Current conflicts have overturned how air power is applied. Air forces should no longer be built solely around crewed aircraft. A different balance is required.
The use of drones in very large numbers in the war in Ukraine has attracted much attention but has obscured a more fundamental shift in how air power is now applied. For a long time, air forces have principally comprised crewed aircraft and their training and support structures. But now combat air operations have shifted decisively from homogeneity to heterogeneity that involves complicated combinations of crewed aircraft, rocket, missile and drone systems.
This shift dominates air operations currently underway. Over the past few years, an extraordinary diversity of air systems have been used in conflicts involving Ukraine, Russia, India, Pakistan, Israel, Iran, Hezbollah, the Houthis and Hamas. This trend continues to broaden into the multi-domain.
Consider air and missile actions of the past couple of months. Israeli Mossad agents within Iran have used small, short-range drones to destroy surface-to-air missiles and help crewed aircraft penetrate Iran’s air defence systems. Ukraine used commercial trucks to deploy similar drones close to distant Russian air bases to attack bombers. Iran fired land-based hypersonic missiles towards Israel while Russia fired sea-based cruise missiles at Ukraine. Ukrainian sea drones used modified air-to-air missiles to shoot down modern Russian fighters.
A striking feature of this shift to heterogeneous air power is that it’s large-scale and rapidly intensifying. Traditionally, the ability to create and employ large packages of diverse air assets has been restricted to the United States. Indeed, some argue that Russia’s Aerospace Forces failed early in the war in Ukraine because they could not build large air combat packages of different types of crewed aircraft.
Heterogeneous air power has overturned this convention and now allows most states and non-state actors to devise and use large offensive and defensive air packages. Future air wars will clearly now often involve well-coordinated, large-scale heterogeneous air operations.
Defending comprehensively against such operations will be a complicated business. Heterogeneous air power can be matched by fielding large numbers of diverse counters, but this is inherently a complicated and costly approach that involves many skilled personnel and distracts them from other tasks.
Israel’s present ballistic missile defence is apparently about 80–90 percent effective but involves numerous surveillance drones and crewed aircraft working together to attack hostile missile launchers, several layers of anti-missile missile systems, a US Thaad battery and several warships. Similarly, countering slow small drones can involve warning sensors, backpack- and vehicle-mounted electronic jammers, gun systems, hard-kill interceptors and laser dazzle devices. New directed energy weapons, such as high-energy lasers and electromagnetic pulse systems, offer potential but still seem technically immature.
The shift to heterogeneous air power has implications.
First, the balance of power in the international system is made more fragile. Homogeneous airpower created a balance that changed only slowly as the same crewed aircraft stayed in service for decades. In contrast, heterogeneous airpower includes rockets, cruise and ballistic missiles, and drones built using technologies able to be rapidly updated and so upset long-standing power balances.
Moreover, emerging technologies, such as AI, can be rapidly incorporated into uncrewed systems, possibly dramatically changing their performance and capabilities. Many emerging technologies come from the civil sector and can appear suddenly, be affordable and quickly proliferate globally. Unlike homogeneous airpower, the source code of heterogeneous airpower is mostly open, allowing new military and civilian developments to rapidly plug and play within it.
Second, air forces will need to be comprehensively reimagined to get the most from embracing heterogeneity. Britain’s latest defence review offers a useful way to think about this. Under a 20–40–40 model, 20 percent of combat power might come from crewed aircraft, 40 percent from expendable autonomous systems such as rockets and cruise missiles, and the remaining 40 percent comprising of reusable assets, including electronic warfare and surveillance drones. This idea would require air forces switching to embrace lower cost air systems to gain scale.
Today, the Royal Australian Air Force operates three Northrop Grumman MQ-4C Triton maritime surveillance drones (the type is arguably the world’s most expensive uncrewed system) and is buying fewer than 10 highly-capable Boeing MQ-28 Ghost Bats. In contrast, heterogeneity tolerates lower-cost, less effective elements which allows acquiring very large numbers. Iran has long done this with Russia, the US and Europe now following suit.
Third, heterogeneous air power can provide high quality targeting and equally rapid precision attack. To operate, air forces will need to both disperse into small elements where each presents a less attractive target, and take measures to deceive and confuse the hostile heterogeneous air power. While the RAAF’s embrace of agile air operations is timely, rocket, missile and drone systems offer even greater dispersal possibilities including through not needing runways or large support facilities. Heterogeneous air power can be a uniquely distributed form of air power.
Heterogeneous air power is here. It’s time to take notice.