We Need a New Language to Discuss Air Power

What happens when two sides have elements of air superiority in the same place/time?

Hi Everyone,

OK—normal service has resumed. I started writing a piece, and its become so long it will end up being 2 or 3. In particular I wasn’t able to get into how strategic air power is different in this war (an apt subject considering the Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil facilities recently). That will be developed more in the next piece—but this one focuses on air power over the battlefield.

This piece is an attempt to wrestle with a conceptual question that has arisen over the last year or so, and which I think renders our earlier discussions of air power obsolete. By obsolete I mean the older language we have used to discuss air power is not adequate for the job in light of the Russo-Ukraine war. Now, as a historian of air power, I’ve taken part in the discussion of air power during the last two years with some gusto, and yet increasingly I wonder if the problem we face is that we cant conceptually engage with what we are seeing here—both in terms of tactical airpower and strategic. We keep trying to put the use of airpower into earlier ideas—air superiority, tactical airpower, CAP, even strategic airpower—and yet none of these seem to be adequate to the discussion at hand.

A German fortress in France devastated by Allied Air Power in 1944https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Visit/Museum-Exhibits/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/196702/breakout-and-the-race-across-france/