CONTESTING THE AIR LITTORAL.

The diffusion of small uncrewed aerial systems, mobile air defense systems, and one-way attack drones is rapidly changing the character of war, with US adversaries gaining new ways to contest the air domain. The traditional notion that air superiority is won or lost in the “blue skies”—the medium and higher altitudes where fighters and bombers typically operate—is outmoded. Even if an air force manages to gain blue-skies air superiority, the airspace below these altitudes—called the air littoral—remains contested. Absent a significant revision in US Air Force thinking and operations, the service risks ceding control of the air littoral to the adversary as well as other services. Instead, the US Air Force should drive a reinvention of airpower concepts, including that of air superiority, as well as the close air mission, to fulfill its purpose and role as experts of the air domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]