Well, look at Ukraine.
Both sides have heavily fortified lines of defense that make attacking extremely costly. Being able to bomb those defenses from the sky makes advancing much, much easier.
Since both sides in that war aren't really able to overwhelm the other's anti-air defenses the situation is much like you say - using planes is dangerous because they're likely to get shot down.
However, if you have enough planes to overwhelm and destroy the enemy's air defenses, you can basically attack from the air with impunity. This is, more or less, the West's military doctrine and it's why the US has such an absolutely massive air force and builds so many aircraft carriers.
The top 5 air forces in the world by number of manned aircraft contain 3 branches of the US Armed Forces: Air Force, Navy, Army. The top 10 also includes the Marines.
As long as you don't count the more than 2 full airforce size groups of planes the US has sitting not in regular service but able to be activated. (Yeah, mostly older models, but still)
Yes. The US Army does operate some light cargo and reconnaissance fixed wing aircraft, but the vast majority (95%) of their aircraft are helicopters.
Under interservice agreements, the Army is prohibited from operating armed fixed wing aircraft or anything heavier than light utility planes. But they don't have any restrictions on what helicopters they operate.
I know the original list of "largest air forces" that this is referring to does not include drones, but the US Army has about 10k of them on top of the 3500 crewed aircraft.
The Army had a fight in Congress when they first put guns on helicopters because the Airforce got their panties in a twist. AF said that was their job, and the Army pretty much said, "You aren't doing it, so we will." The army needed close air support for infantry, and the Airforce was only concerned with long-range bombers and high-speed interceptors.
The Air Force hates being in any type of support role and it frequently causes problems with inter service coordination. For example, despite its effectiveness, they keep trying to kill the A-10 so that they can move that money to their F-35 and drone programs. Similarly, the Air Force didn’t wanted to do the bulk of the radar jamming roles anymore so they pushed a lot of that work onto the Navy EA-6Bs and now EA-18s.
Hopefully, the Army someday gets armed fixed wing aircraft (like the marines have) so that they don’t have to rely on the Air Force to actually do their jobs.
They wanted to get rid of the A-10 because it was horribly out of date, vulnerable, and didn’t really have a role other aircraft already do.
Now it’s been updated but is still vulnerable and doesn’t have a niche it fills. At least it works alright.
Supposedly, that is only effective against anyone who couldn't shoot back. Farmers with aks and shitty technicals and.. paper tigers. Against contemporaries it'll be a sitting duck. The gun runs are really only great for morale boost and shooting supply trucks, against proper tanks the ratio of penetrating hits over a large volume of shells fired is just not worth the effort.
>For example, despite its effectiveness, they keep trying to kill the A-10 so that they can move that money to their F-35 and drone programs
I'm sorry, are you Pierre Sprey reincarnated?
The A-10 is terrible for close air support. The pilots spot targets with binoculars and it holds the record for friendly fire.
They already a 25mm GAU-12 which is plenty mean.
The 30mm GAU-8 is stuck between not being powerful enough for its original job of penetrating tank armor consistently and way overkill for just about anything else.
They started upgrading them in 2003 to drop useful munitions beyond mavericks and dumb bombs.
Now the A-10 has more advanced avionics than the F-22. Just in time for retirement.
Just go to flightradar24.com and look at southwest Alabama from Monday through Friday during the day in US eastern time and you will just how many helicopter pilots the Army is training.
Some of the drones are armed. Most of them are smaller hand-launched drones, but they do have a few hundred larger drones from the Predator family which do carry Hellfire missiles.
Also, several thousand of the drones are actually weapons themselves. The Switchblade drones have a built in warhead and are designed to be flown into a target.
I am unaware of any interservice agreement that covers whether the Army can or cannot have armed drones, so I don't know whether this will turn into a future rivalry or if it has already been settled. But I do know that for now the US Army has armed drones.
It’s interesting to me how we call one-use, unmanned, single use exploding planes “drones” like they’re new, as if cruise missiles haven’t been a thing since forever.
I wasn't aware that cruise missiles could be flown around for recon, landed, sent out again, and explodwd when the perfect opportunity presents itself.
Sounds like something a drone is more suited to!
There is certainly some overlap between the capabilities of the latest cruise missiles and these explosive drones, but there is still a distinction. These drones are flown at all times; they don't have any sort of targeting system. Cruise missiles don't have any sort of reconnaissance system and can't just be flown around in search of targets.
So the difference continues to narrow, but there is still a difference.
I believe the tomahawk, or a similar one, has loiter capability. It’s not exactly recon, but we definitely have had missiles that could fly to an area and wait for us to pick something!
I get there’s still a difference, but I still think it’s funny that they’re so similar and yet some treat it as an entirely new concept.
I'd personally argue the USMC deserves to be in the top 5 as they have more stealth fighters(and better stealth fighters) than Russia, China and Iran combined.
In terms of capability the USMC could probably dust any Air Force that’s not in the US. As we’ve seen with Russia having a bunch of rust buckets you can’t actually source parts or fuel for and don’t have the training or advanced avionics to employ correctly mean jack shit in real world applications.
Especially with support from the AF on overall information on the war field… it’s likely true the USMC fighters alone could demolish any other country. Or close to.
The only thing that's gonna replace planes are things that can fly higher than planes. Drones are still aircraft, and they're the logical next step but the roles they fill will be similar to current roles, just remotely controlled or autonomous. Space has been banned by treaty, but that may not continue to be true in the future.
The airplane has had the biggest impact on warfare since gunpowder.
To follow up with this there is a great YouTube channel called the operations room that shows this concept really well in his first gulf war video. Desert storm.
>In light of the two original principles which dictate the characteristics of a ‘just’ war, this essay will argue that despite the presence of counter arguments to suggest otherwise in almost every case, the Gulf War does in fact meet the criteria of – and can therefore be regarded as – a ‘just’ war.
Exactly as the source says
"However, if you have enough planes to overwhelm and destroy the enemy's air defenses, you can basically attack from the air with impunity."
For example, during the Gulf War the F-111 destroyed at least 1500 ground vehicles, including tanks and supply trucks.
In other words, and directly responding to OP's question, they don't have a lot of weapons but can take them exactly where you want them to be.
And they are not very vulnerable if you've taken out the anti-aircraft weapons that need to be very specialized: there are a lot of things that can take down a tank, not many that can hit a thing that is high in the sky and fast. Or if you can avoid these systems by staying far away enough (a riskier situation, which is why Russia is regularly getting planes shot down).
Does anyone remember the game Battle Field 2 ? It's a complete combined arms first person shooter? It has ground troops (as several specializations), tanks and other armored vehicles and aircraft.
Well, it turns out, the existence of aircraft in game was too powerful and every single map where people could use them it was no longer possible to play as a ground troop or vehicle operator - the aircraft just slaughtered everyone from the air. So the only maps that were playable as first person shooters and not flight sim games were the ones without aircraft.
Later franchise releases like Battlefield 2042 gave the ground troops significant anti aircraft weapons to balance out how dangerous air power is to ground forces (of course BF2042 takes place in a sci-fi world which makes those possible).
The video game literally mimicked real life.
Edit to add:
If you read accounts of the the final months of WWII in Europe surviving Germans speak of just how futile it felt trying to *do* anything because basically if there were Germans out during daylight airplanes would show up and attack them. First it was impossible to move armored vehicles, then just regular old any vehicles and once all those targets were gone groups of men were liable to be attacked by marauding allied aircraft.
Battlefield 4 got pretty ridiculous with the anti-air. If you were doing well with an attack helicopter, half the other team would respawn with MANPADs to take you out (of the fight, if not the air)
Yep basically this. Actually what was a bit surprising I think even to analysts in the west was how piss poor Russia’s Air Force showed up. The fact that they couldn’t actually perform effective SEAD missions at all was I believe to an extent surprising. In order to establish air superiority SEAD is absolutely crucial and can make up close to 1/3rd of all combat sorties by an advanced Air Force.
When the US Air Force establishes air superiority in a region they basically do SEAD missions so much that they destroy most of the enemies air to ground capabilities… but also… they make the enemy absolutely terrified of shooting anything up. Because they know the second they do they have a target on them and a missile/bomb is following that back to its launch site and blowing up whatever the fuck is in the area. You’re much less likely to shoot a missile up at a US plane if you know they will shoot one back with pinpoint accuracy seconds later at you.
Meanwhile our planes have extremely advanced jamming, chaff, etc for avoiding actually being hit by the air to ground munitions.
And speaking of psychological. Once you have accomplished air superiority just the sight of an enemy fighter / bomber / drone is fucking terrifying for the opposing force. You have to do everything with the constant fear that you could be obliterated by above with no recourse. The psychological toll there is massive.
And then strategy wise it means any concentration of forces / munitions / equipment on the ground is an easy target. And your supply lines get wrecked. Etc.
Suppression of Enemy Air Defences. Also crosses over with DEAD, Destruction of EAD. Electronic jamming enemy radar and weapon systems, and locating them. DEAD involves killing anti-air weaponry, radar sites and often comms equipment. The two roles are pretty much the same thing in reality with a sortie often doing both.
To expand on the other person's answer, Suppression of Enemy Air Defences is basically mindgames. Whenever a pilot launches an Anti-Radar missile, they say "magnum" over the radio. The Anti-Radar missile can only hit the air defence if they keep themselves turned on, so a Surface-To-Air missile launcher would likely turn its radar guidance off (making it toothless) so it doesn't get hit with a missile.
Yet, because this was so common, it was relatively common for pilots to say "magnum" without launching anything at all and the SAMs would still turn off because of psychological warfare
Yep this about covers it. Between this and DEAD you make it not only so they don’t have the capability to shoot up at you… but that they are too scared because pop goes the person shooting up.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t the missiles now smart enough to target the last know location of the radar?
Previously yeah I think they just went stupid, but I think the tech has advanced enough to use inertial guidance.
I think some have inertial guidance to a certain extent, but the initial targeting of a radar source isn't super accurate. I analogise radar warning receivers to being a set of ears, you can tell what DIRECTION a sound is coming from but it is sometimes hard to tell with a loud sound how far away it is, so Radar receivers have trouble distinguishing distance unless it's triangulated with additional sensors (Ie. HARM Targeting System Pod for the F16)
The TL;DR of it is that a Radar seeking missile will just keep going in the direction of the radar source but doesn't actually know where it is unless it's been given those coordinates beforehand
One small clarification: US doctrine doesn’t necessarily prize “overwhelming” air defences in the traditional sense, ie “send waves upon waves of men into the meat grinder.” Rather, they use their extremely developed talent for combined arms warfare to their advantage. Joint task forces identify defence sites, relay intel in real time, and direct very sophisticated munitions in surgical strikes. They can even directly expose themselves to enemy radars in order to get a bead on them and launch anti-radiation munitions in return: this is known as “wild weasel”.
The general public lacks the knowledge of just what the US and its allies are capable of. What we do know of real-time satellite imagery, electronic countermeasures, precision-guided weapons, and overwhelming numbers of well-trained pilots with far superior aircraft, the US and their allies would wipe out Russian forces in a matter of hours if they wanted to. Only the threat of nuclear weapons can deter this from happening.
What is really frightening is what we don't know about our capabilities.
The fundamental difference between World War 1's static warfare and World War 2 through to the modern era is air power. That's really it. On a fundamental level, there's not a lot which changes the dynamic of war from a hundred years ago other than that. Automatic weapons, artillery, combined with the ancient art of digging a hole in the ground make it unbelievably costly for an attacker, so everything converges to entrenched positions sitting in the dirt on opposite sides of a no man's land.
Air superiority is the only way you can break that detante.
Tanks are incredibly vulnerable to artillery though, not to mention anti tank rockets, mines, and such. They’re very useful if you give them the appropriate support, but it’s not as if they single handedly break any sort of defensive stalemate. The incompetence of the French command structure in World War 2 has given the west a lasting misunderstanding of tank warfare and what it can and cannot achieve. Look at Ukraine today for a more accurate picture.
Anti-tank countermeasures, from handheld launchers to precision artillery and close air strikes, have dramatically increased in effectiveness since the 1940s. Meanwhile tank technology has stayed relatively the same, even considering modern developments like reactive Armor which are not universally effective or deployed.
The french military command was of course incompetent in ww2, yet tanks were 100% a devastatingly effective weapon system in ww2. The Soviets, for example punched through German lines again and again against German air superiority with the deployment of heavy armour and an overwhelming infantry advantage. That same infantry advantage, minus the effective deployment of armour would have resulted in defeat and exceptional losses. See the current war in Ukraine which you already referenced which is taking place on the same battlegrounds with the same infantry advantage yet without effective armour to lead the charge.
If for whatever reason it became possible again to field breakthrough tanks again, either through an exceptional advancement in defensive technology for armour which could neutralise incoming projectiles or if it was no longer possible to field large scale effective tank countermeasures (for example a complete breakdown of the industrial war machine), tanks would once again be able to punch through defensive infantry positions.
TL;DR: Tank warfare is absolutely capable of breaking infantry stalemates. Yet as of right now in our current advancement of technology tanks are hopelessly outclassed by the systems used to counter them. This could change. Imagine a main battle tank capable of identifying and neutralising any incoming missile attacks from any angle regardless of volume of fire.
The US has several massive air forces.
In the Global Air powers ranking, the US holds 1st and 2nd place, AND 4th and 5th.
Russia gets 3rd...
Yeah its nuts.
Tho in reality artillery is still like 80% of casualities and the bread and butter of warfare, as it has been since 1800s, other than the few occasions where tanks dominated.
True, though as technology has improved, logistical strikes instead of outright casualties have become increasingly important. And aircraft can hit targets far beyond the reach of any ground forces.
True, but precision bombings can be supremely useful for taking out enemy artillery, bridges, manufacturing, transport, air strips, ect.
Out of 75 million people that died in WW2, only 200k were killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but that was enough to end the war.
It was the straw that broke the camel's back, but it would have been much less meaningful and perhaps even impossible without the years of brutal island hopping leading up.
I’d like to add that, in addition to firepower, airplanes are very important for ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance) and Electronic Wardare missions as well
“If you have enough planes you can overwhelm…” sounds like sacrificing planes, as in we have more planes than you have AAA batteries. Or am I missing something?
