What the Iran War Reveals about American Airpower

Kelly Grieco from the Stimson Center will give a presentation at the MIT Security Studies Program's Wednesday Seminar. Summary: The prevailing theory of airpower rests on two core propositions. First, air superiority is necessary for victory, winning the contest for the medium and high-altitudes—fighter against fighter, and fighter against surface-to-air missile—enables strategic attack, and strategic attack compels political concessions. Second, once that contest is won, whatever still threatens from below it is a force protection problem, a matter of defending aircraft on the ground and personnel, rather than a continuing contest for control of the air. The U.S. war with Iran tested both propositions—and both failed. The United States achieved and maintained air superiority as the theory defines it, using it to strike the full range of strategic targets, including Iran’s senior leadership. Yet these attacks neither produced operational or strategic paralysis nor compelled political concessions. Instead, while the United States controlled the blue skies, Iran denied the air littoral—the low-altitude airspace, e.g. typically below 15,000 feet—using dispersed, numerous, and mobile missiles and drones to keep the Strait of Hormuz closed and end the war on Iranian terms. This talk develops an alternative theory of air control centered on the air littoral and air denial, emphasizing distributed rather than integrated air defense, and explores the implications for airpower theory, U.S. strategy, and force design.