The advancement of air power in the 20th century transformed war from a combat between armies to mass killing operations and the destruction of cities.
An excerpt from, "What Britain gained by partitioning the subcontinent into India and Pakistan" By Raghvendra Singh, Quartz, August 9, 2019:
"Maintaining oil stakes in the Middle East and securing air routes would become a major task for Britain once India was lost to it. Britain desperately needed a foothold in the Indian subcontinent where it could legitimize its presence as an ally of the newly created state of Pakistan. Leaders of the movement for Pakistan also appreciated the expediency of a British presence in the state. What could a militarily weak Pakistan do but allow British presence on its soil for a substantial period of time? It suited Britain to partition India. Apart from enabling Britain to sustain its position in the Middle East, the creation of the two dominions of India and Pakistan within the British Commonwealth also allowed for a continuity of sorts."
An excerpt from, "A Century of Air Power: Lessons and Pointers" By Kapil Kak, Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, March 2001:
Historically, lessons on the critical importance of air superiority abound. In World War II, command of the air became an essential element of Blitzkrieg; it determined the outcome of the Battle of Britain in which the Luftwaffe's offensive counter air campaign was badly misdirected; it decided the outcome of war at sea in the Pacific; it protected the Allied invasion of Normandy in 1944; it enabled the Allies' own successful air ground campaigns in North Africa and North Western Europe and, finally, when the Luftwaffe's air defences were irreparably overcome in 1944, it enabled the destruction of the German industrial base. Conversely, when control of the air was lost to enemy air forces by Russia in July 1941, by the US over Pearl Harbour, by Britain in Southeast Asia, by Rommel in North Africa and again in North Western Europe, armies and navies met with disaster.
An excerpt from, "US aircraft carriers - What they bring to the Middle East" Reuters, October 16, 2023:
The Ford, which was commissioned in 2017, is the United States' newest aircraft carrier and the world's largest, with more than 5,000 sailors aboard.The carrier, which includes a nuclear reactor, can hold more than 75 military aircraft, including fighter aircraft like the F-18 Super Hornet jets and the E-2 Hawkeye, which can act as an early warning system.It has an arsenal of missiles, like the Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile, which is a medium-range, surface-to-air missiles used to counter drones and aircraft.
An excerpt from, "The Future of the Bomber in an Air Superiority Role: Fighting an Adaptive, Complex Enemy in the Pacific" By Dr. Mel Deaile, Air University, August 1, 2022:
When Desert Storm began 30 years ago, I was serving as a copilot on the B-52 Stratofortress and deployed to the tropical island of Guam. I arrived on the island about a week before Pres. George H. W. Bush commenced the campaign to liberate Kuwait. Ironically, one week prior, I completed a nuclear alert tour at Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana. On the first night of combat air operations, I flew a bomber from Guam to Diego Garcia that would serve as an attrition reserve for the anticipated losses the 4300 Provisional Bomb Wing expected on the first night. As I flew over the Pacific, formations of B-52s penetrated Iraqi air defenses. Flying close to the ground to evade Iraqi air defenses, these bombers dropped weapons on critical runways. There were no losses that night. After arriving at Diego Garcia, my crew entered the bombing line-up. Eleven times we took off in a three-ship bomber formation, flew to Iraq, dropped our full load of 45 gravity bombs on one target, and returned to the island. That was 1991.Desert Storm showed the strategic effects airpower could generate and became the impetus for a decade-long investment in and advancement of airpower thought, technology, and training. On 8 October 2001, I flew another combat sortie at the beginning of an air operation. This time President Bush’s son, Pres. George W. Bush, authorized an air campaign against Taliban targets in Afghanistan in response to the 9/11 terrorist attack. By this time, I had left the B-52 and transitioned to the B-2 Spirit. On this record-setting 44-hour flight, my stealth bomber now carried 16 Global Position System (GPS)–aided Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM). Instead of one target, my bomber dropped multiple weapons on multiple targets with near precision. Much like the first night of Desert Storm, this night’s attacks focused on Afghanistan’s airfield and air operations. While the aircraft type and targets were similar, much had changed in the intervening years.In the span of a decade, airpower application evolved in multiple areas, including technology, munitions, and the concept of operations. In Desert Storm, formations of multiple bombers attacked the same target; now one bomber serviced multiple targets per plane. The precision revolution reached a tipping point. Fewer than five percent of the weapons dropped in Iraq during the 1991 operation were precision. Following the war, the US Air Force (USAF) added the GPS-aided JDAM to its arsenal; precision weapons became a majority of the weapons employed during Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF). Whereas B-52s flew dangerously close to the earth in Desert Storm to evade enemy radar, in OEF, B-2 low-observable aircraft employed weapons from safer altitudes undetected by enemy radar. The Guidance, Apportionment, and Targeting (GAT) process pioneered in Desert Storm morphed into the Air Force’s Joint Operations Planning Process for Air (JOPP-A) and its accompanying 72-hour air tasking order (ATO) cycle. One thing remained the same—the objective. Since the advent of airpower, air superiority has been the first objective in campaigns.
An excerpt from, "The US and Chinese air forces are rethinking whether it's possible to control the air" By Michael Peck, Business Insider, September 3, 2023:
The classic definition of air superiority comes down a simple proposition: Your air force can conduct its assigned missions while keeping an enemy air force from doing the same.Yet the US and China are grappling with the realization that control of the skies doesn't mean what it used to. Strategists on both sides are wondering whether it's even possible to achieve aerial dominance for more than brief periods against near-peer adversaries.. . .US bomber raids over Germany in 1944 were designed to lure the Luftwaffe's fighter force into the air, where they could be destroyed by American fighters. The spectacular Israeli victory in 1967 was preceded by a surprise aerial assault that destroyed the Arab air forces on the ground, enabling Israeli ground troops to receive constant air support without interference.But what is remarkable about the ongoing war in Ukraine is the limited impact of airpower. Despite the presence of advanced jets, especially on the Russian side, both air forces are flying cautiously in the face of surface-to-air missiles such as the Soviet-designed S-300 or newer Western-made air defenses. Drones have more freedom to operate, but even those face high losses to physical and electronic countermeasures.China's military is also wondering whether it's even feasible to control the skies permanently during a conflict between forces with comparable numbers of long-range weapons.Given the ability of such forces to deny each other control of the air, the goal should shift from control at "all times over all areas" to pursuing "air superiority for key tasks at key times and over key areas," three authors affiliated with the China's Air Force Command College wrote in the Chinese military's official newspaper this spring.
