The Evolution of Airpower

The Evolution of Airpower

Photo: Image by George Bekris/Getty Images

Throughout the war in Ukraine, neither Ukrainian nor Russian forces have been able to establish a recognizable level of air superiority, though-as detailed more thoroughly in the following section-each side has been able to interfere with each other's air operations.⁷ Neither side has demonstrated the means to disable or destroy the opposing side's integrated air defenses, resulting in a prolonged state of air parity. According to analysis by the CSIS Futures Lab, Russia launched over 11,000 missiles, one-way suicide drones, and other munitionized airborne systems into Ukraine from September 2022 to October 2024.⁸ Though Ukrainian counterair operations have proven mostly effective, they have not been able to deny Russian forces the ability to launch air attacks.⁹ Similarly, Russian air defenses have been able to down and disable many, but not all, Ukrainian drones aiming at targets inside Russia.¹⁰ Ukraine's Operation Spider's Web, a radical departure from conventional thinking, however, introduced low-altitude munitionized airborne systems into an environment in which Russia had not deployed countermeasures and, in so doing, managed to circumvent Russian air defenses.11

In stark contrast to the situation in Ukraine, Israel has managed to establish an effective degree of air superiority throughout the surrounding region, defending the skies over Israel and showing that it can strike targets in Iran, Lebanon, and Syria without interference.¹² In October 2023, Hamas fired thousands of rockets and missiles at Israel-but nearly 90 percent of them were intercepted by Israel's air defenses.¹³ In October 2024, Iran launched 170 drones, 30 cruise missiles, and 120 ballistic missiles at Israel. Of the entire barrage, all but a handful of the ballistic missiles were shot down.¹⁴ But the overall intercept rate may obscure important nuances. Subsonic cruise missiles and one-way drones are almost all getting shot down, while supersonic cruise and ballistic missiles are much harder to intercept, even if they are still getting shot down in large numbers.¹⁵ In addition to maintaining air superiority over Israel, Israeli forces have achieved that same feat over Iran; Israel arguably achieved total air supremacy over Iran by mid-June 2025. Israel used its command of the air to carry out sustained air attacks on Iranian military targets and laid the foundation for the U.S.-led Operation Midnight Hammer, which targeted Iranian nuclear facilities.16 For both homeland defense and the projection of airpower, Israel achieved its air superiority by maximining the use of cutting-edge technologies, training, and tactics and, in the case of operations over Iran, spycraft and the element of surprise.¹⁷

Future conflicts may very well look like the one that has played out in the Middle East since late 2023. In that notional case, a technologically advanced, well-resourced, and well-trained force operating a layered air defense system would have a leg up on the opposing force. But pitting two peers who are roughly equivalent in terms of technology, resources, and training against each other might easily result in a conflict that looks more like the persistent state of air parity over Ukraine's skies. To gain superiority, each side in a future conflict will aim to disable or destroy its opponent's air defenses on both a sector-by-sector and a layer-by-layer basis, possibly through sheer numbers and mass-an approach Russia has tried in Ukraine without using enough mass to actually gain air superiority-or through attacks coming from unexpected directions that rely extensively on the element of surprise, as was the case in Operation Spider's Web. The effectiveness of attacks from unexpected directions was also demonstrated in Israel, for instance, when a lone Houthi drone came in from an unusual trajectory and was able to penetrate Israel's air defenses.¹⁸ This also foreshadows the importance of keeping counterair defenses in the dark as long as possible, blinding kill chains to allow temporary access, and using decoys and deception-another lesson from Israel's operations in Iran and Ukraine's Operation Spider's Web, during which drones were transported undetected closer to their targets.

