For the past 20 years, the United States and its allies have concentrated the preponderance of their time, energy, and resources on the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) in the Middle East. During this period, the operational landscape of Europe steadily changed, giving way to a new host of issues in air operations. Russian aggression on the European continent highlights the importance of US and NATO air operations in the region to provide deterrence because “Airpower possesses inherent strength through its combination of speed, reach, altitude, agility, and concentration, creating multiple dilemmas for adversaries.”[i] The US and NATO-led initiatives in the region aim to deter Russian aggression toward its Eastern European neighbors.[ii] Russian aggressiveness evolved in response to long-established Western air supremacy. The changing threat environment of European air operations necessitates an adaptive approach to agile combat employment (ACE) that accounts for multi-domain effects and emerging technologies.

After analyzing the challenges in the European theater, this paper identifies five primary factors altering air operations: the electromagnetic spectrum (EMS), advanced aerial threat environment, emerging technologies, airbase survivability, and sustainment. The paper begins with a short explanation of ACE, then transitions to section one, which describes how the EMS impacts air operations. Section two addresses the host of emerging weapons that currently shape the advanced aerial threat environment. Section three explains emerging technologies and the new capabilities they bring. Section four examines the challenges to airbase survivability. Section five assesses the shortfalls in airbase sustainment as it pertains to ACE. Each section will analyze the problems described above and provide potential solutions.

Agile Combat Employment

Dispersing aircraft and personnel using ACE is one method to avoid the ever-growing list of threats to European air operations. Air Force Doctrinal Note 1-21 (AFDN 1-21) defines ACE as “A proactive and reactive operational scheme of maneuver executed within timelines to increase survivability while generating combat power.”[iii] This concept provides several ways to maneuver in Europe’s current threat environment. First, it provides flexibility. The ability to base aircraft across all NATO and allied countries offers additional air avenues of approach. Second, it offers survivability. With numerous airbases providing bed down, Russia’s targeting is significantly more complicated than if we only employ well-established airfields.[iv]Third, it provides rapid response. Although aircraft can cover a vast distance quickly, the ability to take off and strike without an aerial refueling tanker simplifies many aspects of a joint air campaign and provides an element of surprise. Lastly, it forces interoperability amongst allied nations by utilizing their airfields.

Electromagnetic Spectrum

The EMS includes all transmitted electromagnetic radiation from gamma rays to AM radio, and is an essential battleground for future operations because of its critical role in air employment. If denied or established access is spoofed, pilots lose the common operating picture (COP) that is essential for aerial operations. The EMS forms the backbone of data transmission that creates a COP for pilots to employ weapons and avoid threats effectively. Moreover, it connects all facets of air operations within the broader all-domain efforts in the theater.

This reliance on a COP in aerial efforts started with the use of radar in the late 1930s. In World War II, the Germans utilized radar dishes to aim their anti-aircraft artillery (AAA) and vector their fighters to intercept Allied bombers. The precisely aimed AAA had deadly effects on the Allied bomber fleet. The Germans’ unrestricted access to a COP through the EMS gave them an enormous advantage that the 8^th Air Force paid for in blood. However, to deny the German’s EMS access, the British captured a German Wurzburg radar, identified its operating frequencies, and created chaff to spoof the German radar by creating false targets.[v] This use of chaff was an early EMS denial technique that disrupted the Germans ability to locate the bombers, create a COP, and vector their fighters. Fast forward 80 years, and the U.S. is still looking for techniques to deny adversaries access to a COP through EMS denial with radar spoofing stealth technology (B-21 and NGAD).          

The increasing complexity and highly advanced cyber and electronic warfare (EW) methods aimed at disrupting EMS access are becoming a significant concern in the European theater. These activities pose challenges to maintaining an operational COP. Adversaries, particularly Russia, recognize Western dependence on the EMS for effective military operations. Specifically, offensive cyber-attacks and advanced jamming systems represent a few of the capabilities Russia developed to gain an advantage in the EMS.

While the EMS is not new, its importance in modern warfare has increased to the point where the conduct of air operations without sufficient access could degrade the ability to achieve battlefield results. For instance, Russia is currently employing a wide variety of ground-based jammers in its war with Ukraine, which significantly hinders Ukrainian air operations. At least three of Russia’s five EW battalions are deployed in the theater. If Russia can deny Ukraine (or NATO) access while simultaneously maintaining their own, it gives them a massive advantage in the air and on land. However, at this time, despite employing nearly every EW system in its inventory, Russia has failed to establish persistent EMS superiority in Ukraine.[vi] Even temporary access to the EMS can provide an opponent with a target of opportunity.  For example, a Ukrainian GPS-guided munition destroyed a Russian GPS jammer (Pole-21) that was momentarily switched off.[vii] That said, NATO’s access to the EMS domain in Europe is not guaranteed, and the adverse effects of temporary or persistent exclusion will greatly complicate communication and targeting in the European theater. Therefore, the US must rethink its approach to operations within this contested EMS environment.

