Hi All,
This piece might be a little technical. It is about conceptions of air power, and in particular how states are using it now (particularly the USA and Ukraine). It is built on the ideas that I have mentioned in a number of places before, from books to articles, but not brought together in this way. I hope that it makes sense.
The piece is built around the idea that the US has (once again) revealed that it does not understand how to use air power, and as such has terribly bungled a war—and ended up weakening itself. It then moves on to Ukraine. I would say Ukraine shows signs that it grasps how to use air power better than the USA—though those signs are not as clear as many would have thought. There has been, at times, an overly celebratory discussion of the Ukrainian use of air power—when their campaign is, imho, more uneven than people realize. By that, I mean that to this point they might have been able to achieve more if they had used their air power more methodically. By looking at the Ukrainian air campaign against the Russian company Wildberries, I will try and provide some illustration of what I mean.
The USA Does Not Understand Air Power
The US is not alone in this, but it is painfully clear that the USA, and this includes both the Trump White House and the Pentagon, fails to grasp what air power can do and crucially what it will struggle to do effectively. The bombing of Iran, arguably the largest bombing campaign since the Vietnam War, has failed utterly to achieve anything strategic and indeed the country that has been bombed (Iran) is arguably in a stronger position since the US started the war.
That is an extraordinary thing. The USA was able to launch this campaign at a time of its own choosing, with close to air supremacy, with the aid of the Israeli Air Force, and with some of the most accurate and destructive weapons systems on the planet. And yet, after somewhere close to 15,000 different targets were attacked (at the time of the April ceasefire this figure was 13,500, and there were almost two weeks of bombing in July so I am estimating something close to 15,000 now).
It even had the new advantage of AI targeting, about which much was boasted early in the campaign (though far more was promised than delivered).
So, the USA could target almost anything it wanted—and it certainly did not hold back using some of its best munitions in doing so.
