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Power Lessons for the defensive employment of small air forces Ian - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Oct 02, 2023 361 likes •802 views

Concentration and Asymmetry in Air Power Lessons for the defensive employment of small air forces Ian Horwood, Niall MacKay & Christopher Price Technical limitations of interwar air defence Chain Home radar station Continuity in British

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Concentration and Asymmetry in Air Power Lessons for the defensive employment of small air forces

Ian Horwood, Niall MacKay & Christopher Price

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Technical limitations of interwar air defence

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Chain Home radar station

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Continuity in British air defence: Hawker Fury and Hawker Hurricane

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J.F.C. ‘Boney’ Fuller

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Concentration

  • J.F.C. Fuller

‘The Principles of War with Reference to the Campaigns of 1914-15’ JRUSI 61 (1916)

  • F.W. Lanchester

Aircraft in Warfare: The Dawn of the Fourth Arm (London, 1916)

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Dissemination of Fuller’s principles

  • 1920 Field Service Regulations (British Army)
  • 1922 Operations Manual, Royal Air Force
  • ‘Col. Fuller has indeed earned the gratitude of

the fighting services by formulating these principles’

  • Air Vice Marshal R.M. Brooke-Popham

RAFSC 4th Course, Commandant’s Lectures, Air Warfare (1925) Air 69/41

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Difficulties of concentration

  • ‘The ultimate aim of fighters is to stop enemy
  • attacks. To do this they must obviously

intercept and engage enemy bombers, if possible before they reach their objectives ’

A.B. Ellwood, RAFSC 17th Course, Air Warfare III: Fighter Operations (March 1939) AIR 69/223

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However

  • Defenders might face multiple incoming raids

against different targets

  • How to respond?
  • Fighters should avoid

‘nibbling at every enemy formation as

  • pposed to bringing maximum force to bear
  • n certain raids, with the objective of

destroying them utterly’

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Hugh Dowding & Keith Park

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Trafford Leigh-Mallory & Douglas Bader

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Battle of Britain – 7 Sep. 1940

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Battle of Britain – 15 Sep. 1940

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Air Ministry Meeting 17 October 1940

  • ‘It was agreed that the more we could
  • utnumber the enemy the more we should

shoot down’

  • ‘It is much more economical to put up 100

against 100 than 12 against 100’ (Bader)

  • Minutes, Air/27281
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The American Experience

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Air War – North Vietnam

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North Vietnamese integrated air defence system

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North Vietnamese interceptors: MiG- 17/19/21

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Potency of North Vietnamese interceptors

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North Vietnamese GCI system

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Attritional strain on US air forces

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F-105

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F-4 Escorts

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North Vietnam

  • The evidence from the air war over North

Vietnam shows that air combat is not Lanchestrian.

  • The case of North Vietnam shows, yet again,

that air combat is asymmetric

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North Vietnam

  • The US air campaign against North Vietnam

was not only unsuccessful in terms of achieving American strategic objectives

  • It also contributed to American defeat in

Vietnam.

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The Falklands War (1982)

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Sea Harrier CAP

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San Carlos Water

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801 Squadron FAA

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The Gulf War (1991)

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John Warden

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Warden’s application of airpower

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UCAVs

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  • Between the battle of Britain and Vietnam, technology

moved the balance of forces in the direction of the defence so that a genuinely integrated air defence became possible.

  • The principle of economy achieved by Keith Park in the

Battle of Britain was manifested by the North Vietnamese in countering the most powerful air arm in history.

  • The advantage apparently regained by the offensive during

the Gulf War was effectively another example of the application of overwhelming force, in which the systemic mathematical advantage of the defence did not come close to offsetting the material advantage of the attacking force.

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Conclusions

  • In the context of defensive aerial warfare, it

seems, there is no advantage in mere concentration of numbers of aircraft in single engagements.

  • Recent clashes have tended to obscure the

fallacy of mass.

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In a defensive air battle the lessons of history might have to be relearned yet again

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  • The lesson of 1940, 1965-7 and 1982 is that effective

defensive concentration does not depend on mass, and that the effective unit of concentration can be as small as the individual aircraft.

  • The development of tactics and strategy for a future air war

requires a clear and detailed understanding of the evolution of the principles of war, from their inception to the present day, as a historical process.

  • Such a study suggests that grave difficulties have resulted

from the metaphor of mass, the doctrinal emphasis on the

  • ffensive, the assumption of symmetry between forces,

and the incorporation of these in airpower theory.