Air and Space Power in the Gray Zone

Richard D. Newton

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Introduction

Since the dawn of military aviation, air power has been, and continues to be, a predominant psychological weapon with the power to influence strategic decisions and shape tactical outcomes. As such, the opponent best able to wield the air power tool usually holds an asymmetric advantage in those conflicts dominated by the human dimension—irregular, unconventional, revolutionary, insurgent, low-intensity, etc., because as Billy Mitchell observed, “… air covers the whole world and there is no place that is immune from influence by aircraft [and now space capabilities].” From the great and middle powers’ perspectives, the evolving capabilities conferred by 21st-century technology—persistent high-resolution surveillance, precision targeting and attack, and rapid global mobility—makes possible what air power theorists dreamed about a century ago, i.e., a relatively low-cost means of controlling irregular adversaries without subjecting formations of soldiers to danger or causing the collateral damage as formations of troops pass through villages and farms. In 1920, Great Britain demonstrated that eight De Havilland DH-9A biplanes could substitute for the two divisions of soldiers the Army proposed as needed to find, attack, and defeat the Dervish guerrillas of Somaliland. Moreover, the Royal Air Force accomplished the mission for less than five percent of the Army’s funding request for the operation.

Nearly all analyses and reporting of irregular conflicts and gray-zone aggression have tended to limit their perspectives to a terrestrial focus, and thus neglected the possibilities and opportunities available via the third, vertical, dimension. For three quarters of a century, air, and more recently space, capabilities have offered military and civilian leaders creative options to address political, economic, humanitarian, and security challenges. The general missions conducted by air and space forces during irregular conflicts are much the same as during conventional conflicts. What is different, though, is the dominating role the human dimension plays in irregular conflict. While modern overhead systems have amazing, multispectral capabilities to “see,” they cannot sense emotions, judge attitudes, nor assess passion, all of which exert significant influence in the irregular warfare ecosystem.

Between the World Wars, the British tested their theories of air power’s psychological effects as a population control method in their colonies and mandates. The Royal Air Force (RAF) used the presence of surveillance aircraft and threat of air attack to influence behavior and force the locals to comply with political and economic decisions. The British embedded airmen among the tribes to communicate expectations, control the duration and tenacity of air-delivered effects, assess the impact of air operations, and then negotiate with the leaders to determine follow-on actions. Almost a century later, the fear of observation and attack from the air again shaped the actions of al-Qaeda and the Lord’s Resistance Army. Between the World Wars, the British also demonstrated how air power might serve a humanitarian role, delivering vaccines, warnings of locusts, and pioneering medical evacuation techniques. More recently, Western air and space capabilities were powerful counters to anti-Western messaging during humanitarian relief operations in Pakistan and Türkiye.

On the other side of the coin, specifically the possibility for insurgents, terrorists, and criminals to add air and space capabilities to their malign actions has largely been ignored or rejected, until 7 October 2023. Shocked by Hamas’s combined arms invasion of Israel, the world watched on social media and in the mainstream news as Hamas terrorists demonstrated coordinated air operations, using paragliders, commercial drones, and homemade rockets that nation-states’ traditional hegemony over the air domain had ended. It does not matter if the West’s failure to anticipate Hamas’s air force was through arrogance or ignorance. The fact is that violent non-state actors, criminals, and insurgents have been finding creative ways to use air and space technologies for decades, and the West should not have been surprised by Hamas’ air operations on 7 October.

In 1998, the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka were the first insurgent group to field a guerrilla air force. Since then, al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, Hezbollah, al-Shabaab, and others have used relatively inexpensive aerial drones for reconnaissance, surveillance, propaganda, and air attacks. To no one’s surprise, transnational criminal organizations have taken note and have been using commercial-grade drones for scouting smuggling routes, harassing government officials, transporting illicit cargo, and intimidating innocent civilians and government officials. Of even more concern are reports of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel in Mexico hiring Middle Eastern terrorists as technical advisors and now fielding an elite drone unit, Operadores Droneros, trained to modify and fly commercial drones as attack aircraft. Around the world, malign actors—criminals, insurgents, terrorists, and madmen—have found innovative ways to cause harm, influence decision-making, and drive up the cost of defending innocent populations, aided and abetted by the commercial drone industry that offers inexpensive and ever-improving aircraft with capabilities such as secure communication, larger payloads, night vision, obstacle avoidance, and GPS-enabled autonomous flight. What Hamas achieved in October 2023 announced to the world that a new era for air and space operations had arrived and the world’s national armed forces could no longer ignore the air threat from violent non-state actors.

