Air supremacy (as well as air superiority) is the degree to which a side in a conflict holds control of air power over opposing forces. There are levels of control of the air in aerial warfare. Control of the air is the aerial equivalent of command of the sea.
Air power has increasingly become a powerful element of military campaigns; military planners view having an environment of at least air superiority as a necessity. Air supremacy allows increased bombing efforts, tactical air support for ground forces, paratroop assaults, airdrops and simple cargo plane transfers, which can move ground forces and supplies. Air power is a function of the degree of air superiority and numbers or types of aircraft, but it represents a situation that defies black-and-white characterization. The degree of a force's air control is a zero-sum game with its opponent's; increasing control by one corresponds to decreasing control by the other. Air forces unable to contest for air superiority or air parity can strive for air denial, where they maintain an operations level conceding air superiority to the other side, but preventing it from achieving air supremacy.
The achievement of air supremacy does not guarantee a low loss rate of friendly aircraft, as hostile forces are often able to adopt unconventional tactics or identify weaknesses. For example, NATO forces which held air superiority over Kosovo still lost a stealth strike aircraft to a Yugoslav ground-based air defense system, despite it being considered "obsolete". Several engagements have occurred in asymmetrical conflicts in which relatively poorly-equipped ground forces have been able to achieve aircraft kills despite working against overwhelming air supremacy. During both the Iraq War and the War in Afghanistan, insurgents found a greater degree of success in attacking coalition aircraft on the ground than when they were operating above them in the skies.
Levels Strong force Weak force Air supremacy Air incapability Air superiority Air denial Air parity Air parity
is the highest level, where a side holds complete control of the skies. It is defined by NATO and the United States Department of Defense as the "degree of air superiority wherein the opposing air force is incapable of effective interference". is the second level, where a side is in a more favorable position than the opponent. It is defined in the NATO glossary as the "degree of dominance in [an] air battle ... that permits the conduct of operations by [one side] and its related land, sea and air forces at a given time and place without prohibitive interference by opposing air forces." is defined as "an air situation in which the extent of air effort applied by the enemy air forces is insufficient to prejudice the success of friendly land, sea or air operations." is where no side holds any level of control of skies. This also known as mutual air denial if both parties make it practically or virtually impossible for the opponent to carry out regular aerial operations due to effective anti-air defences on the ground or at sea.
Methods
Although the destruction of enemy aircraft in air-to-air combat is the most obvious aspect of air superiority, it is not the only method of obtaining air superiority. Historically, the most effective method of gaining air superiority is the destruction of enemy aircraft on the ground and the destruction of the means and infrastructure by which an opponent may mount air operations (such as destroying fuel supplies, cratering runways with anti-runway penetration bombs and the sowing of air-fields with area denial weapons). A historical example of this is Operation Focus in which the outnumbered Israeli Air Force dealt a crippling blow to the Egyptian, Jordanian and Syrian Air Forces and airfields at the start of the Six-Day War, achieving Israeli air supremacy.
Disruption can be carried out through ground and air attack. The main role for which the British Special Air Service was formed was to conduct raids on German aircraft and airfields.Haskew, p.40 During operations in the Western Desert the SAS are reckoned to have destroyed more than 400 enemy aircraft. On 6 December 1944, the Imperial Japanese Army Air Force Raiding Group Teishin Shudan destroyed B-29 aircraft on Leyte. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union claimed it could achieve air superiority despite the inferiority of its fighters, by over-running NATO airfields and parking their tanks on the runways, similar to what they have done during Tatsinskaya Raid during the Battle of Stalingrad (note the Germans used parts of their autobahn motorways as airfields during the last war). The Soviet Union planned to use its Spetsnaz special forces in attacks on NATO airfields in the event of conflict.
Attacks by special forces have been seen by some commanders as a way to level the playing field when faced by superior numbers or technology. Given the disparity in effectiveness between their own and South Korean and US fighters, North Korea maintains a large force of infiltration troops; in the event of a war, they would be tasked, among other missions, with attacking coalition airfields with mortar, machine gun and sniper fire. This strategy has been practiced in active conflicts even in recent decades; during the asymmetrical warfare of the War in Afghanistan, 15 fedayeen destroyed or severely damaged eight United States Marine Corps Harrier jump jets in the September 2012 Camp Bastion raid, one result of which being pilots fighting as infantry for the first time in 70 years. Similarly, during the Iraqi War, four Apaches were destroyed on the ground in 2007 by insurgents armed with mortar, which were unintentionally aided by web-published geotagged photographs taken by coalition soldiers.