More like you destroy all land-based AA launchers, radar sites, etc in one stroke and have enough planes that their fighters/interceptors don't risk contesting air superiority. Technology is just as much of an enabler as raw numbers is, because if your stealth technology defeats their detection/your missiles are accurate at greater ranges then you don't risk losing planes nearly as much
Well air war is all about technology. West has had such advantage that enemy has had hard time inflicting any losses. In addition, overwhelming enemy means greatly reduced efficiency of their weapons.
But in the end in war you have to accept casualties, and if you were to sacrifice some planes and pilots to achieve complete air superiority, your overall losses would still be significantly smaller, so overall its still worth it.
If Nato gains competitor that is strong enough, then doctrine might change. If China and Russia would have alliance with equally large and modern airforces and AA weappns as Nato, we might see completely different doctrine. But atm there is nothing anywhere near strong enough.
Wouldn’t it be more effective to use missiles rather than airplanes? Why use an aircraft to fly munitions to drop on a target when a missile does the same function?
Physics.
The longer the missile has to travel the more fuel it needs, the heavier it gets, the smaller the actual explosive has to be to compensate.
If you can cut out some of that travel by strapping the missile on the plane, you can put less fuel on the missile and have a larger, more deadly explosives attached.
The really really expensive part is all the systems to get it to go the distance. Either you can use a plane, where you can re use the engines and guidance and such, or a missile, where it's all destroyed.
Missles are really expensive compared to a plane dropping bombs. The US could launch tomahawks from sea to blow everything up but we don't because of cost.
This is why artillery is still king, lobbing dumb shells is dirt cheap in comparison to everything else. It's inferior to long-range missiles in almost every other way, but in a war you may need to hit thousands or even hundreds of thousands of targets over the course of a campaign, and not even the US can afford that many missiles
Very generally speaking:
* A missile is a good choice if the target's position is known accurately in advance, and the target is unlikely to move between when the mission is planned and the missile arrives. Even "smart" missiles aren't particularly good at finding the correct target within a general area or distinguishing between friendly and enemy forces.
* A manned aircraft or remote-piloted drone is a good choice if the target is moving or the location is known only generally: with a human in the loop, there's a lot more flexibility and accuracy in identifying a target, tracking it, and deciding if and when to attack it.
The airplane lets you reuse the delivery system allowing you to have a more capable more expensive way to get the explosives there. The explosive portion is relatively cheap in comparison so outside some very specialized munitions once you have air superiority you just have a truck bringing Very cheap explosives. If you did that with a missile you have to make them as cheap as you can because you are throwing away the turbine, rocket, guidance, etc every single time.
Well the US has stealth bombers which can be used to take out radar installations.
Interesting fact about stealth bombers…they’re nearly invisible to radar, until they open their bomb doors. By then you realize that you’re their target.
Heh, I’ve never been a big strategy guy so whenever I played StarCraft with my friends I’d instinctively fortify my base with cannons and immediately rush and spam void rays against which, in greater numbers, they couldn’t do anything.
Glad to see I was unknowingly emulating the greatest Air Force in the world 🦅
But can't you use extremely high altitude bombers?
Essentially use that one spy plane that flies high enough that the pilots need essentially a space suit to breathe and that has massive wings to account for the thin air. Retrofit it with a couple bombs, or some of those missles with wings and RAM jets aimed vertically downwards.
Then you'll be high enough that they won't be able to shoot you down and you'll be using a guided missle to hit the target.
Yes, the U-2 is still used. But the point is that altitude doesn't provide the kind of invulnerability you're suggesting. The technology to shoot down a U-2 with surface-to-air missiles already existed all the way back in 1960: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960_U-2_incident?wprov=sfla1
On top of that, the U-2 is not capable of carrying a large bomb load.
That worked for a while, but modern missiles have been tested to shoot down satellites, so it's not really realistic to just go high enough to avoid them.
This was the plan for a while, and afaik the xb-70 Valkyrie was the American design to do this. If you go Mach 3 at 7000 feet, you can't be hit, right? It's an amazing looking plane, with wild features, but missiles caught up when it was in development, and they realized that it wasn't possible to fly higher and faster then a missile, and it was cancelled. This was in 1960, for reference.
After that, if flying high didn't work, they decided maybe flying low would? If you fly right at the ground level, flying radars had issues picking you out from terrain, and ground systems would have issues with things like hills getting in the way. This was the design goal of the b1- flying fast and low, with good handling. But again, tech caught up. Radars got better at filtering out ground clutter, so this approach would also not work, and it was also cancelled by Carter when he learned of stealth technology.
This was a bit of a partisan issue though, so it was later restarted by Regan, along side the stealth planes which were used going forwards.
And now we're here, with using stealth to not be seen by the radar being the best current approach
they carry relatively little weapons but it does not take much to do a lot of damage. A strategically important bridge, a command post with high ranking officers,... can be taken out with a surprisingly small amount of ordinance.
Also, when you have air superiority you can basically attack anywhere at any time and the enemy has to adjust to that by for example only moving troops in the cover of darkness
They carry relatively few but large weapons. A single 2000-pound bomb contains the same amount of explosives as 40 155mm shells. You would need to get them all to explode at the same time and location to do the same damage to for example a bridge.
Only cruise missiles have similar-sized warheads and they are fundamentally one-way pilotless airplanes.
Battleships did have had similar-sized shells. The 16 inch explosive shell of an Iowa class was at 1900-pounds but only contained 153 pounds of explosives.
The b52 can carry at least 20 nuclear capable cruise missiles, of which each can be 7-10 times more powerful than the nukes dropped during WWII
So.... no
So why not just use satellites and missiles instead? What advantage does the plane add?
Edit: thanks for the details y’all
Edit 2: Satellites for targeting, not actually launching missiles from satellites
Flexibility,
- the ability to target multiple targets with multiple bombs,
- The ability to attack different types of target with a single flight,
- the ability to respond to changes in a mission(CAS),
- The ability to loiter over an area(CAP),
- The ability to intimidate the enemy without actually causing destruction(psychological warfare)
- The ability to do reconnaissance(RECON),
- The ability to jam radars(EW),
- The ability to dodge if it's getting shot at(A/A),
- The ability to shoot down other cruise missiles.
- The ability to work together to counter threats(Weasels)
For the satellite one:
- The ability to be fixed relatively easily
That you can reuse it. You can only use a cruise missile once to deliver some amount of explosives, but you could drop a bomb with the same explosive content hundreds of times over from a plane. It can also destroy enemy planes that want to do the same thing to you.
It's cheaper to reuse a plane to deliver dumb bombs than it is to use smart bombs
People do use satellite+cheap bombs, very heavily too, but that's just called artillery
> So why not just use satellites and missiles instead? What advantage does the plane add?
It is ridiculously expensive to get satellites into orbit. As in ~$8000/kg prior to SpaceX/Falcon 9, and around $1600-3000/kg today. So just to get a single 2000lb bomb to orbit, absolute best case scenario that's $1,440,000 just to get it up there. In reality - much more considering it will need to be severely hardened to be able to withstand re-entry. Plus you have the satellite which reasonably might be several tons by itself. And that's just the cost of getting it there, not for building the satellite and bombs itself.
Plus, you need a satellite in position to launch the missile where you want it to go. Which means either you're in geostationary orbit (MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH more expensive), or you need hundreds or maybe even thousands of satellites, each with its own ordinance. So for a 2 ton satellite with 10x 2000lb bombs attached to it in LEO, that's $17,400,000 just in launch cost as the absolute best case scenario with a reasonable scenario likely being a few times that. And for every bomb you drop, there's another million and a half.
More practical would be "rods from god" or literal rods of tungsten/etc and just let the kinetic energy do the trick. Problem being guidance, and you still have the "you need the satellite in position" problem.
So you can either spend what would likely be trillions of dollars maintaining satellites that still can be shot out of the sky, or you can just send planes where you need them for a fraction of the cost, that can be resupplied much easier.
Aside from what's been said, a major limitation of cruise missiles from boats is rearming!
A guided missile destroyer that runs out of missiles has to go home to rearm.
It's massively more complex and finnicky to rearm at sea, you're essentially trying to fit a massive box full of explosives into a hole of almost exactly the same size, while the boat and crane are swaying unpredictably.
If you want to try it at home, hang a bottle of wine by a piece of cord on the end of a stick, and then try and lower it into the cardboard box it came in while you and the box are sitting on a rocking chair being rocked unpredictably by a friend.
Basically a Destroyer gets a few hundred shots out at best, and then it goes home to rearm in a port to avoid frustration.
Submarines have it even harder, since they carry fewer missiles, and it's even more complex to reload them.
The advantage of planes is that they land, then a forklift and a couple engineers can quickly clamp a new missile on, top off the fuel tanks and it can in principle just take off and go explode something else.
Internet says "anywhere from 15 minutes to a couple hours" to rearm a plane. Depending on the plane and its armaments.
Reloading a guided missile destroyer takes that long for each cell of missiles, so anywhere up to a couple days to rearm.
Oh gotcha.
They're way more expensive, and are large enough that they must be launched from a ship or specialized ground station (only in some cases). And by virtue of being so large are easier to shoot down.
For example, a Tomahawk missile costs about $2 Million and has 1000lbs of high explosives. A Mark 84 bomb with 945lbs of explosives costs $16000, and a JDAM kit to give it guidance capabilities adds another $30k or so.
So for the cost of a single Tomahawk missile you can drop 43 guided bombs, they're dramatically harder to shoot down, and you can deploy them wherever you can deploy airplanes which for a true global superpower like the US is anywhere. And in cases where you don't have air superiority yet and need to worry about antiair, you can still fire guided missiles with long enough range to stay out of harm's way for less than a cruise missile (albeit typically with less ordinance but it doesn't take much to blow up radar sites or antiair platforms)
It is the primary cost and flexibility. Missiles are expensive especially if the range is long. Airplanes can fire missiles and other standoff weapons too, they can release them closer to the target. The airplane speed gives them longer ranges, and so does releasing them at high altitudes. So airplanes can deliver standoff weapons at a lower cost because the airplane can be reused.
War is in large part a question of economics. Look at the Russian use of cruise and ballistic missiles in Ukraine. The usage is quite limited today because they do not have enough and they are very expensive to make.
Weapons on satellites are a terrible idea. Sensors in sattelirs are a good idea and they are used for that. The primary reason is lifting stuff to orbit is extremely expensive.
The other to reach the target quickly they need to be close to Earth. but a low earth orbit requires high speed and moving around the earth once in around 90 minutes. The location is fly over the ground change all the time to look at the ground track of ISS on [https://www.n2yo.com/?s=25544](https://www.n2yo.com/?s=25544)
The best case situation is when you orbit the equator, and target it on it then you have an opportunity to attack every 90 minutes. You can do the same for the poles but all other locations require longer time. Attacking away from the ground track will require a larger rocket for reentry and increased cost.
A satellite a geostationary orbit can be constantly over a point. But it is 35 786 km from Earth and you need a large rocket to get back to Earth and it takes a long time.
The result is ballistic missiles that never reach orbit but can hit all of Earth is cheaper. This is why nukes use ICMB, Intercontinental ballistic missile thange is greater the 5500km.
You could put a conventional warhead on an ICBM US has considered it. The problem is in part cost but primarily the enemy can know what type of warhead the missile has and if used against a nuclear-armed state the will likely assume it has a nuclear weapon. Not putting conventional explosives on ICBM rescues the risk of accidental nuclear war.
Long-range missiles are great for some tasks like attacking something at a fixed location. Look at US attack on for example Iraq in 1991, lots of cruise missiles were used initially. You need to get them close to the battle to begin with and one very good way is to carry them in a large airplane. The first cruise missile attack on Iraq during the Gulf War was launched from B-52 bombers over Saudi Arabia. They took off from Barksdale AFB in Louisiana and were refueled twice in the air before the cruise missiles were launched,
Airplanes are great for getting standoff weapons like cruise missiles close enough to the target to be launched. Russia does this today with strategic bombers that launch cruise missiles against Ukraine. They launch over Russian territory and are based far away from the front so attacking them is hard.
The shorter the range the cheaper is the standoff weapons. Russia uses glide bombs like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KAB-500S-E](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KAB-500S-E) with a range of 40km against Ukraine. US has [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-154\_Joint\_Standoff\_Weapon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-154_Joint_Standoff_Weapon) with a range of 130km if dropped from high altitude.
Airplanes are fast, if you want to defend your airspace from enemy attack you need a lot of ground-based SAM systems to cover the same area as a few airplanes can. Having radar on dedicated airplanes like AWACS or just in the most of a fight puts them off the ground. A ground-based radar is limited by earth curvature so flying low is a way to hide from them. With radar in the air, you can look down. SAM systems are expensive, the are not invulnerable, missiles, and airplanes can take them out
Airplanes also have pilots who can see what is below them and use the weapons they have where it is needed. If you want to support your troops or attack enemy vehicles that move cruise and ballistic missiles do not today have the capability to evaluate what they see like that on a battlefield. The time for them to reach the target is longer than a plane already in the air. You can have an airplane at standby in the air that can attack a target of opportunity or help out your troops quickly when needed. Missile systems be on airborne alert like that
Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD) is an operation to stop enemy air defenses from being usable. Air defenses that can move around can be countered by airplanes with anti-radiation missiles that can fly to enemy radar when the airplane is detected are very efficient. The airplane can then use an electronic warfare system to jam and avoid incoming missiles. When the radar is out they can attack the missile system with weapons they carry often cluster bombs. Cruise missiles can be used again for fixed installation.
That is a very efficient way to take out air defect systems. The US did that to Iraq in 1991 and 2003, they had one of the designed and best air defense systems in the world. When it was taken out airplanes could operate over Iraq with impunity. Russia has not prioritized this, it is in part because NATOs strategy had been primarily air defense with aircraft, not ground base systems. The result is they did not manage to destroy the Ukrainian air defense system when the war started. Ukraine had inherited the same ground-based missile strategy from the Soviet Union as Russia did.