The Future of Irregular Air Operations – The Real Next Inflection Point

Over the past few years, Air Force leadership has talked about being at a new inflection point, where the service needs to adapt to a new reality. After two decades of near-continuous combat in theaters where the adversaries had minimal air defenses, the nation’s Air and Space forces must adapt once again, this time to address technologically advanced air and space threats from peer and near-peer adversaries.

In August 2023, Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall noted that the Air and Space Forces were not as prepared as they should be to deal with the threats posed by China, and to a lesser extent Russia. To address the shortfalls, Secretary Kendall established seven operational imperatives that are overwhelmingly focused on the next generation of systems and platforms—space defense systems, the next-generation air dominance fighter, the B-21 next-generation bomber, and continued fielding and upgrades to the F-35—needed to deter our two primary competitors. Interestingly, though, the Secretary is also pushing for a change in mindset to focus on large unit training, exercises, and deployments. What is glaring by its omission is how the Air and Space Forces will address the most likely conflict scenarios between the three major powers—the limited “small wars,” often waged through proxies, that avoid triggering major conventional war. History suggests that future great power confrontations will most likely be waged through surrogates and proxies. Those conflicts will be fought in primitive, remote, and austere environments where the modern marvels of air power are ill-suited for operations. Moreover, those primitive locations present more risk and ambiguity than the Air Force’s leadership is likely to accept.

While we might agree that our Air and Space Forces are definitely at an inflection point, one can also argue that the problem is more than a blinkered focus on China. The dangers to international security and stability posed by China and Russia are formidable and the United States and its allies must develop systems, strategies, organizations, people, and doctrine to deter future conventional war—the war we pray will never happen. At the same time, however, the West needs systems, strategies, organizations, people, and doctrine appropriate to “uncomfortable wars,” far from where the services are planning, training, and equipping to fight—the limited wars the nation will likely have to fight.

In 2020, the Department of Defense wrote in the irregular warfare annex to the National Defense Strategy, that even with the shift to strategic competition between the major powers, “the requirement for mastery of irregular warfare persists” and that the department must not “repeat the ‘boom and bust’ cycle that has left the United States underprepared for irregular warfare in both Great Power Competition and conflict.” That document was supplemented and affirmed in 2023 by the Joint Concept for Competing, but already, the Air Force has divested its only dedicated irregular warfare capability and is asking to reduce its Tactical Air Control Parties by 44 percent, claiming that these unique airmen‘s skills are no longer needed to deter war with China or Russia. But if, as the joint concept claims, the DoD’s goal is to subvert our opponents’ goals and objectives, create dilemmas for our enemies, and erode our adversaries’ power, influence, and will through irregular operations, an obsessive focus on next generation air combat seems like a foolhardy rush to irrelevance. Therefore, Project Air Power will explore the air and space power aspects of irregular conflict, offer thoughtful alternatives to potentially address the challenges of irregular conflict, contemplate the potential character of future irregular conflicts, and consider the applicability of air power case studies to contemporary strategic competition.

Project Air Power’s Mission

Project Air Power will offer military and civilian leaders, academics, and the private sector from across the international air and space communities an independent forum to explore, research, and debate the challenges of irregular conflict in the third dimension. In the process, those leaders, policymakers, futurists, and practitioners will discover opportunities to employ the totality of air, aviation, and space capabilities – joint, interagency, international, civilian, and humanitarian – to contribute to whole-of-society approaches that address the spectrum of irregular and hybrid challenges posed by the West’s strategic competitors.

The project focuses on an air-minded approach to the lower two-thirds of the competition-conflict spectrum, where human interaction, understanding, and connections are more important than technological marvels. It is also where the attributes that make air and space capabilities so powerful: reach, lethality, persistent stare, and power to influence are tempered by thinking airmen, aviators, and guardians who recognize the unique challenges of the irregular conflict environment, but who can also articulate the tremendous possibilities and advantages air and space power offers to shape decisions, influence people, and impact the future.

What’s Next?

The air power dimension is changing, and quickly. Violent non-state actors and transnational criminal organizations are creating their own, “guerrilla,” air forces that are upending what has been the asymmetric advantage typically held by nation-states. Traditional air forces are being confounded and overwhelmed by inexpensive air and space systems and unconventional employment of commercial technologies. The old rules for who gets to exploit the third dimension no longer apply.

Project Air Power intends to inspire discovery from airmen, aviators, and guardians, and also from industry, academia, internationals, and humanitarian service providers. In the face of daunting conventional and irregular challenges from our strategic competitors, the opportunities for creativity and innovation are boundless. Please join us in helping to shape, influence, and impact air and space power’s future.