A futures literacy exercise in warfare, technology, and strategic adaptability
Military aviation is approaching an inflection point, but the popular conclusions are premature. Drones are not replacing aircraft, runways are not obsolete, and warfare is not inevitably moving underground and into space. Each is a possible development. None is the settled future.
The more useful question is whether the assumptions that have organized military power for the past century are beginning to break down.
The current evidence points in several directions at once:
- Ukraine shows that inexpensive unmanned systems can severely constrain the employment of extraordinarily expensive manned aircraft.
- The Middle East shows that technologically superior air forces cannot necessarily prevent adversaries from launching missiles and drones.
- Underground infrastructure protects against surveillance and precision attack while introducing new vulnerabilities and operational constraints.
- Airfields and aircraft carriers concentrate combat power in increasingly targetable locations.
- Commercial technology is challenging assumptions about propulsion, autonomy, manufacturing, and the physical infrastructure that mobility requires.
- Space provides unprecedented surveillance, communications, and navigation while becoming a contested environment itself.
Each development matters individually. Together they raise a larger question: is military power shifting from platform-centric forces to adaptable systems of distributed military effects?
The exercise uses futures literacy in the UNESCO sense. The aim extends beyond forecasting technologies to examining the assumptions behind expectations of the future, exploring alternative futures, and using those possibilities to reconsider decisions in the present.
Three distinctions hold throughout.
Technological possibility is not operational feasibility. A car that briefly lifts off the ground is not an aircraft. A drone that launches vertically does not replace a fighter.
Battlefield observations are not universal laws. What works in Ukraine’s dense air-defense environment may fail in the Pacific, the Gulf, or a conflict with different geography and force structures.
Adaptation is reciprocal. Drones provoke electronic warfare, electronic warfare encourages autonomy, and autonomy encourages new forms of detection and deception. The cycle has no obvious endpoint.
1. Ukraine: Manned airpower has not disappeared, but its employment has changed
Ukraine is the most important contemporary laboratory for the future of airpower. Neither Russia nor Ukraine achieved the air superiority American airmen have come to expect. Russia entered the war with a substantial numerical and technological advantage in tactical aviation, yet Ukrainian air defenses survived, dispersed, adapted, and kept operating. Airpower did not disappear. Its employment changed.
Justin Bronk’s July 28, 2026 RUSI commentary, “Four Years On: An Update on the Air War Over Ukraine,” assesses how Ukrainian F-16 and Mirage 2000-5 fighters operate against Russian cruise missiles and one-way attack drones while Russian long-range ground-based air defenses sit near the front. The resulting air war runs under constraints very different from those of Western expeditionary air campaigns (Bronk, RUSI, July 28, 2026).
Fighters: still valuable, doing different work
Ukraine’s F-16s defend national airspace, intercept cruise missiles and drones, and provide capabilities Ukraine previously lacked. RUSI reports that the F-16s alone have destroyed well over 2,500 Geran and Gerbera one-way attack drones (RUSI). Bronk told Defense News that the F-16 fleet has been over-tasked, mostly by counter-drone interception duties, and he argues that other systems should take more of that work so the fighters can concentrate on cruise missiles and strike missions (Military Times).
The most sophisticated aircraft in the inventory now spends much of its time defeating weapons that cost a fraction of what it costs to operate. The fighter remains militarily useful, but the economics of the engagement have changed.
That raises a second question: does every mission currently assigned to fighters require a fifth- or sixth-generation aircraft? Some missions could move to autonomous interceptors, inexpensive defensive drones, ground-based systems, or aircraft designed for counter-UAS operations. Others still demand speed, range, payload, sensors, and human judgment. The likely result is greater differentiation among the aircraft performing different missions.
Bombers: the weapon matters, and so does the launch location
Russian bombers continue to launch cruise missiles from long distances, and Russian tactical aircraft release glide bombs from standoff ranges. The aircraft generates effects inside defended airspace without entering it and becomes a mobile launch platform. Historically, aircraft had to approach a target to deliver ordnance. Now they can stay outside the most dangerous threat envelopes while their weapons travel into them.