Proliferation of Uncrewed Systems

Unmanned aircraft systems (UASs) can be grouped into two main categories: systems intended for one-way, single-use munitionized applications (e.g., missiles, rockets, guided bombs, loitering munitions, and kamikaze or suicide drones) and systems designed for return and reuse. Either type of system can be used for attack, surveillance, or transportation. Both types can be operated under the direct control of a human operator or use various degrees of autonomy to perform their operations. UASs designed for return and reuse can serve as carriers for one-way, single-use systems, such as one-way drones, missiles, or mines.¹⁹ The conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East have seen widespread use of both single-use systems and systems designed for return and reuse, as well as extensive use of counterair operations using integrated air defense systems. In these conflicts, one-way systems have primarily been used to deliver munitions, while reusable systems have been primarily used for intelligence and surveillance purposes.

Both Ukraine and Russia have relied heavily on the use of one-way systems during the conflict in Ukraine.²⁰ Since February 2022, Ukraine has been subjected to almost daily attacks by Russian airpower, primarily by one-way UASs.²¹ These one-way weapons have conducted long-range bombardment of national infrastructure-including infrastructure that was primarily civilian in nature, such as power and energy facilities.²² Small one-way drones have also been used to great effect against surface forces, like tanks and individual soldiers.²³ Many of the one-way drones used by both sides are based on mass-produced, inexpensive, commercially available models that have been retrofitted to carry a small munition. This approach has allowed the economical deployment of one-way munitionized drones on a vast scale and facilitated a trial-and-error approach to developing new drone systems and tactics.

Meanwhile, one-way drones-particularly drones manufactured by Iran-have been used extensively by Iran and the Houthis in the Middle East.²⁴ Hamas used a variety of one-way and reusable drones during its October 7, 2023, terrorist attacks on Israel, especially for targeting monitoring and communications systems and dropping munitions on tanks, soldiers, and emergency responders.²⁵ Israel has deployed a specific variant of one-way attack drone, usually called a loitering munition, which is designed to circle a designated area over a period of time, waiting for direction from a human operator or sensor-triggered action to strike its target.²⁶ Israel's Harpy drone is a loitering munition designed to detect and destroy air defense radars by homing in on radar signals. Iran's Shahed drone is another example of a loitering munition.²⁷ During the conflict in the Middle East, UASs have also been used for surveillance, not only by Israel and Iran but also by nonstate actors like Hezbollah.²⁸

Based on their use and evolution in Ukraine and the Middle East, there can be little doubt that UASs will play significant roles in future conflicts. Drones will be manufactured and deployed on massive scales-Ukraine alone claims it can manufacture 2.5 million drones per year.²⁹ Whereas operations in Ukraine or the Middle East may have involved dozens or hundreds of UASs, future operations may include thousands of drones operating according to pre-programed instructions or under the control of a human operator or AI-enabled algorithm. Drones will be used for long-range bombardment, support to military surface forces, surveillance and reconnaissance, and transportation. Due to their cost-effectiveness, drones will also be used for counterair operations, with Ukrainian forces having already demonstrated the use of one-way drones for intercepting and destroying their hostile Russian counterparts.³⁰ Additionally, reusable loitering drones are likely to become more important, possibly as carriers for one-way attack drones or missiles.³¹ Finally, as both Israel's operations in Iran and Operation Spider's Web demonstrate, the impact of munitionized drones increases when they can be conveyed-for example, by suitcase or truck-without detection into areas without specialized counter-drone defenses.32

Effectiveness of Electronic Warfare

The effectiveness of pervasive signal jamming in Ukraine as a tool of counterair operations has underlined that battlefield communications are fragile and easily disrupted. This has the potential of interfering with the ability of human operators to control uncrewed systems, including those operating in the air domain. Russian signal jamming in Ukraine has also impacted the reception of position, navigation, and timing (PNT) signals received from GPS satellites, eroding the accuracy and effectiveness of missiles and drones that rely on GPS to find their targets. The architecture of proliferated satellite constellations has offered some protection against jamming, but Russia is increasingly successful at degrading Starlink service and has consistently been able to disrupt many other signals-like GPS and drone command and control links.³³

Experts have been trying to enhance the jam resistance of weapons systems as part of the cat-and-mouse game between the jammers and the jammed, with each side racing to develop technologies that defeat the other's latest and greatest capabilities.³⁴ As a result, the ability to remotely command and control uncrewed systems and communicate with crewed ones can never be assured from mission to mission. It also means that it may not be possible to rely entirely on GPS or any signal-based PNT technology. In support of counterair operations, based on its effectiveness in Ukraine, electronic warfare-and electronic countermeasures-will feature prominently in future conflicts. The threats to signal-based positioning, navigation, and links used for timing and command and control communications emphasize the need for incorporating greater autonomous decisionmaking into UASs.

