> Diplomacy How do you use this to attack an enemies airpower?
> By Big E
Firstly thank you for your consistant interest in Australian defence matters.
I was answering this specific comment of yours on how political factors, that I called diplomacy for short, can affect Airpower. I gave a few examples on how various nations have used diplomacy, propaganda, etc to affect the enemies use of Airpower.
To take GW2. Due to international political factors, not directly related to the Gulf War, Australian and British pilots had far tighter ROE. For the commonwealth powers to have acted as the Americians did would have been illegal. This is due to us deciding on adopting restrictive laws of armed conflict which the Americians haven't done to the same degree (additional protocols to Hague conventions for one).
It is said by a German philosopher that there is the people, the government, and the military which is related to the famous trinity of emotion, politics, and chance. Each of these groups can be influenced and each exists in the groups of participants (and neutrals are participants too).
In WW2 the americian people didn't want war, the Government did (I don't know what the military thought). Until Japan attacked AND Hitler declared war on America, the people's attitude kept America from being a ally (though they were a friendy neutral) in Europe. In the Pacific only Japan's attack mattered - Hitler was irrelevent.
My point is by influencing those three groups (people, govt, and military) in each of the nations (ally, friendly, etc) can influence the use of airpower (or any military power).
It was included in a list of strategies that sought to contest air superiority. It was not my main point. It was included for the sake of completeness.
My point is that small countries must take every effort to win or render irrelevent the air war. Small countries don't have much in numbers so every kill of a friendly is important. ARMs have the ability to kill or supress ground based radars. Weapons like ARMs are not that numerous. Making the enemy waste their stocks of ARMs means they may lose a relitive risk free way of supressing air defences - less risky than dropping iron bombs on SAMS.
My concept wasn't to protect radars with phalanx. But to use radars (if phalanx is effective at protecting) or radar decoys as bait to form ARM traps and attrit enemies munition stocks. As the missile gets destroyed the radar stays up forcing more shots.
The enemy may decide to abort strike packages rather than fly with a radar active. Then that gives one a mission kill as well.
I specified decoys as I believe that there is probably tactical countermeasures that could be taken, maybe fire two ARMs at once (or three or four). It would not be a magic bullet.
My overall point was it may be useful as part of a comprehensive strategy to defeat the enemy's airpower.
Assuming of course that it would work - which is what my orignal question was.
Some criticisms of the idea was based on resources. This is a valid point. But I had a sense it was from a viewpoint of a very large military. The US can afford to conduct large scale OCA AND continue DCA. If one can then that is what one would do. But that option was not available to Iraq for instance.