That arrangement creates dependencies: suitable weapons, targeting information, communications, and a safe operating location. Each dependency becomes a target. Ukraine’s June 2025 Operation Spiderweb showed the problem. Ukrainian officials reported that 117 drones, smuggled into Russia and launched from trucks near the bases, struck aircraft at five airbases, including strategic bombers that normally operated far from the front, and Kyiv claimed more than 40 aircraft were destroyed or damaged (UK Defence Journal; American University SIS). The damage figures come from Ukrainian officials.
Bombers are not obsolete, but standoff range in the air does not guarantee sanctuary on the ground.
Helicopters: perhaps the most interesting manned-aircraft problem
The helicopter’s great advantage is operation without conventional runways. It hovers, lands in confined areas, moves troops, evacuates casualties, and supports ground forces. It already has some of the infrastructure independence now sought for future aircraft.
But helicopters operate low and slow, in environments increasingly saturated with drones, MANPADS, and short-range air defenses. Russian attack helicopters have adapted through standoff weapons employment, and Ukrainian helicopters operate under severe restrictions. The aircraft best suited to operating without a runway is among the most vulnerable near a transparent battlefield.
Four futures are plausible. Helicopters could operate increasingly from standoff distances. Unmanned rotorcraft could take over the most dangerous missions. Conventional helicopters could evolve into optionally crewed systems. Or the helicopter’s combination of lift, maneuver, and access could be distributed across several types of autonomous aircraft. No single outcome can be assumed. The deciding question is which missions truly require a human aboard.
What Ukraine shows about manned flight
| Question | Emerging answer |
| Can manned aircraft survive? | Yes, but the threat environment heavily shapes their employment. |
| Can manned aircraft remain operationally decisive? | Yes, under appropriate conditions and with supporting capabilities. |
| Must every aerial mission be performed by a manned aircraft? | Increasingly, no. |
Planning that starts from the aircraft already in the inventory, rather than the military effects required, carries that assumption forward unexamined.
2. Iran and the Gulf: A very different air war, and a revealing one
The contrast with Ukraine is instructive. The United States holds overwhelming advantages in stealth, long-range strike, electronic warfare, aerial refueling, and integrated command and control, and American aircraft continue to operate in the regional conflict. Iran has nonetheless retained the ability to strike targets across the Gulf.
A Reuters investigation published October 15 found at least 135 drone and missile attacks by Iran and the forces it arms on at least 84 infrastructure sites in seven Gulf states since the war began on February 28 (Reuters, October 15, 2026, via MarineLink; Reuters on X). Some of the attacks came from the Iran-backed Houthis and Iraqi militias. Reuters reports that the strikes systematically disabled critical equipment and caused cascading failures, including Fujairah’s oil-routing systems in the UAE, which were hit at least 19 times, two of the cold boxes at Qatar’s Ras Laffan LNG facility, and pumping stations on a key Saudi pipeline. QatarEnergy’s chief estimated in March that full repairs to the cold boxes would take three to five years.
Reuters could not always determine how well Gulf air defenses performed or the full extent of the damage without visiting the sites, and Gulf governments often attributed damage to debris from intercepted munitions. The finding still shows that the ability to conduct extensive offensive air operations does not automatically translate into the ability to prevent an adversary from generating effects of its own.
Air superiority is not immunity from attack
American airpower doctrine has long emphasized control of the air. That remains important, but control of the air means something different when an adversary can launch ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and autonomous aircraft from dispersed or concealed locations. An adversary’s conventional air force can be largely neutralized while its ability to attack persists.
Two missions are involved, and they overlap without being identical:
- Air superiority: the ability to conduct operations in the air without prohibitive interference.
- Air and missile defense: the ability to protect forces, infrastructure, and populations from aerial threats.
The second mission may grow more demanding even after the first is achieved.
Iranian adaptation in the Strait of Hormuz
A Critical Threats Project and Institute for the Study of War (CTP-ISW) update dated October 14 reports that Iran retains the ability to target vessels in and near the Strait of Hormuz, even though CTP-ISW had assessed in early September that U.S. airstrikes on Iranian coastal radars were disrupting that ability (CTP-ISW, Iran Update, October 14, 2026). A U.S. military official told Reuters on October 13 that Iranian naval forces use small boats with spotters to identify targets for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a method adopted after the United States destroyed a significant part of Iran’s radar capability (Reuters, October 14, 2026). The official cited one example from the preceding one to two weeks.
