Preparing for the LAST war: Flawed Western Air Power 

It is possible to both prepare for the future you visualize and be wrong. Lessons learned in the past are only part of the problem. The enemy gets a vote as well. Also, your military strategy is a build strategy. This means that it takes years to adapt to growing trends and new tech.

One seldom hears a speaker say so much while actually telling so little. Perhaps, someone should stop asking the RAF do a job the RAF had no funding for from consecutive governments. RAF already has most conventional capabilities to counter current threats (together with NATO allies): capable pilots, platforms, stand off strike capability and BVR engagement capability. The government has to spend money to scale RAF capabilities (allocate funds to design/purchase/procure new platforms, weapons and personnel training) according to mission requirements (someone has to stop asking the military accomplish things it had no capability for). The government either allocates pertinent resources to the RAF including budget, time and human material... Or someone may set up an eco friendly office full of people distant from aviation, who are going to waste copious amounts of paper and tax payers' money to accomplish nothing.

Wow, some serious clickbait title 👌🏼

Sounded more like an assignment for an MBA.

I think the premise stated in the title of this video is flawed. The flaw of western air power is not that is has been preparing for the last war, the flaw is that until recently it has not been preparing for any war. It had been too busy flying CAS support missions against insurgent militias in the sandbox to spend any money on preparations for the next war. In fact, when USAF tried to prepare for the next war it was shut down by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who sarcastically accused the service of "next-war-itis". He slashed production of the F-22 fighter so he could have more drone orbits over the Taliban. Now USAF has been forced to buy new F-15s to fill the fighter gap that resulted from abbreviated F-22 production. And the old saw about preparing for the last war has never really applied to air forces because even more so than the other services, technology drives capability and doctrine, and they have to think ahead just to keep up. Try to tell the USAAC in the 1930s that they were preparing to fight the last war as they were fighting over strategic bombing theory in order to revolutionize the way with next war would be fought. Try to tell USAF that they were preparing to fight the last war (Korea) when they were preparing to fight the next war (nuclear) in order to not have to fight it. That tired old saw about the last war really doesn’t cut it in this application.

Sounds like she’s not actually intimate with various countries’ militaries (specifically, branches with large amounts of aircraft) cultures and their decision making processes beside the U.K.’s, which is understandable. She was presented as such. Never claimed she was. And she’s British.

I frankly didn't understand what is wrong about the western air power. Are the airplanes wrong? Is the training of the pilots wrong? Is the strategy or are the tactics wrong? Is the maintenance wrong?... Yes, I do understand the truism that the military usually prepares to fight the last war. But, beyond that my mind is left uninspired by the talk.

The aphorism that the military is always preparing to fight the last war might be true, but isn't it also true of the enemy? Look at Russia in Ukraine: it tried to fight one of American's last wars, the invasion of Iraq, by applying it to Ukraine and failed miserably. Now it has reverted to how it fought even *earlier* wars, a combination of the First and Second World Wars, but with a lot of comparatively small modern innovations thrown in: drones, loitering weapons, hypersonic missiles, cruise and ballistic missiles, precision-guided munitions (where they still have them), etc, etc. Regardless of whether you are set up to fight tomorrow's war, yesterday's war, or last century's war, the most important thing is that you need to be set up to *win* the war. The big question we have in the West is whether we are set up to win *today's* war, the one Ukraine is fighting on our behalf. A year in, not only are we still holding back on providing the weaponry and munitions Ukraine needs to win the war, we haven't even begun to ramp up industry to manufacture the basics, such as 155mm artillery rounds, to meet the demand of the war and to restock the assets that have been and are being transferred to Ukraine. Russia, on the other hand, in spite of its failures on the battlefield, *has* ramped up production, with three shifts operating around the clock. In spite of their woeful performance, and the significant impact of Western sanctions on their economy, Russia is prepared for the long haul, in anticipation of eventual, slow, grinding victory. Is the West prepared to respond appropriately?

The (British) Commonwealth Trainig Program in Canada trained pilots from around the world. Cheers from the Pacific West Coast of Canada.

