Airpower is the ability to project power or influence through the medium of the air to achieve strategic, operational or tactical objectives. For nearly a century, there has been a fundamental difference of opinion as to whether or not airpower has altered the strategies of war or merely its tactics. If it is the former, airpower can be seen as a revolutionary leap in the conduct of war but if the latter is true, then airpower is simply another weapon that joins the arsenal along with the rifle, artillery and the frigate.

Such a debate has not been fully resolved. But the recent body of evidence in Afghanistan and Kosovo adds to the theory that airpower has indeed brought about a revolution in war, because it has altered virtually all aspects of how it is fought, by whom, against who and with what weapons. Operation Iraqi Freedom reinforced the notion that modern air forces, properly employed, can quickly and dramatically transform the operational situation by stripping the enemy of its air defences, dismantling key elements of national infrastructure and isolating, immobilising and attriting field forces.

Much of this revolution in warfare can be explained by airpower’s unique characteristics of ubiquity, speed, range, potency and flexibility. However, traditionalists maintain that airpower’s inherent limitations of impermanence and its inability to hold ground continue to place insurmountable boundaries on airpower’s ability to truly transform warfighting. With the advent of high endurance unmanned systems, long range precision weapons, high assurance datalinks, high speed C4I systems and more powerful ISR systems, such a proposition may no longer hold true.

It is thus important for us to examine how technological advances have affected the nature of airpower as this issue has a direct impact on how the RSAF, and concomitantly the SAF, should go about transforming our-selves. The approach this paper has adopted to do is an eclectic one. It first examines the unique physical attributes of airpower that we have commonly associated with manned aircraft and highlight how emerging technologies can alleviate airpower's traditional weaknesses and enhance its strengths. The synthesis will show that modern technology can further enhance airpower’s unique attributes, mitigate its traditional limitations and truly influence the conduct of warfare in fundamental ways. Riding on these findings, the paper will then endeavour to put forth some suggestions on how the RSAF can go about actualising such a transformation insofar as technology, concepts, people and organisation.

Airpower As A Dominant Source of Military Power – Enduring or Ebbing?

One can arguably trace aerial warfare back to the 1700s with the advent of balloons and suggestions to use them to reconnoitre enemy positions and potentially bomb them. But it was the epic heavier-than-air machine flight by the Wright Brothers in 1903, which marked the first concrete step of technological advances for airpower’s evolution into a mature element of modern warfare.

Since then, in tandem with enabling technological advances, airpower has evolved from being a peripheral component of military force to what General Omar Bradley described in 1956:

“Airpower has become predominant... both as a deterrent to war, and in the eventuality of war, as the devastating force to destroy an enemy’s potential and fatally undermining his will to wage war.” 1

Early air theorists have advocated strategic bombing as the concept to fully exploit the military value of air-power. However, in recent times, many have come to believe that the advent of high rate, around-the-clock capability to precisely spot and strike fielded enemy forces either on the move or in defensive positions, as demonstrated in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Persian Gulf campaigns, is portending a new phase in the history of air warfare.

Airpower’s Unique Physical Attributes

What are the unique characteristics of airpower that accounted for its amazing ascent in the last 100 years even as its dominant form of application changes with time and context? Glimpsing into the future, what are the new factors that may re-define air- power in fundamental ways? This topic can be discussed and argued in many ways. One simple but insightful perspective is perhaps to examine the issues in terms of the premium physical attributes of airpower, commonly agreed to be speed, range, elevation, lethality and flexibility. 2

Military aviation systems, the traditional means of airpower, are valued for their long range, high speed and power of elevation to serve as carriers of a versatile range of payloads for diverse types of missions, such as reconnaissance, transportation, communications, or ground attacks. In this sense, “command of the air” battles are wrestles for the right to take military advantage of the medium of air – air superiority is a means to higher ends. Looking back, even the flimsy planes of 1918 could fly several hundred miles at one hundred miles per hour. And they overcome with ease natural and man-made obstacles to surface forces, such as hills, rivers, forests and build-up areas. Today, many modern aircraft are capable of unrefuelled ranges of thousands of miles at speeds of several hundreds miles per hour. This makes military aviation systems sometimes the only means to reach key enemy facility or capability, simultaneously if needed, across the entire depth and breadth of an enemy country. In fact, airpower’s flexibility is often acknowledged in terms of its ability to enable the parallel conduct of different types of air campaigns at the same level of war, as well as at different levels of war.

