🔷 Air Littoral...Superiority

The Air Littoral

Note: This is part 3 of a series about concepts in the control of the air. Part 1 covered control & denial; part 2 covered presence.

The war in Ukraine has drawn fresh attention to an old, largely ignored concept: the air littoral.

Down & Dirty

The air littoral, sometimes referred to as the air-ground littoral, is the airspace between ground forces and traditional air superiority altitudes—think low, slow, and close. It’s the space where helicopters operate and small-arms and short-range fires matter.

It’s also where the democratization and weaponization of large numbers of cheap drones has made it a popular topic.

What started in Mosul in 2017 as a surprise asymmetric nuisance became a key part of the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War.

In Ukraine, it’s been the defining environment of the war.

An Air Force Problem?

This renewed interest has generated a number of opinions about airpower, air superiority, and even the looming irrelevance of the US Air Force.

Some have even suggested this may be the Air Force’s “battleship moment.”

Not so fast.

If it flies, is it automatically an Air Force mission? Nope.

If it achieves an airpower-related outcome that rhymes with an Air Force mission like interdiction or SEAD, is it an Air Force mission? Nope.

In the past few years, there’s a whole lotta Air Force material published on this, but surprisingly only a few from the Army. Note that these are all academic opinions—definitions and doctrine for the air littoral does not exist.

The above links constitute 100+ pages of thoughts and explanations that are all very similar—so we’re going to focus on the 1 thing that almost all of them miss.

Command & Control

Here’s the thing: the air littorals have always existed and who commands and controls them is the most important detail.

So who owns air superiority under 2,000 feet?

In some cases it depends, but there are 20+years of operational experience that show it’s NOT the Air Force.

Anyone who flew missions in Iraq or Afghanistan knows there was an airspace deconfliction line called the coordination altitude.

This set the division of command and control and was usually 1,500 feet above ground level.

Above this line, the Combined Forces Air Component Commander (CFACC) had theater command and control, establishing procedures and structures to efficiently and dynamically allocate airpower across the entire country or countries at any given time—a key lesson learned from the failure of ‘penny-packeting’ airpower in 1943 at Kasserine Pass.

Below this line, regional commands were established based on the need to balance unity of command with the limits of span of control. These commands were assigned aviation brigades and attack reconnaissance battalions that operated AH-64 Apaches for organic air support.

Above this line, fixed-wing aircraft provided close air support (CAS) using 9-line procedures.

Below this line, rotary-wing aircraft provided similar support, but often with call for fire (CFF) 5-line procedures as an extension of the local ground commander.

The 2 worlds co-existed to support the same thing—though kept distinct due to the nature of unity of command and span of control.

Air Littoral Superiority

With this C2 context in mind, imagine if Afghanistan had a massive kamikaze drone problem that restricted the ground force’s ability to maneuver and execute their mission.

What force would be the one best organized, trained, and equipped to deal with this? And what command structure is best suited to deal with this?

Neither of those answers are likely the Air Force.

The Army air defense mission—specifically the SHORAD mission—is explicitly designed to protect fielded forces.

This is the difference between air superiority (an explicit Air Force mission) and air littoral superiority—an implicit Army mission.

Oh What

The Army willingly divested almost all SHORAD capabilities 20 years ago to make budget space for GWOT-centric fights in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Africa (ah, you forgot about Africa, didn’t you).

• Good news: The Army is sprinting to catch up with M-SHORAD, a portfolio of both kinetic and non-kinetic (laser and microwave) systems, and mid-sized organic ISR drones.

• Bad news: M-SHORAD and organic ISR compete for money against tangential yet massively expensive Army efforts like long-range hypersonic weapons and anti-ship missiles.

Fight’s On

Drones have made the air littorals too lethal to ignore and the mission to gain and maintain air littoral superiority demands localized command and decentralized control that is intrinsically linked to the ground commander and their fielded forces.

The Army has work to do because the adversary gets a vote, and technology nor time stands still—especially below that coordination altitude.

Feel free to steal air littoral superiority and run with it.

