“War is a harsh teacher,” Thucydides warned in ancient times. History has repeatedly borne out the truth of his dictum, and the war in Ukraine is no exception. The ongoing conflict ought to serve as a “wake-up call” for the United States: Despite Moscow’s numerical and fires advantage, Kyiv has proven a formidable opponent by combining old and new tactics and technologies, marking a crossroads for the future of airpower.
“Everyone is learning from the current events in Ukraine,” the chief of staff of the US Air Force, General Charles Q. Brown, Jr., acknowledged, but identifying the correct lessons from the war is no easy task. This task is further complicated by Russia’s failed air campaign, which provides a convenient rationalization for avoiding unpleasant truths. In 1914, the great powers went to war expecting it would be short and decisive, with their militaries extolling the advantages of offense in warfare. But nothing turned out as expected. The horrors of machine guns, massive artillery barrages, and static trench warfare awaited them. European armies had missed the warning signs from the American Civil War, the Boer War, and the Russo-Japanese War. We should not repeat this tragedy today.
Instead, the United States and other allied air forces ought to ask the tough questions: Does the war in Ukraine challenge existing assumptions about the future of war? And how might the United States and its allies need to rethink and adjust existing doctrine, operational concepts, and procurement priorities? These are high-stakes questions, the answers determining whether air forces anticipate change or get taken by surprise in tomorrow’s wars.
Airpower experts and practitioners take up this challenge in the Atlantic Council’s Airpower After Ukraine: The Future of Air Warfare essay series. Given the war is ongoing, and publicly available information remains limited and incomplete, the authors approached the task with suitable humility and caution. Senior leaders ought to relentlessly examine and reexamine lessons from the war in Ukraine in the years ahead.
This series draws preliminary lessons from the air war in Ukraine, with particular attention to the implications of technological trends and emerging concepts for air control, supporting fires, intelligence sharing, space operations, electronic warfare, and cybersecurity. Five overarching themes emerge about the future of air warfare.
Taking the lessons forward
Several key recommendations can be taken from this series:Recognize that systemic trends—the global diffusion of air and space capabilities, particularly dual-use capabilities—make US power projection more costly and risky than in the age of primacy.
Accelerate the shift from a smaller number of exquisite and expensive capabilities to large numbers of small and cheap systems.
Rethink the traditional paradigm for air superiority and prioritize exploiting the advantages of air denial.
Prioritize building integrated partnerships with commercial actors and private industry as critical force enablers.
Adapt air and space operations for the information age, minimizing risk while identifying new ways to exploit open-source intelligence and social media platforms.
Apply lessons from Ukraine to the China challenge—but beware of contextual fallacies.
The character of modern air and space wars is rapidly changing, and the United States and allied air and space forces must necessarily adapt their force structures, acquisition priorities, and doctrine to prepare for tomorrow’s wars. Charged with preparing for an uncertain future, US and allied leaders should relentlessly examine and reexamine lessons from the current war—or else the United States risks being bested by competitors like China, which are carefully watching Ukraine and learning from Russia’s military successes and missteps. US and allied military strategists and planners will want to discern the overarching trends in air and space operations from contextual idiosyncrasies—including distinctions between Chinese and Russian geographies, military capabilities, doctrines, and strategic interests. Starting with the preliminary lessons offered in this series, the Russia-Ukraine war ought to serve as a foundation for adapting traditional air and space power paradigms for the twenty-first century battlefield. To prevail in tomorrow’s wars, air and space forces must first master the lessons taught today.
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