The world is now a dangerous place. Very real wars are underway in Europe and the Middle East while in in the Indo-Pacific, many nations are fretting about a possible United States/China war. Unsurprisingly, air forces are assessing their readiness, that is their present ability to respond quickly to unexpected strategic shocks.
Improving readiness involves maximising the current force’s productivity, but readiness is not enough (Chief of Air Force, 2024 May 8). After the initial response to a crisis, resilience becomes everything. In general terms, resilience is the ability to come back from a strategic shock.
If that shock is a major war, it means that the current air force may have lost many aircraft, facilities, and highly skilled people. The survivors might then be looking around and asking themselves what is next? This is where Ukraine found itself in 2022. It’s no longer an irrational scenario. This is undeniably a worst case example, but considering such instances can reveal ideas also useful in less-stressful circumstances.
Resilience can be conceptualised as comprising an absorption element, which reduces the impact of a shock, and an adaptability element, which is focused on the recovery to a steady state. Returning to a steady state ranges from: surviving a shock in some reduced form; continuing operation in the presence of a shock; recovering from a shock to the original form; or absorbing a shock and evolving in response (Layton, 2021).
This article discusses resilience as it relates to air forces and particularly smaller air forces that are the most sensitive to strategic shocks. There are four alternative steady-state strategic-level objectives air forces can choose from when planning to be resilient. In considering resilience alternatives to adopt, small air forces have agency, albeit sharply bounded by the practicalities imposed by having few people, modest force structures, and relatively constrained funding.
Surviving a shock in some reduced form
This alternative aims for a diminished organisation to remain in existence post-shock. For a small air force fighting in a major conflict the survival of specific key elements into the post-war period then becomes the measure of success. Losing some parts of an air force is accepted in trying to ensure the survival of other parts that are considered necessary for the post-war period.
Some smaller air forces might sacrifice their air transport elements as civilian resources could be substituted in the immediate post-shock period. On the other hand, training capabilities might be considered the most important element that a small air force deems important, as it allows the air force to rebuild after the shock. Resilience in this alternative also involves deciding how to husband and protect the necessary skilled people, aircraft, maintenance equipment, and spare-part stockholdings so as to allow operations post-war.
The assessed ability to realistically restart the desired air operations in the post-war period will be an important consideration. For small air forces, such restarting will require access to appropriate global supply chains; if this appears improbable than the air elements originally considered important to retain may need adjusting. For example, for most air forces a major war between the U.S. and China conflict would lead to a much-changed international supply chain environment.
In the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), the Iranian Air Force used this form of resilience. The air combat elements of the air force capable of strategic strike air operations were kept in reserve to provide deterrence against future Iraqi air attacks. The air force had an extreme sensitivity to attrition, given that any losses could not be easily replaced and therefore tightly constrained the use of key air elements. A similar approach was taken by Iraq (Bergquist, 1988).
Continuing operation in the presence of a shock
This resilience alternative aims to continue air operations for as long as possible. Implicit in this is that some air operations will be more important during a conflict than others. These could be key warfighting elements such as an air defence fighter force. An example of this is the Ukrainian Air Force’s efforts to conserve its fighter force in the early days of the Russian invasion (Arrol, 2022 June 28).
A key factor will be the length of air operations. This time period drives the air force commanders’ management of the rate of decline from peacetime as aircraft, facilities, and people are gradually lost. The goal for air operations is a prudent balance between rates of attrition and operational needs, as the intent is to continue operating for as long as the shock continues.
A second factor is the protection of the desired air element. As noted, resilience includes an absorption element that reduces the decline in the functioning of the impacted system. Given threats from hostile long-range weapon systems, this concept aims to “create a more resilient force posture” that can sustain combat air operations by shifting assets across a network of dispersed airbases and contingency operating sites in a form of deadly shell game. Aircraft, fuel, weapons, spare parts, equipment and air and ground crews are continually moving between various locations to make an adversary uncertain of where to attack. Resilience is further enhanced by having a capability to reconstitute and repair any infrastructure damaged by those hostile attacks that are undertaken. An example of this form of resilience is the Royal Australian Air Force’s agile air operations. (Department of Defence, 2023).
Recovering from a shock to the original form
The measure of success for this alternative is the time it takes to return to a pre-shock state. This is what most people think of when they think of resilience. This would involve rebuilding a damaged force while recruiting and training new personnel to replace those lost.
