This entry is a subentry of Tactics.
Tactics in air warfare consist of fundamental methods, skills, and techniques designed to lead to success in aerial combat. Subject to change as the result of the rapid and continuing improvements in aircraft, weapons, and support technology over the last eighty years, air warfare tactics nevertheless remain a natural outgrowth of the earliest use of military aircraft by the major belligerents during World War I.
The classic goal of air warfare is to deny an enemy the use of airspace and to exploit that airspace for victory. Typically, this mandates the destruction of enemy aircraft—either in the air or on the ground—and winning and maintaining air superiority. Success in the battle for air superiority permits one's aircraft to attack enemy ground or naval forces, deny the enemy logistic support, resupply friendly forces, collect photographic intelligence, and bring an enemy's country under long‐range strategic bombardment. Scores of other missions exist as well, and are not confined to the atmosphere immediately surrounding the Earth. Space is a new arena for air warfare. At a fundamental level, military aviators create and modify air warfare tactics to maximize the impact and effectiveness of aircraft or aerospace vehicles—manned or unmanned—whatever the objective.
At the beginning of World War I, Germany and Britain used aircraft largely for straightforward reconnaissance, observation, and artillery‐spotting purposes. In its earliest forms, air combat developed as an outgrowth of these missions. It was not long before airmen who had greeted each other with smiles and waves began shooting at each other with rifles and pistols. These weapons quickly gave way to machine guns synchronized to fire through propellers. The German fighter pilot Max Immelmann is generally credited with developing in 1915 the first aerial maneuver designed to give an attacking aircraft a relative advantage over another. The 180‐degree climbing turn that soon bore his name might accurately be thought of as the genesis of aerial tactical development. Another German aviator, Oswald Boelcke, developed seven fundamental rules of air combat, several of which survive to this day. The most enduring admonitions were to surprise the enemy and to maintain the offensive advantage. Boelcke was also among the earliest proponents of formation flying. Eschewing “lone‐eagle” patrols, he believed aircraft attacking in pairs offered mutual support and enjoyed a greater chance of success against the enemy.
Boelcke's notions and techniques found widespread acceptance on both sides of the lines during World War I. At its most basic tactical level, fighter air combat consisted largely of seeing the enemy, deciding whether or not an attack was possible, closing by maneuver, firing, and escaping. If the original attack was unsuccessful, further maneuver was necessary either to reengage or to avoid further attack and survive. With allowances for vast increases in speed, target acquisition, and accuracy of weapons, these tenets are just as valid today as they were between 1914 and 1918.
By the end of World War I, air warfare tactics were remarkably sophisticated, and included concepts for the employment of large numbers of bombing and reconnaissance aircraft. All sides employed mass formations; aircraft attacked targets both on the immediate battlefield and deep within enemy country. Using lighter‐than‐air Zeppelins and large, specially designed long‐range airplanes, the Germans undertook the first sustained strategic bombing campaign in history against London. Although it caused only minimal physical damage, its psychological impact was important. Moreover, the campaign spurred many of the doctrinal and tactical developments during the interior period.
The 1920s and 1930s were a fertile time for those thinking about the potential use of airpower. Airpower advocates in Britain and the United States, like Sir Hugh Trenchard and Gen. Billy Mitchell, and Giulio Douhet in Italy, suggested that large independent air forces, built around long‐range bombers, could have a winning impact. At a tactical level, they assumed that bombers were fast enough, well enough defended, and could fly high enough to avoid or defeat enemy interceptors. In their minds, this reduced or virtually eliminated the need for armed escort of fighter planes. Moreover, the most optimistic zealots confidently predicted that bombers would be able to obliterate their targets and terrorize civilian populations with little difficulty. Americans, less comfortable than their British counterparts with the notion of bombing of civilians in cities, believed accurate U.S. bombsights and well‐protected aircraft such as the B‐24 and B‐17 were capable of precision against industrial targets. A few, such as Claire Chennault, advocated increased emphasis on fighter aircraft.
The Germans developed their own views on the uses of airpower during this period. They were particularly impressed with the concept of terror bombing. Their success in the Spanish Civil War convinced them that bombers might play a significant role in reducing an enemy's morale and willingness to resist. Nevertheless, the Germans' principal contribution here related to the importance of ground support aviation. In the earliest campaigns of World War II, the Luftwaffe became a true extension of the German Army, and in many ways operated like mobile artillery. German fighters, flying in flexible and mutually supporting formations, attacked first to sweep an enemy air force from the ground and sky. Subsequent waves of high‐ and low‐altitude bombers attacked enemy airfields, transportation centers, fuel storage areas, and troop installations. Finally, highly accurate dive‐bombers assisted the swift‐moving columns of German tanks as they swept through enemy defenses in deep, encircling penetrations. The rapid German victories in 1939 and 1940 astonished the world.
