China is attempting to dominate the Indo-Pacific region and control trade routes crucial to American prosperity. Russia continues to test American security interests in the Atlantic, Arctic, Middle East, and Europe.
So how can America best counter and overcome these threats? The answer is continued air supremacy — something that has special utility in the era of the coronavirus.
After all, conventionally armed U.S. missiles have a limited range and accuracy. So in the event of a significant military threat developing in the current coronavirus moment, the United States would face a significant challenge: employing a range of different forces but risking the spread of the coronavirus among them. That would jeopardize both the mission and the personnel attempting to effect it. And adversaries believe that the U.S. is newly hesitant to deploy forces against them for that reason.
But the U.S. retention of air supremacy provides a workaround. That’s because it allows the use of force in a way that mitigates the risk of coronavirus infection while accomplishing the mission. It’s air supremacy, after all, that best allows the U.S. to deter enemies and destroy their strongholds and support troops on the ground and warships on the water.
Take the threats posed by North Korea and Iran.
Both nations know that the U.S. can penetrate their air defense networks and destroy targets across their respective nations. This includes their hardened nuclear facilities. In that sense, the U.S. is able to dangle the threat of destruction even in a global situation, as now, where the ability to use other elements of military force is restricted. This thus forces a degree of caution into the calculations of those threat actors even as they seek an advantage from the present situation.
Yet we can’t take this advantage for granted. China and Russia in particular have developed extremely high-competency air defense networks. Those efforts are designed to allow their forces to establish powerful strongholds rapidly in the event of a U.S. operation to confront them. And while the U.S. currently retains means of puncturing these strongholds, we will lose that capability absent continued investment in our assured air supremacy.
Although retained air supremacy necessarily entails some big-ticket investment projects, such as the B-21 Raider, new technology enables other more affordable means to get the job done. Take the evolution of high-performance, low-cost drones, for example. These platforms offer the U.S. a credible means of successfully attacking an enemy while mitigating the risk to our aircrews. If we can build lots of drones to swarm enemy forces, we can both maximize our mission efficiency and allow our manned missions to continue simultaneously.
Still, the simple takeaway is the enduring one: In 2020, as in 1945, air supremacy remains the key to victory.
