Air Power Projection in the Era of 'Double Digit' SAMS

摘要

The United States military has had the advantage of being able to achieve air superiority during armed conflicts over the last 30 years. The ability to access the airspace over adversary territory has become part of the American way of war. Access to foreign hostile airspace in the future will become increasingly difficult. While performance of manned aircraft are reaching their limits, performance characteristics of surface-to-air missiles are still improving. Lessons from recent operations in Kosovo prove that a nation can exercise air denial using inexpensive air defense weaponry. The ability to exploit enemy airspace will continue to be a necessity in the future. In order to make that possible, we must focus our efforts on sensors and weapons that are more difficult for the enemy to detect and defend against. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and standoff weapons are well suited to be these enemy airspace exploitation weapons. Joint forces with standoff weapon capability and targeting information provided by UAVs together with a common battlespace picture will have the ability to exploit enemy airspace in the future. The capability exists today; the necessity will exist tomorrow.