If that account holds, a technologically sophisticated sensing architecture was degraded and the adversary substituted a less sophisticated capability, so the technology was lost while the military function survived. CTP-ISW cautions that the picture is not settled. Iran may have partially reconstituted some maritime targeting capability, may be using new tactics, or may have developed new capabilities, and Iranian officials told Reuters that new tactics took effect around October 4. The example still supports the central claim that destroying a capability does not necessarily eliminate the function it performed. Improvised substitutes may be slower, less reliable, and more vulnerable, so the effectiveness of these adaptations should not be overstated.
Saudi Arabia and the Houthis: the sanctuary problem becomes regional
Houthi missile and drone attacks on Saudi airports escalated through the first half of October. Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport was struck repeatedly from October 6, and the October 10 missile strike killed at least 12 people and wounded more than 300, according to Saudi civil aviation authorities (Al Jazeera, October 10). Authorities extended the suspension of operations at the airport, the kingdom’s second busiest, and Lufthansa cancelled its Riyadh flights through October 16 (Al Jazeera, October 12). The Saudi-led coalition reported a projectile falling near King Fahd International Airport in Dammam (Al Jazeera, October 11). Saudi air defenses did intercept three Houthi missiles on October 12 (CNN), but CTP-ISW notes regional officials’ mid-September warning that Saudi Arabia was running low on interceptor missiles (CTP-ISW, October 14).
An airport is more than a runway. It is an economic node that supports transportation, logistics, commercial activity, and national connectivity. An attack need not destroy every aircraft to impose substantial consequences. Disrupting operations, shaking confidence, and forcing costly defensive responses may be enough.
Ukraine and Iran converge here: the target is increasingly the system that generates military or economic activity, and the platform that performs it is secondary.
Iran’s ability to inflict damage does not prove that U.S. airpower has failed. Judging that would require examining the campaign’s objectives, constraints, duration, and actual military outcomes. The evidence does challenge the expectation that technological dominance produces comprehensive protection.
3. Subterranean warfare: The search for a different kind of sanctuary
Going underground changes the relationship between detection, targeting, and survivability. An underground facility can conceal activity from many overhead sensors, provide physical protection, enable movement between protected locations, and preserve selected functions while the surface is under attack. The option is especially attractive against an adversary with overwhelming advantages in aerial surveillance and precision strike.
Going underground does not eliminate the need to interact with the surface. People, equipment, energy, supplies, and information must still move through the system, which creates dependencies on entrances, access routes, ventilation, communications, and logistics. Underground construction is also expensive, slow, and geographically constrained.
What the underground buys is limited:
- Time. Protection allows forces to survive attacks and preserve capabilities until conditions change.
- Uncertainty. An adversary may know a facility exists without knowing what happens inside it.
- Alternative movement. Underground routes can support maneuver or sustainment while reducing exposure to surface surveillance.
A fourth possibility deserves attention. Underground facilities could serve as protected nodes in a larger distributed military system. Selected command functions, manufacturing, storage, maintenance, and autonomous-system support could sit underground while smaller systems operate above ground. That is a plausible concept and has not been demonstrated as a general solution. The open question is how much activity can be protected underground before cost, complexity, and logistical burden outweigh the benefit.
The subject is drawing active attention in the U.S. defense community. A Steve Blank essay published October 13, originally in the Cipher Brief, argues that the Department of War needs a single owner for subterranean warfare, ideally a Direct Reporting Portfolio Manager reporting to the Deputy Secretary, with portfolios for resilience, sensing, and defeat (Blank, October 13, 2026). The resilience case rests on the 2026 Iran conflict, in which Blank reports that Iranian missiles and drones damaged U.S. installations across eight Middle Eastern countries, and on his reading of public budget documents as showing no comparable effort to shelter aircraft, fuel, command nodes, and munitions. He also argues that Agile Combat Employment, dispersal, hardening, and rapid runway repair were not designed for a combined drone and missile attack, which bears directly on the ACE discussion in section 4. Blank discloses a financial interest in companies in this space.