The measures taken to achieve this resilience steady state should be considered at the air force’s strategic command level. Here, plans can be made to quickly and efficiently rebalance resources across the whole organisation when a shock occurs. Such an approach raises issues of which elements might be the fastest to reconstitute and thus are perhaps preferable to sacrifice to protect the more difficult elements to recover.
Arguably, skilled personnel are the most time-consuming asset to develop, as this requires having a suitably sized training establishment in-place. Consequently, the air force’s training capacity might need expanding before starting to reconstitute its war-damaged elements. The rate of training base expansion might be a critical factor. Ukraine has shown during the current conflict with Russia that foreign training capabilities can be utilized to train larger numbers of new personnel than by solely relying on national capacity. The Ukrainian air force has also benefited from expedited delivery of some aircraft, equipment, and weapons from foreign supporters. If this type of resilience is chosen, it is important to foster good alliance and partner relationships with other air forces before the shock occurs (Sucio, 2024 October 24). This resilience alternative requires the persuasion of partners who can spare the desired items, but offers a potentially quicker path to recovery.
This type of resilience is easy to envisage: if the air force was once built, it can be rebuilt again. However, returning to the original functional form may have strategic shortcomings. It’s likely that combat will have exposed significant weakness in the pre-war force structure capabilities and capacities. If the original air force design was unable to deter the conflict, will it now be able to win it?
Absorbing a shock and evolving in response
This resilience steady state is the most difficult to undertake particularly when under the stresses imposed by on-going conflict. The pre-existing air force can intuitively appear the optimal model based on custom, its longevity and the difficulty of imagining something different. Nevertheless, in a conflict a small air force may be quickly lost and force a major reconsideration, especially if recovering from a shock to the original form is not a practical possibility.
The measure of success is being able to both continue air operations until the conflict ends and meet new operational demands concerning capability and capacity as these arise. Recent developments in digital technology and the proliferation of this technology across most societies have helped make such resilience more achievable for air forces than previously.
Traditionally, air forces principally comprised crewed aircraft and their training and support structures. However, this model has fragmented, with air power now able to be applied using rockets, cruise and ballistic missiles and many different types of large and small drones. Air operations have shifted from being homogeneous in nature to being heterogenous.
The Ukraine War is an exemplar of the resilient steady-state alternative of absorbing a shock and evolving in response. When both Russian and Ukraine air forces suffered unsustainable attrition of their crewed aircraft and helicopters in the first few months of the conflict, they quickly transformed to field and operate diverse force structures. Their evolution in response meant shifting from a focus on manned aircraft to using unmanned systems of many different kinds and capabilities.
Conclusion
Air forces are complicated combinations of people and equipment that are not naturally resilient, and therefore need to be designed to have such an attribute. Working through the four key resilience planning issues can assist this process, particularly by gaining a better understanding of the level of steady-state resilience desired: survival, continuing operation, recovery to the original state, or evolving in response to a shock.
Resilience involves many factors that need consideration before a shock hits. The fact that resilience is suddenly fashionable is itself a shock and reflective of the threats lurking for small air forces in this dangerous time. It’s time to think deeply about resilience.
Arrol, M. (2022, June 28). The Key to Maximizing the Air Force’s Agile Combat Employment Concept? The Army. Modern War Institute. https://mwi.westpoint.edu/the-key-to-maximizing-the-air-forces-agile-combat-employment-concept-the-army/.
Bergquist, R. (1988). The Role of Airpower in the Iran-Iraq War. Air University Press. https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/AUPress/Books/B_0025_BERGQUIST_AIRPOWER_IRANIRAQ.PDF
Chief of Air Force (2024, May 8). Building Readiness and Resilience in National Air and Space Power across the Spectrum of Competition. Air Force. https://www.airforce.gov.au/news-events/speeches-transcripts/building-readiness-and-resilience-national-air-and-space-power-across-spectrum-competition.
Department of Defence (2023). ADF Air Power, Edition 1. Australian Defence Force. https://airpower.airforce.gov.au/sites/default/files/2024-01/ADF-I-3%20ADF%20Air%20Power%20Ed%201.pdf.
Layton, P. (2021). Being Prepared for Unprecedented Times: National Mobilisation conceptualisations and their implications. Griffith Asia Institute. https://www.griffith.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0021/1327350/Being-prepared-for-unprecedented-times-web.pdf
Suciu, P. (2024, October 24). Ukraine Now Has Hundreds of F-16 Fighter Pilots. National Interest. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/ukraine-now-has-hundreds-f-16-fighter-pilots-213364
