Air superiority slipping out of West hands in UAV era: NATO commander
A senior British officer in NATO admits that the West can no longer rely on its fading aerial superiority as a win condition in modern combat.
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British Royal Air Force Typhoon fighter jets operating from Ämari Air Base in Estonia were scrambled June 15 to intercept two unknown contacts, the aircraft were intercepted and identified as a Russian Su-30 Flanker fighter and an Ilyushin IL-76 Candid transport aircraft (British Ministry of Defence)
Drones becoming a big thing in aerial combat means that the West can no longer count on having air superiority in war, Major General James Martin, the Commander of the United Kingdom's Warfighting Division told The Telegraph on Wednesday.
The West no longer has the airspace of battlefields in a chokehold, as Martin told British news outlet The Telegraph that the widespread access to cheap UAVs, which are also readily available and relatively easy to use, nearly "democratized" the air and the usage of aerial surveillance and reconnaissance.
The West no longer "assume[s] we have control of air space anymore," Martin said. "We don't assume we have air superiority or supremacy as we have done" in West Asia.
According to the senior UK military official, the West has now been forced into adhering to limited windows of opportunities to do what it wants to do due to the advances being made by the West's adversaries. "That's the difference between fighting a peer adversary vs fighting a counter-insurgency."
Though the "kinetics" of modern warfare are still the same, Major General Martin said, the West battling with a peer threat would be very different from what it was used to when it was fighting in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan during the invasions waged by the US and its allies of those countries all because of the capabilities available to the West's main adversaries being so heavily sophisticated.
"In Iraq and Afghanistan, we didn’t have to worry about this stuff because our opponents didn’t have the ability to do anything about it. He now does," he told The Telegraph.
One way, if not the only way, for the West to cope with their loss of aerial supremacy, is through camouflage and disguising the movement of troops, according to Major General Martin.
The British commander's words come as Russia is being accused of running out of long-range missiles, which is why Moscow has been resorting to UAVs.
Reportedly, Russia is chiefly using the Shahed-136/Geran-2 type kamikaze drone against Ukraine, with many reports surfacing about the matter in recent days.
The Russian armed forces have been conducting a vicious campaign over the past few days, which has seen Moscow shelling Ukraine and carrying out drone strikes, causing air raid sirens to blare throughout the country, and leading to a highly tense atmosphere.
Russia carried out over the past weeks strikes against infrastructure critical for the Ukrainian military, which happened to include facilities related to energy and connectivity.
Russian President Vladimir Putin explained the debacle by underlining that his country would not leave without response the crimes Kiev committed against Russian civilian infrastructure, primarily the explosion that took place on the Crimean bridge.
On Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed that Russia was deploying almost 2,500 attack drones purchased from Iran.
Despite Israeli and Ukrainian claims about alleged Iranian drones being used in the war in Ukaine, Tehran has repeatedly denied such accusations.
Iranian Foreign Minister Amir-Abdollahian had affirmed in an interview with La Repubblica newspaper that Iran would continue to avoid any steps that could prolong the war in Ukraine and did not confirm the sale of military equipment, including drones, to Russia.
Russia is a major player in the international arena, and its usage of Iranian drones promotes the latter and could see Iran's standing increase even further.
Iranian drones started to fly over Ukraine for the first time a few weeks ago. The drones flew from Crimea, according to Andriana Arekhta, a first sergeant in the Ukrainian armed forces, and headed to attack a special forces unit fighting near the southern city of Kherson.
Russia has deployed Iranian Shahed-136 and Mohajer-6 combat drones across Ukraine, which led to "devastating results". Some hit combat positions and destroyed tanks and armored vehicles.
According to Politico, it appears that Iranian drones may be a game changer for the Russians. They are relatively small and fly low, evading Ukrainian radars.