The sensing and defeat side concerns the adversary’s use of the underground. Blank observes that the deepest facilities can today be struck only from the air, with uncertain damage assessment, and points to autonomous drilling as an emerging option. A Modern War Institute article from August describes Russian underground corridors near Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine’s relocation of war-supporting infrastructure underground, and North Korea’s reported underground air bases, one of which reportedly has an 1,800-meter runway running through a mountain (Modern War Institute).
Industry is signaling interest as well, and the signal now has an official channel. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Project Meridian in his October “State of the Force” speech, a 120-day effort to identify the weapons and battlefields of the future, with findings due January 28, 2027. Anduril founder Palmer Luckey co-leads the workgroup with Elon Musk and Newt Gingrich. In an interview with the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics held days before the speech, Luckey called the subterranean domain inevitable and described using the crust of the earth as a three-dimensional maneuver and battle space, arguing that autonomy makes boring practical because the primary cost is the initial advance (Military Times, October 13, 2026). He said in a March 2026 Axios interview that Anduril has working prototypes of subterranean systems able to deliver kinetic, electronic, and other effects (Axios). Public detail on the prototypes is limited to these statements.
The important shift is from treating the underground as a hiding place to treating it as part of the infrastructure of military regeneration. That framing leads directly to airfields.
4. Airfields and runways: The end of the traditional airbase?
For more than a century, airpower has been organized around the airfield. Aircraft need somewhere to launch, recover, refuel, rearm, and receive maintenance, and the airfield provides those functions efficiently. That efficiency depends on concentrating infrastructure, and concentration creates vulnerability.
The runway is only part of the problem
An adversary that cannot destroy aircraft can still attack the runway, fuel distribution, munitions storage, maintenance facilities, electrical systems, or the surrounding transportation network. It can also force repeated defensive responses that reduce sortie generation. A runway does not need to be permanently destroyed to become operationally ineffective.
The airfield is better understood as a system for generating combat power than as a location. The relevant measure is the combat power the system can continue to produce, and the count of surviving aircraft says little about that.
Agile Combat Employment is the current answer, and it is incomplete
ACE disperses aircraft and people across more operating locations to reduce the payoff of attacking any single base. The approach addresses concentration. The evidence suggests it does not fully address scarcity. The Western Pacific has many airfields with adequate runways, and a 2019 RAND report cites an analysis counting at least 163 that can accommodate F-22s and C-17s. The constraint is the far smaller set that can sustain operations, and RAND notes that forward arming and refueling points place heavy demands on mobility aircraft and on political access (RAND). Dispersal adds nodes and also adds demand: fuel, munitions, maintenance, security, and air defense must reach each location, and the airlift and tankers that carry them depend on the same scarce airfields.
The airfields that matter most are also the ones adversary planners have studied longest. A Stimson Center analysis found that Chinese missiles could keep U.S. fighters from operating at bases in Japan for close to the first two weeks of a conflict and could close Guam to tankers and bombers for at least the first four days (Defense News). The same report describes Chinese sites that appear to practice strikes on airfield mockups resembling Kadena Air Base (Stimson Center). A summer 2025 International Securitystudy, as reported by FlightGlobal, concluded that the Air Force is unlikely to overcome its reliance on vulnerable fixed bases (FlightGlobal). An Air University journal article calls ACE as currently designed flawed for a peer conflict in the Western Pacific while arguing that merging it with other joint concepts can repair it (Air & Space Operations Review).
ACE complicates an adversary’s targeting problem and buys time. It does not remove the dependency on fixed infrastructure, and that dependency is what a regeneration-and-substitution architecture has to solve. The Stimson authors reach a similar conclusion: their results support dispersal, and they also call for building an inside force around large numbers of runway-independent platforms and drones.
What if the runway were not required?
