Apropos of the grown role of confrontation in the aerospace sphere and Air Force tasks in 21st-century military operations.

The process of world transformations is considerably complicated at the present time due to a clearly expressed, progressing instability and an aggravation of the old and emergence of new interstate contradictions, some of which have led to protracted military conflicts that are difficult to settle. The leadership of the North Atlantic Alliance goes on with a policy of expanding NATO's responsibility zone east, while the United States of America, particularly after the coming to power of the new administration, seeks to consolidate its global leadership and restrict Russia's influence and importance in international affairs.

This is accompanied by a stepped-up economic and technological rivalry between the traditional and emergent power centers, which are engaged in an increasingly keen competition for spheres of influence, sources of raw materials, and markets. The world witnesses continuing uncontrolled proliferation of mass destruction weapons and R & D is in progress on nuclear missile and chemical technologies.

An analysis of and forecast for weaponry development trends shows that in the modem conditions as well as in the near future the Russian Federation is threatened the most, from the point of view of a potential for delivering strikes at key facilities, primarily by aerospace attack weapons. As of today, these can reach up to 25% of facilities in this country, which figure grows to 45% if Tomahawk-type cruise missiles are fired from surface ships or submarines. Ten percent of the facilities is within the range of non-strategic ballistic missiles.

A characteristic trait of modern aerospace weapon programs is a stepped-up tempo of work on promising technologies, including in the hypersonic area, STEALTH, the module principle, and application of latest technological advances in onboard electronic equipment. This will make it possible to improve the quality parameters of the existing means of warfare and to create on that basis a fundamentally new generation thereof.

Scientific and technological advances in the area of R & D on end-trajectory command and control and guidance systems enable the same accuracy of strikes by conventional-tipped ballistic missiles as by precision cruise missiles. This will broaden the range of missions they may perform, including engagement of individual facilities. The promising models of aerospace technology of the third millennium will be represented by hypersonic aircraft capable of M = 5- 25 speeds at altitudes from 30 to 120 kilometers, a range weakly controlled by the existing air defenses. These will be good for flying both in airspace and outer space: the United States is developing a hypersonic reconnaissance plane, a hypersonic cruise missile, and a hypersonic transport and passenger plane as well as a gliding ICBM warhead and an aerospace plane. In turn, integration of attack and support systems of the aviation, missile and space components will lead to the creation in the early 21st century of a global reconnaissance and strike st rategic system capable of dealing with objectives of aerospace warfare practically in the real time mode.

As is evident from the record of military actions in Iraq and Yugoslavia, progress in qualitative parameters of aerospace offensive weapons (ASOW) has a direct bearing on further evolution of forms and methods of their combat employment. This is expressed in the following: rapid build-up of an air combat force from a relatively small original strength; larger-scale coordination of joint actions by air forces belonging to different combat arms that are based over vast territories; greater intensity of combat operations, growth of spatial parameters of air operations (campaigns), less time it takes to perform assigned combat missions, search for new methods of achieving an element of tactical surprise of attacks on targets.

It can be stated with confidence that, with these tendencies persisting, the capabilities of ASOW forces of the more advanced countries will grow considerably at the start of the third millennium and the focus in warfare will shift to aerospace and information spheres, while gaining superiority over the adversary in the aerospace sphere will be an indispensable condition of achieving the aims of a war.

Outer space is used already today for flights of military (and double purpose) satellites, manned orbital stations, and scientific spacecraft. ICBM and SLBM launches are via outer space as well and it may also contain certain stretches of trajectories of aircraft-launched cruise missiles and operational-tactical ballistic missiles. Finally, it is in outer space that strategic and non-strategic antimissile defense systems will be used. A not so far-off possibility is the appearance of aviation space systems and aerospace planes, something that will lead to the emergence of a space theater of operations.

So, what influence does scientific progress have on warfare in 21st-century military conflicts? In the broad sense, this influence may cause the appearance of new offensive and defensive means of warfare--space, aviation-space, aviation, surface-to-air missile, unmanned and remotely piloted, low-signature or invisible, as well as new combat platforms as NMD systems are deployed in the U.S.A. and Europe; proliferation of unconventional and non-lethal weapons; a change in the nature of military operations not only in the aerospace sphere but also on the ground and in the sea; a multiple increase in the importance of reconnaissance, command and control activities, information confrontation, as well as the state, level of training, and experience of the command personnel and the entire personnel of the armed forces; adjustment of the organizational structure of the Armed Forces, their services and combat arms to the new means of warfare, objectives and conditions of combat operations, including possible emergence of aviation-space units as an element of the Air Force, etc.; certain erosion of the self-contained status of traditional strategic sectors (theaters of operations) due to the possibility of employment of long-range precision weapons (PW) and to an increased vulnerability of vital military and economic targets; specification of the role of the nuclear deterrence factor against the background of expansion of "the nuclear club," unpredictability of some of its members, and the impossibility to use this factor in limited military conflicts of nuclear and non-nuclear states.

