The United States Air Force (USAF) will find it much harder to protect its forward or remote airbases, operate tankers, and establish air superiority in future conflicts, according to a new report by the US Department of the Air Force.
The report was mandated by Congress in 2023, directing the Department of Air Force to reconsider its Force Design for 2050. Titled “The Department of Air Force in 2050,” the report discusses the overall course that the department should take and the obstacles that it will encounter on the way.
A sub-section titled ‘Air Domain’ under the section ‘Character of War’ predicts that by the year 2050, the enemies of the United States will possess anti-air missiles with a super-long range of up to 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers).
This will be a massive leap in the adversary’s anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) capabilities, as the range would be much longer than that of the existing air-defense missiles.
The report states that the war in 2050 will be very different from how aerial wars have been fought so far. It explains that the ambition to gain control of the air, both offensively in an adversary’s airspace and defensively in one’s own, has been at the heart of air domain conflict since its inception.
Controlling the air has, so far, been considered essential to conducting operations on land and at sea. “Crewed aircraft—multi-role fighters and bombers operating from relatively secure airbases and able to survive multiple sorties once air superiority was established—have extended strike ranges efficiently against the full range of land and sea targets. The ability to deliver munitions at scale through bombing campaigns with acceptable loss rates has also depended on the ability to achieve control of the air domain, at least temporarily.”
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However, the report warns that this might become difficult to attain in a war that happens in 2050, exhorting that the script would have to be rewritten. It states, “Control of the air will still be critical to military success, but how, when, and where it will be achieved are all subject to change.”
It elaborates by stating: “Two fundamental developments make this necessary. The first is the vulnerability of forward-located fixed bases (and, to some extent, even remote air bases) to attack by precision missiles. The second is the extension of counter-air weapons engagement zones to unprecedented, almost unlimited, ranges.”
For one, the extension of counter-air weaponry poses a massive risk to the USAF in a potential conflict with adversaries like China and Russia.
In particular, it is anticipated that counter-air missiles “with ranges out to over 1,000 miles and supported by space-based sensors” may pose a threat to Air Force operations. Such long-range weapons will threaten “aircraft, such as tankers, that have traditionally operated with impunity.”
The restriction in the operation of tankers would mean a limited number of sorties that fighter jets and bombers can make in a conflict without refueling. This may become particularly concerning in case of a conflict in the Indo-Pacific, where the US would not have the home advantage. More importantly, these anti-air missiles would be launched from any platform—land, sea, or air.
Though the report does not specifically name any adversary while making this prediction, it may be connected with China’s rapid military development and fielding of long-range weapons across domains.
Escalating tensions in at least two significant hotspots in the Indo-Pacific—the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait—have enhanced the possibility of conflict between the US and China. Thus, both sides are preparing for a potential battle or at least a limited-armed showdown.
Currently, China fields air defense systems like the S-400, which has a range of about 400 kilometers (248 miles), the HQ-9, which has a range of about 300 kilometers (186 miles), and the HQ-22, which has a range of about 170 kilometers (110 miles).
It has also developed a new HQ-19 air defense system, which is generally meant for defense against ballistic missiles and has a speculated range of 1,000 to 3,000 kilometers (621 miles to 1800 miles).
The other fundamental threat to achieving air superiority highlighted by the report is the vulnerability of its forward bases for operations.
Long-Range Missiles Threaten US Forward Bases
The US Department of Air Force 2050 report highlights the vulnerability of forward air bases used by the USAF against precision missiles.
“China’s military modernization program has been largely about investments in long-range precision, originally to a few hundred miles and now to over 1,000.”
The report further notes that the Chinese fractional orbital hypersonic vehicle test has previously shown that conventional capabilities can achieve intercontinental precision. Moreover, China has already achieved significant success in medium-range air-, land-, and sea-launched systems that could reach the so-called second island chain (islands of Japan stretching to Guam) and beyond.
“In 2050, we should expect to be under the threat of ultra-long-range precision weapons at any range and launched from any domain, including space. There will be no sanctuary from these weapons.” This will essentially make it much harder for the US to establish air superiority. The enemy could attack forward bases in Guam, Japan, and other Pacific territories and destroy runways, thus denying the USAF fighters or bombers the chance to operate from these facilities.
Moreover, refueling tankers that move slowly and fly low are already at risk from Chinese air-to-air and surface-to-air missiles, but they would be particularly vulnerable when operating on regular flight paths from Guam and a few other Pacific islands. Notably, the USAF is working to enhance the survivability of these tankers, as underlined by Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall in an interaction on January 13.
Speaking after the release of the Department of Air Force 2050 report, Kendall said the adversary’s weaponry will continue to advance in accuracy and range. “Intercontinental effects are going to be conventional,” according to Kendall, which presents “a really big problem.”
However, Kendall added that forward aircraft deployment will always be required, notwithstanding the growing difficulty of fighting in contested airspace. That said, the vulnerability of forward bases was specifically highlighted by the U.S. Air Force’s new Installation Infrastructure Action Plan, released in December 2024.
In addition to this, a Stimson Centre report, “Cratering Effects: Chinese Missile Threats to US Air Bases in the Indo-Pacific,” also highlighted the same challenge and warned that no one countermeasure, or even a set of countermeasures, would be enough to stop the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force from attacking runways. Instead, it urged the USAF to adopt the Agile Combat Employment concept, which calls for the dispersal of operations more widely across a host of different locations.
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Making matters worse, another recently published report by the Hudson Institute states that many US airbases lack the hardened protections found in Chinese facilities, leaving them susceptible to missile strikes. For example, China could neutralize US military aircraft and fuel stores at Iwakuni, located on Japan’s main island of Honshu, with as few as 10 missiles.
While US forces have historically had an advantage in deploying to forward airfields without much resistance in past conflicts in the Middle East, experts believe that a conflict with China would present a very different and far more challenging environment. In such an atmosphere, establishing air superiority would be far more difficult than previously envisioned.
The report states that by 2050, “There will be a general need to distribute and conceal military value so that it is less vulnerable to attack. This will be true in all domains and at all altitudes: space, air, ground, sea, and undersea. The tendency of the United States to rely upon increasingly high-cost exquisite systems in small numbers will have to be reversed.”
“The tendency to make major warfighting platforms self-sufficient and both lethal and survivable independently will be replaced by the need to disaggregate and network capabilities across multiple systems, which, in turn, will drive adversary development of systems and weapons designed to deny, destroy or counter disaggregated capabilities.”
Speaking of the challenges in establishing air superiority, the report states: “Against a pacing challenge, the current Joint Warfighting Concept already assumes that, in heavily contested airspace, air superiority can be achieved only episodically through pulsed operations.”
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