To understand the value of air superiority in the 21st century, military planners should look to Ukraine and its surprise invasion of Russia. While Ukraine’s struggle to maintain their salient inside Russia is ongoing, electronic warfare elements—including drones and F-16s—have augmented Ukrainian forces on their drive into the Kursk border region, seemingly keeping Russian bombers at bay and even downing several Russian attack aircraft.
These elements support Kyiv’s repeated arguments that Western-made jets like the F-16 will help Ukraine own the air domain and thus decisively change the overall course of the war in their favor. Kyiv’s fledgling F-16 fleet is small—and with the recent news of the death of a top Ukrainian pilot, shrinking—but the pressing need for F-16s as well as qualified pilots and maintainers is strikingly apparent.
While this first tranche of jets is too small to provide Kyiv the sweeping, countrywide air superiority for which it hopes, it illustrates the vital importance of air superiority for Ukraine. Most importantly, Ukraine’s narrow F-16 sustainment pipeline during this war foreshadows the consequences of ceding air superiority through lackluster fighter procurement the United States will face in the next.
Hundreds attended a farewell ceremony for deceased Ukrainian pilot Oleksiy Mes, known as “Moonfish, in the central square in Shepetivka, in Khmelnytskyi Oblast Ukraine on Aug. 29.
Libkos/Getty Images
Amid war in Europe, instability in the Middle East, and China’s continued military rise, America’s ability to project power and deter through the air is critical to maintaining its vital national interests. And yet, the U.S. Air Force fighter fleet today is the smallest in its history. It is the job of prudent leaders within Congress and the DoD to correct this serious deficiency.
The China air threat
America enjoyed its so-called “peace dividend” after the Cold War, and its fighter inventory has never recovered the numbers it had in the early 1990s. China, by contrast, is rapidly expanding its fighter force, to the tune of 100 J-20 stealth fighters every year.
Consider: the U.S. lost more than 2,000 fixed-wing aircraft in Vietnam, against a non-peer adversary. Should war with China come and American fighters find themselves contending in combat with their numerically superior fifth-generation Chinese counterparts, there is every reason to believe the casualties will be far worse. This becomes all the more sobering considering there are only about 1,000 F-35s total.
Yet, at a time when the Air Force currently had only 48 fighter squadrons to meet a requirement for 60 multi-role fighter squadrons, the House Armed Services Committee earlier this year proposed cutting F-35 procurement. Fortunately, the House Appropriations committee subsequently—and wisely– proposed an increase. While the final numbers will need to be hammered out in conference later this year, one thing is clear: cutting F-35 numbers will only deepen the deficit of fighters already in desperately short supply.
Slowing F-35 production won’t fix the gap, and it certainly won’t change the equation for planners in Beijing who may be assessing when to take Taiwan. Neither will the Air Force’s insufficient plan for 42 jets in FY25. An earlier House proposal to cut this figure down to 30 would only save Chinese pilots the trouble.
While the impact on the future fight cannot be overstated, reducing planned numbers of F-35s has other disastrous disadvantages as well: the F-35 is crucial for U.S. and allied airpower integration. The reduction of its numbers endangers international partnerships, disrupts timelines, and weakens economies of scale. Reduced production also harms the defense industrial base, which already confronts workforce and supply chain challenges.
If lawmakers think the F-35 is expensive, they should imagine the costs of shortfalls in America’s fighter fleet in the event of war. It is a grim vision, but one that can be dramatically lessened if Congress boosts F-35 production now, while they can still have a deterrent—and punitive—effect.
The cost of going without air superiority
I reported from Ukraine since the beginning of the full-scale illegal Russian invasion, witnessing firsthand the consequences of contested airspace. Seeing Ukrainian anti-aircraft fire light up the night sky in Donbas was, at first, brilliant, as was hearing Ukrainian Air Force fighter jets thunder fast and low toward the front.
On May 9, 2023, my friend and fellow journalist Arman Soldin was killed in Chasiv Yar, a small town in Donetsk, struck by a Russian Grad missile. It is haunting to consider whether he would have lived if Ukraine controlled the skies. It’s an impossible mental equation. What I do know is that a window of Ukrainian air dominance at that time and place would undoubtedly have raised his odds of surviving the war, and the lives of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians elsewhere.
American air dominance has provided that protection for the U.S. and its allies since 1945. That era is coming to a close unless the country course corrects—and soon.
Caleb Larson is Berlin-based journalist, formerly with Politico, and has spent more than seven months reporting from Ukraine at the front and elsewhere throughout the country.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