One of the traps in planning and acquisition is to see systems as linear progressions replacing similar systems. This is exacerbated by marketing efforts that divide into semi arbitrary generations of systems that do not necessarily align with the military priority needs in past conflicts, much less future conflicts. For example, we can now see that large fighter aircraft with large long range radars and large external weapons loads appear to be most critical in the Ukraine conflict where neither side has air dominance. The persistence of ground based air defenses and the political factors that restrict military operations across borders created a situation where seeing at extreme range and launching large weapons and large volumes of weapons lofted at high altitude to extend range is the new norm. Some platforms previously seen as on the way out because of lack of full stealth or aging systems might actually be more useful than assumed. Typhoon, F-15, and MiG-31 for examples. F-15EX might be a step in the right direction. It seems to me that while stealth and drones will play important roles there also is a need for long engagement range large missile carrying platforms. Since this implies external stores to maximize firepower, then full stealth is impossible but there can nevertheless be improvements in minimizing radar cross section in a cost effective and near zero maintenance manner by shaping, durable materials, serpentine engine intakes, and jigsaw edges. Gap fillers and exotic high maintenance radar absorbing materials can be ignored to keep costs down and reduce maintenance time because they are the source of many additional costs in time and money with observability improvements only really relevant for aircraft with internal weapons. Aircraft such as KF-21 Boramae might actually be on the right track as an end point, not just as a stepping stone towards a model with internal weapons. Missile ranges are improving but to take full advantage of this requires detection and lock at longer ranges. Large fighters with large nose volume can have radars with larger antenna arrays and longer effective ranges. Dual engine fighters also provide more electrical power to drive these sensors and associated avionics. Large, cost effective, low observable high firepower fighters are the way forward. These will complement the stealth fighters in much more meaningful ways than previously thought and will provide utility as workhorses in a variety of missions. My example is just one of many blind spots that we should look at more closely and incorporate into plans without dismissing them as “last generation” or “not x type of system”

Obtaining interviews with such genuine players. That's an absolute credit to you sir, love your work.

Thank you so much for the subtitles

A couple of examples of outsider thinking. Billy Mitchell came up through the Army Signals Corp and saw the combat potential of airplanes beyond their first role in supporting, observation and communications. Tank treads which had their origins in agricultural equipment. This leads back to the first step of problem solving, defining the problem. Why will we be fighting? Where will be fighting? (and the rest of Kipling's friends) If we build space lasers to shoot down Chinese balloons, what will we do when the battle turns out to be losing hearts and minds on TikTok?

Compared to who?...

The anchoring bias is the trouble. Instead of looking at technology and trends to rethink the compromises of the past people think that the old ways are mostly right but stuff needs to be added.

A remarkably substance free interview. There is little to no substantive ideas presented, beyond a cursory overview of the institutional culture of the Air Force. Any Air Force.

No offense, but with my experience in the usmc I can tell you first hand to challenge a senior military ranked individual with the idea that what their doing is wrong isn't comparable to career suicide it is career suicide.

Thank you for your service.

You ask great interview questions.

The USAF and Western European air forces are not at all planning for the last war. Lots of them bought the F-35 particularly due to the threat posed by S-400. They now have stand-off weapons, anti-radiation missiles, BVR air-to-air missiles, sensor fusion and network-centric warfare. Military officers are not idiots, they are not allowed to speak about tactics publicly, but there's lots of military simulation and analysis taking place that we know nothing about.

The truth is whether your Air Power is flawed or not depends on who your opponent is. It's just not economically feasible to make an Air Force that can in fact take on every conceivable threat. I doubt many ground force commanders across the world thought that the Ukraine War would be like a WW1 war of attrition, but here we are. I doubt anyone knows what the next "Air War" will be like, so it's tough to predict what is the optimal Air Power for the next war.

IF you're a politician, or human being, and want to know how things get into space, get Kerbal Space Program. It looks like a kids game, but it is THE BEST tool for teaching someone how orbit works in just a few minutes. The sequel looks promising, but apparently needs work, stick with the OG KSP if you want to learn.

I think it's interesting that space forces seem to be a logical extension of air forces today, but looking far into the future space forces often seem more akin to blue water navies.

