What kind of technological advancements would render Air Power obsolete?

Considering how dominant air power is in modern warfare, the premise of this thread may sound far-fetched.

However, aircraft have always had a fundamental weakness: lack of armor. Sometimes this is compensated by making them big enough to support a moderate amount of armor. Most times, they compensate by being fast and flying high.

What if we developed a weapon that:

a) is powerful enough to destroy planes and missiles instantly
b) has pinpoint precision
c) can handle multiple targets simultaneously
d) has enough range to hit the stratosphere
e) can be miniaturized enough to be mobile

Directed energy weapons and rail guns come to mind.

If this kind of weapon was made operational, and assuming stealth was no longer a factor (a big assumption, I know...), aircrafts and missiles can be instantly destroyed. The only things that could stand against it would be heavily armored ground or naval units or artillery firing solid slugs from over the horizon.

Thoughts?

What would render Air power obsolete? Space Power. If you could produce SSTO Platforms at a Affordable cost and propagate them. Were talking beyond conventional range and flight envelopes. that could deploy weapons from orbit without cost a major chunk of GDP. but even then Air power would just evolve.

TerraN_EmpirE said:

What would render Air power obsolete? Space Power. If you could produce SSTO Platforms at a Affordable cost and propagate them. Were talking beyond conventional range and flight envelopes. that could deploy weapons from orbit without cost a major chunk of GDP. but even then Air power would just evolve.

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I actually think that space power goes hand-in-hand with air power, sort of like how navies need an amphibious landing force, unless we have space-based weapons that can hit tank-sized ground units with pin-point accuracy.

However, that kind of weapon would necessarily be a beefier version of the kind of ground based weapons I described above that I believe would render air power obsolete.

Well The conventional Air power as we know it evolved over the battlefields of WW1 as Scout planes evolved. Pilots from the other side crossing each other and the enemy lines first could only signal each other then someone realized they could try and attack so some Barnstorming pilot dropped a grenade. Eventually some pilot on the other side said "if he can drop a bomb I can shoot him." and then the grenade became larger and the pistol became a machine gun. and the speeds got faster and the loads became larger and after WW1 someone realized that if you can drop a bomb you can drop a soldier and things evolved from there.

Now Even if the Top tier nations get your super tech that is going to leave smaller less well funded nations who will continue with what they have and likely look to use the relic surplus aircraft of the top tier nations.
Also Just because you have your super weapons it does't necessarily mean that all the missions of Air power are filled. Think about Intercepts of Civilian aircraft, Transport of Military forces and Logistics. You are still going to have lots of options. on the conventional side unless you develop Teleportation.

The basics of Airpower would still apply. And although Your deploying some form or super weapon that might have a global reach you have to think about the speed at which small attacks could still happen. I mean Were assuming that stealth is out fine, but what about range and time and size? Think small drones. If you have your super weapon trying to Clear the skies of a theater ranging into the stratosphere. What do you do about Low altitude attacks? Small Drones launched in swarms each weighing dozens of pounds flying at high speed and maneuvering. sure you can try to wipe them out but if they are mixed among the buildings and surface clutter those can still get in close to your troops and make a mess. pop up guerilla warfare.

You know Sol, back in the early 2000's I remember there was a Larry Bond Novel That this is reminding me of.
Lash Up by Larry Bond.
Remember this was from the early millennium and I suspect Bond had written it even earlier So it's a bit dated on tech but the Story was that the PRC deployed a Gerald Bull Super Gun and It was knocking The US out of Space, by destroying Communications and GPS satellites knocking holes in the US ability to react well simultaneously making big pushes Against US Allies in SEA.
The US has to respond So they launch a crash Course of launching sats to fill gaps and building tech, They repurpose the Venture star from Lockheed Martin.
Venture star was supposed to be a single stage to orbit Space plane aimed to replace the shuttle, It was canceled in the last days of the Clinton administration. Anyway they arm the Venturestar with lasers and Rods from god. They goat the PRC, into destroying a few more satellites. They use the sacrifice to triangulate the trajectory of the Asat round and then the point of firing.

This is a important point here about the Relationship between Space and Air power. In both it's all about DeltaV. but in a Atmosphere it's Drag vs Lift. vs in Space where it's Thrust and momentum vs Gravity. Less Top Gun more butterfly effect.

In Lash Up, The PRC figures out what the Us is up to and Threatens to destroy the Craft before it can deploy against them. The Crew of the Venture star renamed "Defender" uses this to there advantage. They leak the launch and plan it for the night so that the PRC can see it, and know it's happening. They then have a false launch using a fighter jet on afterburners and the low light to Trick the PLA gun crews into firing. This is important because of orbital dynamics. For an Intercept of a object in space, you need precise timing of when the object will be in just the right spot for just the right moment to align.
By performing the False Launch stunt the Press and any agents in the crowd would see it and think it was the launch and transmit the time. By transmitting the Time of Launch and calculating the Mass and location vs the known Trajectory The PRC gun crew would have programed the counter launch to intercept for the best launch window. Mean time after a few moments the real launch took place placing the attack in a different orbital window. The fired gun ( in this case by being a Bull super gun) is used up and the Defender in the story launches attacks on the Super gun, knocking it out and make strikes against the PLA from orbit.
By being in orbit It could launch it's strikes thousands of miles away from targets and be well out of conventional interception range.

