Air Force

Study Sea Power to Understand Air Power

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U.S. Air Force officers and officials ought to study the canon of maritime theorists. Few of the greats had much to say about air power. In fact, most of them lived before military aviation started fulfilling its potential. Alfred Thayer Mahan, probably history’s most influential writer on naval topics, went to his reward in 1914—shortly after the outbreak of World War I and long before the United States joined the fight against the Central Powers.

Mahan’s contemporary Julian S. Corbett outlived the Great War and went on to compose the official history of Royal Navy operations in the war. But he perished in 1922. Corbett barely lived to see Billy Mitchell’s experimental U.S. Army Air Service brigade sink the ex-German battleship Ostfriesland in 1921. And aircraft carriers sporting wings of combat aircraft remained mostly a thing of the future. The Imperial Japanese Navy commissioned the world’s first purpose-built flattop in 1922, and the Royal Navy followed in 1924.

Air power remained exotic for the masters of maritime strategy, and yet nautical scribes—Corbett in particular—can help the U.S. Air Force of 2018 think through the design of its aerial armada and explain that design to lawmakers and ordinary citizens. Military folk tend to think in terms of individual platforms, armaments, or programs. Corbett wrote about fleet design, drawing mainly on age-of-sail navies such as the Royal Navy, French Navy, and Dutch Navy. He divided fleets by function. First there was the battle fleet, composed of the navy’s heavy hitters—the battleships, battlecruisers, and their ilk. It existed to duel hostile battle fleets for “command of the sea” or various lesser degrees of sea control. Clearing the seas of foes let the main work of maritime strategy proceed.

Winning maritime command entitled a navy to exercise command in this offshore haven. To do that navies constructed swarms of “cruisers.” They could afford these winsome, lightly armed, inexpensive craft in large numbers. Cruisers scattered out after a decisive fleet action to police the sea lanes, guaranteeing safe passage for friendly navies and merchant fleets while barring the sea lanes to enemies. And finally there was the “flotilla” of small craft. These unarmed or very lightly armed vessels executed the mundane administrative tasks all navies must execute, typically in near-shore waters. The battle fleet’s main function was to act as the guardian of cruisers and flotilla vessels that actually exercised command. Battle was a means to an end rather than an end in itself.

Consequently, Corbett portrays capital ships as specialized support ships. If enemy capital ships remain at large and seek to interfere with friendly command, then the battle fleet goes after them to dispatch the threat. Otherwise the fleet waits in reserve or busies itself with other missions assigned to it by senior commanders. It lands troops, pounds shore targets, or helps enforce blockades. This division of labor maps to modern air forces. Imperfectly, of course: Corbett admitted that the neat differentiation of ship types was breaking down even in navies of his day. The onset of the age of steam blurred boundaries even as new weaponry—the torpedo, the sea mine—appeared on scene.

But the basic functions—winning command of geographic space, then exercising command—endure. And they appear to apply to fleets that take to the sky rather than the bounding main. Take two U.S. Air Force programs that have made headlines in recent weeks and years. First, Boeing recently pitched the F-15X, a new variant of its venerable family of F-15 Eagle fighters, as a replacement for older Eagles. Its builders abjure stealth. Rather, they envision a warplane that can haul a mountain of ordnance and is compatible with its forerunners in logistics and maintenance terms—maximizing interoperability within the fleet while holding down costs. Sounds like a solid idea to this non-aviator. Presumably tacticians would pair up F-15Xs with F-22 or F-35 stealth jets, or perhaps hold the non-stealthy F-15s in reserve until enemy air defenses had been degraded enough for them to fly unfriendly skies.

This sounds rather like a debate over battle-fleet tactics, doesn’t it? Fleets of capital ships fight to command the sea, defeating enemy fleets along with coastal artillery that can strike out to sea from shore. Fighter aircraft do much the same. They contend for mastery of the air, defeating enemy air forces along with land-based surface-to-air weaponry that can strike at planes cruising overhead. In both cases ridding physical space of foes capable of contesting it represents the uppermost goal. Rendering sea- or airspace safe prepares the way for other ships or aircraft—cruisers or the flotilla in the saltwater setting, bombers or close-air-support planes in the wild blue—to exploit surroundings rendered permissive. One imagines Corbett would liken the debate over how to package ultramodern F-15Xs with stealth fighters to debates over how to array battleships, battlecruisers, and other armored vessels for maximum hitting power and defensive strength in his day.

Or second, think about the debate about new ground-attack aircraft for the U.S. Air Force. Close air support is equivalent to sending steam-powered cruisers or flotilla ships from Corbett’s lifetime to police the sea or project power ashore. Once the major antagonist has been driven off or destroyed, A-10 Warthogs or future ground-attack planes can venture into relatively secure skies to pummel targets of opportunity or respond to calls for fire from troops on the ground beneath. These are the planes that make use of the sky rather than duel for it. The purpose of fighter wings is to protect them while they do so—just as naval battle fleets remain watchful lest an opponent regenerate combat power and come out to renew the fight for sea command.

Critics of proposals to acquire very light attack planes such as the A-29 Super Tucano often allege that these craft would be highly vulnerable to ground fire or enemy aircraft. And so they would if close air support took place in utter isolation from fighter cover. But that is not reality. There are no perfectly safe skies any more than there are perfectly safe seas where cruisers and the flotilla float serenely doing their work. Even after a stunning victory over the enemy battle fleet, writes Corbett, the opponent could still make life difficult. Enemy air defenders could do the same—and so fighter formations still have work to do after winning the fight for air superiority. They still have to protect airborne “cruisers” as they prosecute surface targets.

In short, decisive battle is important—but it doesn’t solve everything. Corbett thought of navies as organisms with different parts that worked together under a division of labor. Aviators should think of air forces in similar terms—and envision how new programs fit into the fleet architecture and air strategy as a whole. Only thus can force planners make wise decisions about how to invest finite funding. So crack open that old copy of Some Principles of Maritime Strategy for insight—and figure out the best way to give ‘em the gun.

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