Not sure this is original but to the point of the video I am at, you got two chuckles out of your guest. Cheers

I saw a clip of this lady from the BBC, wanted to see if the soundbites were accurate. Thank you!

The lesson of the Battle of Britain is that it was won with Radar, not Spitfires. If we aligning to (avoid) war with Russia & China, who have highly sophisticated air defence, being an Airforce that’s not Radar visible and partly disposable (drones) seems a logical focus.

you have masterfully baited me with that title, well done {:

One point about the historical effectiveness of the RAF, they have not shot down a single fixed wing aircraft since the Israeli war of independence in 1948. All these MiG15s, A4 Skyhawks and Mirages downed during the Korean and Falklands Wars were shot down by Fleet Air Arm aircraft operating from Royal Navy aircraft carriers.

In the military budget process- from 1970…debates amongst generals for money was always heated over latrinesso to speak..but new tech kit- nobody had a clue so decisions were arbitrary …last minute.

Woah Im amazed she so smart " things will change " that will be a million quid please , brilliant !

I think western air forces are struggling to deal with asymmetric responses to their force modernization programs. The Chinese are the only real symmetric adversary that seems to be keeping up technologically, and their numbers are limited. The greater threats to modern air forces are probably force protection, network attacks, out of date command and control, and mis-matched capabilities for the conflict type (I.E. dropping bombs on terrorists with Typhoons because you never invested in a more affordable platform). It will be a challenge to get the politicians and military brass to shift significant amounts of resources into dealing with these issues and accepting a modest and cheaper modernization of combat air power, rather than dumping everything into a new 6th gen fighter.

Great interview Chris. I think this is the second time you've interviewed Dr. Sophie. You can definitely see the work you put into the questions you asked. And the good doctor showed her depth of knowledge while not boasting of her long career in the service. I'm hoping these series continues for many more episodes!

Is any air force up to date? I would suggest the answer to that is no. In what way then, is western air power out of date?

you always fight the next war with the last wars weapons and tactics which are then changed by experience gained

Preparing for the next war is very hard as it basically requires looking into the future. It can work if you have good intel on how your most likely enemies expect to fight in the future, but you don't always have that and sometimes you think you know but you're wrong. If you can spy on your enemy so well that you know his current doctrine (not his doctrine from the last war), he's probably not a peer enemy to begin with. It is also possible to prepare for the next war, only to find out that you should've been preparing for the last war and that your ideas aren't ready yet. The US had a very futuristic approach to air combat in Vietnam and found out that their missiles aren't as reliable as they thought and that guns weren't obsolete yet. Before Korea, both sides thought that the next big war would be nuclear and that conventional weaponry wouldn't be as important. They were wrong.

I think we should use the term "Orbital" instead of "Space" to define that "Domain"... I understand why we use "Space", but it doesn't help to generate the understanding of what has to be considered in that domain. However, if you use the term "Orbital Domain", it's clearer from a strategic conceptualization & planning perspective..

I feel like we've reached peak military strategy. The current war has devolved into a style of warfare used over 100 years ago. The only way militaries can advance, in my opinion, would be technologically.

did she even answer a question in a concrete way or did she just mention buzzwords through the entire thing?

Great discussion! Which in regards to the US we always prepare for the last war only to pivot during the next one and still win it(Unless we get bored...)

An academics view. It's amazing how you don't know what you don't know.

There are several comments of people taking exception to the mention of climate crisis in relation to a discussion on defense matters. Perhaps an exploration of this topic could warrant a future video?

Other than the Battle of Britain reference, if your guest is providing guidance to the powers that be: I do hope they are less confused than I am about the incoherence in the answers to the title here: "Preparing for the last war?"

If western airpower is out of date , how far behind is the eastern and developing world????