Anticipating the Future: Looking Over the Horizon

Though there are lessons for the future of airpower that can be directly gleaned from Ukraine and the Middle East, there are also trends that can be seen through a glass, darkly, with only the rough contours visible on the horizon. In the future, AI-enabled lethal autonomous weapons, which to date have not been extensively-if at all-used in combat, will play a main role. Such a development will lead over time-it is too early to say whether that time is measured in years or decades-to a decreasing need for human-piloted aircraft. The proliferation of sensors, and AI-enabled solutions making sense of that data at machine speeds, will make it more difficult for airborne systems to evade detection, leaving air platforms exposed to kill chains enabled by these technologies and making it harder to maintain air superiority.

AI-Enabled Autonomy

Automated decisionmaking for weapons that operate in the air and other domains is not a new concept. Heat-seeking missiles, mines, and torpedoes, as well as systems like the Phalanx radar-guided gun and Israel's Harpy drone, make lethal decisions autonomously, albeit following a very tight script that probably falls short of being considered artificial intelligence.³⁵ Though a magnetic underwater mine detonating is an automatic reaction to it coming near a metallic warship hull, the action-the "decision" made-looks more like the instincts of a closing Venus flytrap than human decisionmaking. AI-enabled solutions using machine learning, trained to make decisions like people, are the evolution of these "Venus flytrap" platforms.

The designers of these legacy weapons turned to autonomy for one of two reasons: a requirement to make sense of a situation and act faster than would be possible with a human in the loop, or a need to make a decision in the absence of human input. Looking to the future, airpower will rely on autonomous decisionmaking for these same two reasons-but unlike today, decisions with lethal consequences will be made by AI-enabled algorithms trained using machine learning. One new driver for this shift is the increasing effectiveness and impact of electronic warfare and its ability to sever the links between uncrewed machines and human operators. Another evolving driver is the availability and need to quickly make sense of the deluge of data collected from a myriad of sensors monitoring the battlespace. The amount of data is already so enormous that it cannot be completely assessed at operationally relevant timescales using human input.³⁶

There are interim solutions on the horizon that attempt to keep the human in the loop for UASs in highly jammed signal environments. In Ukraine, some operators have resorted to fiber-optic lines to maintain the ability to communicate with their drones.³⁷ This solution is unwieldy and will not scale to a future battlefield environment in which thousands if not millions of drones are operating together. The long-term response will involve implementing more AI-enabled autonomous decisionmaking in uncrewed aircraft, including decisionmaking that involves the use of deadly force. Defenses operating at machine speeds can deploy countermeasures much faster against hypersonic weapons and drone swarms than a system relying on human reaction times. The United States is already buying an AI-enabled counter-drone system-the Bullfrog robotic gun system-capable of fully autonomous operations.³⁸

Though researchers have observed that AI-enabled decisionmaking cannot today replicate human judgment, AI-enabled problem solving will probably improve over time.³⁹ But exactly when that could happen is hard to predict. Until that point-when machines make as good as or better warfighting decisions than people-AI-enabled airborne systems will have to operate side-by-side with human pilots and crews. This creates challenges for both the human and machine, as each will struggle to operate most efficiently and effectively unless both sides learn how to predict and understand how the other side reacts in situations encountered on the battlefield.

