The End of Air Supremacy

"[T]he cavalry will never be scrapped to make room for the tanks; in the course of time cavalry may be reduced as the supply of horses in this country diminishes. This greatly depends on the life of fox-hunting, for which the class of horse required in the cavalry is used."

• Neil Haig, "Substance or Shadow", Journal of the Royal United Service Institution (March 1921)

Before I went to tax school, April 15th was a day most noted as the anniversary of the last time U.S. soldiers were killed by aerial bombardment. We were very proud of that fact in the F-15 community, where our raison d'etre was to clear the skies of enemy aircraft so the guys on the ground could go about their business without interference from above. When they looked up at the sound of a aircraft overhead, they never had to worry if it was a bandit rather than a friendly.

That is, until now.

Granted, some of these Iranian strikes in the Middle East have been with missiles--we never really counted those in tabulating our winning streak because there wasn't much an air-to-air fighter could do about them. But these drones are certainly capable of interception, and our combined defenses in the air and on the ground have failed to prevent deaths on the ground and massive amounts of damage to our equipment and facilities that have lined the western side of the Persian Gulf for decades now.

How bad is it? The photos are now leaking out into the news, and it's obvious we've been misled about the extent of the destruction and disarray. But our actions are the real tell--the Navy has effectively abandoned Bahrain as a supply center, leaving our sailors relying on a two thousand mile logistics chain all the way to Diego Garcia. The Abraham Lincoln debacle in the news of late was largely caused by this loss of a key point of resupply. And a general at a forum with his troops responded to a question from a soldier about when he'd be able to return to a Kuwaiti base to retrieve personal items by saying he had no idea when it would be safe enough to venture there.

All very bad. It would be too easy to blame this utterly incompetent administration for the disaster unfolding in the Middle East, and they certainly bear all the responsibility for starting this war with no clear objective or endgame other than to distract you from the Epstein files. But the problem here has a much longer pedigree, and finds its origins in a smug, hidebound, and mostly political uniformed leadership, too dependent on very expensive and specialized weaponry that makes our military extremely vulnerable to logistical disruptions and unable to restock weapons stores at a pace to keep up with the swarms of cheap drones that have made power projection using our model virtually impossible. As another old fighter pilot posted on social media this morning, it's awfully hard to take on an adversary or deter a future fight when you're Winchester (the fighter pilot term of art for being out of ammo). Using $500k AIM-9s to shoot down $20,000 drones is a game you can't play for long.

We should have seen this coming, with the Ukrainian front a lab for experimenting with cheaper and more agile ways to make the fight more lethal. But the last thing our defense industry wants is the expense of retooling for the production of cheap weapons--both sides of that equation mean lower margins, and lower shareholder returns. Moreover, gutting our industrial base also meant gutting our military production capability--remember when we were warned 40 years ago by hawkish rust belt Democrats that the loss of American manufacturing capability was a national defense issue? Well, here we are folks, and the world is taking note of the fact that we've become a paper tiger.

A lot of the blame I see in the old fighter pilot circles (which I tread in carefully, given the often MAGA flavor of the conversation) is directed at Ken Willsbach, the current Air Force Chief of Staff. I flew with Cruiser when he came over with an all star team from the Spads (the "Hat in the Ring" squadron you've all heard about since the days of Eddie Rickenbacker) to fill out our pilot ranks during the Gulf War. He's a good egg, but definitely knows which way the wind is blowing in D.C.. You don't get that job without strong political instincts. And sure, he's saying things now to show he's on the R team (referring to our "38 days of war" as if the Iran adventure ended last spring), but the screw-up goes back at least to 2022, and as I mentioned for decades before that.

I could go on about how the real problem in Iran goes back to Colonel Kurtz's speech in Apocalypse Now about how he knew the U.S. couldn't win in Vietnam when he saw the pile of innoculated arms amputated by the Viet Cong, and realized we didn't have the stomach to do what it would take to prevail militarily there. I'm not advocating for war crimes, but with no coherent goal, no political backing at home, and a military mistooled for its task, we simply weren't going to engage in an all-out war of domination against Iran that would likely entail millions of casualties, including thousands of our own sons and daughters. The Iranians figured out they could win by abiding. And they have.

So just as the age of Air Force "air supremacy" (we used to call it "air superiority", but decided that wasn't manly enough) has ended, so has the age of the Pax Americana, with our military and diplomatic resources enforcing a sometimes grudging global peace. With another couple years of unhinged leadership at the top, we're entering dangerous waters. When you hear the sound of that aircraft over your head, best to take care and maybe take cover.