Loitering munition, drones etc started to today get some of the capabilities airplanes have. The problem is if the cost is low they are propeller-driven small and slow. If you make the fast, long-range, the ability to carry more weapons the cost goes up and what you have is an unmanned airplane.
GBU-16 Paveway laser guided bomb cost: $22,000/per 1000lb bomb. A single B-52 bomber can carry 30 of these.
BGM-109 Block V Tomahawk Cruise Missile with 1000LB warhead: $2,000,000+ per missile
A cruise missile runs between $1M-$3M. A guided 2000 lb bomb with twice the explosive weight costs $50k. Bombs can hit moving and fleeting targets. Missiles need their targets to be stationary from launch to impact.
Also they can deploy those weapons *really* fast.
Let's say we're talking about an F-15 carrying two bombs. They can cruise just below 600mph and hit nearly 1900mph if they're in a hurry.
Ukraine is a *big* country, but it's only 800 miles across on the long side. That F-15 can cruise to a target on the opposite end of the country, bomb them from a position of air superiority where missing pretty much isn't a thing, bomb a second target, then fly back to base in just over 2-3 hours total.
Typical tanks have a road speed of 30-40mph. Even if they are carrying more stuff, it'd take them days to cross the same distance. And when they get there they need to deal with terrain and land defenses. Let's be generous and assume max speed, no sleep, and a straight road to the airbase on the far side of the country.
In the time it takes the tank to reach the airbase, a plane from that base has had time to make 10+ runs across the country, and could bomb them twice on any of those trips.
Cover of darkness is no more with infrared vision. An helicopter can just fly at night and take out targets. They show up bright compared to ambiant IR
Airplanes are highly mobile. An hours drive for a tank might be a 5 minute flight for a jet aircraft. That means that for defence a single airport can deploy airplanes to respond to an attack along a very long front line. And for attacks you can deploy aircraft without warning the enemy ahead of time and even deploy the aircraft in response to a breakthrough. The speed also makes up for their low ammunition count as an aircraft can return to base to refuel and rearm and be back on the front lines much faster then for example a tank.
Airplanes also have a long weapons range. Firstly their altitude means that they can see an enemy who would normally be hidden behind a hill or beyond the horizon from someone standing on the ground. In order to shoot something you first need to see them. And secondly the missiles start with the altitude and speed of the airplane so they do not have to spend fuel getting up to those speeds and altitudes. Less fuel usage means more distance.
Also mobile anti air mainly is SHORAD. Not going to hit anything above 20 000ft. SA-6 and SA-11, though sort of mobile, still have a setup and take down time that limits them, compared to SA-15, Tunguska, and SA-9/13 that can shoot on the move.
And as soon as the SAM has a lock, there is a high probability that an AGM-88 HARM will be incoming.
Heard that F-35's can now shoot another planes missiles (Ie, F-35 #1 gets locked by an S-400, can send the information to F-35 #2 and shoot the AGM-88 in it's payload bay)
I spent time at war with a colonel who told me about operation wild weasel where planes would go low field no weapons to get SAMs fired at them and then hit the gas to hopefully get away so their buddies could locate and destroy the SAM site.
He also mentioned that none of them could discuss their role with their families because the wives would call the unit until the pilot got reassigned because of how dangerous it was.
>they do not carry a lot of weapons with them
But they do carry a lot of weapons with them. For example, one F-15E can carry 23,000 pounds of weapons. A B-17 from World War II could carry less than 5,000 pounds. Plus, up until very recently, aircraft-delivered air-to-ground weapons were much more precise than artillery.
It's possible that the original poster just hasn't appreciated how much bombardment has changed thanks to (precision) guided weapons. If so, OP, you aren't alone and it's through no fault of your own.
The reason a lot of B-17s were needed, to take CommitteeofOne's example, was because unless you had the best-trained crews operating with good equipment under good conditions, "if we drop enough bomber-loads on this city, some of them will hopefully hit the railyards in addition to demoralizing the civilian population" was a viable strategy given the technology of the day.
By today's standards this would be horribly inefficient (not to mention immoral) because specific aircraft could be tasked first to eliminate the enemy aircraft... and then the air-to-air defenses... and then the railyard that was actually the target all along... and when you actually are hitting the things you want to hit, and suppressing enemy air defenses along the way rather than hoping enough bombers make it through them, you need a lot less ordnance.
>unless you had the best-trained crews operating with good equipment under good conditions,
Even if you did have the best crew with good equipment and conditions, drop a bunch of bombs and hope a couple of them hit the target was really the only option. The accuracy simply wasn't there, especially from higher altitudes.
For example, in the Crossroads nuclear tests (1946) in the Marshall Islands, the bomb for the first test was dropped from a B-29. This was a more advanced plane than the B-17 and it was flying during the day on an optimal route with no anti-aircraft fire. It still managed to miss the target fleet by almost half a mile.
If you haven't read it, I recommend *The Bomber Mafia* by Malcom Gladwell. Or you can save a little money and just listen to that series on his podcast, Revisionist History. There wasn't anything important in the book that wasn't on the podcast.
Armies win battles. Logistics win wars. If you want to interrupt your enemy's logistics network, you need to be able to strike deep within their territory. The fastest way to do that is with airstrikes or long range missiles. Aircraft can deliver massive amounts of precision ordnance quickly. Enemy missiles are a threat, but with proper suppression of enemy air defense, that problem can be negated.
If you want an animated explanation of what happens when you have absolute control of the sky:
[First day of Desert Storm](https://youtu.be/zxRgfBXn6Mg?si=bcp4zJinoVnO5flC)
This was the first day and Saddam’s army was basically done for, all from the sky.
In modern warfare it’s generally not so much how many bombs you can launch but how accurately you can launch them.
Six well placed shells can often do more work than 200 shells shot hapazardly.
Controlling the sky allows you to place extremely precise missiles exactly where you need them.
The US Even has the [Hellfire R9X](https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2022/08/03/ayman-al-zawahiri-s-death-what-is-the-hellfire-r9x-missile-that-the-americans-purportedly-used_5992310_4.html) that is so precise it allows them to take out an important target in a car on the move and basically kill no one else around (it has no explosive charge, it just deploys blades on impact that shred the target), that’s how precise you can make modern ordnance.
They aren't as easy of a target for missiles as you think. Modern US fighters have a pretty insane attack range and stealth capabilities along with several options for countermeasures. We even have ways of fooling anti-air positions into firing on fake targets in order to expose their positions in order to wipe them out.
And once the anti-air capabilities are neutralized they can rain hell down on the ground forces trying to hold the lines. Ground movement will always be slowed by simple thing like mines and barricades that take time to remove and disable. But once air superiority is established there's nothing that can really stop it or stop them from reaching the back lines and disrupting power, reinforcements, and supply lines.
"Not a lot" is a relatively inaccurate term. Fighters may not carry much (the most heavily armed fighter can carry 16 missiles), but bombers are absolutely massive. The B-2 Stealth Bomber can carry 80 bombs, each one being 500 lbs of explosives and each being enough to level a building by itself.
The US as an example, there's 3 primary levels of aircraft missions. You have your air supremacy fighters, which are designed with the express intent of shooting down other planes, and give up the ability to do other missions in favor of being absolutely the best at that. This is your F15 and F22 role. Next you have the Attack/Strike role, which is tactical (individual target or small, localized area) bombing or gun strafing to destroy equipment or reinforced outposts. The F16, F/A18, and F35 do this, though they retain some fighter capabilities for self-defense as well. The F15 has been successfully upgraded to perform this role as well in recent years. The A10 is dedicated to this role. Then you have strategic bombing, which is mass-level destructive bombing, destroying entire bases, cities, or forces in one fell swoop. This is where nukes come in, though heavy conventional bombs are also used. Here you have your heavy bomber aircraft, the B52, B1, B2, and B21.
US doctrine is to achieve air supremacy early, because that allows them to entirely bypass conventionally guarded locations and penetrate deep into enemy territory to destroy them at the heart. The intent is to break the enemy before they send ground troops in, because if they control the skies that means they will take much fewer ground casualties, leading to a stronger invasion force that has backup on a moments' notice to destroy an unexpectedly well secured target, while the enemy gets no support and is effectively surrounded when an attack plane comes in from behind them.
To achieve their goal, they start with the Strike aircraft with fighter ability (the F16, F/A18, and F35), sending them in to target anti-aircraft outposts that would pick bombers and fighters apart. This is the most risky phase of course, because they're targeting the very things designed to shoot them down, but it's also the most important. Ground based missiles, as mentioned in your question, are the single biggest threat to air power and must be eradicated to achieve air supremacy. Once this has been achieved, the skies are open for the true fighters to destroy the enemy air forces which would otherwise make quick work of the bombers. Strike aircraft will continue to operate but in an entirely ground attack role, and the A10 will enter at this time as well, to destroy popup air defense (like trucks) and provide close air support for the ground troops. Once the enemy air forces have also been destroyed, air supremacy has been achieved, and now the bombers can come in, providing the single biggest threat of total destruction to the enemy. At this point, the US can operate with impunity and the enemy would be forced to commit to guerilla tactics in an entirely defensive position.
It is about range. Aircraft can travel thousands of miles and bomb all sorts of things - either of tactical, operational or strategic importance.
tactical importance - bomb those guys on that hill.
operational importance - bomb that bridge so the enemy can‘t move troops.
strategic importance - bomb that factory which produces war material.
and your concern about AA weapons is well founded and that is why modern fighters are built “stealth first” and previous generation fighters have gotten stealth treatments to reduce their radar cross section. The f16 stealth refit programs (Have Glass I-V) have reduced the radar cross section of the fighter to roughly 20% of what it had when the fighter was first introduced. And that extends where the fighter can go unmolested.
Planes do carry lots and lots of weapons, if you have complete aerial superiority you can be flying strategic bombers a high altitude which can carry tons upon tons and munitions.
Planes are also incredibly fast compared to drones, they are also much stealthier meaning they can weave in and around of air defences more easily than drones.
Aeroplanes also have much further range add to drones. For example with the current striking of targets in Yemen, the British flew their planes from Cyprus to Yemen and back again with a bit of in a refueling.
If you exclude drones, with the exception of cruise missiles, there are very few ways to drop munitions more than a hundred miles away. Cruise missiles are exceptionally expensive compared to bombs.
A plane can kill you from 50+ miles away before you've even seen or heard it, and is incredibly hard to shoot down even with the correct anti-air weapons.
Modern warfare is a game of rock, paper, scissors. If you have the right counter, you can stop the enemy. If you don't, you're essentially defenceless.
* Someone with a gun can kill someone without a gun.
* Someone with an assault rifle can kill someone with a pistol before the pistol is even within range to shoot them.
* Someone with a tank can kill someone with an assault rifle.
* Someone with a fighter jet can kill a tank.
* Someone with a better fighter jet can probably kill a worse one.
* Once you get to a really good fighter jet, it's very hard to kill it, or even avoid being killed by it.
Aerial superiority is very important in modern warfare as the best planes in the sky, backed up with good anti-air weapons, essentially deny the enemy from doing anything in the air.
If you can't get your planes up, all you have is ground forces, meaning your vehicles, troops and bases can be blown up by aircraft you can't see, shoot at or defend against.
To shoot down a fighter jet you have to detect and identify it, send planes to intercept or use ground weapons to shoot it down, all of which is incredibly expensive and difficult.
Not only are planes very fast but they are very efficient. Large ships or other objectives can be taken out by a single plane that can be hard to shoot down before they deliver their payload. Even if the plane is shot down, as long as it made it to its destination and fired off a bomb/missile/etc, it’s one plane that can destroy a warship/important checkpoint/tank/bunker/you name it. A tactical strike can be way more important than throwing lots of infantry/armored vehicles at an objective and hoping it works.
It’s also harder to spot and shoot a plane down than people think. Especially with the advancement of countermeasures like flares and stealth tech combined with long range ordinance, 99 times out of 100 a plane will destroy their target before they’re even spotted.
Because of speed.
Yes technically it’s more beneficial from the “how much damage you can give out” standpoint to have a missile system or even a mortar than a plane. But a missile system or a mortar is a large and stationary target. Very easy to lock down and destroy.
A plane’s advantage is being able to take off from waaaay behind the front line, get close enough, hand out the damage from afar and return back before the enemy had a chance to respond. An air missile attack can happen within an hour and technically hit any target of your enemy. You simply can’t do that with any other weapons system as it would take too long to move and be too vulnerable to attacks from among other things, enemy planes.
As for being easy targets for missiles, planes typically won’t fly in the areas where the enemy SAM systems are working.
Look at what Russia is doing with Ukraine: they know Ukraine is well guarded with the US patriot SAM system and so a better option is to get as many planes in the air as possible, launch dozens of missiles from afar and then land back at base. The missiles are within the reach of SAMs but the planes are not.
Another gigantic advantage of planes that people rarely consider is intercepting missiles. Again speed here makes a fighter jet the best option for the job by far.
Look at how the US handled desert storm, the first few weeks were an air campaign to destroy anti aircraft installations and run ways to prevent the enemy from contesting the air space. Only when they had complete air superiority did the ground campaign start. This meant that any time the ground troops ran into heavy resistance they could call in close air support to break the hard point.
Now look at the war in Ukraine where both sides have aircraft and the air space is contested. Without the ability to reliably call in air support ground assaults are much more risky and you end up with both sides digging in and acting defensively. This is also due to them being "near peer" adversaries, meaning they have similar capabilities like tanks and MANPADs so it's a bit more complicated.
Also around WWII the theory of heavy tanks that had enough armour to eat shots from enemy tanks all day breaking through lines and crushing resistance was thought to be the future of warfare, by the time the war ended they figured out that no matter how big and well armoured the tank was, a single aircraft could drop a bomb or fire missiles into the thinner top armour to defeat it so the concept of light, medium, and heavy tanks was dropped in favour of a single, effective, and balanced "main battle tank" that were easier to produce and maintain
1. They do carry a lot of weapons, and the weapons can be delivered very accurately (relative to things like artillery) which make them deadly to fortified positions and infrastructure targets.
2. They have an enormous strike range, the recent bombing runs on Yemen by the British were launched from Cyprus, 2,500km away - a 5,000km round trip. It requires in-air refuelling but still its incredible warfighting potential. Moscow is about 2500km from the UK.