Across the spectrum of air missions, virtually all the air theorists have given great focus on the issues of ground strike. At the extreme, some may argue that a history of air strategy is a history of the search for the single, perfect target. In the era of unguided or “dumb” weapons with limited range, military aviation systems provide both the necessary extended range to reach targets in depth, as well as the precision through aiming sights during weapons launch.

For the latter, by the 1991 Gulf War, with increasingly accurate bombing platforms equipped with increasingly advanced sighting systems, a circular error probable (CEP) of 160 feet is attainable for medium altitude “dumb” bombing. While this is probably the physical limit of accuracy achievable by “smart” systems with dumb bombs 3 , the close to 20-fold improvement since War World II 4 has significantly cut down, though not completely eliminated, the requirements for redundant targeting. Coupled with the attributes of speed, range and elevation, concentrated firepower can be directed at specific locations on and behind the battle area, further enhancing the lethality of modern airpower. This is particularly effective for large targets, such as industrial plants, key transport systems and nodes, enemy vehicle parks, and fielded enemy forces not yet engaged by own forces.

New Airpower Equation

The framing above describes the traditional competitive advantages of airpower commonly associated with the manned aircraft, especially the high performance and “ smart ” systems, for which military planners are willing to pay a premium to possess. But the advent of information and network systems, modern air / surface delivered stand-off, precision-guided surface attack weapons 5 , as well as unmanned aerial systems have radically changed this calculus, and defined a new airpower equation. At the conceptual level, the terms “Network-centric Warfare” , “Precision Warfare” and “Unmanned Warfare” , which gained popularity after Desert Storm, are indications that this is not just about new technologies or better gadgets but maybe the emergence of new form of warfare that will fundamentally change the way airpower is constituted and employed. In the case of the SAF, the evolving concept of Integrated Knowledge-based Command and Control is our attempt to frame the possibilities for warfare in the Information Age.

To illustrate some of the possible ramifications of the new factors to airpower, con-sider the simple case of a flight of aircraft on a ground strike mission. Precision weapons with accuracy usually measured in feet have reduced the need to hedge against the probability of a miss. Even at the dawn of the modern precision weapon era, four flights of laser-guided bomb (LGB) armed McDonnell F-4 Phantoms perfunctorily took down the Thanh Hoa bridge in North Vietnam on 13 May 1972, which massive numbers of planes and dumb bombs in the previous seven years had failed to significantly damage. 6 Precision weapons have changed the notion of mass for ground attack from the air. Instead of sorties per target, planners can now talk in terms of targets per sortie. This trend will be further boosted by the advent of increasingly smaller warheads and weapons, as precision and miniaturisation enter a mutually reinforcing spiral.

But the above argument is equally valid for surface-launched precision weapons, which increasingly will have comparable range, speed and accuracy, and becoming a key element in the new airpower equation. This means that strike missions in the future are increasingly likely to be conducted by an integrated force comprising air and surface elements rather than huge formations of aircraft. The key question will be: Which option is the most cost-effective for the effects to achieve? In the case of special targets or groups of targets that require heavy payload, the scale will tilt more towards aviation systems that have natural advantage in capacity. But eventually, each military force would have to find its own optimal balance depending on its unique strategic context and operational requirements.

A follow-on point is that precision weapons become themselves a justification and means to acquire more cost-effective precision-weapon carrying aviation platforms. Not every platform needs to be both a “designator” and “shooter” . With advanced networks and networking, the demand for the “shooter” to provide Precise Aim has reduced. Precision Guidance and Precise Control of the weapon itself have allowed target designation and engagement updates to be provided from sources other than its carrier. 7 For example, “double lasing” is a common technique for Laser-Guided Bombs (LGB) employment.

Notwithstanding the concepts of employment, organisational structure and processes, the prosecution of Precision Warfare will require capable intelligence, sensor, and network systems. Furthermore, the necessary information and network systems to support the employment of precision weapons will also provide force-multiplying effect for flight. While better information does not allow the aircraft to fly faster, longer or higher, it can provide better awareness for the aircraft to take the least dangerous or defended route. This in turn may mean the need for less aircraft to perform protection role. Better information can also give flexibility in the form of on-the-fly reassignment of higher priority targets. The possibilities are endless with information and knowledge.