History
First World War
The First World War saw many firsts in the field of aerial warfare, including the deployment of aircraft armed with machine guns,Cheesman 1960, p. 177.Bruce 1989, pp. 2–4. the first successful engagement involving synchronisation-gun-armed aircraft on the afternoon of 1 July 1915.Sands, Jeffrey, "The Forgotten Ace, Ltn. Kurt Wintgens and his War Letters", Cross & Cockade USA, Summer 1985. Throughout the conflict, air superiority on the Western Front changed hands between the German Empire and the Allies several times. It became recognised that the worst losses was amongst new pilots, many of whom lasted just a day or two.Hart 2005, p. 11. The emergence of specialised fighter units, which were typically led by highly experienced pilots, some of them survivors of the Fokker Scourge period, greatly increased the effectiveness of fighter units.Mackersey 2012, pp. 126–130.Gray and Thetford 1962, pp. xxviii–xxx.
Early on, the Allies gained a lead over the Germans by introducing machine-gun armed types such as the Vickers F.B.5 Gunbus fighter and the Morane-Saulnier L. In response, Germany bolstered its own aerial development efforts; a major achievement of the era was the (push rod controller), a genuine synchronisation gear, developed by the Fokker company.Grosz 1989, p. 2.Weyl 1965, p. 96. The device was fitted to the most suitable Fokker type, the Fokker M.5K (military designation Fokker A.III), of which A.16/15, assigned to Otto Parschau, became the prototype of the Fokker Eindecker series of fighter designs.Gray and Thetford 1961, p. 83. This subsequently contributed to a period of German air superiority known as the Fokker Scourge, lasting between late 1915 and early 1916. A briefer period of German aerial dominance occurred in the Bloody April of April 1917; paradoxically, the Germans were disadvantaged on paper during Bloody April in terms of numerical inferiority; their effectiveness was increased by confining themselves to mainly operating over friendly territory, both reducing the possibility of pilots being captured and increasing the amount of time they could stay in the air. Moreover, German pilots could choose when and how they would engage, effectively dictating the terms of combat.Shores 1991, p. 14.
The Italian Corpo Aeronautico Militare established air superiority over the Austro-Hungarian Imperial and Royal Aviation Troops at the Battle of Vittorio Veneto in late October 1918. The Allies operated roughly 600 aircraft (93 Anglo-French, including four RAF squadrons) to gain complete air superiority in this final offensive.War Monthly (Issue 31): Vittorio Veneto, pp. 33–34 by Peter Banyard. The defeat suffered by Austria-Hungary at Vittorio Veneto has been attributed with causing the dissolution of the empire.Franks et al. 1997, pp. 111–113. In turn, the surrender of Germany's primary ally was another major factor in the German Empire's decision that the conflict was no longer viable and needed to end.
Interwar period In 1921, Italian aerial warfare theorist Giulio Douhet published The Command of the Air, a book positing that future wars would be decided in the skies. At the time, mainstream military theory did not see air power as a war-winning tactic. Douhet's idea was that air power could be a decisive force and be used to avoid the long and costly War of Attrition. In The War of 19, Douhet theorized that a future war between Germany and France would be settled in a matter of days, as the winner would be the one to gain air supremacy and destroy a few enemy cities with aerial bombs. He speculated that, while the targets would be announced ahead of time and all the population evacuated, but that the event would terrorize citizens into pressuring their government into immediate surrender. At the beginning of the Second World War, Douhet's ideas were dismissed by some, but it became apparent that his theories on the importance of aircraft were supported by events as the war continued.
In 1925, the Royal Air Force (RAF) tested the ability of air supremacy in isolation from other warfare forms during their first independent action in Waziristan. The operation, that later came to be known as Pink's War after Wing Commander Richard Pink in charge, used only air warfare in a combination of air attack and air blockade over 54 days to force militant tribes to surrender. The campaign was successful in defeating the tribes with two deaths for the RAF, but contemporary critics were not entirely convinced of its use in isolation; Commander-in-Chief, India General Sir Claud Jacob stated that "satisfactory ... the results of these operations have been, I am of [the] opinion that a combination of land and air action would have brought about the desired result in a shorter space of time, and next time action has to be taken, I trust that it will be possible to employ the two forces in combination".
American general Billy Mitchell was another influential air power theorist of the inter-war period. After the First World War I, then-Assistant Chief of Air Service in the United States Army Air Service under Chief Mason Patrick, Mitchell arranged live fire exercises that proved that aircraft could sink battleships (the largest and most heavily armed class of warships). The first of these was Project B in 1921, in which the captured First World War-era German battleship, SMS Ostfriesland, was sunk by a flight of bombers in 22 minutes.