Partial answers already exist. The F-35B demonstrates short takeoff and vertical landing. Helicopters and many unmanned aircraft operate without runways. Some autonomous aircraft launch from catapults, rails, or other launch systems. DARPA’s SPRINT program aims to demonstrate an aircraft that cruises at 400 to 450 knots while hovering and operating from unprepared surfaces, a significant technological ambition (DARPA SPRINT).
Suppose that capability scaled. Aircraft with meaningful range, speed, and payload could launch from small dispersed locations or from concealed facilities, and an airbase could become a distributed network of launch, recovery, maintenance, and resupply nodes. Physics will impose performance penalties, and the extent of those penalties is the open engineering question.
The effect on the economics of attack would be considerable. An adversary would have to find and suppress many small operating locations in place of a handful of major airbases. Logistics, maintenance, communications, and force coordination become harder in turn, and the adaptive cycle repeats: each solution to one vulnerability creates another.
For selected forms of airpower, runway independence could turn the runway from a necessity into an option.
5. Designing from the mission: What non-aviation technology signals
Tesla unveiled its redesigned Roadster on October 15, 2026, at a SpaceX test site in McGregor, Texas, using technology developed with SpaceX: cold-gas thrusters fed by 600 liters of compressed air and a fan-based suction system. In the demonstration the car drove up a curved ramp until it was inverted, held there by the fans, then used its thrusters to launch off, flip, and land. It also jumped over a line of Tesla vehicles (TechCrunch, October 15, 2026; Fox Business). Musk said production would not begin until 2028 (CNBC).
The demonstration is a weak signal, and its limits are clear. The Roadster is not an aircraft. Its airborne movement depends on thrust rather than aerodynamic lift. Cold-gas propulsion carries too little stored energy and propellant for sustained atmospheric flight, and hopping over an obstacle differs from flying hundreds of miles with a useful payload. The suction system holds the car to a surface and produces no lift.
The relevant signal is the integration of propulsion, controls, energy storage, sensors, and autonomy in a vehicle that briefly operates outside its traditional physical environment. Related technologies could eventually contribute to aviation in attitude control, short-duration maneuver, or hybrid propulsion. Distributed electric propulsion and advanced flight controls offer more promising paths for sustained flight and are already under exploration. The boundary between vehicle categories reflects, in part, the technologies available at a given time.
The design discipline this suggests is mission-first. Consider a requirement to move a 500-pound payload 200 miles, deliver it accurately, and return without a conventional runway. The solution need not resemble an airplane. It might use distributed electric propulsion, hybrid power, a lifting body, a tiltrotor configuration, or a combination, evaluated on payload, energy consumption, range, reliability, survivability, and operational cost.
No evidence suggests Tesla has invented a military aircraft. The question worth tracking is whether technologies developing outside aviation will change the assumptions that govern aircraft design, without mistaking an interesting demonstration for a mature capability.
6. Space: The same problem at larger scale
For decades, satellites provided military capabilities from an environment most adversaries could not reach. That relative sanctuary supported extraordinary dependencies: GPS, satellite communications, missile warning, intelligence collection, weather, and global connectivity.
Space is now contested, and the response resembles what is happening on the surface. Satellites are becoming more maneuverable, constellations more distributed, and autonomy more important. Orbital servicing and refueling are moving from concept toward demonstration. On July 21, 2026, a DARPA and Northrop Grumman SpaceLogistics spacecraft carrying DARPA’s robotic servicing system launched on a Falcon 9, the first privately owned, operational robotic servicing mission for geosynchronous orbit, beginning a yearlong journey to that orbit (DARPA, July 21, 2026). The Space Force’s Future Operating Environment 2040, a concept document the Chief of Space Operations has described as not an intelligence estimate, discusses proliferated, maneuverable, and tactically responsive constellations and on-orbit servicing, repair, and refueling (Space Force; Defense Daily).
Space forces now face the questions air and naval forces already know. How to maneuver, refuel, protect critical assets, replace losses, delegate decisions when communications degrade, and sustain operations over time. The technologies differ enormously while the operational questions remain remarkably similar.
SpaceX as an industrial model
SpaceX matters as much for its industrial model as for launch services. Reusable launch and high-volume satellite deployment make it possible to treat some space capabilities as systems that can be replenished and upgraded frequently. That changes the logic of survivability. In place of a small number of highly capable satellites designed to last many years, an architecture can employ many less expensive satellites on shorter replacement cycles.