It is worthwhile to point out that the relation between aviation and information and communications / network systems can be symbiotic. The advantage of elevation is obvious for the function of sensing. But in the Information Age, elevation confers an advantage. Advanced networks usually have a high demand for bandwidth. In the commercial world, 3G mobile phones today are already offering throughput of 384Kps to 2Mbps. This would require carrier frequency beyond VHF band, which in turn require the communicating nodes to be within line-of-sight. Air platforms, with its inherent physical advantage in elevation, are in a good position to surmount this challenge and become key hubs not only for sensing and targeting but also in the overall military network system.

Unmanned aerial systems provide the means to lessen the natural limitation of conventional airpower – impermanence. Unlike surface forces, pilots cannot live in their medium and have to land in order to rest, refuel and rearm. The value of unmanned aerial systems lies in their endurance – they are able to stay in the air over a longer duration, and generally at lower cost. Persistence – the ability to have continuous presence in time – can be achieved with planning to conduct strike, sensing, networking and other functions.

With these new factors in the airpower equation come the issues of orchestration. What will be the right mix of systems for a transformed airpower? How should manned and unmanned systems be integrated to give airpower unprecedented flexibility, pervasiveness and persistence for sensing, networking, targeting, effects evaluating and other key combat functions? What are the unique force multiplicative effects that airpower can provide in joint, land, sea and information campaigns with its combat advantages conferred by the new factors in airpower equalton? What should be the underlying infrastructure, linkages and processes for Command and Control, and information flow to bring everything together? Although the SAF has some pieces of the puzzles, we recognize that there is still much to explore.

In summary, this section only examines the possible ramifications to airpower by new factors in the equation from the physical attribute perspective. Other perspectives, such as political considerations and concept of deterrence, will provide equally interesting insights on the possible future path for airpower. This will require a longer analysis than what this article intends to discuss. But what is clear is that there are complex issues in force structure and technological developments, strategy and doctrine, command and control structure and processes, as well as education and training that need to be examined and resolved to fully harness the potentials and possibilities for warfare in The Information Age.

Technology, Concepts, People

While the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into the glorious butterfly requires it to remain in a cocoon, it will be quite unlikely that RSAF can afford such luxury. As the RSAF moves on to embrace the transformation for the next quantum leap, there are three pillars: Concepts, Technology, and People that The Pillars for Transformation have to come together for the complete transmutation. Tomorrow’s military capabilities will depend on the right investment in enabling technologies that can be integrated into new or existing systems and employed using new operational concepts, and more importantly, by people who are properly trained and willing to embrace the new concepts. Short of the proper doctrines and correctly skilled war fighters, the newest machines will not generate the airpower that allows it to continue its dominant role in future battles. In this article, some suggestions are discussed on the many facets the transformational journey that RSAF can take.

• Technology

New concepts of warfare have proliferated throughout military jargon after Desert Storm which the US forces won decisively. How can airpower continue to maintain its relevance and effectiveness in the future battlefield, with these new sources of military power?

The delivery of a weapon is only the end-point of a process involving a complex array of inputs and information that enable it to arrive at the right place, at the right time. Some key technological areas that will enable dominance in the battlefield will be precision strike capability, information networks and unmanned platforms.

While these technologies are not uniquely applied to the utilization of airpower, they, however, uniquely provide the edge for airpower to further its dominance in the battlefield.

One key weakness of airpower is its impermanence. Currently with large unmanned aircraft, like the Global Hawk, 24-hour coverage of the battlefield can already be achieved. With the eventual advent of unmanned strike platforms, not only will there be round-the-clock intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) coverage of the battlefield, the enemy will not have breathing space between pauses in air strikes encountered today.

