Air Power’s First Transformation in the 21st Century

In the gray dawn of an August morning in 2024, the skies above Ukraine erupted. Two hundred thirty Russian missiles and explosive-laden drones — a steel rain of unprecedented scale — screamed toward their targets. This massive strike should have been devastating; each of the largest missiles carried enough explosives to level a city block. Yet by nightfall, the story wasn’t of destruction but of failure. Ukrainian air defenses had swatted 87% of the projectiles from the sky, leaving Russia’s supposedly mighty air force — some 600 combat aircraft strong — still sitting impotently on its bases, unable to influence the battle.

This wasn’t merely a tactical failure. It was an augury of warfare’s future, a glimpse into a reality that Western air forces have long dreaded but can no longer ignore. The age of the crewed combat aircraft, which has dominated military thinking for a century, may be ending not with the dramatic clash of titans long imagined, but with the whimper of obsolescence.

History has a way of retiring its kings. Just as the battleship — that sovereign of the seas — was rendered obsolete by air power in World War II, we are witnessing the twilight of the crewed combat aircraft. The executioners are manifold: ruthlessly effective air defenses, precision missiles, autonomous drones, and perhaps most decisively, the cold mathematics of modern military economics.

Consider the numbers, stark in their implications. The F-35, the crown jewel of Western air power, has hemorrhaged money — $209 billion over budget, a sum that would have seemed fantastic even to the most profligate defense planners of previous generations. Even the “affordable” option, an upgraded F-15, now costs over $90 million per airframe. Meanwhile, the U.S. Air Force’s fighter fleet has withered like autumn leaves, from 4,321 aircraft at the Cold War’s end to 1,294 in 2025. We are buying fewer planes not because we want fewer, but because we can no longer afford them.

The alternative presents itself with cold logic. Modern missile systems and autonomous drones can accomplish many traditional air power missions at a fraction of the cost, without risking pilots’ lives or requiring massive support infrastructure. China has already embraced this reality, developing sophisticated missile networks and air defense systems that could transform the Pacific into a no-fly zone in any future conflict. Even smaller nations now field missile arsenals capable of challenging traditional air power, democratizing the ability to contest the skies.

The romance of the strategic bomber — that dark angel of the nuclear age — persists in military imagination like a stubborn ghost. The U.S. Air Force pours billions into the B-21 Raider while Russia and China pursue their own next-generation bombers, as if replaying scenes from a war that has already passed into history. Similarly, crewed airplanes for close air support (CAS) missions are being replaced by lethal drones capable of taking on armored vehicles and tanks on the battlefield.

In an age when hypersonic missiles can strike any point on Earth within hours, when satellites track mobile targets in real-time, and when air defenses can detect even the stealthiest aircraft, the notion of sending billion-dollar bombers with human crews deep into enemy territory seems not just anachronistic but almost perverse. The B-52 may fly for a century, but it will be as a museum piece, a reminder of an era when putting humans in harm’s way was the only way to deliver strategic effects.

Yet technology alone does not write the obituary of air power as we know it. As Raymond Aron once observed, “Strategic thought draws its inspiration each century, or rather at each moment of history, from the problems which events themselves pose.” We stand witness to the twilight of the post-Cold War liberal order that shaped Western military power for three decades. The era of liberal interventionism — where Western air power could be deployed with relative impunity to enforce international norms — is ending. In its place rises a more pragmatic, multipolar world, where military force must answer to national interests rather than ideological imperatives.

This shifting political landscape transforms the very context in which air power operates. When multiple powers can contest the skies and where the political appetite for prolonged military interventions wanes, the assumption of persistent air superiority that underpinned Western military doctrine appears increasingly hollow.

The transformation of air power also depends on control in other contested domains, making its geostrategic and political implications even more serious. For example, space isn’t merely supporting air power anymore; it has become its nervous system. Modern air operations depend on satellites for everything from navigation to weapons guidance, creating a vulnerability as profound as it is invisible: disable the space segment, and you might neutralize an air force without ever engaging its aircraft.

The implications ripple through military planning like tremors before an earthquake. China, Russia and others have demonstrated anti-satellite capabilities ranging from direct-ascent missiles to subtle electronic warfare. Even simple Global Positioning System jamming could render a fifth-generation fighter — invisible to radar but blind to its position — into an exquisitely expensive piece of aerospace sculpture.

This vulnerability becomes more acute with each technological advance. Unlike airspace, orbital space cannot be occupied in the traditional sense. Control becomes about ensuring access to space-based capabilities while denying or degrading an adversary’s ability to use their space assets. The future demands resilience through redundancy, distributed capabilities and the ability to operate in degraded conditions.

But perhaps the most profound transformation lies in a realm we cannot see at all. Modern combat aircraft are no longer merely machines of metal and fuel; they are flying data centers, utterly dependent on the electromagnetic spectrum and cyberspace. Want to defeat an air force? You might not need a single missile. Simply deny them access to satellite navigation, jam their communications, or corrupt their mission planning systems, and those billion-dollar fighters become very expensive lawn ornaments.

This isn’t theoretical. In Ukraine, aircraft on both sides struggle to operate effectively through a soup of electronic warfare and GPS jamming. The F-35, with its much-vaunted sensor fusion and networking capabilities, becomes considerably less mighty when its digital sinews are severed.

The electromagnetic spectrum has become the invisible battleground where future air wars may be won or lost. Modern air defense systems rely not just on radar — they use complex networks of sensors operating across multiple frequencies. Counter-air operations increasingly focus on electronic attack rather than kinetic engagement. In this new reality, electromagnetic spectrum superiority may matter more than traditional air superiority.

The transformation becomes even more dangerous and complex in a world bristling with nuclear weapons. When precision conventional strikes can match nuclear weapons in accuracy, how does a nation under attack distinguish between them? The line between conventional and nuclear conflict blurs dangerously, potentially creating situations where every military engagement carries the seeds of nuclear escalation.

This nuclear dimension adds another layer of complexity to the transformation of air power and may prove to be the biggest rationale for maintaining crewed strategic bombers. Their very visibility and crew presence make their missions unambiguous in a way that missiles are not — a critical capability in a world where misinterpretation could trigger a nuclear catastrophe.

In any event, military forces face a Darwinian moment: adapt or become irrelevant. Future air power will be distributed across a constellation of platforms — some crewed, many unmanned, increasingly autonomous and heavily reliant on missiles. The days of fighter pilots dominating the battlespace are numbered, even if their final obituary remains unwritten.

The transformation of air power doesn’t diminish its importance — quite the opposite. Control of the air remains crucial to military operations, but achieving it looks radically different than it did even a decade ago. The future belongs to those who can effectively combine different capabilities — crewed aircraft, autonomous systems, missiles and space-based assets — into a coherent whole.

Just as the battleship admirals of the early twentieth century struggled to accept their vessels’ growing obsolescence, today’s air forces must face an uncomfortable reality. Those who adapt fastest to this new reality will shape the future of warfare. Those who don’t will be left defending expensive relics of a bygone era, exposing their forces to needless vulnerability.

The roar of jet engines may still stir the soul, but the future belongs to the whisper of missiles and the buzz of drones. The question isn’t whether this transformation is coming — it’s whether our military leaders possess the wisdom and courage to embrace it before it’s too late.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author.