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Air Warfare

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Air warfare is the ability to disable an opponent's military using strategic strikes from manned and unmanned aircraft. RAND has extensive experience evaluating and providing recommendations to military decisionmakers to ensure rapid, effective, and sustainable airborne deployments to counter regional threats.

Report

Leveraging Complexity in Great-Power Competition and Warfare: Volume I

Aug 26, 2021

The United States should aim to minimize the element of complexity for itself while maximizing it for its adversary in great-power competition and warfare. But what does complexity mean in an Air Force context? And how can it be used as a method of attack?
Report

Winning the Battle of the Airfields

Feb 24, 2021

Airfields have long been recognized as essential military facilities. And combatants have gone to great lengths to destroy enemy aircraft on the ground and to deny the use of airfields through attacks. What enduring lessons do RAND's seven decades of work on air base defense and attack provide?

Explore Air Warfare

Report

Road to Damascus: The Russian Air Campaign in Syria, 2015 to 2018

The authors review the chronology of Russian air operations in Syria, and assess the strategic and operational blueprint, basing strategy and force disposition, effectiveness of the Russian air campaign, and its applicability to future campaigns.

May 11, 2022
Report

Supporting Combat Power Projection Away from Fixed Infrastructure

The authors examine the logistics and sustainment aspects of an emerging operational concept for employing a family of unmanned aerial vehicles that can be launched, recovered, and sustained with minimal reliance on runways.

Jan 26, 2022
Blog

The Most Popular RAND Research of 2021

As another extraordinary year draws to a close, we continue to believe that objective, nonpartisan research and analysis has a key role to play in navigating what continues to be a difficult time. Here are the 10 research projects that resonated most with rand.org readers in 2021.

Dec 22, 2021
Report

Leveraging Complexity in Great-Power Competition and Warfare: Volume II

The Air Force should apply a complexity lens through which to review ongoing and future efforts to best leverage complexity to U.S. decision advantage. The technical companion to an initial exploration includes a literature review and a user manual.

Aug 26, 2021
Journal Article

Bomber Strike Packages with Chinese Characteristics

This book chapter traces the development of China's bomber strike packages and assesses how these flights support operational training for Chinese air force wartime missions.

Jun 10, 2021
Journal Article

China Signals Resolve with Bomber Flights Over the South China Sea

An unprecedented display of Chinese strategic systems over disputed territories in the South China Sea reflects China's efforts to signal its resolve following a diplomatic defeat.

May 18, 2021
Research Brief

The Role of U.S. Airpower in Defeating ISIS

The United States used airpower in Syria and Iraq to halt ISIS's momentum and help defeat the organization, without committing a large number of ground forces.

Feb 12, 2021
Report

Airpower Was Indispensable to Defeating ISIS

Some argue that airpower could have been applied more vigorously in Operation Inherent Resolve to have more quickly defeated ISIS. Airpower was essential, but ground forces led by Iraqi and Syrian partners were needed to destroy the Islamic State as a territorial entity.

Feb 5, 2021
Report

European Contributions to NATO's Future Combat Airpower

European air forces currently have limited capabilities for defending allies in high-intensity conflict. However, Europe's airpower is trending in the right direction, especially with the introduction of fifth-generation aircraft.

Oct 22, 2020
Report

Joint All-Domain Command and Control for Modern Warfare: An Analytic Framework for Identifying and Developing Artificial Intelligence Applications

The authors examine and recommend opportunities for applying artificial intelligence and, more broadly, automation to deliberate planning for joint all-domain command and control for the U.S. Air Force.

Jul 1, 2020
Report

Air Dominance Through Machine Learning: A Preliminary Exploration of Artificial Intelligence–Assisted Mission Planning

U.S. air superiority is being challenged by global competitors. In this report, the authors prototype a new artificial intelligence system to help develop and evaluate concepts of operations for the air domain.

May 29, 2020
Report

Operating Low-Cost, Reusable Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Contested Environments: Preliminary Evaluation of Operational Concepts

The authors of this report summarize early thinking and analysis about how the U.S. Air Force might employ a force of "attritable"—low-cost and reusable—unmanned aerial vehicles in a demanding conventional warfighting scenario.

May 11, 2020
Report

The tanKer Aerial Refueling Model for Analysis (KARMA)

This report describes the algorithms used in the tanKer Air Refueling Model for Analysis (KARMA) and explains how to use the model. KARMA simulates the extent to which a tanker force can aerially refuel combat aircraft in a denied environment.

Sep 4, 2019
Report

Distributed Operations in a Contested Environment: Implications for USAF Force Presentation

This report's authors identify capabilities the Air Force needs to carry out distributed operations in a contested environment. They then assess whether the current force presentation model can provide such capabilities.

Jul 17, 2019
Report

OCEANS 17 Tabletop Exercise: Findings and Recommendations

In December 2017, the RAND Corporation conducted a tabletop exercise on air operations across the boundaries between geographic combatant commands. This report describes the exercise's design, key insights from our analysis, and recommendations.

May 9, 2019
Blog

Saudi Arabia, Border Troops, China's Military: RAND Weekly Recap

This weekly recap focuses on how to deter aggression abroad, examining the need for U.S. troops at the border, China's aerospace capabilities, and more.

Nov 23, 2018
Report

How the U.S. Air Force Shapes China's Military Aerospace Goals

Aerospace power has been a core feature of the People's Liberation Army's rapid modernization. The main driver for its development is the PLA's view that it needs to be prepared to deter and, if necessary, defeat the United States in a high-end clash.

Nov 21, 2018
Report

Learning from Past U.S. Army–Air Force Collaborations

The Army and the Air Force are developing the concept of multi-domain battle to better coordinate air and ground forces to meet shared challenges. Lessons from past efforts show that to succeed, multi-domain battle will have to address the fundamental questions of each service's culture and deeply held views about warfighting.

Sep 13, 2018

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RAND Topic:
Air Warfare

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