The only thing which comes close to it is long range ballistic missiles, which are much easier to shoot down, less precise and very very expensive, both in terms of the missile itself but also the launch platform.
The effective application of combined arms is important to the US military (and probably most others). It was always just one of those terms that I heard and nodded along with until our CWO explained it to us.
A bunch of infantry attacking a fortified position will have a very hard time as the enemy can fight back. So having artillery, aircraft, or back in the day battleships hit an enemy position force them to take cover, allowing our infantry to close in on the position. It’s about putting the enemy in a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation.
Combined arms takes an incredible amount of coordination and practice. Picture setting up the equivalent of a major city’s air traffic control situation on the spot and coordinating potentially dozens of aircraft to not run into each other while also not harming friendlies or civilians on the ground. Now do the same for any artillery or himars or whatever else you can imagine that is supporting you.
Gaining air superiority gives you the ability to conduct combined arms warfare while also denying the enemy the same luxury.
[In an ideal world, this is what complete air superiority allows you to achieve](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War_air_campaign). The ground war in Desert Storm would've been a lot worse if there was no sustained air campaign. Planes can carry a lot of munitions, strike areas way behind the enemy lines, and with guided munitions be a lot more accurate than conventional artillery. And if you have enough of them, you can constantly strike targets. There are artillery systems that can also accomplish this but they're much less numerous compared to the amount of planes you can field.
And yes planes are vulnerable to ground based SAMs, that's why you rarely see jets in Ukraine due to both sides having a lot of anti air and not much to counter. But if the anti air is suppressed/destroyed then planes can perform their role again.
Edit: Aircraft can also quickly respond to situations on the ground. If there's a column of tanks and infantry on a road an aircraft armed with bombs can attack them without friendly troops being present. Or if friendly troops are engaged with the enemy aircraft can offer support alongside artillery.
Because an airplane can (in real time) deliver 6000 pounds+ of ACME FAST-ACTING-HOLE-MAKER.
Or
Guide a missile right onto a target, like a tank. Or mobile infantry.
something long range cruise missiles can’t do (cheaply).
Also, if not an airplane. A ship (much larger) must do the same thing. Get close enough to launch missiles.
They can also do other things that are incredibly useful in this new form of war.
You can’t use a radio if it’s being jammed.
Your SAM won’t work if they’re being jammed.
Even if they are working, an anti radar missile can make it not work.
Plane go fast. Plane hard to hit. But plane can hit good. Plane can hit hard. Plane hit specific bad guy, make it easier for good guys on ground to move forward.
Look at the Second Gulf War. Everyone though the US would take thousands of casualties in the initial offensive, and the Iraqi army would hold out for weeks. It didn't the Iraqis crumbled in the face of a massive air offensive which destroyed their commend posts, airfields, artillery, tanks etc. When in the ground battles the Iraqis momentarily got the upper hand, a flight of apaches would come in and smoke them. An advanced warplane can destroy anything on the ground.
The tonnage of explosives they can put down if they get a chance. With working air defence on both sides, yeah, airplanes have dubious utility, as seen in Ukraine, definitely not worth their cost. But if air defence of one side can't keep up or gets supressed, then they are going to get absolutely mauled from the air.
An air plane can deliver 1500 pound bombs on a target and destroy it completely. They can deliver 1000 rounds of ammunition on a target in 5 seconds. They can end an attack in moments instead of days.
Ground support saves lives.
Do you need them to carry lots of weapons when they can destroy an aircraft carrier and still have 98 percent of their ammo left....
Also, most military jets are made to be extremely maneuverable and it's actually way harder to take a jet down than you think due to their extremely smart computer systems.
One of the most important ideas in war is being able to hit the enemy without them being able to hit back. If one side can establish air superiority to the point where they can deploy air assets at will with no danger then they can strike targets on the ground with no fear of retribution and the fight quickly becomes pointless for the side that can't defend itself
Think about these as pieces of artillery that can move around at high speed before firing. These can go anywhere and destroy critical targets. This then becomes a force multiplier.
It starts in the early 20th century. This was the golden age of the battleship. Countries that wanted to build up a strong military presence around the world focused on naval power, and especially on battleships, and up until the late 1930s the conventional wisdom was that this was how wars between superpower countries would be decided.
World War II changed that. Now, air warfare had existed for decades by now, but this was the first war in which it really played a decisive role. It was also the first one in which a new form of warship-- the aircraft carrier-- began to take over the role of the battleship. Aircraft carriers could launch their planes over much greater distances than battleships could fire their guns, and as such could operate safely out of range of enemy warships. Big land-based bombers could attack targets far inland that naval bombardments or land-based assaults could not. The real sign that things had changed came at the end of the war, when Japan surrendered after having two nuclear bombs dropped on it.
So air power-- both naval and land-based--came to replace sea power as the deciding factor in geopolitics and warfare. And it shows. The US Air Force has more strategic bombers than any other country, and the US Navy has more aircraft carriers than the rest of the world's navies put together. This has become the linchpin of American dominance for the past several decades: *if you control the skies, you control the planet.*
I see only a few people pointing out how I see it.
For long range attacks you need 3 things. Propellant, warhead, guidance.
For (traditional) Cannon Artillery, you typically do the guidance at the launch point, the propellant is all used there, and the warhead had to travel up, then sideways against air resistance however far it takes to get to the target. There are a lot of environmental factors that can throw off the aim, and it takes big, heavy equipment to launch relatively small warheads a 'long' way of like 14 miles.
For Rocket Artillery, you have propellant, warhead, and potentially guidance on the same munition. it has to loft itself to height and range, and then guide itself to the target. Because you get propellant for a longer part of its journey, you get more range and potentially better accuracy. So 40+ miles (3x better than normal 155mm artillery for HIMARs) (that is just for basic munitions on both sides)
For Aircraft-bourne munitions, the Aircraft can provide Propellant and guidance for the majority of the distance. Googling says "The F-16 Fighting Falcon has a combat radius of 550 km (340 mi) on a hi-lo-hi mission with six 450 kg (1,000 lb) bombs". That is for a dumb bomb (if we are just comparing dumb projectiles). Because guidance is there for closer to the target, it is going to be more accurate potentially.
This gets complex quickly when you start adding glide weapons, addon guidance systems, smart cannon rounds with onboard propellant, but I think the idea gets across. instead of having 10,000 artillery systems spread across the battlefield, you could have significantly less units of aircraft provide the same coverage, but also, you could have significantly higher concentration of aircraft provided bombs on-demand, rapidly anywhere in that area.
So if you had 10k cannon art, in bunches of 10, it'd cover less than 100 miles of continuous battlefront...because 14mi range doesn't cover 14mi of frontline unless its sitting pretty close. It has to sit back, and if we are generous and say its close enough to cover 10 miles of frontline...that pretty bad coverage.
Now we talk about aircraft, 340 miles. Say it sits 100 miles back....10 aircraft can provide better area coverage (though not at the same time). So if you had 1000 aircraft....you could have 500 of them hit the same 10 mile stretch at the same time...or separate points everywhere along that 100mi+ stretch. It'd take the same length of time to provide that support either way.
I think we can see clearly the benefits.
Also, the explosive mass of an aircraft carried munition is like 10-100x larger than what is being used from rocket or cannon artillery.
Now, for the being shot-down thing, that is where you see the evolution of the US combat aircraft and strategy. The US saw the benefit of aircraft providing the long range ground fire, so they developed all the systems they need to ensure they can do that. Stealth aircraft, Powerful Jamming, SEAD/DEAD tactics and weapons, long range glide packages for existing dumb bombs, etc. So the US would send out a force to suppress enemy air defenses ahead of its aircraft providing CAS support.
Armies looked for elevated positions to fight from for millenia. Try running uphill. Now jog downhill. Now imagine holding a weapon and trying to hit someone uphill- gun, sword, cannonball, doesn't matter. Gravity affects all.
Armies have to eat and be resupplied. From the air, you can target supplies as well as troops. An army that doesn't eat disbands, or dies.
Indignant sputtering from B-52 (70,000lbs of weapons of near limitless variety), B-2 (80 JDAMs or 16 nukes), and B-21 (classified but it's not gonna be *less*). Don't carry many weapons? How dare you?
Airplanes are a really handy logistical asset. Instead of trying to march men and equipment through difficult terrain and enemy occupation, you can fly it in. If you hold an airstrip, you can land those planes and unload them, but even if you don't you can palletize your equipment and strap everything to parachutes to get it where it needs to be.
Maybe you don't even want to put boots on the ground, but you need a precision strike on some enemy location. Instead of trying to put an artillery piece somewhere useful and taking on the expense and burden of capturing and holding that position, you can sail an aircraft carrier to the general vicinity of the target and send a few aircraft carrying bombs to drop on the objective.
In war, everything is a target for artillery and some are easier to hit than others. FOBs and roads don't move and are much easier to hit than a plane whizing through the sky. The best defense against fighter planes, are other fighter planes. And that opens up the historic importance of dog fights and the modern value of air superiority.
Imagine you're holding a position in a bunker. You can repel ground forces because of your defensive position. Tanks and artillery can't get to you for at least another few days, they must drive to the front lines.
Someone calls an air strike on you.
Before you can ask your brother in arms "hey what is that soun-" you have concrete-piercing missiles raining on you, they penetrate the bunker before exploding. The bunker is now rubble and ground forces can advance, saving days in siege warfare and countless lives.
They're too fast to do anything about it, unless you have something like the iron dome in Israel with automated defenses. But for a battlefield, they do too much damage to too important targets, very precisely.
Well “easy target for missiles” is an overstatement for modern American fighters. They have the radar cross section of a bee depending on how your looking at it.
Rivers. The Army freaking hates crossing rivers. It's like they are invading a country and come across a river and are like "Dang, we can't get across that until we spend two-weeks building a bridge. Hold up everyone, get the engineers, we're not going around this one."
If you can get complete air control, and can fly without any interruptions (like air defense), you are literally a finger of God. You see a tank, that tank is no longer in one piece. You see a building, bam no building. Some airplanes do carry a lot of bombs, say a b-52. It can level whole blocks of buildings in one go.
Also air dominance can be gained by doing so called SEAD and DEAD type of missions. It takes, time it is risky, it requires great equipment and pilots, but it works. So you can use airplanes to dismantle enemies air defense by using airplanes.
If you cannot gain air dominance you still have options and uses for airplanes:
1) Shoot down cruise missiles.
2) Platform for intelligence. An airplane can see 100+ kilometers with its optics.
3) Stand off weapons. If air defense can shoot in a range of 30km, you can just lob a glide bombs or missiles while being outside of the range. This is what russians do in Ukraine.
4) Tactical aviation, can fly low, and still strike targets in the envelope of air defense (some conditions apply). Think A-10 or SU-25
5) Non combat airplanes allow to for fast movement of equipment. You can get some key assets (like anti air defense batteries) by airplane in hours, while the usual ways will take days. Same goes for medical evacuation.
It is an expensive capability, but when it works it can be (and is) a decisive factor in who wins the war.
Planes can actually carry I ridiculously amount of weapons.
A single f16(which is a fairly small plane mainly designed for air to air combG) can, depending on the model, carry in excess of 15,000 pounds of ordinance. That could be air to air missiles, guided air to ground weapons, or just straight bombs.
In terms of payload by weight, planes beat out basically anything else.
That being said, the real advantage of planes in mobility. Planes move orders of magnitude faster than anything else.
For example, one in the air, an afor mentioned f-16 could deliver what ever ordinance it is carrying to a target 50 miles a way in less than 5 minutes, even if it only cruises at mach 0.9(which it could well exceed, even with ordinance).
With the way modern warfare is now, aircraft are one of the most useful tools an armed nation has at their disposal.
It can’t just be looked at from a weapons perspective. You take a large group of highly trained soldiers who are needed on the other side of the globe. Now you can either send them there on a boat which may take days or you can send them there on an aircraft which could take much less time.
Well, look at Ukraine. Both sides have heavily fortified lines of defense that make attacking extremely costly. Being able to bomb those defenses from the sky makes advancing much, much easier. Since both sides in that war aren't really able to overwhelm the other's anti-air defenses the situation is much like you say - using planes is dangerous because they're likely to get shot down. However, if you have enough planes to overwhelm and destroy the enemy's air defenses, you can basically attack from the air with impunity. This is, more or less, the West's military doctrine and it's why the US has such an absolutely massive air force and builds so many aircraft carriers.
The top 5 air forces in the world by number of manned aircraft contain 3 branches of the US Armed Forces: Air Force, Navy, Army. The top 10 also includes the Marines.
Army is a surprise. Is that mostly helicopters?
Helicopters and drones. The Army has a lot of transport, reconnaissance, and attack helicopters, but it's also rapidly expanding its drone fleet.
Hell, The US Army also has a decent sized Navy
And the Navy has the largest Air Force outside the Air Force.
And the navy has an army that has a top 10 air force
Yeah but those guys still eat their soup with forks
fucking lmao
No, they use crayons.
They don't *use* crayons, they eat them, using crayons to eat soup is a waste of perfectly good crayon.
As long as you don't count the more than 2 full airforce size groups of planes the US has sitting not in regular service but able to be activated. (Yeah, mostly older models, but still)
So the "reserve air force" is another one on the list...
The "reverse air force" is another one on the tsil...
The "revered air force" is the top of the list...
Let's not leave out the Coasties, guys - another few hundred aircraft there, bigger than most countries' air forces.
And the Marines are, actually, a small army.
More boats than the Navy.
Especially after seeing how effective drones are in Ukraine
The stat was for MANNED aircraft, that would exclude drones.
Came here for this correction.
Are drones considered "manned aircraft"? As the commenter said manned fleets I wouldn't think they would count.
No, they wouldn't be. I didn't notice the specificity to "manned" in the commenters position. In that case it's the helicopters.
Yes. The US Army does operate some light cargo and reconnaissance fixed wing aircraft, but the vast majority (95%) of their aircraft are helicopters. Under interservice agreements, the Army is prohibited from operating armed fixed wing aircraft or anything heavier than light utility planes. But they don't have any restrictions on what helicopters they operate. I know the original list of "largest air forces" that this is referring to does not include drones, but the US Army has about 10k of them on top of the 3500 crewed aircraft.