Down from 19 fighter squadrons down to 5 the Royal Airforce has been in decline for the last 20 years

If you look at which warships, airplanes, and other equipment survived the peace-war and war-peace transitions the best, you find it was the most general purpose weaponry. Cruisers and destroyers built to the most stringent specifications had no flexibility built in and were usually too constrained for space to handle new equipment, like radar and AAA batteries. The F4U Corsair survived well into the Korean War as an all-round asset while the P-51 was too focused to carry radar or a good bomb load. The F-14 was put to pasture sooner than the F-15 because it was such a special case and its proponents resisted the ground attack role until it was too late; carriers don't have the room to spare. The B-52 is a general purpose bomber repurposed from high level to low level; the B-1 and B-2 are too special purpose to be kept around. (I know only the US stuff but I am certain it applies to all other military equipment too.) Or maybe I am ignorant and just cherry picking 😲 But you can't plan for the next war, you can only plan for flexibility and expandability.

Some excellent points, would love an in depth interview related to corruption and procurement issues with developing nations like the Indian Air Force, desperate procurement strategies leading to a frankensteins monster of a fleet consisting of fishbeds,floggers,rafales,jaguars, fulcrums and flankers while being offered hornets, gripens and fulcrum-ks for it's increasing naval aviation capability.

I did not understand the entire space debate. What were they even talking about? What capability or technology?

The sound quality of the Dr. microphone is bad and hard to follow

DR SOPHY YOU ARE A GREAT LADY ! USA USA

the way to prepare for the next war is practice in little wars - ring rest is ring rust

In the longer term, with interplanetary and interstellar space, the Navy is much more likely to be a better model for the future of the Space Force than the Air Force.

i would love to follow this discussion but i can hardly understand her with the ad audio quality. I quit the video after only a few minutes. Hopefully the audio quality of all participants will be good again in the next videos.

Well USAF apparently wants their NGAD to give them F22 like dominance c. 2006 again but I'm not sure even we (America) can afford aircraft that costly.

Do any of the viewers of this channel, or the author, have an opinion as to which way anti-drone SHORAD is going to go? Will we see a resurgence of Gepard like vehicles, or will it be all be EW, or a mix? I'll partially answer my own question by saying that EW can't counter INS guided munitions, so I expect there will still need to be some rock tossers.

Aircraft are always behind when it comes to radar defense and missile technology

US hasn't lost yet. yes, we always look back and make mistakes. but so are our enemies, and they have even less experience to draw from than we do. But people don't realize how far forward looking some in the military actually are. No one has a crystal ball. People simply don't realize just how OP the US military is in many ways.

Aerospace forces make sense, because people live on the earth's surface and nobody lives in space.

i'll take that topic with a grain of pepper. nato is neither dumb nor blind.

The problem isn’t looking back at the Battle of Britain, it’s about what you see. To me, it shows us that having a modern, well prepared Air Force is slightly important.

Will there be a direct conflict between nuclear powers ever?

I have a theory that the last generation of American fighters were so OP that the russians cant even keep up with those either even with their new PakFA

Just go full stealth

the basic problem was assigning a large portion of your budget to a program designed at a time when future threats are not concrete and tech is moving rapidly. the f35 is very good at fighting the war in ukraine with the emphasis on air denial land based systems, but because of lack of urgency to consider future threats, designed against u.s. current plans, the big f35 program did not go far enough and made sacrifices for legacy requirements. things like missile range, aircraft range and space oriented stealth are vulnerabilities, while stuff like maneuverability and commonality (that is not even realized) are not worthwhile objectives or their justifications can be accomplished in other ways such as better digital design and testing.

perhaps fearmongering is not the right way...

Germany has a space command now? Oh chris you simply *must* do a vid on them and plz fill it with oblique references to “Raumpatrouille Orion”!

When it comes to the RAF, it goes deeper than preparing for the last war. Any thinking about the last vs the next war assumes that there will be a next war. In the context of just the RAF, you can't make that assumption. Squeezed in between two very large friendlies, it has nothing to do, no enemy to have a war with, except in the context as a sidekick to these friendlies. To be more specific, the best the RAF can do right now is not to plan for the next war but to donate its kit to Ukraine and then adopt a stance more like Ireland. Which is not what they will do, they will do like what they always done the last few wars, harp on about preparing for the next war, not the last war, which is basically the same as preparing for the last war. Russia has the same problem. Facing a unified Europe, their geostrategic situation has fundamentally changed. They have spent decades carefully thinking about the next war when they shouldn't have been thinking about war at all. So thinking about e.g. drones etc is so last war. The next war will be in the South China Sea and for that war, e.g. drones will not be as important as for a ground war. For various reasons. It's a valid question. The topic is classic. Just being asked to the wrong person and in the wrong context.