Overall Though. I really think that in the end as long as earth has a atmosphere and Man has powered flight Air power will be a critical.

I'm definitely not going to dispute that as long as Earth has an atmosphere, air transportation will be critical. However, the "Air Power" I had in mind was more related to the concept of air superiority. The way I see it, the purpose of air superiority is to allow bombers to make attack runs safely. Bombers are effective because they can attack targets from a very long range and is protected from most ground based weapons. If we took away that advantage, making bombers as vulnerable as, say, a piece of artillery, then the whole concept of achieving air superiority goes down the drain.

Aircrafts would obviously always have a role, but whereas today the dominant force in warfare is air power, could we in the future see that dominance shifted back toward ground forces and heavy armor?

solarz said:

Aircrafts would obviously always have a role, but whereas today the dominant force in warfare is air power, could we in the future see that dominance shifted back toward ground forces and heavy armor?

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Modern armor evolved at the same time as Air power. So shifting back is not a reality as Heavy armor was never really a stand alone to begin with it evolved along side Air power
Infantry and artillery were stand alone, but are as you said vulnerable to attack from above, however standing alone Infantry and Artillery bog down. Infantry because when two infantry forces clash it's more or less accidental and a matter of who brings more "Fire power" and Artillery because it's vulnerable to attack as a fixed position and needs up to date targeting on enemy positions.

Armor more or less in the modern sense evolved after WW1 to as one of three the Cavalry and Horse Infantry revolutions including Air cav and Paratroops.
Achieving air superiority is critical as it's the automatic high ground, offering uncontested attack but it also serves as a critical control node gathering information and distributing it. If you removed Air power, it breaks down to a conflict of blind infantry as your artillery breaks down and is no longer able to target long range.
Armor may charge in and scout but they would be limited by lack of information distribution, they bumble around like infantry hoping to find the enemy and find themselves more or less in a stalemate, as modern tanks tend to be tied in armor and weapons. Same for infantry. The Conflict would likely turn in to a long drawn out war of attrition with both sides bleeding the other out in hopes that eventually one would give up.

TerraN_EmpirE said:

Modern armor evolved at the same time as Air power. So shifting back is not a reality as Heavy armor was never really a stand alone to begin with it evolved along side Air power
Infantry and artillery were stand alone, but are as you said vulnerable to attack from above, however standing alone Infantry and Artillery bog down. Infantry because when two infantry forces clash it's more or less accidental and a matter of who brings more "Fire power" and Artillery because it's vulnerable to attack as a fixed position and needs up to date targeting on enemy positions.

Armor more or less in the modern sense evolved after WW1 to as one of three the Cavalry and Horse Infantry revolutions including Air cav and Paratroops.
Achieving air superiority is critical as it's the automatic high ground, offering uncontested attack but it also serves as a critical control node gathering information and distributing it. If you removed Air power, it breaks down to a conflict of blind infantry as your artillery breaks down and is no longer able to target long range.
Armor may charge in and scout but they would be limited by lack of information distribution, they bumble around like infantry hoping to find the enemy and find themselves more or less in a stalemate, as modern tanks tend to be tied in armor and weapons. Same for infantry. The Conflict would likely turn in to a long drawn out war of attrition with both sides bleeding the other out in hopes that eventually one would give up.

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I agree with the importance of aircrafts in recon, and I think this would be where its primary role would be shifted to. As drone technology matures, I envision large fleets of recon drones automatically patroling the skies. They would even be equipped with weapons designed to take down other drones, but would be vulnerable to ground-based anti-air weapons. Their role would be to fly as close to the enemy as possible and transmit data before being destroyed. Thus they would be designed to be as cheap and as fast as possible.

solarz said:

I agree with the importance of aircrafts in recon, and I think this would be where its primary role would be shifted to. As drone technology matures, I envision large fleets of recon drones automatically patroling the skies. They would even be equipped with weapons designed to take down other drones, but would be vulnerable to ground-based anti-air weapons. Their role would be to fly as close to the enemy as possible and transmit data before being destroyed. Thus they would be designed to be as cheap and as fast as possible.

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Then it would still be Air power, just evolved into a smaller form.
Remember that you can count on a single hand the number of nations with full bombers. The US, Russia and China. The rest use fighter bombers which are more or less reconfigured or multi role fighters or Coin types which are reconfigured flight trainers.