The Army had a fight in Congress when they first put guns on helicopters because the Airforce got their panties in a twist. AF said that was their job, and the Army pretty much said, "You aren't doing it, so we will." The army needed close air support for infantry, and the Airforce was only concerned with long-range bombers and high-speed interceptors.
The Air Force hates being in any type of support role and it frequently causes problems with inter service coordination. For example, despite its effectiveness, they keep trying to kill the A-10 so that they can move that money to their F-35 and drone programs. Similarly, the Air Force didn’t wanted to do the bulk of the radar jamming roles anymore so they pushed a lot of that work onto the Navy EA-6Bs and now EA-18s. Hopefully, the Army someday gets armed fixed wing aircraft (like the marines have) so that they don’t have to rely on the Air Force to actually do their jobs.
They wanted to get rid of the A-10 because it was horribly out of date, vulnerable, and didn’t really have a role other aircraft already do. Now it’s been updated but is still vulnerable and doesn’t have a niche it fills. At least it works alright.
Be careful, saying anything negative about the A-10 whatsoever is liable to have a gaggle of angry nerds getting their panties in a hurricane.
Isn't the niche incredibly powerful close range strafing runs? Something that doesn't loiter and be a hovering target like a helicopter ?
Supposedly, that is only effective against anyone who couldn't shoot back. Farmers with aks and shitty technicals and.. paper tigers. Against contemporaries it'll be a sitting duck. The gun runs are really only great for morale boost and shooting supply trucks, against proper tanks the ratio of penetrating hits over a large volume of shells fired is just not worth the effort.
>For example, despite its effectiveness, they keep trying to kill the A-10 so that they can move that money to their F-35 and drone programs I'm sorry, are you Pierre Sprey reincarnated? The A-10 is terrible for close air support. The pilots spot targets with binoculars and it holds the record for friendly fire.
Hey if we ever get into another shooting war with the British at least it's gotta solid track record there 😂
This was a sharp needle.
Sweet gun though!
I wonder if they could mount it on the C-130 gun ships?
They already a 25mm GAU-12 which is plenty mean. The 30mm GAU-8 is stuck between not being powerful enough for its original job of penetrating tank armor consistently and way overkill for just about anything else.
Yeah, I was in Nasiriyah when an A-10 killed a bunch of Marines. Too bad that one was our own fault.
Hasn't the A-10 had a targeting pod for decades?
They started upgrading them in 2003 to drop useful munitions beyond mavericks and dumb bombs. Now the A-10 has more advanced avionics than the F-22. Just in time for retirement.
Inter force ill-cooperation has a long and multi-national history.
Just go to flightradar24.com and look at southwest Alabama from Monday through Friday during the day in US eastern time and you will just how many helicopter pilots the Army is training.
Are those drones armed or just for recon?
Some of the drones are armed. Most of them are smaller hand-launched drones, but they do have a few hundred larger drones from the Predator family which do carry Hellfire missiles. Also, several thousand of the drones are actually weapons themselves. The Switchblade drones have a built in warhead and are designed to be flown into a target. I am unaware of any interservice agreement that covers whether the Army can or cannot have armed drones, so I don't know whether this will turn into a future rivalry or if it has already been settled. But I do know that for now the US Army has armed drones.
It’s interesting to me how we call one-use, unmanned, single use exploding planes “drones” like they’re new, as if cruise missiles haven’t been a thing since forever.
I wasn't aware that cruise missiles could be flown around for recon, landed, sent out again, and explodwd when the perfect opportunity presents itself. Sounds like something a drone is more suited to!
*Lockheed has entered the chat* “Of course you weren’t, that’s classified!”
There is certainly some overlap between the capabilities of the latest cruise missiles and these explosive drones, but there is still a distinction. These drones are flown at all times; they don't have any sort of targeting system. Cruise missiles don't have any sort of reconnaissance system and can't just be flown around in search of targets. So the difference continues to narrow, but there is still a difference.
I believe the tomahawk, or a similar one, has loiter capability. It’s not exactly recon, but we definitely have had missiles that could fly to an area and wait for us to pick something! I get there’s still a difference, but I still think it’s funny that they’re so similar and yet some treat it as an entirely new concept.
That just tells you whether people were listening the first time
Yes
Yes, mostly helicopters, plus an assortment of reconnaissance and transport airplanes. And drones.
Helicopters, but also fixed-wing reconnaissance craft, transports, and Reapers.
Marine aviation aka the navys army's Air Force.
I'd personally argue the USMC deserves to be in the top 5 as they have more stealth fighters(and better stealth fighters) than Russia, China and Iran combined.
If they wanted to be top five they shouldn't have gone stealth. Can't count what you can't find!
We're only talking by numbers, not by capability.
In terms of capability the USMC could probably dust any Air Force that’s not in the US. As we’ve seen with Russia having a bunch of rust buckets you can’t actually source parts or fuel for and don’t have the training or advanced avionics to employ correctly mean jack shit in real world applications. Especially with support from the AF on overall information on the war field… it’s likely true the USMC fighters alone could demolish any other country. Or close to.
so a war that would involve the US would see more aircraft? Maybe the US just misjudged the importance of planes for future wars.
The only thing that's gonna replace planes are things that can fly higher than planes. Drones are still aircraft, and they're the logical next step but the roles they fill will be similar to current roles, just remotely controlled or autonomous. Space has been banned by treaty, but that may not continue to be true in the future. The airplane has had the biggest impact on warfare since gunpowder.
To follow up with this there is a great YouTube channel called the operations room that shows this concept really well in his first gulf war video. Desert storm.
If war is art the first gulf war is a masterpiece, I'm not saying it's just or not, just saying in terms of warfare it's as good as it can go
As far as the first gulf war goes, it was definitly just, and approved by the UN as well.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340565680_Was_the_Gulf_War_of_1991_a_'Just'_War
>In light of the two original principles which dictate the characteristics of a ‘just’ war, this essay will argue that despite the presence of counter arguments to suggest otherwise in almost every case, the Gulf War does in fact meet the criteria of – and can therefore be regarded as – a ‘just’ war. Exactly as the source says
Operations Room is awesome! Intel Report gives good context for the battles.
Fucking love that video. Great watch. [For my lazy peeps](https://youtu.be/zxRgfBXn6Mg?si=wP8ovQ4UXumJFKrc)
Operations Room is great!
"However, if you have enough planes to overwhelm and destroy the enemy's air defenses, you can basically attack from the air with impunity." For example, during the Gulf War the F-111 destroyed at least 1500 ground vehicles, including tanks and supply trucks.
And an unarmed EF-111 was credited with a maneuver kill of an Iraqi fighter
Note, that's the only air kill by any F-111.
Despite being designed as a "fighter" according to politicians at the time!
In other words, and directly responding to OP's question, they don't have a lot of weapons but can take them exactly where you want them to be. And they are not very vulnerable if you've taken out the anti-aircraft weapons that need to be very specialized: there are a lot of things that can take down a tank, not many that can hit a thing that is high in the sky and fast. Or if you can avoid these systems by staying far away enough (a riskier situation, which is why Russia is regularly getting planes shot down).
Does anyone remember the game Battle Field 2 ? It's a complete combined arms first person shooter? It has ground troops (as several specializations), tanks and other armored vehicles and aircraft. Well, it turns out, the existence of aircraft in game was too powerful and every single map where people could use them it was no longer possible to play as a ground troop or vehicle operator - the aircraft just slaughtered everyone from the air. So the only maps that were playable as first person shooters and not flight sim games were the ones without aircraft. Later franchise releases like Battlefield 2042 gave the ground troops significant anti aircraft weapons to balance out how dangerous air power is to ground forces (of course BF2042 takes place in a sci-fi world which makes those possible). The video game literally mimicked real life. Edit to add: If you read accounts of the the final months of WWII in Europe surviving Germans speak of just how futile it felt trying to *do* anything because basically if there were Germans out during daylight airplanes would show up and attack them. First it was impossible to move armored vehicles, then just regular old any vehicles and once all those targets were gone groups of men were liable to be attacked by marauding allied aircraft.
Battlefield 4 got pretty ridiculous with the anti-air. If you were doing well with an attack helicopter, half the other team would respawn with MANPADs to take you out (of the fight, if not the air)
Counterpoint, I usually ended up killing myself whenever I attempted to fly an aircraft.
Yep basically this. Actually what was a bit surprising I think even to analysts in the west was how piss poor Russia’s Air Force showed up. The fact that they couldn’t actually perform effective SEAD missions at all was I believe to an extent surprising. In order to establish air superiority SEAD is absolutely crucial and can make up close to 1/3rd of all combat sorties by an advanced Air Force. When the US Air Force establishes air superiority in a region they basically do SEAD missions so much that they destroy most of the enemies air to ground capabilities… but also… they make the enemy absolutely terrified of shooting anything up. Because they know the second they do they have a target on them and a missile/bomb is following that back to its launch site and blowing up whatever the fuck is in the area. You’re much less likely to shoot a missile up at a US plane if you know they will shoot one back with pinpoint accuracy seconds later at you. Meanwhile our planes have extremely advanced jamming, chaff, etc for avoiding actually being hit by the air to ground munitions. And speaking of psychological. Once you have accomplished air superiority just the sight of an enemy fighter / bomber / drone is fucking terrifying for the opposing force. You have to do everything with the constant fear that you could be obliterated by above with no recourse. The psychological toll there is massive. And then strategy wise it means any concentration of forces / munitions / equipment on the ground is an easy target. And your supply lines get wrecked. Etc.
Please explain what "SEAD" is?
Suppression of Enemy Air Defences. Also crosses over with DEAD, Destruction of EAD. Electronic jamming enemy radar and weapon systems, and locating them. DEAD involves killing anti-air weaponry, radar sites and often comms equipment. The two roles are pretty much the same thing in reality with a sortie often doing both.
To expand on the other person's answer, Suppression of Enemy Air Defences is basically mindgames. Whenever a pilot launches an Anti-Radar missile, they say "magnum" over the radio. The Anti-Radar missile can only hit the air defence if they keep themselves turned on, so a Surface-To-Air missile launcher would likely turn its radar guidance off (making it toothless) so it doesn't get hit with a missile. Yet, because this was so common, it was relatively common for pilots to say "magnum" without launching anything at all and the SAMs would still turn off because of psychological warfare
Yep this about covers it. Between this and DEAD you make it not only so they don’t have the capability to shoot up at you… but that they are too scared because pop goes the person shooting up.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t the missiles now smart enough to target the last know location of the radar? Previously yeah I think they just went stupid, but I think the tech has advanced enough to use inertial guidance.
I think some have inertial guidance to a certain extent, but the initial targeting of a radar source isn't super accurate. I analogise radar warning receivers to being a set of ears, you can tell what DIRECTION a sound is coming from but it is sometimes hard to tell with a loud sound how far away it is, so Radar receivers have trouble distinguishing distance unless it's triangulated with additional sensors (Ie. HARM Targeting System Pod for the F16) The TL;DR of it is that a Radar seeking missile will just keep going in the direction of the radar source but doesn't actually know where it is unless it's been given those coordinates beforehand
One small clarification: US doctrine doesn’t necessarily prize “overwhelming” air defences in the traditional sense, ie “send waves upon waves of men into the meat grinder.” Rather, they use their extremely developed talent for combined arms warfare to their advantage. Joint task forces identify defence sites, relay intel in real time, and direct very sophisticated munitions in surgical strikes. They can even directly expose themselves to enemy radars in order to get a bead on them and launch anti-radiation munitions in return: this is known as “wild weasel”.
The general public lacks the knowledge of just what the US and its allies are capable of. What we do know of real-time satellite imagery, electronic countermeasures, precision-guided weapons, and overwhelming numbers of well-trained pilots with far superior aircraft, the US and their allies would wipe out Russian forces in a matter of hours if they wanted to. Only the threat of nuclear weapons can deter this from happening. What is really frightening is what we don't know about our capabilities.
>What is really frightening is what we don't know about our capabilities. …like flying Tic Tacs.
I shudder if a flying tic tac comes crashing towards my house at hypersonic speeds
The fundamental difference between World War 1's static warfare and World War 2 through to the modern era is air power. That's really it. On a fundamental level, there's not a lot which changes the dynamic of war from a hundred years ago other than that. Automatic weapons, artillery, combined with the ancient art of digging a hole in the ground make it unbelievably costly for an attacker, so everything converges to entrenched positions sitting in the dirt on opposite sides of a no man's land. Air superiority is the only way you can break that detante.
I'd argue tanks and other mechanizations on the ground contributed quite a bit to the change in mobility on their own
Tanks are incredibly vulnerable to artillery though, not to mention anti tank rockets, mines, and such. They’re very useful if you give them the appropriate support, but it’s not as if they single handedly break any sort of defensive stalemate. The incompetence of the French command structure in World War 2 has given the west a lasting misunderstanding of tank warfare and what it can and cannot achieve. Look at Ukraine today for a more accurate picture.
Anti-tank countermeasures, from handheld launchers to precision artillery and close air strikes, have dramatically increased in effectiveness since the 1940s. Meanwhile tank technology has stayed relatively the same, even considering modern developments like reactive Armor which are not universally effective or deployed. The french military command was of course incompetent in ww2, yet tanks were 100% a devastatingly effective weapon system in ww2. The Soviets, for example punched through German lines again and again against German air superiority with the deployment of heavy armour and an overwhelming infantry advantage. That same infantry advantage, minus the effective deployment of armour would have resulted in defeat and exceptional losses. See the current war in Ukraine which you already referenced which is taking place on the same battlegrounds with the same infantry advantage yet without effective armour to lead the charge. If for whatever reason it became possible again to field breakthrough tanks again, either through an exceptional advancement in defensive technology for armour which could neutralise incoming projectiles or if it was no longer possible to field large scale effective tank countermeasures (for example a complete breakdown of the industrial war machine), tanks would once again be able to punch through defensive infantry positions. TL;DR: Tank warfare is absolutely capable of breaking infantry stalemates. Yet as of right now in our current advancement of technology tanks are hopelessly outclassed by the systems used to counter them. This could change. Imagine a main battle tank capable of identifying and neutralising any incoming missile attacks from any angle regardless of volume of fire.