“Without further ado” is a RU-vid cliché. You need a better segue.

I think that part of the impediment to to conceptualizing on a broad front comes from the influence of social Darwinism in our culture. We fixate on "the king of beasts", the apex predictor, yet the flexibility of natural selection is in the diversity of the species that will provide the successor to the king when his species goes extinct, the insignificant mammals that replaced the dinosaurs. Conceptualizing which will be the military mammal of the future requires sifting through 10,000 potential possible solutions. Maybe this would be a good use of AI, to generate a diverse range of options that goes beyond the cultural biases of a human planner.

I would say relativistically not

The lady’s audio is very hard to make out, so unfortunately I cannot listen.

the past is now part of the future , the present is well out of hand

Nice Video. Looking forward to more 👍

If you do an interview with a Brit you got to be aware that their answers are always self-centered.

The comments are going to be hot🔥🤣

I think the future has the potential for different air war scenarios. A new war against some middle east terrorist state is going to be something entirely different than the big military confrontation of the west with China. So we need the capabilities for different scenarios.

Navy commanders love ships Air marshals love plans, when you challenge their forces direction / worth in a modern conflict there blinkered and bias. I mean what would offer most value in a Russian/ NATO war , a 10b dollar fighter jet program or 5b dollar drone program and 5b dollar air missile / laser defence program. Yet no modern air force could honestly look at swapping fighter jets for drones and air defence, or Aircraft carriers vs a space based global power projection

solution: more money for defense contractors

Excellent presentation Chris - as always. However. I have - no doubt impudent - questions of Dr Antrobus. Specifically - 1) Her contention that climate change is the greatest security concern in our time. A somewhat odd observation given that more nations than ever have nuclear deliverabilty. 2) Of course the UK did not fight alone in the BoB. Britain NEVER fights alone when contesting with peer adversaries (except during the American War of Independence - and we all know how THAT ended). However - the ADGB was a totally UK driven system. 3) The UK had one enemy during the Cold War which is why they find in difficult to pivot to other combatant scenarios . The Falklands War?

Although this interview was interesting the audio quality made it genuinely painful to listen to, I mean how hard is it to have an acceptable audio setup as a working person with a job ? You can get an ok mic for like 50 euros...

Is the flaw their culture? I don't see nothing substantial but culture.

What you're saying is Australia needs F-111 capabilities in a stealth platform. I just keep hearing that.

I feel like an understated point in war is morale, at least here in the USA, fewer and fewer people actually want to join the military and therefore the military goes out of its way to automate more and more of its functions, thus painting itself in an even worse light since autonomous war machines are VERY frowned upon, only making the problem worse

Well 'the opposition' has demonstrated they are still using stuff from the last war, so we should be good.

Well, looking at the Ukraine front WW1 tactics are still actual, so I’m not sure if the west’s AirPower is so obsolete. An F-16 wouldn’t have performed too bad in the battle of the Somme, would it?

Special military operations are not wars, its an attempt to sieze territory without encountering much organised resistance. In an actual war, its really difficult to win since both sides are commited to fighting until they cant. This means long term attrition, and is always weighed in favor of industrial capacity, secure supply chains and numerical advantage. This is how the US won WW2. Relative technological advantages plays an important role but its not a game changing role as its more tactically significant but has little impact at the strategic level, unless you are using nukes... but when you use nukes against a foe with stockpiles of world ending nukes then everyone loses.

Western airpower? You sound like as if there was some other 'airpower'....

It's Spain '36-'39 all over again. Until your military hits combat, you really don't know.