The approach adds its own dependency on industrial production and launch capacity. A proliferated constellation is resilient only if it can be replenished during conflict, and the ground infrastructure that supports it remains vulnerable. U.S. Space Command’s Space Warfighting Environment 2040 identifies the vulnerability of fixed terrestrial space-enabling infrastructure and points toward proliferated spacecraft that regenerate under attack and distributed, mobile ground nodes (Breaking Defense; ExecutiveGov).
The emphasis is shifting from protecting individual space platforms to sustaining space-enabled services despite the loss of platforms. That is the same conceptual shift identified for airbases.
7. Five possible futures for airpower
The scenarios below are alternatives for testing assumptions and are not forecasts. Each includes signposts, the observable developments that would indicate which future is arriving.
| Future | What changes | Implications for airpower | Signposts |
| 1. The Fortress Returns | Underground facilities, hardened bases, and protected infrastructure proliferate. | Manned aircraft remain important, and survivability depends increasingly on protected operating systems. | Sustained investment in hardened shelters and underground production; Project Meridian findings (due January 28, 2027) that recommend subterranean capability; weapons that fail to defeat deep targets at scale. |
| 2. The Distributed Air Force | Runway-independent aircraft, autonomous systems, and dispersed logistics mature. | Combat power is generated from numerous smaller operating locations. | Programs such as SPRINT reaching operational maturity; dispersed sites sustained under realistic exercise conditions. |
| 3. The Mothership Model | Large aircraft operate at standoff distances while deploying autonomous systems. | Crewed aircraft become command, sensing, and launch platforms. | Autonomous systems operating reliably from airborne carriers; escorts and tankers surviving at standoff range. |
| 4. The Transparent Battlefield | Sensors, AI, and precision strike improve faster than concealment. | Mobility, deception, low signatures, and rapid regeneration become central. | Persistent detection of dispersed forces in conflict; losses from detected and struck mobile targets. |
| 5. The Contested Commons | Space, cyber, communications, and navigation suffer persistent disruption. | Airpower must function with intermittent information, degraded connectivity, and reduced external support. | Routine jamming and spoofing of navigation and communications in conflict; operational loss of space-enabled services. |
The futures can overlap, and the most plausible outcome may combine elements of several. The value of the exercise lies in identifying which assumption each future challenges. The Fortress Returns assumes that hardening stays cost-effective against emerging weapons. The Distributed Air Force assumes that runway-independent aircraft and dispersed logistics become practical. The Transparent Battlefield assumes that sensing continues to outperform concealment and deception. The Contested Commons assumes that space and network disruption become enduring operational conditions. The Mothership Model assumes that standoff launch of autonomous systems works at scale. No assumption should go unchallenged.
8. Airpower without assured infrastructure
Consider a conflict in 2040. The United States retains advanced manned fighters, bombers, tankers, and airlift aircraft, but it can no longer assume that major airbases remain continuously operational. Aircraft carriers face substantial threats. Space-based services suffer intermittent disruption, communications networks are contested, and large concentrations of equipment are increasingly difficult to conceal. Airpower continues anyway.
It continues through some combination of conventional aircraft, runway-independent systems, autonomous platforms, distributed logistics, protected infrastructure, and alternative navigation and communications. Some missions still depend on large aircraft and established bases. Others become increasingly independent of them. The force holds multiple ways to generate the same operational effect, and no single technology has replaced another.
Substitutability becomes the central design property. If a fighter cannot launch, another system must be able to perform the mission. If satellite communications disappear, command must continue. If a tanker cannot operate, the mission must be redesignable. If a carrier must withdraw, combat effects must be generated from elsewhere. If an underground facility is compromised, its functions must be movable.
