Improved Air Defenses Have Made Close Air Support Much Harder in Ukraine
In the constant battle of one-upmanship between offense and defense, greatly improved air defenses are currently in the ascendancy.
Enhanced technological sophistication has given air defense systems an advantage over human-piloted aircraft. While this has prevented either Russia or Ukraine from establishing air dominanceor from offering ground troops close air support, it may be that drone swarms and other autonomous weapons systems will provide such protection in the future. JL
Christopher Woody reports in Business Insider:
While Russian and Ukrainian aircraft are still active, each side's
air-defense weapons - such as major Soviet-era anti-aircraft systems
like the S-300 or shoulder-fired missileslike the US-made Stinger - have forced the other to make tactical adaptations, such as launching rocket attacksfrom longer ranges rather than sending aircraft to provide close air support. "Integrated air and missile defense have made aircraft
worthless. They can't do close air support."
After a year of fighting, neither the Russian nor Ukrainian air forces have been able to take control of the skies over Ukraine. This has severely limited the role that fighter jets have played in the conflict, and it's a preview of what US troops could face in the future, US Air Force officials say.
While Russian and Ukrainian aircraft are still active, each side's air-defense weapons — such as major Soviet-era anti-aircraft systems like the S-300 or newershoulder-fired missileslike the US-made Stinger — have forced the other to make tactical adaptations, such as launchingless-accurate rocket attacksfrom longer ranges rather than sending aircraft to provide close air support over the front lines.
Ukraine is estimated to have lost more than 60 aircraft and Russia more than 70, according to Gen. James Hecker, the commander of US Air Forces in Europe. Hecker told reporters at the Air and Space Forces Association symposium this month that Russia's larger air force still has jets it could devote to the war, as does Ukraine, but both face an issue.
"The problem is both of the Russian as well as the Ukrainian success in integrated air and missile defense have made much of those aircraft worthless. They're not doing a whole lot because they can't go over and do close air support," Hecker said.
Long-range sensors and missiles allow Russian aircraft totarget Ukrainian aircraft behind the front lines, further limiting Ukrainian operations, but Kyiv's jets continue to launch strikes on Russian forces, often relying on US weaponry to do so.
A Russian Su-35 downed by Ukrainian forces in the Kharkiv region in April 2022.Press service of the Ukrainian Armed Forces General Staff/Handout via REUTERS
Using those weapons and other assets, Ukraine's air force is able to do "a couple of strikes a day" at ranges "a little bit farther than HIMARS can get right now, but not real far out at all," Hecker said.
The lack of close air support for Russian and Ukrainian troops and the thicket of air-defense weaponry preventing it is a departure from what US troops have faced in recent wars, according to Gen. Charles Brown, the US Air Force chief of staff.
"We cannot predict the future of what kind of environment we're going to fight in, for one, but I fully expect it'll be much more contested," Brown said at the symposium on March 7. "The amount of close air support we will do will probably be less than we've done in the past, typically in the Middle East, because that environment was that we didn't have an air threat or a surface-to-air threat."
Asked about Hecker's comments, Brown said that it was "spot on" to say that "in a contested environment it's going to be tough to execute the close air support."
"Close air support in a contested environment, that's not what we do, no matter who you are," Brown added.
'More contested environments'
An A-10 Thunderbolt II flying over Afghanistan in February 2011.Air Force photo/Master Sgt. William Greer
Since taking over as the top US Air Force officer in August 2020, Brown has stressed that future battlefields will bemore complex and deadlyfor the Air Force.
Brown's signature initiative, "Accelerate Change or Lose," has sought to replace the aircraft and other aspects of the force that are ill-suited for that environment — including the A-10 Thunderbolt, a ground-attack jet designed in the 1970s specifically for close-air-support missions.
Congress has long opposed retiring the A-10, objecting to its loss without a dedicated replacement, but lawmakers relented in December, allowing the Air Forceto retire 21 of the jetsin 2023. The service had planned to retire the remaining 260 by the early 2030s, but Brown suggested that it may happen faster, saying that the jets will "probably" be "out of our inventory" over the next five to six years.
"The A-10 is great airplane. It's a great airplane in an uncontested environment. The challenge is we're going to be in more contested environments in the future," Brown said, adding that combatant commanders around the world have little interest in it because it's "a single-mission airplane."
Other aircraft can fill that role, Brown said. "I've flown F-16s doing close air support. I've flown our bombers in combat doing close air support. We are very capable of doing close air support, the F-35 and all the other platforms."
While the low- and slow-flying A-10 is generally acknowledged to be more vulnerable to modern anti-aircraft weapons, experts and observers have expressed doubt that other jetscan conduct the same kindof close-air-support missions as the Thunderbolt. An apparentreduction in training requirementshas also raised concern about the close-air-support skill set atrophying among US pilots.
US and Estonian troops gesture to an A-10 after close-air-support training in Kansas in December 2017.US Air National Guard
Gen. Mark Kelly, who oversees US fighter pilot training as the commander of Air Combat Command, said that the way the Air Force conducts close air support, or CAS, is likely to change but the fact that A-10 pilots have filtered through the force means they will still influence how the service approaches the mission.
As a pilot who has been assigned to different aircraft, "one of the best things I saw was the influence of, say, an A-10 aviator in a Strike Eagle, of an A-10 aviator in an F-35, because they bring not only a mindset but a skill set that we need to keep doing that mission," Kelly said at the symposium on March 7.
"We have to do it a little bit different," Kelly said of future CAS operations, "so we're going to have to get our sensors in there and we're going to have to get our weapons in there" to support troops in combat.
Kelly contrasted Operation Desert Storm in 1991, which was proceeded by a six-week US-led air campaign to destroy Iraqi aircraft and air defenses, with the fighting in Ukraine, which in recent months has settled intoan artillery battle with heavy casualtieson both sides — losses that Kelly said are high "because no one has established air superiority and no one has been able to execute air-defense takedown."
The US Air Force needs to be able to do those missions "at the time and place" of its choosing to prevent US ground troops from experiencing those kinds of losses, Kelly said.
"I still think there's going to be some CAS. I think it's going to be very different," Kelly said, adding that the Air Force has to understand that it owes ground troops that, "first and foremost, any weapon coming off an airplane that they see comes off of a US airplane hitting someone across them, not the other way around."
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As a Partner and Co-Founder of Predictiv and PredictivAsia, Jon specializes in management performance and organizational effectiveness for both domestic and international clients. He is an editor and author whose works include Invisible Advantage: How Intangilbles are Driving Business Performance. Learn more...
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This Post is very interesting, Top-class leaders are the visionaries who inspire their team by doing more, aiming high and going the extra mile. They invest insights hire someone to take my class from their personal story to help everyone progress.
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