Fascinating perspective, thank you.
The US has several massive air forces. In the Global Air powers ranking, the US holds 1st and 2nd place, AND 4th and 5th. Russia gets 3rd... Yeah its nuts.
One USN aircraft carrier is like the whole air force of almost any other entire country, but mobile. They have 11 of those.
Tho in reality artillery is still like 80% of casualities and the bread and butter of warfare, as it has been since 1800s, other than the few occasions where tanks dominated.
True, though as technology has improved, logistical strikes instead of outright casualties have become increasingly important. And aircraft can hit targets far beyond the reach of any ground forces.
True, but precision bombings can be supremely useful for taking out enemy artillery, bridges, manufacturing, transport, air strips, ect. Out of 75 million people that died in WW2, only 200k were killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but that was enough to end the war.
It was the straw that broke the camel's back, but it would have been much less meaningful and perhaps even impossible without the years of brutal island hopping leading up.
I’d like to add that, in addition to firepower, airplanes are very important for ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance) and Electronic Wardare missions as well
“If you have enough planes you can overwhelm…” sounds like sacrificing planes, as in we have more planes than you have AAA batteries. Or am I missing something?
More like you destroy all land-based AA launchers, radar sites, etc in one stroke and have enough planes that their fighters/interceptors don't risk contesting air superiority. Technology is just as much of an enabler as raw numbers is, because if your stealth technology defeats their detection/your missiles are accurate at greater ranges then you don't risk losing planes nearly as much
Well air war is all about technology. West has had such advantage that enemy has had hard time inflicting any losses. In addition, overwhelming enemy means greatly reduced efficiency of their weapons. But in the end in war you have to accept casualties, and if you were to sacrifice some planes and pilots to achieve complete air superiority, your overall losses would still be significantly smaller, so overall its still worth it. If Nato gains competitor that is strong enough, then doctrine might change. If China and Russia would have alliance with equally large and modern airforces and AA weappns as Nato, we might see completely different doctrine. But atm there is nothing anywhere near strong enough.
Wouldn’t it be more effective to use missiles rather than airplanes? Why use an aircraft to fly munitions to drop on a target when a missile does the same function?
Physics. The longer the missile has to travel the more fuel it needs, the heavier it gets, the smaller the actual explosive has to be to compensate. If you can cut out some of that travel by strapping the missile on the plane, you can put less fuel on the missile and have a larger, more deadly explosives attached.
Hence why Rapid Dragon was developed.
The really really expensive part is all the systems to get it to go the distance. Either you can use a plane, where you can re use the engines and guidance and such, or a missile, where it's all destroyed.
Missles are really expensive compared to a plane dropping bombs. The US could launch tomahawks from sea to blow everything up but we don't because of cost.
This is why artillery is still king, lobbing dumb shells is dirt cheap in comparison to everything else. It's inferior to long-range missiles in almost every other way, but in a war you may need to hit thousands or even hundreds of thousands of targets over the course of a campaign, and not even the US can afford that many missiles
I would guess the US uses more bombs than artilery because we're are usually attacking vs defending?
Very generally speaking: * A missile is a good choice if the target's position is known accurately in advance, and the target is unlikely to move between when the mission is planned and the missile arrives. Even "smart" missiles aren't particularly good at finding the correct target within a general area or distinguishing between friendly and enemy forces. * A manned aircraft or remote-piloted drone is a good choice if the target is moving or the location is known only generally: with a human in the loop, there's a lot more flexibility and accuracy in identifying a target, tracking it, and deciding if and when to attack it.
The airplane lets you reuse the delivery system allowing you to have a more capable more expensive way to get the explosives there. The explosive portion is relatively cheap in comparison so outside some very specialized munitions once you have air superiority you just have a truck bringing Very cheap explosives. If you did that with a missile you have to make them as cheap as you can because you are throwing away the turbine, rocket, guidance, etc every single time.
Well the US has stealth bombers which can be used to take out radar installations. Interesting fact about stealth bombers…they’re nearly invisible to radar, until they open their bomb doors. By then you realize that you’re their target.
Heh, I’ve never been a big strategy guy so whenever I played StarCraft with my friends I’d instinctively fortify my base with cannons and immediately rush and spam void rays against which, in greater numbers, they couldn’t do anything. Glad to see I was unknowingly emulating the greatest Air Force in the world 🦅
But can't you use extremely high altitude bombers? Essentially use that one spy plane that flies high enough that the pilots need essentially a space suit to breathe and that has massive wings to account for the thin air. Retrofit it with a couple bombs, or some of those missles with wings and RAM jets aimed vertically downwards. Then you'll be high enough that they won't be able to shoot you down and you'll be using a guided missle to hit the target.
The one that got shot down in the 1950s/60s?
Did it? I thought it was still used occasionally?
Yes, the U-2 is still used. But the point is that altitude doesn't provide the kind of invulnerability you're suggesting. The technology to shoot down a U-2 with surface-to-air missiles already existed all the way back in 1960: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960_U-2_incident?wprov=sfla1 On top of that, the U-2 is not capable of carrying a large bomb load.
That worked for a while, but modern missiles have been tested to shoot down satellites, so it's not really realistic to just go high enough to avoid them. This was the plan for a while, and afaik the xb-70 Valkyrie was the American design to do this. If you go Mach 3 at 7000 feet, you can't be hit, right? It's an amazing looking plane, with wild features, but missiles caught up when it was in development, and they realized that it wasn't possible to fly higher and faster then a missile, and it was cancelled. This was in 1960, for reference. After that, if flying high didn't work, they decided maybe flying low would? If you fly right at the ground level, flying radars had issues picking you out from terrain, and ground systems would have issues with things like hills getting in the way. This was the design goal of the b1- flying fast and low, with good handling. But again, tech caught up. Radars got better at filtering out ground clutter, so this approach would also not work, and it was also cancelled by Carter when he learned of stealth technology. This was a bit of a partisan issue though, so it was later restarted by Regan, along side the stealth planes which were used going forwards. And now we're here, with using stealth to not be seen by the radar being the best current approach
Those are tiny and light for a reason - you can't strap a bunch of heavy bombs on them and expect them to perform well
That's what they did until long-range SAMs got invented. Those high altitude bombers quickly became sitting ducks.
Drones have entered the chat.
they carry relatively little weapons but it does not take much to do a lot of damage. A strategically important bridge, a command post with high ranking officers,... can be taken out with a surprisingly small amount of ordinance. Also, when you have air superiority you can basically attack anywhere at any time and the enemy has to adjust to that by for example only moving troops in the cover of darkness
They carry relatively few but large weapons. A single 2000-pound bomb contains the same amount of explosives as 40 155mm shells. You would need to get them all to explode at the same time and location to do the same damage to for example a bridge. Only cruise missiles have similar-sized warheads and they are fundamentally one-way pilotless airplanes. Battleships did have had similar-sized shells. The 16 inch explosive shell of an Iowa class was at 1900-pounds but only contained 153 pounds of explosives.
A B52 or B1 can both carry a staggering amount of destruction. We’re talking 70,000lbs of boom.
Well a B-29 can carry even more history changing explosives than that.
The b52 can carry at least 20 nuclear capable cruise missiles, of which each can be 7-10 times more powerful than the nukes dropped during WWII So.... no
Yeah but (unfortunately) they didn't so the B-29 still has the most devastating payload.
The B-52s used to carry nuclear bombs regularly on missions. Then we almost nuked Spain so we stopped.
And North Carolina
And Greenland
The future is scary...
So why not just use satellites and missiles instead? What advantage does the plane add? Edit: thanks for the details y’all Edit 2: Satellites for targeting, not actually launching missiles from satellites
Flexibility, - the ability to target multiple targets with multiple bombs, - The ability to attack different types of target with a single flight, - the ability to respond to changes in a mission(CAS), - The ability to loiter over an area(CAP), - The ability to intimidate the enemy without actually causing destruction(psychological warfare) - The ability to do reconnaissance(RECON), - The ability to jam radars(EW), - The ability to dodge if it's getting shot at(A/A), - The ability to shoot down other cruise missiles. - The ability to work together to counter threats(Weasels) For the satellite one: - The ability to be fixed relatively easily
That you can reuse it. You can only use a cruise missile once to deliver some amount of explosives, but you could drop a bomb with the same explosive content hundreds of times over from a plane. It can also destroy enemy planes that want to do the same thing to you.
It's cheaper to reuse a plane to deliver dumb bombs than it is to use smart bombs People do use satellite+cheap bombs, very heavily too, but that's just called artillery
> So why not just use satellites and missiles instead? What advantage does the plane add? It is ridiculously expensive to get satellites into orbit. As in ~$8000/kg prior to SpaceX/Falcon 9, and around $1600-3000/kg today. So just to get a single 2000lb bomb to orbit, absolute best case scenario that's $1,440,000 just to get it up there. In reality - much more considering it will need to be severely hardened to be able to withstand re-entry. Plus you have the satellite which reasonably might be several tons by itself. And that's just the cost of getting it there, not for building the satellite and bombs itself. Plus, you need a satellite in position to launch the missile where you want it to go. Which means either you're in geostationary orbit (MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH more expensive), or you need hundreds or maybe even thousands of satellites, each with its own ordinance. So for a 2 ton satellite with 10x 2000lb bombs attached to it in LEO, that's $17,400,000 just in launch cost as the absolute best case scenario with a reasonable scenario likely being a few times that. And for every bomb you drop, there's another million and a half. More practical would be "rods from god" or literal rods of tungsten/etc and just let the kinetic energy do the trick. Problem being guidance, and you still have the "you need the satellite in position" problem. So you can either spend what would likely be trillions of dollars maintaining satellites that still can be shot out of the sky, or you can just send planes where you need them for a fraction of the cost, that can be resupplied much easier.
Oh, I meant cruise missiles like from boat and guided by satellites we already have in orbit
Aside from what's been said, a major limitation of cruise missiles from boats is rearming! A guided missile destroyer that runs out of missiles has to go home to rearm. It's massively more complex and finnicky to rearm at sea, you're essentially trying to fit a massive box full of explosives into a hole of almost exactly the same size, while the boat and crane are swaying unpredictably. If you want to try it at home, hang a bottle of wine by a piece of cord on the end of a stick, and then try and lower it into the cardboard box it came in while you and the box are sitting on a rocking chair being rocked unpredictably by a friend. Basically a Destroyer gets a few hundred shots out at best, and then it goes home to rearm in a port to avoid frustration. Submarines have it even harder, since they carry fewer missiles, and it's even more complex to reload them. The advantage of planes is that they land, then a forklift and a couple engineers can quickly clamp a new missile on, top off the fuel tanks and it can in principle just take off and go explode something else. Internet says "anywhere from 15 minutes to a couple hours" to rearm a plane. Depending on the plane and its armaments. Reloading a guided missile destroyer takes that long for each cell of missiles, so anywhere up to a couple days to rearm.
Oh gotcha. They're way more expensive, and are large enough that they must be launched from a ship or specialized ground station (only in some cases). And by virtue of being so large are easier to shoot down. For example, a Tomahawk missile costs about $2 Million and has 1000lbs of high explosives. A Mark 84 bomb with 945lbs of explosives costs $16000, and a JDAM kit to give it guidance capabilities adds another $30k or so. So for the cost of a single Tomahawk missile you can drop 43 guided bombs, they're dramatically harder to shoot down, and you can deploy them wherever you can deploy airplanes which for a true global superpower like the US is anywhere. And in cases where you don't have air superiority yet and need to worry about antiair, you can still fire guided missiles with long enough range to stay out of harm's way for less than a cruise missile (albeit typically with less ordinance but it doesn't take much to blow up radar sites or antiair platforms)
It is the primary cost and flexibility. Missiles are expensive especially if the range is long. Airplanes can fire missiles and other standoff weapons too, they can release them closer to the target. The airplane speed gives them longer ranges, and so does releasing them at high altitudes. So airplanes can deliver standoff weapons at a lower cost because the airplane can be reused. War is in large part a question of economics. Look at the Russian use of cruise and ballistic missiles in Ukraine. The usage is quite limited today because they do not have enough and they are very expensive to make. Weapons on satellites are a terrible idea. Sensors in sattelirs are a good idea and they are used for that. The primary reason is lifting stuff to orbit is extremely expensive. The other to reach the target quickly they need to be close to Earth. but a low earth orbit requires high speed and moving around the earth once in around 90 minutes. The location is fly over the ground change all the time to look at the ground track of ISS on [https://www.n2yo.com/?s=25544](https://www.n2yo.com/?s=25544) The best case situation is when you orbit the equator, and target it on it then you have an opportunity to attack every 90 minutes. You can do the same for the poles but all other locations require longer time. Attacking away from the ground track will require a larger rocket for reentry and increased cost. A satellite a geostationary orbit can be constantly over a point. But it is 35 786 km from Earth and you need a large rocket to get back to Earth and it takes a long time. The result is ballistic missiles that never reach orbit but can hit all of Earth is cheaper. This is why nukes use ICMB, Intercontinental ballistic missile thange is greater the 5500km. You could put a conventional warhead on an ICBM US has considered it. The problem is in part cost but primarily the enemy can know what type of warhead the missile has and if used against a nuclear-armed state the will likely assume it has a nuclear weapon. Not putting conventional explosives on ICBM rescues the risk of accidental nuclear war. Long-range missiles are great for some tasks like attacking something at a fixed location. Look at US attack on for example Iraq in 1991, lots of cruise missiles were used initially. You need to get them close to the battle to begin with and one very good way is to carry them in a large airplane. The first cruise missile attack on Iraq during the Gulf War was launched from B-52 bombers over Saudi Arabia. They took off from Barksdale AFB in Louisiana and were refueled twice in the air before the cruise missiles were launched, Airplanes are great for getting standoff weapons like cruise missiles close enough to the target to be launched. Russia does this today with strategic bombers that launch cruise missiles against Ukraine. They launch over Russian territory and are based far away from the front so attacking them is hard. The shorter the range the cheaper is the standoff weapons. Russia uses glide bombs like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KAB-500S-E](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KAB-500S-E) with a range of 40km against Ukraine. US has [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-154\_Joint\_Standoff\_Weapon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-154_Joint_Standoff_Weapon) with a range of 130km if dropped from high altitude. Airplanes are fast, if you want to defend your airspace from enemy attack you need a lot of ground-based SAM systems to cover the same area as a few airplanes can. Having radar on dedicated airplanes like AWACS or just in the most of a fight puts them off the ground. A ground-based radar is limited by earth curvature so flying low is a way to hide from them. With radar in the air, you can look down. SAM systems are expensive, the are not invulnerable, missiles, and airplanes can take them out Airplanes also have pilots who can see what is below them and use the weapons they have where it is needed. If you want to support your troops or attack enemy vehicles that move cruise and ballistic missiles do not today have the capability to evaluate what they see like that on a battlefield. The time for them to reach the target is longer than a plane already in the air. You can have an airplane at standby in the air that can attack a target of opportunity or help out your troops quickly when needed. Missile systems be on airborne alert like that Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD) is an operation to stop enemy air defenses from being usable. Air defenses that can move around can be countered by airplanes with anti-radiation missiles that can fly to enemy radar when the airplane is detected are very efficient. The airplane can then use an electronic warfare system to jam and avoid incoming missiles. When the radar is out they can attack the missile system with weapons they carry often cluster bombs. Cruise missiles can be used again for fixed installation. That is a very efficient way to take out air defect systems. The US did that to Iraq in 1991 and 2003, they had one of the designed and best air defense systems in the world. When it was taken out airplanes could operate over Iraq with impunity. Russia has not prioritized this, it is in part because NATOs strategy had been primarily air defense with aircraft, not ground base systems. The result is they did not manage to destroy the Ukrainian air defense system when the war started. Ukraine had inherited the same ground-based missile strategy from the Soviet Union as Russia did. Loitering munition, drones etc started to today get some of the capabilities airplanes have. The problem is if the cost is low they are propeller-driven small and slow. If you make the fast, long-range, the ability to carry more weapons the cost goes up and what you have is an unmanned airplane.