Turning now directly to the Air Force, let us observe that it not only absorbs achievements of progress in science and technology but is also a motive force behind that progress. Already today this provides for a cardinal increase in the efficacy of joint employment of aviation and air defense forces due to the use of new means of warfare (aviation and surface-to-air missile systems, precision weapons, and weapons based on new physical principles, reconnaissance and strike systems, AEW planes, new means of electronic support, EW, communication, and command and control), reliable information support, and reduction of conspicuousness of both aircraft and the air weapons they use. Protection and overhead security of areas, national and military installations grows more reliable while the aviation becomes capable of selective and precise engagement from the air of the more important or dangerous targets determining stability of enemy force groupings, command and control elements, military economy and communicatio n lines. It is held both in this country and elsewhere that PW systems, given the leading role of air offensive weapons, will be the main strike force in military conflicts between states possessing modern technologies.

The main vectors of the effort to improve PW are the following: increasing flight velocity and range, enhancing accuracy, reducing the radar signature, and using combined all-weather guidance systems. A particular focus is on furnishing PW with various types of warheads, which tends to widen considerably the spectrum of combat objectives that may be addressed. For example, in its attacks against targets in Yugoslavia, the U.S. and NATO aviation, along with traditional weapons, made a wide use of weapons based on new technologies: microwave munitions designed to damage by means of electromagnetic pulses radioelectronic facilities at operations centers and signals centers as well as air defense radars; guided aviation bombs with concrete-piercing warheads designed to damage highly protected emplaced targets, and with warheads stuffed with depleted uranium cores designed to damage armor; cruise missiles and bombs containing electrified graphite mixture (fibers, granules, powder) designed to disable power supply systems.

Aviation precision weapons have made a particular contribution to the evolution of forms and methods of combat employment of air weapons in modern military conflicts. Their influence has wrought a cardinal change in the tactics of air combat forces, generating new tactical techniques used to suppress air defenses and deliver strikes at different ground targets.

As the present writer sees it, air campaigns, air operations, systematic combat operations and air strikes will remain the main forms of combat employment of air combat forces of foreign countries in possible military conflicts in the early 21st century. However, influenced by the massive arming of the aviation with precision weapons and by the further improvement of their qualitative parameters, these forms will acquire a different character and their content will be substantially amplified. First, the spatial parameters of combat operations will grow considerably as will the amount of operational-strategic and strategic missions tackled by the aviation. Second, as a result of an enhanced selectivity of PW employment, a possibility will emerge for the aviation to accomplish in a comprehensive and simultaneous manner the main missions assigned to it as early as the initial stage of combat operations. Third, the dynamism and intensity of combat operations will grow substantially with the aviation thus spending less time performing its main combat assignments. Fourth, while planning and delivering air strikes, there will be a much greater requirement for quality reconnaissance data about targets, because the high efficiency of PW cannot be realized in full measure unless their employment is backed by reliable data from outside sources. Fifth, there will be a real possibility of achieving an element of tactical surprise, particularly while delivering a first air strike. This tendency is due, on the one hand, to the considerable growth of the combat potential of air combat forces, something that makes it possible to launch combat operations by committing forces existing in peacetime without their prior reinforcement, while on the other to a possibility to use PW from lines outside of the zones controlled by the information assets of the opposing side. Sixth, during massive strikes there will be changes in the operational-tactical formation of air offensive weapons, connected with an increase in the amount of forces o perating in the unmanned weapons echelon. This tendency is due to an increase in the numbers of such PW type as aircraft-based and ship-based cruise missiles, which will be able to deal with practically entire spectrum of combat assignments on their own.

Besides, there will be changes in the tactical disposition of combat formations of strike aircraft operating in the air defense suppression echelon and in the attack echelon. This will find a reflection in a transition to simultaneous operations by a big number of small strike groups or even single aircraft heading to engage their concrete targets. This tendency is due to high precision characteristics of weapons, which makes it possible to deal with combat tasks by committing a smaller complement of forces. According to calculations made by foreign military experts, the number of sorties needed for engaging one and the same low-signature targets with the help of PW is four to five times smaller by comparison with the use of unguided weapons. Therefore, such a concept as "a massed air and missile strike" acquires a totally different meaning, to wit, will be considered, not from the point of view of massed air attacks in extremely close-order combat formations, but from the point of view of simultaneous operat ions by a big number of small air groups. A transition to these operations was clearly in evidence in the military conflict in the Balkans, where the NATO aviation delivered massed strikes by small strike groups or even by single aircraft.

