Battle of Concepts: Strategic Air Dominance or Long-Range Precision Weapons?
Strategic air supremacy is now the cornerstone of quickly defeating the enemy with minimal losses. Strategic air supremacy means that air defense forces (Defense) and the enemy's air force (Air Force) is completely suppressed, and "our own" aviation operates freely and with minimal risk in the skies over enemy territory.
Why is air superiority so important when precision can be used? weapon long range, as Iran does against Israel and Russia and Ukraine against each other?
Just recently, in the material Iran vs. Israel: Can You Win Using Just 'Ballistics' and 'Shaheds'?? we considered whether it is possible to win an asymmetric conflict, when one side has gained air superiority, and the other launches long-range precision weapons strikes from its territory, without using manned reconnaissance and weapons delivery systems over enemy territory.
Today we will talk about the benefits of strategic air superiority.
When comparing the superiority that strategic air superiority provides versus the use of long-range precision weapons, a number of critical indicators can be identified. The first indicator is cost, or more precisely, “cost-effectiveness.”
Cost-effectiveness
Long-range precision weapons will always be more expensive than shorter-range munitions of comparable warhead power and accuracy.
As an example, we can compare the cost of a strategic subsonic cruise missile missiles (KR) with a 500-kilogram warhead and a high-explosive aerial bomb (FAB) weighing 500 kilograms with a unified planning and correction module (UMPK). According to open data, the Kh-101 KR costs 10-13 million US dollars, while the cost of the FAB-500 with UMPK is 7-10 thousand US dollars, that is, the difference in cost is three orders of magnitude (!).
The cost of cruise missiles of the Kh-101 and FAB-500 type is not comparable with the UMPK
Even if we take the cheaper long-range cruise missiles of the Kalibr complex, costing around 1-2 million US dollars, and the more expensive Drel guided air bombs, costing around 20-30 thousand US dollars, the difference in cost will still be two orders of magnitude.
The cost of the kamikaze unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) of the Geranium-2 type is about 50 thousand US dollars with a warhead weight of 90 kilograms, that is, the conditional equivalent of one FAB-500 with UMPK in the Geraniums will still be over 250 thousand dollars.
Of course, the cost of an aerial bomb will be increased by the cost of the flight hour of its delivery, which we will consider using American technology as an example.
When capturing air superiority, there is no point in using expensive fifth-generation fighters, so let's estimate for the newest 4++ generation fighter, namely the F-15EX. According to open data, the cost of an F-15EX flight hour is 29 thousand US dollars, it can deliver up to 15 GBU-38 JDAM aerial bombs (analogous to our FAB-500 with UMPK) to the target - we will replace 6 of them with external fuel tanks, a total of 9 GBU-38 JDAM aerial bombs.
F-15EX fighter-bomber with JDAM aerial bombs
Let's assume that the target is not close, and our F-15EX will spend 8 hours in the air - there and back, then we get approximately $27,8 thousand "markup" on one aerial bomb, that is, the cost of hitting the target (targets) with aerial bombs will increase several times, but not by orders of magnitude.
Some might argue that the cost of losing carriers must be taken into account? Yes, but not in the case of strategic air superiority, which the US has secured in the skies over Iraq, Yugoslavia, and now Israel in the skies over Iran - given the number of sorties, losses could simply be ignored, there will be more due to equipment failures and friendly fire than from enemy action.
Speed reaction
The second indicator is the reaction speed. It is one thing when after detecting a target a cruise missile flies to it for several hours, another when literally a couple of minutes after detection a guided air bomb falls on it. Of course, we can recall hypersonic, but this brings us back to the first indicator - hypersonic weapons will be an order of magnitude more expensive than subsonic cruise missiles.
The problem is partly solved by providing the ability to retarget long-range precision weapons in flight, which, given the presence of developed groups of low-orbit communication satellites, does not present a significant problem, but far from completely; for example, an enemy aircraft attacked at an airbase can simply fly away.
The armed forces of the world's leading countries are constantly increasing the reaction speed of their reconnaissance and strike contours. For example, at the beginning of the Russian special military operation (SVO) in Ukraine, the effective range of most reconnaissance and strike contours was only a few dozen kilometers.
Then the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) acquired HIMARS launchers capable of operating at over a hundred kilometers, and later they were supplemented by ATACMS operational-tactical missiles launched from the same launchers and capable of striking at 300 kilometers. Over time, this distance will only increase – we previously talked about this in the article Up to 500 kilometers from the LBS: death zone under the influence of promising reconnaissance and strike contours.
Operation of the HIMARS launcher
In the event of strategic air superiority, we essentially receive a real-time reconnaissance and strike contour over the entire enemy territory, i.e. as soon as a potential target is detected, it is immediately attacked, ideally from the "air watch" position. In this case, it becomes extremely difficult, if not impossible, for the enemy under attack to conduct combat operations.
Losses per interception
If we attack the enemy with long-range weapons without first suppressing his air defenses, then some of the attacking ammunition will be intercepted one way or another.
An example of how this happens in the absence of air superiority can be seen over the territories of Russia and Ukraine. At the same time, in the conflict between Iran and Israel, the latter intercepted a significant portion of the missiles and UAVs launched by Iran, while Iran could not counter Israel's bombing because its air defenses were suppressed.
The work of the Iron Dome missile defense system in Israel
The more difficult a long-range precision weapon is to intercept, the more expensive it usually is, take hypersonic munitions for example. An alternative option is to use a large number of inexpensive long-range precision weapons, simply overwhelming the enemy's air defense with quantity - this is the option we are currently using in Ukraine, when the Gerans do not fly all over Ukraine, but attack a selected object or area in a flock.
However, there will still be losses in long-range precision munitions if air defenses are not suppressed.
Conclusions
So is gaining strategic air superiority the most profitable strategy?
At the moment, yes, although this does not mean that it will always be so, for example, a hypothetical question: if one of the parties cannot seize air supremacy, but also does not allow it to be seized over its territory, it can produce a million kamikaze UAVs of the Geranium-2 type per year and will use several thousand of them per day, which of the opposing sides will come out on top?
The only question is how to seize strategic air supremacy, and is it possible when confronting all types of possible adversaries? For example, could the US seize strategic air supremacy over Russia or China?
On the other hand, it can be said with confidence that the same Israel is guaranteed to be able to seize air supremacy over any country on the African continent or the Persian Gulf, no matter what the countries present in these territories are armed with, just as the United States is capable of seizing strategic air supremacy over any country or group of countries on the planet, most likely excluding Russia and China.
The opposite is also true: not a single country on the African continent, the Persian Gulf, or their alliance is capable of gaining air superiority over Israel. There is no need to even talk about gaining air superiority over US territory; it is unlikely that even Russia and China would be able to do this, but here the geographic factor plays a significant role.
Why are some countries able to achieve strategic air superiority while others are not?
The fact is that the seizure of strategic air superiority is a complex organizational and technical undertaking, a positive result of which is possible only with competent teamwork of all elements of the attacking side - here you cannot win simply by having the best fifth/sixth/seventh generation fighter in the world.
The armed forces of almost all the countries in the above-mentioned regions are not balanced, they are not built “with a single goal, according to a single plan”, therefore they can only resist the equally primitive armies of their neighbors.
We also have certain gaps in this area, but we will talk about what systems and complexes the Russian Aerospace Forces need to seize strategic air supremacy in the next article.
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