Air Supremacy - Methods

Methods

Although the destruction of enemy aircraft in air to air combat is the most glamorous aspect of air superiority this has not been, and is not, the only method of obtaining air superiority. Historically by far the most effective method of gaining air superiority is by the destruction of enemy aircraft on the ground and the destruction of the means and infrastructure by which an enemy may mount air operations, e.g. through the destruction of fuel supplies, the destruction of runways and the sowing of air-fields with area denial weapons. A historical example of this is Operation Focus in the beginning of Six-Day War in which the outnumbered Israeli Air Force dealt a crippling blow to the Egyptian, Jordanian, and Syrian Air Forces, achieving Israeli air supremacy.

This disruption can be carried out through both ground and air attack. On 6 December 1944, the Imperial Japanese Raiding Group Teishin Shudan destroyed B-29s on Leyte. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union claimed that it could achieve air superiority despite the inferiority of its fighters by over running NATO air-fields and parking their tanks on the runways (note the Germans used parts of their Autobahn as airfields during the last war). The Soviet Union also planned to use its Spetsnaz special forces in attacks against NATO airfields in the event of conflict.

Attack by special forces is seen by some commanders as one way to level the playing field when faced by superior numbers or technology; attacking German aircraft and airfields was the main role for which the British Special Air Service were formed. Given the disparity in effectiveness between their own fighters and the South Korean and US fighters they would face, North Korea maintains a large force of infiltration troops, who in the event of a war with the south would be tasked, amongst other missions, with attacking coalition air fields with mortar, machine gun and sniper fire, possibly after insertion by some 300 An-2 low radar-observable biplanes. Even in today's era of asymmetrical warfare, some 15 fedayeen destroyed or severely damaged 8 Marine Harrier jump jets in the September 2012 Camp Bastion raid with pilots fighting as infantry for the first time in seventy years.

To protect against conventional and unconventional ground attack, most air forces will train airmen in infantry skills. This reached the most extreme degree in Hermann Goring's 22 Luftwaffe Field Divisions, eventually totaling some quarter million men engaging in regular infantry action. In some air forces these may be airmen who receive infantry training in addition to other tasks or in others airmen who belong to units such as the RAF Regiment and United States Air Force Security Forces whose main task is the protection air fields and of aircraft on the ground.