In the military conflicts of the last decade, the main method of combat employment of air combat forces in the course of strikes at ground targets was a phased, successive engagement of opposing forces and assets, with the main efforts concentrated on the principal axes of operations. In future, military conflicts will afford chances of comprehensive engagement of first and second echelons of opposing (troops) forces. This will be accompanied by simultaneous actions against all targets regardless of the depth of their disposition, with weapons allocated for the purpose dispersed over all possible lines of attack. This tendency is also due to the use in future military conflicts of unmanned long-range precision weapons and a considerable boost in the combat potential of strike aircraft. Besides, it should be pointed out that prospective PW will have a definite influence on carrier aircraft tactics, which is going to become much simpler. All the carrier aircraft will have to do is to reach designated PW employm ent points located outside of the opposing side's active air defense zones (and in certain cases outside of zones covered by air defense information assets) and make synchronized PW launches. Given this circumstance as well as a possibility of creation of "intellectual" PW, it makes sense, while forecasting actions by air offensive weapons in military conflicts, to consider not so much the tactics of PW-carrying aircraft as the tactics of PW themselves. This tactics will be determined primarily by the type of guidance system a concrete model mounts, nature of targets, and degree of their protection by active and passive air defense assets.

An analysis of combat operations by the U.S.-British coalition force in the Persian Gulf zone and those by the joint NATO force against Yugoslavia enables the following conclusions.

First, these military operations have definitely revealed the United States' wish to assert itself in the international arena as the only and indisputable world leader dictating its terms to any other state. Demonstration of military might and intimidation are the main arguments in attaining its national interests. By their actions, the U.S. administration and the NATO leadership have, in effect, declared the emergence of a new military-political world order

A period of relative political instability is setting in, characterized by a decline in the prestige of the existing world institutions like the UN Security Council and the OSCE, which are supposed to stave off wars and conflicts. The existing arms control system is under threat too as are numerous vital international treaties. There is a danger of a return to the times of an "active" military confrontation and increased international tensions.

Second, the NATO aggression is causing a worldwide change in attitudes to nuclear weapons. Many countries facing interethnic problems will seek to obtain nuclear weapons of their own, seeing them as the most effective deterrent against potential adversaries. This will lead to a "crawling" nuclear proliferation all over the world and as a consequence to the sapping of regional security and strategic stability.

Third, the military actions against Iraq and Yugoslavia have convincingly demonstrated once again a considerable weakening of Russia's positions in the international arena and a decline in its ability to influence the course of crisis situations through a show of its military might the way the Soviet Union did not so long ago. Besides, they revealed that the level of present-day military cooperation between the Commonwealth countries is clearly at odds with their needs and capabilities.

Considering the general demands on the Armed Forces of Russia as formulated in the National Security Concept and the Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation, the main tasks of the Air Force in 21st-century military operations are likely to be the following: repelling first surprise air attacks preceding land and naval invasion and directed at disrupting mobilization and strategic deployment of the Armed Forces and conversion of state organizations to wartime operation mode; inflicting a defeat on the main forces of the aerospace adversary by coordinated actions of defense forces engaging aerospace offensive weapons in flight (on routes, at trajectories, in orbits) and attack forces throughout their entire basing system; providing air cover and air support for defensive military operations aimed at repelling an invasion of the aggressor's land and naval forces; providing air support and air cover for the Armed Forces' land units in order to enable them to seize the strategic initiative by way of conducting defensive and counteroffensive operations; providing air support and air cover for joint actions by the Armed Forces and other troops of the Russian Federation, aimed at routing armed groups of separatists, nationalists, and their backers from among international terrorists in internal military conflicts; participating in peacekeeping operations outside of the Russian Federation.

Besides, dealing with consequences of natural calamities, accidents and disasters and rendering aid (within the framework of the Military Doctrine and laws) in the face of various unforeseen emergencies will also call for the use of Air Force capabilities in the interests of the state, society and citizens.

On the whole, the tendency in the evolution of means of warfare in the 21st century has a determining impact on the growth of the role of aerospace defense within the general system of efforts providing for Russia's security. This obliges us to do all we can to preserve combat capability of the Air Force, to keep it in a state of combat readiness for the performance of air defense missions jointly with the other Armed Forces services in any conditions of the situation, and in parallel to launch large-scale work aimed at creating a system of aerospace defense of the Russian Federation.

The present-day military-strategic circumstances being what they are, it is impermissible to allow that Russia lag in the aviation and space area and in dealing with air (aerospace) defense tasks, which may have as its consequence the emergence of a direct threat to its national and military security. Having a powerful air combat force, an aerospace defense force, space systems and craft, and highly skilled military personnel possessing sufficient combat experience will be a powerful political and strategic factor deterring any aggressor from launching military operations against Russia and its allies.