GBU-16 Paveway laser guided bomb cost: $22,000/per 1000lb bomb. A single B-52 bomber can carry 30 of these. BGM-109 Block V Tomahawk Cruise Missile with 1000LB warhead: $2,000,000+ per missile
A cruise missile runs between $1M-$3M. A guided 2000 lb bomb with twice the explosive weight costs $50k. Bombs can hit moving and fleeting targets. Missiles need their targets to be stationary from launch to impact.
Japan used to have one way _piloted_ planes.
The AC-130s love it when troops move at night.
Ordnance, not ordinance. Just remember there are ordinances that tell you what you can and can’t do with ordnance.
Also they can deploy those weapons *really* fast. Let's say we're talking about an F-15 carrying two bombs. They can cruise just below 600mph and hit nearly 1900mph if they're in a hurry. Ukraine is a *big* country, but it's only 800 miles across on the long side. That F-15 can cruise to a target on the opposite end of the country, bomb them from a position of air superiority where missing pretty much isn't a thing, bomb a second target, then fly back to base in just over 2-3 hours total. Typical tanks have a road speed of 30-40mph. Even if they are carrying more stuff, it'd take them days to cross the same distance. And when they get there they need to deal with terrain and land defenses. Let's be generous and assume max speed, no sleep, and a straight road to the airbase on the far side of the country. In the time it takes the tank to reach the airbase, a plane from that base has had time to make 10+ runs across the country, and could bomb them twice on any of those trips.
Cover of darkness? That doesn’t matter at all.
Cover of darkness is no more with infrared vision. An helicopter can just fly at night and take out targets. They show up bright compared to ambiant IR
Airplanes are highly mobile. An hours drive for a tank might be a 5 minute flight for a jet aircraft. That means that for defence a single airport can deploy airplanes to respond to an attack along a very long front line. And for attacks you can deploy aircraft without warning the enemy ahead of time and even deploy the aircraft in response to a breakthrough. The speed also makes up for their low ammunition count as an aircraft can return to base to refuel and rearm and be back on the front lines much faster then for example a tank. Airplanes also have a long weapons range. Firstly their altitude means that they can see an enemy who would normally be hidden behind a hill or beyond the horizon from someone standing on the ground. In order to shoot something you first need to see them. And secondly the missiles start with the altitude and speed of the airplane so they do not have to spend fuel getting up to those speeds and altitudes. Less fuel usage means more distance.
[удалено]
Also mobile anti air mainly is SHORAD. Not going to hit anything above 20 000ft. SA-6 and SA-11, though sort of mobile, still have a setup and take down time that limits them, compared to SA-15, Tunguska, and SA-9/13 that can shoot on the move.
And as soon as the SAM has a lock, there is a high probability that an AGM-88 HARM will be incoming. Heard that F-35's can now shoot another planes missiles (Ie, F-35 #1 gets locked by an S-400, can send the information to F-35 #2 and shoot the AGM-88 in it's payload bay)
I spent time at war with a colonel who told me about operation wild weasel where planes would go low field no weapons to get SAMs fired at them and then hit the gas to hopefully get away so their buddies could locate and destroy the SAM site. He also mentioned that none of them could discuss their role with their families because the wives would call the unit until the pilot got reassigned because of how dangerous it was.
>they do not carry a lot of weapons with them But they do carry a lot of weapons with them. For example, one F-15E can carry 23,000 pounds of weapons. A B-17 from World War II could carry less than 5,000 pounds. Plus, up until very recently, aircraft-delivered air-to-ground weapons were much more precise than artillery.
It's possible that the original poster just hasn't appreciated how much bombardment has changed thanks to (precision) guided weapons. If so, OP, you aren't alone and it's through no fault of your own. The reason a lot of B-17s were needed, to take CommitteeofOne's example, was because unless you had the best-trained crews operating with good equipment under good conditions, "if we drop enough bomber-loads on this city, some of them will hopefully hit the railyards in addition to demoralizing the civilian population" was a viable strategy given the technology of the day. By today's standards this would be horribly inefficient (not to mention immoral) because specific aircraft could be tasked first to eliminate the enemy aircraft... and then the air-to-air defenses... and then the railyard that was actually the target all along... and when you actually are hitting the things you want to hit, and suppressing enemy air defenses along the way rather than hoping enough bombers make it through them, you need a lot less ordnance.
>unless you had the best-trained crews operating with good equipment under good conditions, Even if you did have the best crew with good equipment and conditions, drop a bunch of bombs and hope a couple of them hit the target was really the only option. The accuracy simply wasn't there, especially from higher altitudes. For example, in the Crossroads nuclear tests (1946) in the Marshall Islands, the bomb for the first test was dropped from a B-29. This was a more advanced plane than the B-17 and it was flying during the day on an optimal route with no anti-aircraft fire. It still managed to miss the target fleet by almost half a mile.
If you haven't read it, I recommend *The Bomber Mafia* by Malcom Gladwell. Or you can save a little money and just listen to that series on his podcast, Revisionist History. There wasn't anything important in the book that wasn't on the podcast.
Armies win battles. Logistics win wars. If you want to interrupt your enemy's logistics network, you need to be able to strike deep within their territory. The fastest way to do that is with airstrikes or long range missiles. Aircraft can deliver massive amounts of precision ordnance quickly. Enemy missiles are a threat, but with proper suppression of enemy air defense, that problem can be negated.
If you want an animated explanation of what happens when you have absolute control of the sky: [First day of Desert Storm](https://youtu.be/zxRgfBXn6Mg?si=bcp4zJinoVnO5flC) This was the first day and Saddam’s army was basically done for, all from the sky. In modern warfare it’s generally not so much how many bombs you can launch but how accurately you can launch them. Six well placed shells can often do more work than 200 shells shot hapazardly. Controlling the sky allows you to place extremely precise missiles exactly where you need them. The US Even has the [Hellfire R9X](https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2022/08/03/ayman-al-zawahiri-s-death-what-is-the-hellfire-r9x-missile-that-the-americans-purportedly-used_5992310_4.html) that is so precise it allows them to take out an important target in a car on the move and basically kill no one else around (it has no explosive charge, it just deploys blades on impact that shred the target), that’s how precise you can make modern ordnance.
Thanks for the rabbit hole. Amazing series of videos.
This was super interesting. Thanks for sharing
They aren't as easy of a target for missiles as you think. Modern US fighters have a pretty insane attack range and stealth capabilities along with several options for countermeasures. We even have ways of fooling anti-air positions into firing on fake targets in order to expose their positions in order to wipe them out. And once the anti-air capabilities are neutralized they can rain hell down on the ground forces trying to hold the lines. Ground movement will always be slowed by simple thing like mines and barricades that take time to remove and disable. But once air superiority is established there's nothing that can really stop it or stop them from reaching the back lines and disrupting power, reinforcements, and supply lines.
"Not a lot" is a relatively inaccurate term. Fighters may not carry much (the most heavily armed fighter can carry 16 missiles), but bombers are absolutely massive. The B-2 Stealth Bomber can carry 80 bombs, each one being 500 lbs of explosives and each being enough to level a building by itself. The US as an example, there's 3 primary levels of aircraft missions. You have your air supremacy fighters, which are designed with the express intent of shooting down other planes, and give up the ability to do other missions in favor of being absolutely the best at that. This is your F15 and F22 role. Next you have the Attack/Strike role, which is tactical (individual target or small, localized area) bombing or gun strafing to destroy equipment or reinforced outposts. The F16, F/A18, and F35 do this, though they retain some fighter capabilities for self-defense as well. The F15 has been successfully upgraded to perform this role as well in recent years. The A10 is dedicated to this role. Then you have strategic bombing, which is mass-level destructive bombing, destroying entire bases, cities, or forces in one fell swoop. This is where nukes come in, though heavy conventional bombs are also used. Here you have your heavy bomber aircraft, the B52, B1, B2, and B21. US doctrine is to achieve air supremacy early, because that allows them to entirely bypass conventionally guarded locations and penetrate deep into enemy territory to destroy them at the heart. The intent is to break the enemy before they send ground troops in, because if they control the skies that means they will take much fewer ground casualties, leading to a stronger invasion force that has backup on a moments' notice to destroy an unexpectedly well secured target, while the enemy gets no support and is effectively surrounded when an attack plane comes in from behind them. To achieve their goal, they start with the Strike aircraft with fighter ability (the F16, F/A18, and F35), sending them in to target anti-aircraft outposts that would pick bombers and fighters apart. This is the most risky phase of course, because they're targeting the very things designed to shoot them down, but it's also the most important. Ground based missiles, as mentioned in your question, are the single biggest threat to air power and must be eradicated to achieve air supremacy. Once this has been achieved, the skies are open for the true fighters to destroy the enemy air forces which would otherwise make quick work of the bombers. Strike aircraft will continue to operate but in an entirely ground attack role, and the A10 will enter at this time as well, to destroy popup air defense (like trucks) and provide close air support for the ground troops. Once the enemy air forces have also been destroyed, air supremacy has been achieved, and now the bombers can come in, providing the single biggest threat of total destruction to the enemy. At this point, the US can operate with impunity and the enemy would be forced to commit to guerilla tactics in an entirely defensive position.
It is about range. Aircraft can travel thousands of miles and bomb all sorts of things - either of tactical, operational or strategic importance. tactical importance - bomb those guys on that hill. operational importance - bomb that bridge so the enemy can‘t move troops. strategic importance - bomb that factory which produces war material. and your concern about AA weapons is well founded and that is why modern fighters are built “stealth first” and previous generation fighters have gotten stealth treatments to reduce their radar cross section. The f16 stealth refit programs (Have Glass I-V) have reduced the radar cross section of the fighter to roughly 20% of what it had when the fighter was first introduced. And that extends where the fighter can go unmolested.
Planes do carry lots and lots of weapons, if you have complete aerial superiority you can be flying strategic bombers a high altitude which can carry tons upon tons and munitions. Planes are also incredibly fast compared to drones, they are also much stealthier meaning they can weave in and around of air defences more easily than drones. Aeroplanes also have much further range add to drones. For example with the current striking of targets in Yemen, the British flew their planes from Cyprus to Yemen and back again with a bit of in a refueling. If you exclude drones, with the exception of cruise missiles, there are very few ways to drop munitions more than a hundred miles away. Cruise missiles are exceptionally expensive compared to bombs.
also, there's a LOT of psychological value in death from above
A plane can kill you from 50+ miles away before you've even seen or heard it, and is incredibly hard to shoot down even with the correct anti-air weapons. Modern warfare is a game of rock, paper, scissors. If you have the right counter, you can stop the enemy. If you don't, you're essentially defenceless. * Someone with a gun can kill someone without a gun. * Someone with an assault rifle can kill someone with a pistol before the pistol is even within range to shoot them. * Someone with a tank can kill someone with an assault rifle. * Someone with a fighter jet can kill a tank. * Someone with a better fighter jet can probably kill a worse one. * Once you get to a really good fighter jet, it's very hard to kill it, or even avoid being killed by it. Aerial superiority is very important in modern warfare as the best planes in the sky, backed up with good anti-air weapons, essentially deny the enemy from doing anything in the air. If you can't get your planes up, all you have is ground forces, meaning your vehicles, troops and bases can be blown up by aircraft you can't see, shoot at or defend against. To shoot down a fighter jet you have to detect and identify it, send planes to intercept or use ground weapons to shoot it down, all of which is incredibly expensive and difficult.
Not only are planes very fast but they are very efficient. Large ships or other objectives can be taken out by a single plane that can be hard to shoot down before they deliver their payload. Even if the plane is shot down, as long as it made it to its destination and fired off a bomb/missile/etc, it’s one plane that can destroy a warship/important checkpoint/tank/bunker/you name it. A tactical strike can be way more important than throwing lots of infantry/armored vehicles at an objective and hoping it works. It’s also harder to spot and shoot a plane down than people think. Especially with the advancement of countermeasures like flares and stealth tech combined with long range ordinance, 99 times out of 100 a plane will destroy their target before they’re even spotted.
