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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
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?
Aug 26, 2021
Essay
Civilian Casualties: Lessons from the Battle for Raqqa
The United States' emphasis on minimizing civilian harm in Raqqa, Syria, was quite clear and strong up and down the chain of command. But the way in which the U.S. military waged war in Raqqa too often undercut that commitment. The Pentagon asked RAND to find out what happened.
Jul 1, 2022

Explore Air Warfare

Report
Organizing and Training Airfield Operations Capabilities for Emerging Expeditionary Operations: Potential Courses of Action
The authors identify ways to enable the airfield operations (AO) career fields to respond to the needs created by the Dynamic Force Employment concept and the USAF implementation of Agile Combat Employment.
Mar 16, 2023
Report
How Can the Mobility Air Forces Better Support Adaptive Basing? Summary Analysis, Findings, and Recommendations
The U.S. Air Force is exploring adaptive basing concepts to reduce the vulnerability of U.S. forces and to preserve critical combat capabilities in highly contested environments. This report assesses the impact on the Mobility Air Forces.
Jan 24, 2023
Report
How Can the Mobility Air Forces Better Support Adaptive Basing? Appendixes A–C, Supporting Analyses of Adaptive Basing, Soft Power, and Historical Case Studies
The U.S. Air Force is exploring adaptive basing to reduce vulnerability and preserve critical combat capabilities in highly contested environments. These appendixes present supporting analyses, including political challenges and case studies.
Jan 24, 2023
Report
Outsmarting Agile Adversaries in the Electromagnetic Spectrum
RAND researchers conducted case studies comprising key elements necessary for creating near-real-time, autonomous, inflight software reprogramming and artificial intelligence–enabled cognitive electronic warfare capabilities for the U.S. Air Force.
Jan 19, 2023
Report
Outsmarting Agile Adversaries in the Electromagnetic Spectrum: Executive Summary
This executive summary encapsulates the findings in Outsmarting Agile Adversaries in the Electromagnetic Spectrum (RR-A981-1) 2023.
Jan 19, 2023
Commentary
Will Robotized Fire Power Replace Manned Air Power?
Russia's war in Ukraine entered the summer of 2022 with no clear military victor in sight. Although it is important to exercise caution in drawing any major conclusions, some powerful signs about the future of warfare can be derived from this conflict.
Aug 31, 2022
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
Report
Winning the Battle of the Airfields
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?
Feb 24, 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

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RAND Topic:
Air Warfare

Research conducted by

Researcher Spotlight

Mark Simpson

Assistant Policy Researcher, RAND

Mark Simpson is a Ph.D. student in the Research, Analysis, and Design stream at the Pardee RAND Graduate School and an assistant policy researcher at RAND. His research interests include national security, military command and control, deterrence, and information operations in great power…
Brian Dolan

Engineer

Brian Dolan (he/him) is an engineer with expertise in aerospace science and engineering, air and space warfare, science and technology policy, and modeling complex systems. His research at RAND spans many aspects of military operations and acquisitions for the air and space domains. Recent work…

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