Not sure how you can say western air power is flawed, considering the US is producing F-35 stealth fighters very quickly, armed with missiles that snipe you from 3 countries away while being radar guided by an AWACS aircraft far out of harms way. And that is just what we know about it. No one else has that many stealth fighters. Russia has a handful of SU-57s that are only as stealthy as an F-18, while the Chinese J20 is in production but they have far less of that than F-35 and is likely an inferior fighter, albeit it is dangerous due to actually being a stealth craft. Russia is broke and won't be able to afford the tech race, while China is struggling right now to build as many as it has and still operates airframes that are copies of Mig-21 and 23. There isn't going to be an air force in the world that is gonna do well against western air power once F-35s replace legacy air frames in vast numbers. The US alone has 450 in service and intends to have a fleet of over 2000 while its allies will have hundreds more.

As far as big changes in military aviation we have seen a number of changes since WW2 and the post war years where the jet engine, Aa and SA guided missiles, and nukes drove huge changes. 1. The advent of Stealth and the change from low altitude operations to medium to high altitude. 2. GPS and stand off air to surface missiles and precision guided bombs. 3. Network centric warfare and multi-sensor fusion and global reach back. 4. UAVs and Loitering munitions and (now emerging AI) What seems to be a emerging issue is the long range missile threat to aircraft on the ground as well as the long range threat to aircraft carriers. This is manifesting itself in two strategies to cope with this emerging threat, having longer range aircraft (as well as maybe more survivable tanker) and remote basing. In regard to more survivable tankers there is making them more stealthy as well as un-manned. Another possibility in that regard is perhaps making them amphibious as well so that they can be refueled by submarines and then ferry that fuel to combat aircraft. In regard to remote basing one can try to make the aircraft more suitable for that with technologies such as STOVL and more rugged landing gear and FOD screening and such albeit at cost to the aircraft's performance. Another approach might be to launch legacy aircraft from the back of fast moving semi trucks which then enable aircraft to take off from a wider range of roads and road conditions such as those that have small curves or hills or even potholes and such... which BTW, I made and uploaded a few videos on my RU-vid channel that describe that in a bit more detail). Another option is to look at new types of aircraft such as gyrocopters which have an innate ability to work off of remote bases (or even fields0 and could benefit from the advent of light weight, long rage stand off weapons such as the BAE guidance kit for the venerable (and low cost) 2.75 inch rocket (APKWS) as a low cost close air support platform. Another option might be to de-manned say retiring aircraft instead of sending them to the boneyard with Tesla bot like robots that can flay them in lieu of human pilots.

a working microphone on her side would have been great!

Picking small and/or poor countries and showing superiority, that is NATO way, including UK.

it all costs money dude lots of it!

The only voices that matter are MIC lobbyists $$$$$.

I don’t dare challenge your knowledge on this, but you need to also compare who you are fighting against. If western military thinking is 20 years out if date, then Russian thinking is clearly based in the 1970s. I think this question is better applied to naval thinking. I greatly fear that carriers are now giant missile/drone magnets that will be overwhelmed and sunk very quickly. An example of the West re-fighting the lessons of WW2 against Japan.

Ich finde es Schade das Deutschland nicht aus dem Fiasko der Starfighter gelernt hat und schon wieder bei Lokheed jets kauft!

Blurry background made me nauseous, had to stop.

Is it out of date . No bo its not with the majority of the world still in 3rd to 4th gen west is fine especially that they are working on new planes now

Rapidly obsolescence Western AIr Power - two words: Eurofighter Typhoon.

Did she seriously suggest climate change is going to be the biggiest future challange....is it really gonna be the air forces biggest problem tho?

No one is prepared for war until it happens. Most of the time throughout history, the initial battles are bloody and messy. It's only a year or so after when tactics solidify to a point of worthy execution. How to prepare for that? War games. New ideas. Relying on the brass is a fool's method. Need fresh blood of all stripes to test the system. Pretty sure the pentagon is doing just that on a regular basis. If they aren't; what the f am I paying taxes for? Britain specifically is not a military power. It is however one of if not the most refined covert ops system this planet has ever seen. People think the Mossad are the experts and they are top shelf but Britain's covert ops is simply better. Hell, the Mossad taught them decades ago and they ran with it.