In That Number

3rd and 16

Yemen’s Houthi rebels reportedly shot down another US MQ-9 Reaper drone.

That’s 3rd lost in the last 30 days and brings the total to at least 16 MQ-9s shot down since the 2023 insurgency began.

TRIVIA

On this day in 1965, the United States launched the world’s first commercial communications satellite. Officially named Intelsat I, what was the satellite’s nickname?

A) Sky Messenger
B) Early Bird
C) Echo

On the Radar

The Navy’s next trainer jet won’t need to land on carriers. The Undergraduate Jet Training System (UJTS) program will replace the aging T-45 fleet but has had a number of delays getting started. One of them was the requirement to be carrier-capable, or at least capable of landing on carrier for FCLP training (Field Carrier Landing Practice). Now that’s been stripped from the requirements and the sense of urgency is get a production contract awarded by early 2027.

• The Merge’s Take: Ditching carrier landings is a big shift, signaling the Navy’s growing comfort with simulators, software-enabled landings, and just-in-time carrier quals once pilots hit the fleet. This move also opens the door for non-navalized training jets. Expect to see a massive effort between Boeing’s T-7 and Lockheed Martin-KAI’s T-50 to win the ~190-jet program. That’s a ~$4B payday.

The first operational OA-1K Skyraider II arrived at Air Force Special Operations Command. Produced by Air Tractor and modified by L3Harris, the OA-1K replaces the U-28A Draco for the AFSOC manned ISR mission. This first operational aircraft was delivered 6 months behind schedule.

• The Merge’s Take: The 62-aircraft fleet of modified crop dusters cost ~$16.5M each, but despite that high price, time will tell how useful it is—the flight test campaign could rear ugly warts. And yes, the OA-1K looks like a militarized live-action version of Dusty from Disney’s Planes, and now you can never unsee it. We’re clearly not the only one who thinks so either—check this out.

They Said It

“We’re in a race for technological superiority against a formidable opponent, and we cannot stand still. And 100-200 F-47s, that we’re not going to get for several years, is not going to keep us competitive. We’ve got to do more than that, and that has to include, I think, the Block 4 as well as the [Collaborative Combat Aircraft] and the Increment 2 of the CCA.”

— former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall during a recent interview

Our friend Jell-O from the Fighter Pilot Podcast debuted his memoir last Tuesday, April 1st (no joke).

Through the Yellow Visor:
The Life and (Mis)Adventures of a US Navy Fighter Pilot.

From an 8-year-old at an airshow to a Navy Commander with 3,000+ hours in the F/A-18, Jell-O shares his highs, lows, and everything in between—including his time as a combat pilot and TOPGUN instructor.

You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll learn how to land on an aircraft carrier (or, in Jell-O’s case, how not to), and you won’t believe the life-threatening medical condition he overcame to climb back into the cockpit of a high-performance jet fighter.

Grab Through the Yellow Visor in print or digital on Amazon — or get a signed copy straight from Jell-O at the Fighter Pilot Podcast website.

Check it out!

Knowledge Bombs

• Hanwha Aerospace & General Atomics are partnering to produce Gray Eagle STOL drones

• Leidos completed the first test launch of its AC-130-launched small cruise missile (video!)

• The Space Force awarded a combined $13.7B in launch service contracts to SpaceX ($5.9B), ULA ($5.4B), and Blue Origin ($2.4B)—the first time 3 companies will share responsibility for launching high-priority military and intelligence payloads

• The Philippines was approved to buy 20 F-16 Block 70 fighters ($5.6B deal)

• Sierra Space tested its Resilient GPS satellite, advancing the US Space Force’s Quick Start program

• Japan approved export rules to allow sales of the Japan-UK-Italy Global Combat Air Program (GCAP) fighter to 15 nations

• REGENT won a $10M contract to further demo its seaglider vehicle for Marine Corps logistics (check out our YouTube episode with the CEO)

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ANSWER
B. It was named Early Bird because it was the first of its kind—like the early bird catching the worm.