Industrial design belongs to the same problem. Palmer Luckey argues that U.S. weapons should be designed for production in commercial factories, with missiles built in car plants and aircraft in tractor plants as World War II equipment was, so that output can scale quickly in wartime and adversaries see that capacity (Military Times, October 13, 2026). He also calls for unified command and control and information sharing in which every sensor serves every effector, across services and with allies. Both ideas bear on substitutability and regeneration. A force whose sensors and shooters are interchangeable can reconfigure under pressure, and a force whose weapons can be built in many existing factories can replace losses without depending on a few specialized plants. Luckey leads a company that sells autonomous systems, so these remain advocacy and not demonstrated results.
The most adaptable force may be the one best able to reconfigure its capabilities under pressure, and the one with the most sophisticated individual platforms may lose to it.
9. Is this a genuine inflection point?
Military history is full of technologies that were said to make established systems obsolete. The machine gun did not eliminate infantry, the submarine did not eliminate surface fleets, the missile did not eliminate aircraft, and nuclear weapons did not eliminate conventional warfare. Drones will not necessarily eliminate manned aviation. Each of those technologies still changed how existing capabilities were employed, and the same may be happening now.
The inflection may lie less in any particular technology than in the erosion of the assumption that military forces can reliably protect the infrastructure required to generate their combat power.
The vulnerability of airbases is old. During World War II, airfields were attacked repeatedly, and the response was dispersal, hardening, runway repair, and alternative operating locations. What may be changing is the combination of persistent observation, long-range precision, inexpensive autonomous weapons, and rapid technological adaptation. Together these allow adversaries to threaten critical infrastructure more often, at greater distance, and at lower cost. That is a hypothesis to investigate.
Defensive adaptation may also outpace these threats in some environments. Counter-UAS systems, deception, electronic warfare, hardened infrastructure, and improved air defense could restore degrees of sanctuary. The future is not necessarily a one-way march toward vulnerability.
10. A research framework: From sanctuary to adaptability
Research question. How are persistent surveillance, autonomous systems, precision strike, and counterspace capabilities changing the relationship between military platforms, their supporting infrastructure, and the ability to sustain combat power?
Thesis. The proliferation of technologies that can detect and attack military infrastructure is challenging the concentration and relative sanctuary on which much of modern airpower depends. The transformation is unlikely to eliminate manned aircraft, airfields, or carriers. It may shift military advantage toward architectures that can distribute, substitute, sustain, and regenerate combat power under persistent attack.
The analysis is organized around four dimensions:
| Dimension | Traditional emphasis | Emerging challenge |
| Survivability | Protect critical platforms and infrastructure | Assume some losses and disruptions |
| Mobility | Move forces between established operating locations | Reduce dependence on fixed locations |
| Sustainment | Maximize efficiency through concentrated logistics | Maintain output across disrupted networks |
| Adaptability | Restore the original operating system | Reconfigure how military effects are generated |
A fifth dimension is anticipation: the capacity of an organization to recognize that its operating assumptions are becoming obsolete before combat demonstrates the problem. That is the link to futures literacy. The purpose is to identify which assumptions about airpower may no longer be reliable and to begin experimenting before they fail, and a prediction of the 2040 Air Force’s exact configuration is not the goal.
11. Three questions…
What if an air force were designed without assuming access to conventional runways? Runways will not disappear. The exercise would reveal which missions, technologies, and logistical assumptions genuinely require them.
What if space-enabled services were unavailable for significant periods during a conflict? What would still work, what would fail, and which failures would propagate through the force?
What if the force were designed for regeneration as well as survivability? How would force structure, acquisition, training, logistics, and command philosophy change if the force expected to lose substantial portions of its infrastructure and had to keep fighting?
These questions are more valuable than asking whether the next aircraft should be manned or unmanned, because they challenge the architecture of military power.
Conclusion
Airpower emerged partly from the promise of freedom from the geographic constraints of surface warfare. Over the following century, air forces built extraordinarily complex, infrastructure-intensive systems to deliver that freedom. The technologies that enable precision and global reach now make those supporting systems visible and vulnerable.
The responses on offer include going underground, dispersing across the surface, operating from smaller locations, employing autonomous aircraft, and extending capabilities into space. None eliminates dependency. Each changes its form. The future of airpower may depend less on escaping geography than on escaping dependence on any single geography.
The defining advantage in future warfare may lie in the ability to keep fighting after the environment the force was designed to dominate no longer exists.