The solution to EMS denial depends on changes to training and how the military approaches, space, near space, and ACE. Units must train in a degraded EMS environment and learn to operate without datalink, GPS, COP, and communications. However, recent training in this manner has highlighted friction points between commanders and operators. Specifically, commanders are accustomed to high fidelity COPs and full motion video streamed into their joint operations centers. This level of fidelity is not feasible in an EMS-denied environment. Therefore, commanders must learn to empower operators to make lower-level decisions without leadership oversight. The second piece of the puzzle involves broadening interconnectivity between domains to overcome enemy EW efforts. Most of the Russian EW battalions are ground-based. Therefore, the US should transition from non-directional air-to-air, or terrestrial line of sight. Instead the focus must be on directional connectivity between space and near space to avoid EMS exclusion. Lastly, the employment of ACE dispersion by itself will aid in precluding some EMS denial actions. ACE provides EMS survivability as it complicates an adversary’s ability to control the domain over a vast geographic area. Combating EMS denial requires solutions that are a combination of training and technology.

Advanced Aerial Threat Environment

The advanced threats facing aircraft in the contested European skies pose challenges to established technologies and tactics to achieve air superiority. Russia has created an advanced anti-access and area denial (A2AD) zone consisting of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, fighter aircraft, bombers, anti-aircraft artillery, and surface-to-air missile systems.[viii] In specific regions, such as Kaliningrad, these systems are multi-layered, making air superiority in these areas challenging, if not impossible. The Russian S-400 and S-500 surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems are capable of shooting down most of the precision-guided weapons in the US and NATO’s inventory.[ix] While these premier systems are not invincible, as witnessed in the Ukrainian conflict, advanced ground-based air defense (GBAD) underscores the need for investment in additional technologies to gain air superiority, even for short periods.

Russian advancements in GBAD impact air operations by increasing the engagement zone of their existing SAM systems and complicating the employment of tactical airpower. The integrated GBAD architecture increases the engagement zone across a large portion of Europe and enables Russia to target allied aircraft before crossing into its territory.[x] Additionally, Russia has enhanced its capacity to effectively employ its air defense systems across all operational altitudes, affecting air power utilization in military conflicts. Russian GBAD advancements significantly changed Western performance calculus from Western aircraft vs. Russian aircraft to Western aircraft vs. Russian integrated air defense (IADS).[xi]The continuing war in Ukraine underscores the emergence of this threat environment.

The impact of GBAD on air operations in Ukraine is so profound that neither side can “reliably locate, identify, track, and destroy the other’s SAM systems.”[xii] Ukrainian mobile GBAD systems have forced Russian aircraft to operate at extremely low altitudes, which adversely impacts their ability to conduct ground attacks. Conversely, “Ukrainian fighter pilots have been shot down while flying at altitudes as low as 15 [feet] by SA-21 SAMs fired from over 150 [kilometers] away.”[xiii] Reduced air operations in Ukraine dramatically impact ground forces’ tactical and operational application.[xiv] The Ukrainian and Russian armies are limited to pure ground attacks supported by artillery fire, and neither side can employ genuine combined arms.

The Russian GBAD threat must be mitigated through several tactics that are not novel (i.e., suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD) and destructive SEAD) but require modernization to facilitate air operations in the European theater. Currently, SEAD missions require numerous precision anti-radiation standoff weapons.[xv]There are four anti-radiation options for NATO air forces. The first is the High-Speed Anti-Radiation Missile (HARM). The second is the StormBreaker glide bomb, which can hit moving targets at 70 kilometers.[xvi] The third is the SPEAR 3 miniature cruise missile that can avoid certain anti-missile defenses.[xvii] The final option is the Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missile Extended Range, which can reach Mach 4 and has a longer range than the SPEAR 3.[xviii] While advanced for their time, these weapons were designed to be effective against legacy SAM systems and currently provide a limited means to degrade Russian GBAD in Europe.

