Abstract
Will future air-to-air combat follow the norms that previous major conflicts have witnessed? It is possible that future peer-on-peer combat will result in more intense air battles, compared with those seen since the Vietnam War, Middle East and Falklands conflicts, with all sides potentially experiencing high attrition rates. The requirement for an appropriate air dominance system compels assessment. Before this can be done, it is important to understand how AAS have performed in the past. Evaluating statistical trends in historic air-to-air combat allows for a methodical approach in analysing the effectiveness of the types of weapon systems which were used, and those which may be required in the future. Addressing the question of how often more lethal or effective weaponry determines tactical outcomes requires the examination of statistical data. The best evidence comes from the domain of air-to-air combat. There is a large amount of data available from both actual and simulated air combat.
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Notes
See Robert E. Ball, The Fundamentals of Aircraft Combat Survivability Analysis and Design, Reston, VA: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2003, pp. 2–5.
Mitchell Sisle and Edward McCarthy, ‘Hardware-in-the-Loop Simulation for an Active Missile’, Simulation, 39(159), 1982, 159–167.
For examples of exchange ratios and the effect of firing AAM in salvos, see Howard Van Horn, ‘Can Simple Models Predict Air Combat Results?’, Journal of Aircraft, 48(2), 2011, 652–659.
I have used analysis from a number of sources: Burton, ‘Letting Combat Results Shape the Next Air-to-Air Missiles’, slides 3, 4 and 5; Project Red Baron III: Air-to-Air Encounter in Southeast Asia, Volume III: Analysis — Part 1: Tactics, Command & Control and Training, p. 55; Stillion and Perdue, ‘RAND: Project Air Force’, PPF.25, 27–28; Dr Eliot A. Cohen, Gulf War Survey, Volume II, Operations & Effects and Effectiveness, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1993, Part II, p. 113; Air Force Historical Research Agency, ‘USAF Aerial Victory Credits’, 2010; and Watts, Six Decades of Guided Munitions and Battle Networks, p. 43.
Lt Charles H. Heffron USAF (ed.), Project Contemporary Historical Evaluation of Combat Operations Report: Air-to-Air Encounters over North Vietnam: 1 January–30 June 1967, San Francisco: HQ PACAF, Directorate, Tactical Evaluation, 1967, p. 45.
For a dissection of this incident, see generally, Scott A. Snook, Friendly Fire: The Accidential Shootdown of U.S. Black Hawks over Northern Iraq, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002.
See generally, Craig Brown, Debrief — A Complete History of U.S. Aerial Engagements: 1981 to the Present. Atglen, PA: Schiffer Military History, 2007.
See also Air Commodore Arun Kumar Tiwary, Attrition in Warfare: Relationship with Doctrine, Strategy & Technology, South Godstone: Spantech & Lancer, 2000, pp. 106–107. This is, for the purpose of this book, classified as sustained visual manoeuvring in order to achieve a kill, as opposed to visually acquiring an adversary, and then taking a shot with little, or no, manoeuvring required.
See Richard Overy, The Air War: 1939–1945, Washington, DC: Potomac Book, 1980, pp. 32–33. Most German losses were over the British mainland, the Channel and the North Sea, with most survivors not able to be recovered —
see Horst Boog, ‘The Luftwaffe’s Assault’, in The Burning Blue: A New History of the Battle of Britain, Paul Addison and Jeremy A. Crang (eds), London: Pimlico, 2000, pp. 48–49.
Research Institute for Military History (ed.), ‘Germany’s Initial Conquests in Europe’, in Germany and the Second World War, Vol. II, Oxford: Claredon Press, 1991, p. 405.
Stephen Bungay, The Most Dangerous Enemy: A History of the Battle of Britain, London: Aurum Press, 2000, p. 109.
John Mearsheimer argues that the 3:1 rule, which emerged in Europe between the Franco-Prussian War and World War I, is relevant and has achieved widespread acceptance amongst the modern great powers — see John J. Mearsheimer, ‘Assessing the Conventional Balance — the 3:1 Rule and Its Critics’, International Security, 13(4), 1989, 56–62.
Roger Cliff, The Development of China’s Air Force Capabilities, Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2010, p. 10.
Major J. Scott Norwood, USAF, Thunderbolts and Eggshells: Composite Air Operations During Desert Storm and Implications for USAF Doctrine and Force Structure, School of Advanced Airpower Studies, Maxwell Air Force Base, AL, 1994, p. 12, 2012.
For a description of DAMM, see Dr Leo van Breda (ed.), Supervisory Control of Multiple Uninhabited Systems — Methodologies and Enabling Human-Robot Interface Technologies, Neuilly-Sur-Seine-Cedex: The Research and Technology Organisation of NATO, 2012, Chap. 13, pp. 1–27.
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© 2015 Colin Wills
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Wills, C. (2015). The Evolution of Air-to-Air Warfare. In: Unmanned Combat Air Systems in Future Warfare. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137498496_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137498496_6
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