With intelligence gathered from unmanned aircraft supplementing those from various sensors (surface-based, electro-magnetic sources, space-based, etc) dispersed over the battlefield, an integrated information system can provide a collated picture of the battlefield. This global picture will enable each warfighter to gather information that is critical to his / her mission. Coupled with the existing speed, range and elevation advantage of air assets, strategic strikes at the enemy as well as having the ability to divert to targets of opportunities can be carried out in a persistent manner.
Certainly, the question will be whether such capabilities can be realised through cost-effective means, given limited budget? It may be possible that highly valued platforms may not be the way to go. They may likely be bought in relatively small numbers in view of limited budget. What may be a possible alternative is to have miniaturised technology to keep versatility high, but with size and cost per platform remaining low. With the expected advent of photonics (for example, optical switchers and fibres) and Micro-Electro-Mechanical-Systems (MEMS), sensors and platforms based on current technology can be miniaturised while performing the same missions, if not more. How about deploying dozens of small or even micro- UAVs be packed with light-weight, modular payloads for surveillance?

The emerging opportunities with the fusion of technologies in MEMS and the possible use of “ smart material ” will benefit manned aircraft, which also give rise to new hybrid weapons systems. With manned aircraft, it may be possible for each to be armed with small and precision-strike capable munitions that can be software-controlled and tuned to fulfil different missions. Such platforms can pick out and execute “ target-of-opportunity ” missions broadcast over the air. Some examples of new hybrid weapons systems are surface-launched cruise missiles with the capability to loiter and strike at the most appropriate time, and morphing UAVs that can change their “ shapes ” to optimise their performance for different missions. These possibilities certainly offer new areas that airpower can tap into, and to extend its pervasiveness (in both time and space) in future battlefields.

With unmanned systems, the operator no longer resides in the platform. The human management and command and control (C2) paradigms may have to be changed. For airspace management, the maturity of sense and avoid technology is crucial for safe inter-operation with both manned and unmanned platforms. System technologies that focus on the man-machine interface hopefully can be developed with new understanding in human cognition. With the expected increase in information flow and data exchange over the “ air ” , wide-band communication networks will have to be developed. This is an area that the military can leverage on the commercial leaps in communication technology.

• Concepts

The effective use of technologies will have to be complemented by its proper deployment. During World War II, the French certainly had no less tanks than the Germans. The lopsided victory of the Germans in the battle best illustrated the right use of tactics. In order for the RSAF to maintain itself as a modern airforce, transformational concepts and appropriate deployment will be what are needed for RSAF to propel itself to greater heights. The following are possibilities raised in the form of questions to generate more discourse rather than prescriptions.

Providing Homeland Air Security.

Currently, dedicated air defence fighters provide the first line of air defence for Singapore . Dedicating assets for specific roles may, however, sub-optimise the use of our assets. In this case, if air threats are not imminent, then these dedicated air defence fighters would have been under-utilised.

In time to come, with precision munitions getting smaller, aircraft will have room available for more payload, be it air-to-air or air-to-ground ordnance. This offers fresh possibilities in force employment. For example, fighters with Air-to-Air AMRAAMs
and miniaturised PGMs can simultaneously take up the role of intercepting and killing enemy attackers, as well as to perform strikes, such as targeting and destroying time-critical and sensitive targets. The traditional delineation of Air Defence fighters, sweepers and strikers will increasingly be blurred.

Potentially, our fighters can be truly swing-role, seamlessly transitioning between air defence, sweep and strike missions. Coupled with increasingly capable surface-based
air defence systems that can reach further targets and are more lethal against the full spectrum of air threats, the traditional notion of a multi-layer air defence concept can have a very different face.

Indeed, it is pertinent now that we should relook at the entire concept of Homeland Air Security because a large scale force-on-force struggle for survival cannot be the only impetus for Homeland Air Security in this new milieu. With the end of the Cold War, there have been more regional conflicts and now terrorism threatens many nations across the world. Homeland Air Security must thus factor in these new geopolitical circumstances.

As high vigilance is required at all times, we will need to expand our thinking on how best we can provide for our Homeland Air Security. Specifically, we will need to see how best a robust and sustainable air defence shield can be put up for long periods of time without incurring attendant costs so exorbitant that we fall into the asymmetry trap. In this respect, long-range ground-based air defences coupled with a small complement of fighters and Non-Cooperative Target Recognition radars may offer an efficient peacetime air defence against the constant and amorphous threats from the air.

Of course, there will be many challenges in implementing such revolutionary changes in our force employment concepts, but we need to start testing these ideas.