To perform effective SEAD, or destructive SEAD, NATO and the US must invest in additional anti-radiation weapons and seek to build surface-based fire capabilities to target Russian GBAD assets to allow a more permissible air environment in the theater. Low observable, long-range, strike weapons with either kinetic or stand-in electronic attack (EA) capability are needed to allow the US to penetrate Russian GBAD A2AD locations.[xix] A typical IADS is rolled back from the outside in, but the changing operational environment may require an inside-out approach.[xx] Degrading the engagement zone of Russian GBAD assets from the inside out will allow US and NATO aircraft to conduct SEAD. Additionally, ground-based fires can assist with this method because they have demonstrated the ability to interdict deep into an enemy’s rear area. For example, Ukraine used long-range rocket artillery “to impressive effect…against Russian logistics and vehicle targets in the deep battle area.”[xxi] These weapons “could potentially offer significant lethality against SAM batteries…behind the hostile front line.”[xxii] Developing a means to provide timely targeting data from an F-35 to a firing battery would provide a lethal combination to counter Russian GBAD.[xxiii] Networking current SEAD architecture and platforms with long-range ground-based fires will allow US and NATO forces to degrade Russian GBAD from the inside out.

Emerging Technologies

In addition to traditional Russian IADS, unmanned aerial systems (UAS) and high-altitude near-space balloons are changing the advanced aerial threat environment by introducing new offensive technologies that are difficult for current defenses to counter. In the Russo-Ukrainian War, both sides employ thousands of drones per month for ISR and kinetic payload delivery. The drones employed are commercial off-the-shelf quadcopters and indigenously produced fixed-wing applications using artificial intelligence (AI) to classify and categorize targets over great distances.[xxiv] The low cost of the drones and the ability to produce them in mass present a complex problem to solve. Some potential solutions involve legacy signal jamming techniques as well as laser and microwave defensive systems.[xxv] For example, the US aims to procure Israel’s new “Iron Beam” laser weapon for air defense against drones.[xxvi] Protection against the UAS threat currently relies on multiple systems and approaches (some of which are still in development) and does not have a single apparent solution.

Additionally, using high altitude near space balloons presents a challenge to defensive counter air (DCA) as these forces are not optimized to counter threats in this flight regime and at these altitudes. There is a significant void between conventional air-breathing aircraft and satellites in orbit. Should this space between 18-100 kilometers above the earth become occupied with balloons and dirigibles capable of various warfighting functions, a new domain of warfare will materialize. The Chinese spy balloon that meandered its way across the United States early in 2023 identified an emerging threat that we will surely see in the European theater.[xxvii] These advanced aerial threats could be used for any combination of area denial or intelligence gathering and further demonstrate the changing operational air environment. Countering threats in this airspace will again require additional investment in defensive technologies. Current kinetic and non-kinetic weapons will require optimization to be effective against these threats in this environment. Additionally, space, cyber, air, and ground-based defensive technologies must pivot to allow targeting assets in this emerging battlespace.

Airbase Survivability

The fourth factor altering air operations in Europe is airbase survivability against Russian deep-strike capabilities that include stand-off weapons, cruise missiles, and Russian Special Operations Forces (SOF) drone attacks. AFDN 1-21 warns that airbases “are no longer considered a sanctuary from attack regardless of their location” and cannot be expected to maintain continuous operations under constant threat of attack.[xxviii] The groundwork for this current predicament started after the Cold War when hardened shelters and command facilities were replaced with commercial-grade buildings in the interest of economics and efficiency.[xxix] This infrastructure creates a profound hazard to aircraft on bases in Europe because one missile or drone can now destroy several aircraft or facilities.[xxx]

The lack of hardened structures could allow Russian SOF to collect on aircraft and target them using inexpensive drones. The Ukrainian conflict has seen an exponential increase in the use of drones on the battlefield, and both sides have realized their devastating effects. Russia and Ukraine use simple, cheap adaptations to small unmanned aerial vehicles to increase a drone’s lethality and employment options.[xxxi]Ukraine demonstrated these new employment methods when it destroyed at “least eight Su-30SM and Su-24MR jets from Russia’s Naval Aviation forces at Saki Air base” with drones.[xxxii] Shielding airbases in the region against conventional strikes and SOF facilitated drone attacks is necessary to maintain European air operations.

ACE must be employed with a multi-pronged effort that provides integrated air and missile defense (IAMD), layered defensive counter air (DCA), and hardened facilities. IAMD and DCA will disrupt enemy targeting from drones and impose costs on any attack against a US or NATO airbase. Each attack will expose exquisite Russian long-range weapons to US or NATO defensive capabilities. Additionally, reinforcing infrastructure by hardening facilities will improve base survivability. Hardening also undermines intelligence collection by preventing observation, and it makes aircraft less susceptible to drone attacks from Russian SOF. The combination of IAMD, DCA, and base hardening will force the Russians to expend “a lot of accurate, long-range and therefore expensive munitions…to destroy even a moderate number of aircraft.”[xxxiii] Improving airbase survivability with active defensive measures and hardened facilities is essential to maintaining air operations in the European Theater.