Next-Generation Camouflage and the Element of Surprise

The conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East have demonstrated the importance of early-warning and fire-control radars for detecting, tracking, and defeating airborne threats.⁴⁰ Today, air threat detection and tracking systems supporting long-, medium-, and short-range integrated air defense systems rely on radar.⁴¹ In some applications, infrared seekers are used as guidance systems for missiles, which hone in on the heat or thermal signatures of their targets rather than their radar signatures. In addition to radar and infrared, other types of sensors play increasingly prominent detection and tracking roles, including acoustic, visual, and LiDAR-based sensor networks.⁴² To date, these non-radar sensors have been primarily used in counterair point defense systems intended for defeating airborne threats in close proximity to their targets.

Due to the reliance on radar for all but close-proximity point defense systems, stealth technology has enabled strikes against a wide range of important and presumably well-defended military targets by Israel in Iran and Syria, such as during Operation Midnight Hammer. While terrestrial radar will likely continue playing a central role to enable kill chains for airborne targets, space-based systems, including electro-optical sensors, will begin to serve similar purposes. Future space-based sensor webs will be able to detect, identify, and track objects in real-time using a combination of phenomenologies beyond just radar.⁴³ This will pose a challenge to stealth aircraft trying to avoid detection by an adversary's air defenses: Though designed to avoid detection by radar, stealth aircraft can certainly be seen by the naked eye and, thus, are susceptible to optical space-based sensors.

It is not difficult to imagine a time in the near future when every point on the globe is observable by a space-based sensor at all times, with no break in coverage. This can be achieved by a constellation of satellites in lower Earth orbits or by a series of high-resolution satellites in geostationary orbits. Notably, China has already deployed a number of electro-optical satellites in geostationary orbit.⁴⁴ The United States is investigating the use of satellites for tracking targets in the air.⁴⁵ Pairing data from space-based sensors with AI-enabled processing will produce systems capable of identifying and tracking aircraft, including those using stealth technologies.

Challenging the efficacy of traditional stealth will challenge the ability of air forces that rely on it to secure and maintain air superiority. However, new uses of electro-optical space-based sensors in kill chains do not foreshadow the obsolescence of stealth technology. Because radar can see through weather phenomena (such as clouds) that render electro-optical sensors less effective, radar will likely retain its critical place in integrated air defense detection and tracking architectures. But stealth platforms will have to operate in environments in which optical sensors play a greater role in kill chains. This development will require improved tactics-perhaps flying most sorties when there is cloud cover or inventing new types of high-tech camouflage that can hide aircraft from space-based optical sensors.⁴⁶

Future conflicts may see greater use of the undersea domain to deploy airpower, as undersea systems offer unique opportunities for stealth and surprise. Because submarines can be designed to minimize their detectability, crewed and uncrewed submarines may see greater use as platforms from which drones are deployed, aiming to reduce the time air defense systems have to identify, acquire, track, and neutralize hostile airborne targets. Just like suitcases and trucks were used by Israel and Ukraine in June 2025 to smuggle drones closer to their intended targets, undersea systems may be used for a similar effect in future wars.

Conclusion

The contribution of airpower to future wars will be shaped by the evolution and use of technologies and tactics that have appeared on the battlefield in Ukraine and the Middle East. That future will see greater use of uncrewed systems, AI-enabled lethal autonomous weapon systems, and improved camouflage technologies masking radar, thermal, sound, and-possibly-visual signatures. These technologies and the evolving tactics for deploying them, such as AI-enabled systems working side-by-side with humans, will be required to operate under the shadow of ever more sophisticated counterair capabilities.

The goal will be to provide sufficient command of the air to execute core military airpower functions. This is unlikely to mean total air supremacy-but Israel has shown that it is still possible to obtain and maintain near-total control of the skies in certain circumstances. However, command of the air will probably be a balancing act, perhaps a temporary one, on the edge of a razor-air superiority may be ephemeral or something that is never fully achievable. Ultimately, there is probably a lot that cannot be foreseen about the future of military airpower based on lessons from today. It is worth keeping in mind the advice of the father of the U.S. Air Force, Billy Mitchell, who opined: "in the development of airpower one has to look ahead and not backward and figure out what is going to happen, not too much what has happened."⁴⁷

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Clayton Swope is the deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project and a senior fellow in the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.