Air supremacy
The achievement of aerial supremacy does not guarantee a low loss rate of friendly aircraft, as hostile forces are often able to adopt unconventional tactics or identify weaknesses.
For example, NATO forces which held aerial superiority over Kosovo still lost a stealth strike aircraft to a Serbian ground-based air defense system, despite it being considered "obsolete".
[1] Several engagements have occurred in asymmetrical conflicts in which relatively poorly-equipped ground forces have been able to achieve aircraft kills despite working against overwhelming aerial supremacy.
Given the disparity in effectiveness between their own and South Korean and US fighters, North Korea maintains a large force of infiltration troops; in the event of a war, they would be tasked, among other missions, with attacking coalition airfields with mortar, machine gun and sniper fire, possibly after insertion by some 300 An-2 low radar-observable biplanes.
This strategy has been practiced in active conflicts even in recent decades; during the asymmetrical warfare of the War in Afghanistan, 15 fedayeen destroyed or severely damaged eight United States Marine Corps Harrier jump jets in the September 2012 Camp Bastion raid, one result of which being pilots fighting as infantry for the first time in 70 years.
[7] Similarly, during the Iraqi War, four Apaches were destroyed on the ground in 2007 by insurgents armed with mortar, which were unintentionally aided by web-published geotagged photographs taken by coalition soldiers.
[20] The Italian Corpo Aeronautico Militare established air superiority over the Austro-Hungarian Imperial and Royal Aviation Troops at the Battle of Vittorio Veneto in late October 1918.
[23][24] In 1921, Italian aerial warfare theorist Giulio Douhet published The Command of the Air, a book positing that future wars would be decided in the skies.
[26][27] The campaign was successful in defeating the tribes with two deaths for the RAF, but contemporary critics were not entirely convinced of its use in isolation; Commander-in-Chief, India General Sir Claud Jacob stated that "satisfactory ... the results of these operations have been, I am of [the] opinion that a combination of land and air action would have brought about the desired result in a shorter space of time, and next time action has to be taken, I trust that it will be possible to employ the two forces in combination".
[29][30] Mitchell's ideas were not popular, with his outspoken opposition to Army and Navy resistance resulting in a court-martial that precipitated his resignation,[31] but he would prove prescient; his 1924 inspection tour of Hawaii and Asia culminated in a report (published in 1925 as the book Winged Defense) that predicted future war with Japan, including the attack on Pearl Harbor.
It denied the German military air superiority over the English Channel, making a seaborne invasion (planned as Operation Sea Lion) impossible in the face of Britain's naval power.
Achieving total air superiority[clarify] allowed the Allies to carry out ever-greater strategic bombing raids on Germany's industrial and civilian centers (including the Ruhr and Dresden), and to prosecute the land war successfully on both the Eastern and Western fronts.
Following the Big Week attacks in late February 1944, the new 8th Air Force commander Jimmy Doolittle permitted P-51 Mustangs to fly far ahead of the bomber formations instead of closely escorting them starting in March 1944.
Germany's most important air superiority fighters were the Messerschmitt Bf 109 and Focke-Wulf Fw 190, while the Supermarine Spitfire and Hawker Hurricane were the primary ones on the British side.
In the Pacific Theater, the A6M Zero gave Japan air superiority for much of the early part of the war, but suffered against newer naval fighters such as the F6F Hellcat and F4U Corsair which exceeded the Zero in performance and durability.
Both sides engaged in an arms race of improving radar and fighter intercept capability versus the threat of intercontinental strategic bombers carrying nuclear weapons.
Ultimately the US led the way in first applying stealth technology to small strike aircraft like the F-117 and stealthy nuclear cruise missiles carried in conventional bombers for standoff release before the air defenses got too thick.
The Korean War represented a major turning point for aerial warfare, being the first conflict in which jet aircraft played the central role in combat.
In the initial months of fighting, the P-80 Shooting Star, F9F Panther, Gloster Meteor and other jets under the UN flag dominated the Korean People's Air Force (KPAF) propeller-driven Soviet Yakovlev Yak-9 and Lavochkin La-9s.
From 1948, when Israel reestablished independence from a protective League of Nations mandatory regime managed by the UK, the neighbouring countries have, to varying degrees, disputed the legitimacy of a Jewish state in a majority Arab region.
The air force initially consisted of mainly donated civil aircraft, a variety of obsolete and surplus ex-World War II combat-aircraft were quickly sourced by various means to supplement this fleet.
In 1956, Israel, France, and the United Kingdom occupied the Sinai Peninsula after Egypt closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli ships, sparking the Suez Crisis.
[59] After several sorties were launched by French and British aircraft, President Gamal Abdel Nasser ordered his pilots to withdraw to bases in Southern Egypt.
The first few days of the 1973 Yom Kippur War saw major Arab ground breakthroughs, surprising Israel who, after its lopsided 1967 victory, considered its air supremacy sufficient to blunt or dissuade any conventional attack.
Most of Israel's air power in the first few days was directed to reinforce the badly mismatched garrison overlooking the besieged Golan Heights which was under attack by Syria.
[63] The Soviets were so shaken by the staggering losses sustained by their allies that they dispatched the deputy head of their air defense force to Syria to examine how the Israelis had been so dominant.
[68][69] Argentine airpower targeted Royal Navy ships during the landings at San Carlos Bay, numerous British vessels were lost or moderately damaged.
The Argentine forces solved the problem by fitting improvised retarding devices, allowing the pilots to effectively employ low-level bombing attacks on 8 June.
These new strategies have in part resulted from the assumption of obtaining air supremacy and use by the U.S. Air Force of precision munitions with little collateral damage in the Kosovo conflict in what amounted to quick mass destruction of military assets once only possible with nuclear weapons or massive bombing against fellow Slavic Serbians; it also assumed that Russia and its allies do not have the strategic economic capacity of current NATO and allied nations to meet this threat with conventional weapons.
[88] On 22 May 2018, Israeli Air Force chief Amikam Norkin said that the service had employed their F-35Is in two attacks on two battle fronts, marking the first combat operation of an F-35 by any country.
