AURORA, Colo.—The concept of air superiority is changing to increasingly leverage autonomous aircraft, nonkinetic capabilities, and space, but it remains the operational prerequisite if the U.S. expects to prevail in any future conflict, regardless of the cost to achieve it, senior Air Force leaders said at AFA’s Warfare Symposium.
They also emphasized the importance of flying hours, day-to-day training, and exercises as critical elements in maintaining a force that can win control of the air, along with having sufficient munitions on hand to prosecute a no-notice war, and sufficient platforms to deliver those weapons.
“Fiscal constraints do not change what it takes to win,” said Maj. Gen. Joseph D. Kunkel, the Air Force’s director of force design, integration and wargaming, in a panel discussion on air superiority. “We know what it takes to win. It takes air superiority, and if America wants to make those investments to win, then we’ll do so. If America doesn’t want to make those investments, then we’ll take more risk.”
Bottom line, he said: “I’m not so foolish to think that this is like a black and white decision … win versus loss. There’s a degree of risk involved. But “if we fund more force, we decrease operational risk, we decrease the risk of our policymakers”—and provide them with more options.
Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach, head of Air Combat Command, said air superiority allows the joint force to operate where and when it needs, making it a foundational enabler for operations in all domains. But air superiority should not be viewed in isolation from space superiority, he said. Regarding both, he said, “if you don’t have it, everything else is impossible.”
Lt. Gen. Dale R. White, uniformed deputy to the Air Force acquisition executive, said the defining lesson of the war in Ukraine is that fighting a war where neither side has air superiority “ends up in stalemate.”
China’s Focus
U.S. adversaries are developing their own means to achieve air superiority and to try to deny that advantage to U.S. forces. Referring to recent imagery released by China of its newest fighter aircraft, Wilsbach made clear their purpose: “Sixth-gen aircraft are for air superiority,” he said. “We know what that’s for. What are we going to do about it? I don’t believe nothing is an option.”
Kunkel said the Air Force force design he is developing has “designed to” that challenge, and asserted that the design will not be “driven by fiscal choices.” Still, fiscal reality is the biggest challenge to the Next-Generation Air Dominance family of systems, which includes both Collaborative Combat Aircraft and, at its heart, a crewed fighter. Panelists didn’t offer details on what that NGAD program promises, and acknowledged the “pause” imposed last summer when former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall chose to delay rather than commit to a very costly program.
To keep NGAD alive, contractors that have not been publicly identified were given Technology Maturation and Risk Reduction contracts late last year. Industry sources said the TMRR contracts enable the companies to keep their design teams together through the end of the year, leaving a relatively short window for the new Trump administration to decide whether to proceed with NGAD.
When the Air Force paused NGAD, Kunkel said, “we asked ourselves some hard questions: ‘What does air superiority look like in the future? Does the joint force need air superiority?’ And what we found is … air superiority matters.” Wargamers “tried a whole bunch of different options, and there was no more viable option than NGAD to achieve air superiority in this highly contested environment,” he said.
Still, White said the Air Force should be “open-minded about what [air superiority] looks like.” Wilsbach added that it could take a number of forms, including “nonkinetic” ways to dominate the skies. Electronic warfare and potentially cyber techniques can add to conventional kinetic attack. Kunkel said the Air Force can attack and disrupt adversary “surfaces” using nonkinetic means.
Still another element needed to enable air superiority is training. Capability is more than aircraft and weapons; it is also about the readiness and preparation of air crew. In the ramp up to Operation Desert Storm in 1990, pilots got 20 flying hours per month; today, deploying pilots can expect just 12—a number comparable to levels flown by Russia at the nadir of its military power in the late 1990s.
Collaborative Combat Aircraft will add to crewed pilots’ capability, but the Air Force will need a combination of manned and unmanned aircraft, and the time has not yet come where the U.S. can rely on unmanned jets alone.
“We obviously use quite a bit of unmanned platforms to do our business in the day to day,” Wilsbach said. “Very soon we’ll set up the unit at Creech to accept [CCAs] and start flying them. … We’re incorporating manned and unmanned teaming, and we believe that there’s some value to that as we go into the future.” But today’s artificial intelligence has not yet advanced “to the degree that the AI can replace a human brain,” Wilsbach said. “Someday, we will have that … but right now, we don’t. So it does require manned and unmanned teams as we go forward again in the future.”
White said that artificial intelligence writ broadly will help accelerate getting air superiority, as it gives “optionality” for decision-makers pressed to make quick calls. But its potential value is also seen by adversaries.
“We pride ourselves … with being the smartest in the world,” he said, but “the reality is, the threat has changed, because our adversaries are doing very similar things. We can’t just sit back and watch.”