Achieving Air Dominance. Moving on to the control of the air, there are interesting issues for us to address. In the past, control of the air meant the decisive application of airpower against installations or infrastructure used by hostile forces. With the destruction of the installations or infrastructure, the generation of hostile airpower can be stopped. This would allow us to achieve air dominance. The means by which firepower is delivered has, for most airforces, been the aircraft. Looking forward, technology may be able to provide cost-effective alter-natives in the form of surface-launched precision-strike missiles. That would radically alter the air dominance equation in two ways. First, application of fires on installations or infrastructure can be done using a more diversified set of strike means. Where the balance lies, however, will remain something for us to examine. Second, if airpower can be applied through a variety of means, achieving air dominance will be more than the destruction of installations and infrastructure. The ability to target elusive missile launchers and ship-based missile launchers will increasingly be part of the air dominancecampaign.

Dominating from the Air. We will need to be able to dominate the land and sea environments in order to ensure air dominance, even as air dominance creates the conditions for us to dominate from the air. The endurance limitation of manned platforms meant that airpower is generally applied in heavy pulses. In the case of most airforces, strike cycles are planned at a rate of one major offensive about every few hours. This means that in between strikes, the enemy can potentially reconstitute and reorganise.

However, UAVs, with their high endurance, allow us to overcome the transient nature of airpower. The recent applications of unmanned warfare in Kosovo , Afghanistan and Iraq provide ample evidence for this. With their persistence, unmanned systems carrying good sensor payloads have the unique ability to paint the battlespace continuously. Coupled with on-demand air strikes, UAVs allow us to apply force in a timely and precise manner. The result is one where the enemy faces certain destruction each time he moves. Such persistence denies the enemy any opportunity to reconstitute.

In so doing, the psychological refuge that comes with even a fleeting respite from air strikes can be removed. This can be demoralising to any ground soldier or naval combatant; that the mere presence of unmanned systems could cause the collapse of their morale and cohesion. Today, the SAF is looking at how persistent airpower can be used to shape the ground and naval wars decisively. Together with our Army and Navy, the Air Force can apply timely and precise fires to dominate the land and sea battles.

Such a capability is revolutionary in war and can also contribute significantly in peacetime. Take the example of the peacetime requirement of maintaining a recognised sea situation picture, where high sea traffic volumes combine with wide swathes of water to make such a requirement particularly demanding. High endurance UAVs would be able to mitigate these demands because they are able to translate their height advantage and leverage on advanced sensors to provide over-watch over huge areas. The speed and endurance of these UAVs also mean that every UAV sortie can be used to cover multiple maritime zones in a flexible and sustainable manner. The advantages of the UAV over ships and other sea-borne vessels are only too obvious.

Given these systems, UAVs will have a bigger role in the Air Force and airpower’s perennial problems of impermanence and transience are mitigated. Together with the manned fighters’ flexibility and efficacy in bringing heavy loads to bear swiftly, UAVs will bring complementary capabilities that will allow us to push the airpower envelope to new frontiers.

• People

New technologies and concepts offer new opportunities. But to exploit them will require a transformation in our organisational design and people. Ultimately, it is the people who can harness and exploit technology in revolutionary ways that will make the critical difference. The challenge for the organisation is how to create an eco-system that will be conducive to unleash the innovative minds of our people. While the exact “how” for the creation of this kind of ecosystem in a military organisation is still a topic of intense debates, it is generally agreed that openness, spirit of experimentation and intelligent risk-taking are the attributes that the organisation should encourage and consciously reward when there are visible, even if not huge, achievements.

Operationally, the transformation journey ahead is going to be filled with new ideas that may at first look like the dichotomy with traditional notions of how we do things. For example, with the advent of more capable computing, communicating and networking technologies, many arguments were centred on whether there should be greater centralisation or decentralisation in the function of Command and Control. It is useful to clarify the merits of each model in different specific context. But the more important point is to be cognisant of the dangers of falling into the mental traps to think of available options in terms of either “1” or “0” . Instead of hard-wiring the systems based on a particular model, the real opportunities today lies in the potential to create systems that are truly flexible and adaptive to prevailing conditions and requirements. Adaptiveness through continuous learning will truly be a premium competitive advantage for the organisation, especially at a time when many agree that the only certainty about the future is uncertainty.