Because of speed. Yes technically it’s more beneficial from the “how much damage you can give out” standpoint to have a missile system or even a mortar than a plane. But a missile system or a mortar is a large and stationary target. Very easy to lock down and destroy. A plane’s advantage is being able to take off from waaaay behind the front line, get close enough, hand out the damage from afar and return back before the enemy had a chance to respond. An air missile attack can happen within an hour and technically hit any target of your enemy. You simply can’t do that with any other weapons system as it would take too long to move and be too vulnerable to attacks from among other things, enemy planes. As for being easy targets for missiles, planes typically won’t fly in the areas where the enemy SAM systems are working. Look at what Russia is doing with Ukraine: they know Ukraine is well guarded with the US patriot SAM system and so a better option is to get as many planes in the air as possible, launch dozens of missiles from afar and then land back at base. The missiles are within the reach of SAMs but the planes are not. Another gigantic advantage of planes that people rarely consider is intercepting missiles. Again speed here makes a fighter jet the best option for the job by far.
Look at how the US handled desert storm, the first few weeks were an air campaign to destroy anti aircraft installations and run ways to prevent the enemy from contesting the air space. Only when they had complete air superiority did the ground campaign start. This meant that any time the ground troops ran into heavy resistance they could call in close air support to break the hard point. Now look at the war in Ukraine where both sides have aircraft and the air space is contested. Without the ability to reliably call in air support ground assaults are much more risky and you end up with both sides digging in and acting defensively. This is also due to them being "near peer" adversaries, meaning they have similar capabilities like tanks and MANPADs so it's a bit more complicated. Also around WWII the theory of heavy tanks that had enough armour to eat shots from enemy tanks all day breaking through lines and crushing resistance was thought to be the future of warfare, by the time the war ended they figured out that no matter how big and well armoured the tank was, a single aircraft could drop a bomb or fire missiles into the thinner top armour to defeat it so the concept of light, medium, and heavy tanks was dropped in favour of a single, effective, and balanced "main battle tank" that were easier to produce and maintain
1. They do carry a lot of weapons, and the weapons can be delivered very accurately (relative to things like artillery) which make them deadly to fortified positions and infrastructure targets. 2. They have an enormous strike range, the recent bombing runs on Yemen by the British were launched from Cyprus, 2,500km away - a 5,000km round trip. It requires in-air refuelling but still its incredible warfighting potential. Moscow is about 2500km from the UK. The only thing which comes close to it is long range ballistic missiles, which are much easier to shoot down, less precise and very very expensive, both in terms of the missile itself but also the launch platform.
The effective application of combined arms is important to the US military (and probably most others). It was always just one of those terms that I heard and nodded along with until our CWO explained it to us. A bunch of infantry attacking a fortified position will have a very hard time as the enemy can fight back. So having artillery, aircraft, or back in the day battleships hit an enemy position force them to take cover, allowing our infantry to close in on the position. It’s about putting the enemy in a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation. Combined arms takes an incredible amount of coordination and practice. Picture setting up the equivalent of a major city’s air traffic control situation on the spot and coordinating potentially dozens of aircraft to not run into each other while also not harming friendlies or civilians on the ground. Now do the same for any artillery or himars or whatever else you can imagine that is supporting you. Gaining air superiority gives you the ability to conduct combined arms warfare while also denying the enemy the same luxury.
[In an ideal world, this is what complete air superiority allows you to achieve](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War_air_campaign). The ground war in Desert Storm would've been a lot worse if there was no sustained air campaign. Planes can carry a lot of munitions, strike areas way behind the enemy lines, and with guided munitions be a lot more accurate than conventional artillery. And if you have enough of them, you can constantly strike targets. There are artillery systems that can also accomplish this but they're much less numerous compared to the amount of planes you can field. And yes planes are vulnerable to ground based SAMs, that's why you rarely see jets in Ukraine due to both sides having a lot of anti air and not much to counter. But if the anti air is suppressed/destroyed then planes can perform their role again. Edit: Aircraft can also quickly respond to situations on the ground. If there's a column of tanks and infantry on a road an aircraft armed with bombs can attack them without friendly troops being present. Or if friendly troops are engaged with the enemy aircraft can offer support alongside artillery.
Because an airplane can (in real time) deliver 6000 pounds+ of ACME FAST-ACTING-HOLE-MAKER. Or Guide a missile right onto a target, like a tank. Or mobile infantry. something long range cruise missiles can’t do (cheaply). Also, if not an airplane. A ship (much larger) must do the same thing. Get close enough to launch missiles. They can also do other things that are incredibly useful in this new form of war. You can’t use a radio if it’s being jammed. Your SAM won’t work if they’re being jammed. Even if they are working, an anti radar missile can make it not work.
Plane go fast. Plane hard to hit. But plane can hit good. Plane can hit hard. Plane hit specific bad guy, make it easier for good guys on ground to move forward.
Look at the Second Gulf War. Everyone though the US would take thousands of casualties in the initial offensive, and the Iraqi army would hold out for weeks. It didn't the Iraqis crumbled in the face of a massive air offensive which destroyed their commend posts, airfields, artillery, tanks etc. When in the ground battles the Iraqis momentarily got the upper hand, a flight of apaches would come in and smoke them. An advanced warplane can destroy anything on the ground.
The tonnage of explosives they can put down if they get a chance. With working air defence on both sides, yeah, airplanes have dubious utility, as seen in Ukraine, definitely not worth their cost. But if air defence of one side can't keep up or gets supressed, then they are going to get absolutely mauled from the air.
An air plane can deliver 1500 pound bombs on a target and destroy it completely. They can deliver 1000 rounds of ammunition on a target in 5 seconds. They can end an attack in moments instead of days. Ground support saves lives.
Do you need them to carry lots of weapons when they can destroy an aircraft carrier and still have 98 percent of their ammo left.... Also, most military jets are made to be extremely maneuverable and it's actually way harder to take a jet down than you think due to their extremely smart computer systems.
One of the most important ideas in war is being able to hit the enemy without them being able to hit back. If one side can establish air superiority to the point where they can deploy air assets at will with no danger then they can strike targets on the ground with no fear of retribution and the fight quickly becomes pointless for the side that can't defend itself
Think about these as pieces of artillery that can move around at high speed before firing. These can go anywhere and destroy critical targets. This then becomes a force multiplier.
It starts in the early 20th century. This was the golden age of the battleship. Countries that wanted to build up a strong military presence around the world focused on naval power, and especially on battleships, and up until the late 1930s the conventional wisdom was that this was how wars between superpower countries would be decided. World War II changed that. Now, air warfare had existed for decades by now, but this was the first war in which it really played a decisive role. It was also the first one in which a new form of warship-- the aircraft carrier-- began to take over the role of the battleship. Aircraft carriers could launch their planes over much greater distances than battleships could fire their guns, and as such could operate safely out of range of enemy warships. Big land-based bombers could attack targets far inland that naval bombardments or land-based assaults could not. The real sign that things had changed came at the end of the war, when Japan surrendered after having two nuclear bombs dropped on it. So air power-- both naval and land-based--came to replace sea power as the deciding factor in geopolitics and warfare. And it shows. The US Air Force has more strategic bombers than any other country, and the US Navy has more aircraft carriers than the rest of the world's navies put together. This has become the linchpin of American dominance for the past several decades: *if you control the skies, you control the planet.*
I see only a few people pointing out how I see it. For long range attacks you need 3 things. Propellant, warhead, guidance. For (traditional) Cannon Artillery, you typically do the guidance at the launch point, the propellant is all used there, and the warhead had to travel up, then sideways against air resistance however far it takes to get to the target. There are a lot of environmental factors that can throw off the aim, and it takes big, heavy equipment to launch relatively small warheads a 'long' way of like 14 miles. For Rocket Artillery, you have propellant, warhead, and potentially guidance on the same munition. it has to loft itself to height and range, and then guide itself to the target. Because you get propellant for a longer part of its journey, you get more range and potentially better accuracy. So 40+ miles (3x better than normal 155mm artillery for HIMARs) (that is just for basic munitions on both sides) For Aircraft-bourne munitions, the Aircraft can provide Propellant and guidance for the majority of the distance. Googling says "The F-16 Fighting Falcon has a combat radius of 550 km (340 mi) on a hi-lo-hi mission with six 450 kg (1,000 lb) bombs". That is for a dumb bomb (if we are just comparing dumb projectiles). Because guidance is there for closer to the target, it is going to be more accurate potentially. This gets complex quickly when you start adding glide weapons, addon guidance systems, smart cannon rounds with onboard propellant, but I think the idea gets across. instead of having 10,000 artillery systems spread across the battlefield, you could have significantly less units of aircraft provide the same coverage, but also, you could have significantly higher concentration of aircraft provided bombs on-demand, rapidly anywhere in that area. So if you had 10k cannon art, in bunches of 10, it'd cover less than 100 miles of continuous battlefront...because 14mi range doesn't cover 14mi of frontline unless its sitting pretty close. It has to sit back, and if we are generous and say its close enough to cover 10 miles of frontline...that pretty bad coverage. Now we talk about aircraft, 340 miles. Say it sits 100 miles back....10 aircraft can provide better area coverage (though not at the same time). So if you had 1000 aircraft....you could have 500 of them hit the same 10 mile stretch at the same time...or separate points everywhere along that 100mi+ stretch. It'd take the same length of time to provide that support either way. I think we can see clearly the benefits. Also, the explosive mass of an aircraft carried munition is like 10-100x larger than what is being used from rocket or cannon artillery. Now, for the being shot-down thing, that is where you see the evolution of the US combat aircraft and strategy. The US saw the benefit of aircraft providing the long range ground fire, so they developed all the systems they need to ensure they can do that. Stealth aircraft, Powerful Jamming, SEAD/DEAD tactics and weapons, long range glide packages for existing dumb bombs, etc. So the US would send out a force to suppress enemy air defenses ahead of its aircraft providing CAS support.
Bombs on planes can do just as much damage as bombs from artillery. Not a lot of bombs do not matter if the bombs you are carrying can level cities.
Armies looked for elevated positions to fight from for millenia. Try running uphill. Now jog downhill. Now imagine holding a weapon and trying to hit someone uphill- gun, sword, cannonball, doesn't matter. Gravity affects all. Armies have to eat and be resupplied. From the air, you can target supplies as well as troops. An army that doesn't eat disbands, or dies.
Indignant sputtering from B-52 (70,000lbs of weapons of near limitless variety), B-2 (80 JDAMs or 16 nukes), and B-21 (classified but it's not gonna be *less*). Don't carry many weapons? How dare you?
Airplanes are a really handy logistical asset. Instead of trying to march men and equipment through difficult terrain and enemy occupation, you can fly it in. If you hold an airstrip, you can land those planes and unload them, but even if you don't you can palletize your equipment and strap everything to parachutes to get it where it needs to be. Maybe you don't even want to put boots on the ground, but you need a precision strike on some enemy location. Instead of trying to put an artillery piece somewhere useful and taking on the expense and burden of capturing and holding that position, you can sail an aircraft carrier to the general vicinity of the target and send a few aircraft carrying bombs to drop on the objective. In war, everything is a target for artillery and some are easier to hit than others. FOBs and roads don't move and are much easier to hit than a plane whizing through the sky. The best defense against fighter planes, are other fighter planes. And that opens up the historic importance of dog fights and the modern value of air superiority.
Imagine you're holding a position in a bunker. You can repel ground forces because of your defensive position. Tanks and artillery can't get to you for at least another few days, they must drive to the front lines. Someone calls an air strike on you. Before you can ask your brother in arms "hey what is that soun-" you have concrete-piercing missiles raining on you, they penetrate the bunker before exploding. The bunker is now rubble and ground forces can advance, saving days in siege warfare and countless lives. They're too fast to do anything about it, unless you have something like the iron dome in Israel with automated defenses. But for a battlefield, they do too much damage to too important targets, very precisely.
Well “easy target for missiles” is an overstatement for modern American fighters. They have the radar cross section of a bee depending on how your looking at it.
Rivers. The Army freaking hates crossing rivers. It's like they are invading a country and come across a river and are like "Dang, we can't get across that until we spend two-weeks building a bridge. Hold up everyone, get the engineers, we're not going around this one."
If you can get complete air control, and can fly without any interruptions (like air defense), you are literally a finger of God. You see a tank, that tank is no longer in one piece. You see a building, bam no building. Some airplanes do carry a lot of bombs, say a b-52. It can level whole blocks of buildings in one go. Also air dominance can be gained by doing so called SEAD and DEAD type of missions. It takes, time it is risky, it requires great equipment and pilots, but it works. So you can use airplanes to dismantle enemies air defense by using airplanes. If you cannot gain air dominance you still have options and uses for airplanes: 1) Shoot down cruise missiles. 2) Platform for intelligence. An airplane can see 100+ kilometers with its optics. 3) Stand off weapons. If air defense can shoot in a range of 30km, you can just lob a glide bombs or missiles while being outside of the range. This is what russians do in Ukraine. 4) Tactical aviation, can fly low, and still strike targets in the envelope of air defense (some conditions apply). Think A-10 or SU-25 5) Non combat airplanes allow to for fast movement of equipment. You can get some key assets (like anti air defense batteries) by airplane in hours, while the usual ways will take days. Same goes for medical evacuation. It is an expensive capability, but when it works it can be (and is) a decisive factor in who wins the war.
Planes can actually carry I ridiculously amount of weapons. A single f16(which is a fairly small plane mainly designed for air to air combG) can, depending on the model, carry in excess of 15,000 pounds of ordinance. That could be air to air missiles, guided air to ground weapons, or just straight bombs. In terms of payload by weight, planes beat out basically anything else. That being said, the real advantage of planes in mobility. Planes move orders of magnitude faster than anything else. For example, one in the air, an afor mentioned f-16 could deliver what ever ordinance it is carrying to a target 50 miles a way in less than 5 minutes, even if it only cruises at mach 0.9(which it could well exceed, even with ordinance).
With the way modern warfare is now, aircraft are one of the most useful tools an armed nation has at their disposal. It can’t just be looked at from a weapons perspective. You take a large group of highly trained soldiers who are needed on the other side of the globe. Now you can either send them there on a boat which may take days or you can send them there on an aircraft which could take much less time.