Sustainment

Sustaining air operations throughout the region is the final factor altering the emerging air environment in Europe. Aircraft operating from bases across the theater will reduce the need for large, centralized bases and support infrastructure.[xxxiv] However, implementing ACE challenges the logistics enterprise and in theater munitions stocks. Air operations require an enormous logistic and maintenance tail to achieve decisive effects against enemy forces. Executing ACE, an essential activity for airbase survivability, also significantly burdens infrastructure and logistics nodes.[xxxv] This problem compounds as forces disperse across the theater because the current system is a based on “pull” logistics, which was designed for efficiency, not effectiveness. Likewise, weapons are essential to air operations and significant planning factors for aircraft employment. “NATO nations have long suffered from significant underinvestment, and munitions stocks and other materiel are insufficient.”[xxxvi] Hence, US stocks will be heavily relied upon, and munition interoperability may be a limiting factor in maintaining air operations. Royal United Services Institute analysts acknowledge that “the scale of weapon use in peer warfighting…would rapidly and dangerously deplete Western stockpiles and far outstrip existing surge production capacity.”[xxxvii]

The logistics system must shift from “pull” to “push” logistics to overcome theater-wide sustainment problems associated with ACE. AFDN 1-21 calls for a change to push logistics by stating, “Supply and distribution systems need to transform from a fully connected “pull” system, optimized for efficient operations, to a “push” system that maximizes distributed mission effectiveness.”[xxxviii] Altering pull logistics to push logistics in Europe is possible through utilizing local resources and building sustainment interoperability across NATO countries. Building a push system that anticipates end-user requirements in a large-scale combat operation will necessitate significant resource allocation and system development. The NATO Vilnius Summit described this idea: “In the future, national logistics support systems, using…AI, may be able to automatically and pre-emptively order the required weapon or supporting equipment and match it with the necessary transportation method to achieve the required delivery date.”[xxxix] US and NATO air forces must develop a system that anticipates operational requirements and delivers the necessary sustainment on time to maintain air operations. 

Leveraging local sources of sustainment will enhance “push” logistics and shorten the supply chain. NATO and the US started leveraging these opportunities in Poland. Anna Dowd and her co-authors in the article “European Warfighting Resilience and NATO Race of Logistics” describe how “Poland has found practical solutions to logistical challenges and enhanced infrastructure to support resupply and reinforcement.”[xl] These investments are part of the Polish Provided Infrastructure program, which the NATO Security Investment Program, the Polish Government, and the US Air Force fund. The private industries contracted through this program have increased fuel storage and transportation capacity, and they dispersed bulk fuel across Eastern Poland to facilitate US logistics.[xli] Using this model in other regional countries, the US and NATO can scale their resource support and infrastructure requirements to support push logistics.

Several nations have begun to replace their F-16s with new F-35s, which presents an opportunity to enhance interoperability. The nations that purchased the F-16 must return the equipment and spare parts for the F-16 per the restrictions of the Foreign Military Sales policy.[xlii] These assets can be reallocated across Europe to augment current pre-positioned stocks.[xliii] Countries that utilize the F-16 could augment maintainers from other countries to keep F-16s across NATO operational. Distributing this equipment and utilizing maintenance personnel, in conjunction with the interoperability of the F-35, “would enhance the NATO ACE mission considerably.”[xliv] Sustainment is the life’s blood of air operations, and it can be facilitated by transitioning from “pull” to “push” logistics, relying on local logistics sources, and increasing interoperability. 

Conclusion In conclusion, the four factors altering European air operations are the electromagnetic spectrum, the advanced aerial threat environment, emerging technologies, airbase survivability, and sustainment. Each challenge will require new investments and experimentation with innovative techniques. EMS control is a fundamental element of modern warfare, and maintaining the necessary access will provide a significant advantage. Defeating the Russian IADS will involve combining old and new tactics with long-range ground-based fires. Emerging technologies threaten current air defense systems and require additional investment to counter their employment. Enhancing airbase survivability means dispersing, hardening airfields, and defending them. Improving sustainment necessitates shifting from “pull” to “push” logistics, leveraging host nation sources of sustainment, and deeper interoperability with allies. The US and NATO are at a crossroads where they must adapt their current equipment to the new operational environment and perhaps use them in ways never anticipated. If the US and NATO cannot maintain air operations in the European theater, then the alliance’s ability to establish air superiority will be degraded. Military leaders understand that the first step to a successful campaign in modern warfare involves achieving air superiority as early as possible. Field Marshall Montgomery echoed this sentiment: “If we lose the war in the air, we lose the war and lose it quickly.”[xlv]

Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Air Force or the U.S. Government.