The Allies were also able to put the principal tactical elements of their air warfare doctrine to the test. Beginning in 1942, British and American bombers undertook an offensive against German‐occupied Europe and the Nazi homeland. In an attempt to reduce casualty rates, the British bombed area targets largely by night. The Americans, convinced that high‐altitude, daylight formation bombing was possible, attacked a succession of more precise industrial and military targets. Unfortunately, both air forces suffered huge casualties, while German armament production rates actually increased. Employing radar and an increasingly effective nighttime air and ground defense network, the Luftwaffe battled the British over the largest German cities. In the daytime, German fighters used heavier armament and increasingly sophisticated tactics to blast hundreds of U.S. bombers out of the sky. It was not until early 1944 and the employment of sizable numbers of new, long‐range escort fighters like the P‐51, that the American bomber formations became truly effective. Given the attritional nature of the air war in the proceeding months, it took an amazingly short time for the Luftwaffe to suffer the effects. In just six months American fighters largely swept the Germans from the skies, while Allied bombers finally concentrated on the target arrays that would bring the German military machine to a virtual halt—oil and transportation.
Amphibious island‐hopping actions and naval aviation dominated the Pacific War. Naval air warfare tactics were largely built around carrier‐borne aircraft whose main mission was to attack enemy ships. The primary targets in most engagements were enemy aircraft carriers, and the best way to attack them was with coordinated formations of dive‐bombers and torpedo planes. Navy fighter aircraft, in a way similar to their land‐based counterparts, supported offensive air operations or flew in air defense roles. Long‐range strategic bombing by the army air forces in the Pacific fell mainly to the American B‐29. This aircraft, which eventually carried out the first atomic bomb attacks, was capable of large bomb loads and inflicted huge damage on Japanese cities in a series of incendiary raids between 1944 and 1945.
The development of nuclear weapons appeared to fulfill the most visionary projections of the air power advocates. During many of the years of the Cold War, the potential use of atom bomb–laden aircraft dominated the thinking of many leaders in the military and government. According to various airpower historians, the focus on strategic nuclear warfare in the U.S. Air Force caused a corresponding atrophy in developments with regard to ground support or tactical aviation. High‐altitude, long‐range bombers like the Boeing B‐52 and the medium‐range, supersonic Convair B‐58 came to symbolize the Cold War. Soviet air defense improvements predictably forced U.S. Air Force planners to develop increasingly sophisticated penetration tactics. At the same time, intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) gradually took the place of the great masses of bombers at U.S. Cold War air bases. But the events of the Korean War and the Vietnam War also demonstrated that an air force organized and equipped mainly for a strategic nuclear mission was ill‐suited for the demands of low‐intensity conflict.
Vietnam validated the need for a well‐balanced air force as well as principles that encompassed a broader base of air warfare tactics. The young U.S. Air Force aviators who had witnessed American defeat in Vietnam, and later rose to high rank, concentrated on doctrinal, organizational, technological, and tactical developments that would make their air force the most effective in the world. Both the air force and the navy established fighter weapon schools where classic air‐to‐air combat training with gun and missile could be conducted by experts. American aircraft industry produced a new generation of highly maneuverable and sophisticated jet aircraft, such as the Grumman F‐14, the McDonnell‐Douglas F‐15, and the General Dynamics F‐16. Precision‐guided munitions, the use of artificial intelligence, and the full exploitation of the electromagnetic and space environments all became part and parcel of the modern air battlefield. The air force devoted significant resources to data and intelligence collection as it became increasingly apparent that accurate targeting was the key to airpower's effectiveness. At intellectual resource centers like the U.S. Air Force Academy, Air Command and Staff College, the Air War College, and the National War College, officers began to think more critically about airpower. These myriad elements came together in the Persian Gulf War of 1991, affording the world a powerful demonstration of the impact of modern airpower.
Despite the apparent technological domination of contemporary war, air warfare tactics show an unbroken human thread back to 1914–18. At its most fundamental level, air warfare continues to require a human being to shoot down an enemy aircraft or put munitions on target. As long as nations threaten each other, military airmen will ponder the requirements for seizing control of the air and subsequently exploiting that control, much as they did during World War I.
[See also Strategy: Air Warfare Strategy.]
Bibliography
- Keith Ayling, Combat Aviation, 1943.
- Barry D. Watts, The Foundation of U.S. Air Doctrine: The Problem of Friction in War, 1984.
- Richard P. Hallion, Rise of Fighter Aircraft: 1914–1918, 1984.
- Robert L. Shaw, Fighter Combat: The Air and Science of Air‐to‐Air Warfare, 1985.
- Michael S. Sherry, The Rise of American Air Power, 1987.
- R. A. Mark Clodfelter, The Limits of Air Power: The American Bombing of North Vietnam, 1989.
- John Warden, The Air Campaign: Planning for Combat, 1989.
- John Gooch, ed., Airpower: Theory and Practice, 1995