Conclusions

To end, it may be interesting to highlight an analogy that Chief Defence Scientist, Prof Lui Pao Chuen, has used at various international and local forums to describe the challenges that the SAF is facing today:

Unlike the SAF in the past whose main focus is dealing with hot war, the strategic context today demands the SAF to be both a sprinter and marathon runner – the former to fight short, high intensity operations and the latter to sustain long, low intensity conflicts. Over-optimisation of one will be at the detriment of the other. This not only applies at the strategic design level but also at the capability structuring level.

The story of the German Luftwaffe's fighter aircraft design, for example, the Messerschmitt Bf-109 and Junkers 87 “Stuka” , during WWII is illustrative of what could happen if our suite of capabilities is locked in to handle a narrow operational context. While highly optimised and successful for Blitzkrieg operations, the limited range of the German fighter aircraft eventually became a liability at the Battle of Britain, as they could not stay over the battle area for very long before having to return home. The rest, as most people would say, is history.

Therefore, as the SAF explores the unknown in this journey of transformation, we must remain open and flexible to create options for plausible scenarios, experiment to surface relevant questions and solutions, and reserve capacity to deal with the uncertainty.

Endnotes

1 General Ronald R. Fogleman, Chief of Staff, United States Air Force, “Strategic Vision and Core Competencies ”, as delivered at the Air Force Association Symposium, Los Angeles, CA, 18 Oct 1996.

2 Colonel Phillip S. Meilinger, USAF, “Ten Propositions Regarding Air Power ”, Air & Space Power Chronicles, 1995.

3 Lessons from the Gulf War indicated several problems with medium and high-altitude bombing with unguided munitions, even with digital “smart platforms ”. First, the visual bombing pipper was two milli-radians wide. At a slant range of 20,000 feet, typical for high-angle dive deliveries, the pipper blanked out an area on the ground 40 feet across, often hiding the target. To the resulting errors must be added bomb dispersion errors. For example, the Mk 84 General Purpose bomb dispersion was 5-6 milli-radians. The result of both of these kinds of errors was a worst-case 160-foot missed distance, even if the pilot did everything right and the system worked perfectly. Richard P. Hallion, Precision Guided Munitions and the New Era of Warfare, Air Power Studies Centre, APSC Paper Number 53, 1995. He calculated from data that by the time of the Gulf War, the capabilities of ‘smart ’ airplanes dropping dumb bombs from medium altitudes were sufficient to place an unguided munition within 160 feet of a target.

4 Richard P. Hallion has examined the case of trying to hit, with a hit probability of 90 per cent, a target measuring 60 x 100 feet using 2,000 pound unguided bombs dropped from medium altitude:

War Number of Number of CEP Bombs Aircraft (in feet)

World War II 9,070 3,024 3,300

Korea 1,100 550 1,000

Vietnam 176 44 400

5 Precision-guided aerial munitions (PGM) in general refer to self-propelled aerial projectiles, guided in flight toward a target either by remote control or by internal mechanisms. The weapons can be launched from air or surface platforms, and vary widely in size and type, ranging from large strategic ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads to air-to-air missiles for air superiority battles to small, portable anti-tank weapons carried by foot soldiers. Although most are military weapons with explosive warheads, others may carry scientific instruments for gathering information within or above the earth ’s atmosphere. Ground attack PGMs in this article refers to a particular class of PGMs, including air-launched variants – laser-guided bombs (LGB), satellite-guided bombs (e.g. Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM)), air-launched cruise missiles, ground attack missiles (e.g. AGM-65 Maverick, Joint Stand-off Weapon (JSOW), and Joint Air to Surface Stand-off Missile (JASSM)) and ground- based systems, such as the US Army ’s Tactical Missile System (ATACM) and surface – launched cruise missiles. “US Missiles ”Federation of American Scientists. ( 10 Nov 2000).

6 McPeak, Merrill. “Precision Strike—The Impact of the Battle Space. ”Military Technology (May 2000): pp20-24.

7 Precision engagement will depend on three factors – precise aim, precise guidance and precise control. Precise aim depends on pre-launch target data update and orientation of the shooter. The common precise guidance can be from laser homing, inertial, optical or infrared imaging, or satellite signals from the Global Positioning System (GPS). Precise controls are normally realised through adjustable fins, and sometimes self-propulsion of the weapon.