeing 747 out of Amsterdam bound for New York, not yet at top of climb and within 100 nautical miles of Canary Wharf, if it suddenly became one of Al Qaeda’s weapons of mass destruction. This calls for a command and control system and manned interceptors of the highest order plus indicator and warnings systems second to none.

In more conventional warfare, control of the air enables commanders to retain the initiative while denying it to the enemy. Few activities can be conducted without air and space control; successful deployment to an operational theatre, for instance, depends on a benign environment created by control of the air to allow vulnerable transport vehicles, vessels and aircraft to operate safely, while space control facilitates asset logistic tracking and accurate navigation.

Fast jet aircraft may enjoy freedom from most threats after successful counter-air operations, but opponents will fight for the lower airspace with man-portable missiles, rockets and small arms. Although the Afghan Taliban does not have an air force, the UK has been involved in four inter-state conflicts over the past three decades and it would be very unwise to take control of the air for granted in future.

Role 2: Air Mobility

Air mobility and lift (including precision air delivery) underpin the global, regional and local deployment of military and civilian personnel and materiel. Although air lift is limited in payload by comparison with surface lift, in many crisis situations it is the only way of rapidly deploying and sustaining forces. Air mobility is particularly useful for moving light and Special Forces where the threat to surface movement is high. It is often the only way to get wounded personnel to specialist medical care quickly enough to preserve life. Air assault has tremendous utility in irregular warfare and dispersed operations while air-to-air refuelling significantly enhances strategic and operational level mobility. Air lift can also deliver strategic effect through disaster relief or other humanitarian operations. It can influence ‘hearts and minds’ by supporting local projects and evacuating civilian casualties to medical facilities.

Role 3: Intelligence and Situational Awareness

Surveillance and reconnaissance provide intelligence and situational awareness, whether for operational level commanders taking a theatre-wide perspective using space-based assets, or individual soldiers exploiting live video feeds from manned or unmanned aircraft. The high vantage point afforded by air and space allows an almost unhindered view ‘over the hill’ and across the electromagnetic spectrum, providing intelligence at all levels of command. Air and space systems now have sufficient sensor resolution to find and identify targets down to individual people. They can also map terrain and infrastructure and even monitor patterns of change and behaviour, routinely penetrating poor weather and overcoming concealment techniques. Sensors can intercept communications and other signals, helping to build a comprehensive and coherent intelligence picture. The 10,000 surveillance and reconnaissance sorties flown in the Middle East and South Asia during 2007 demonstrated the critical nature of air power in building a comprehensive intelligence picture.

Role 4: Attack

It is no longer sensible to define air power roles in Second World War terms. Large fixed-wing bombers, originally designed for strategic attack, are now quite capable of tactical close air support if properly armed and integrated with surface forces. Similarly, strategic effect is now just as likely to be drawn from the persistence of a Reaper Unmanned Air Vehicle armed with a Hellfire missile tipped with less than 30 kilos of high explosive. It is how weapons systems are used and in what context that matters, not the range or reach of particular aircraft types.

Air power has enormous potential to exert influence through coercion. Because of its almost unlimited flexibility, it may be used to attack a wide range of mobile and static targets across multiple theatres of operations. The successful use of air power as a coercive instrument can reduce friendly casualties and impose a relentless pressure on adversaries. Precision air attack is now so effective against conventional fielded forces that in 2003, of nearly 20,000 targets engaged during combat operations in Iraq, over 15,000 were primarily prosecuted by aircraft. Emerging technology, such as small

diameter bombs and limited blast radius warheads, will increase precision and allow better control of direct effects to minimise collateral damage. Air weapons have significant utility in irregular warfare, especially in identifying and attacking insurgents planting Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs). Coalition aircraft flew over 5,000 Electronic Warfare sorties to jam enemy communications in 2007, defeating trigger mechanisms and, in some cases, pre-detonating the IEDs themselves.

The Future

The next decade will see much soul-searching over British air power as the joint staffs strive to balance the needs of winning today’s counter-insurgency conflict in Afghanistan with the importance of maintaining enough Premier League capabilities to fight whatever tomorrow brings. This will probably result in a mix of support helicopters, transport aircraft, intelligence and situational awareness assets plus a fleet of around 100 Typhoons, 25-30 post-Reaper unmanned combat air vehicles and an indeterminate number of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters.  This level of capital spending is the minimum to meet the capability requirements facing the UK in an uncertain future.