advancement of air defense from 1930 to date

advancement of air defense from 1930 to date

On 28 July 1914, the nature of war changed. Initially, wars were preserved for the high seas and the battlegrounds. The war to end all wars erupted when Austria –Hungary declared war on Serbia, and this led to the First World War. The peaceful skies would rapidly know the despoils of the conflict of men. In a short time, aircraft with fixed wings would be carrying out attacks from the ground and taking part in airy dogfights with the United States taking the lead. Therefore, this paper talks about the advancement of air defense from 1930 to date. The progress of air defenses has a significant effect on national security.

As a result of the significant role air power had played during World War I, a drift emerged between the 1920s and 1930s to institute an independent air force. The modeling of an independent air force institution originated from Great Britain. In 1918, Great Britain amalgamated its Navy Air and its Army into the Royal Air Force (RAF). The United States considered the airplane to be a primary weapon to support the infantry. The United States later gave Air Services that is similar to the field artillery. The field artillery was responsible for training flying units and procuring aircraft. After World War I, airpower activists such as Giulio Douchet and General Billy Mitchell championed for strategic bombardment in 1930. The two argued that held the opinion that strategic bombing would transform warfare. Captain Gordon R Saville and Claire L. Chennault challenged the argument stating that improving pursuit aircraft using defensive strategy could claim air supremacy.

In 1935, the army experimented with a Ground Control Interception (GCI) system, which was successful. The system worked by using high-frequency radios to vector interceptor aircraft towards the incoming formations of bombers that had been seen and reported by ground observers. The systems were not perfect enough to halt a determined strike. However, it could inhibit the destruction of the attacker, thereby costing a considerable loss of the bomber aircraft to the enemy. Experiments were initiated to come up with a detection device that uses radio waves while the army worked to improve the pursuit of airplanes and the GCI system. The experiments were successful, and on 14 December 1936, the military conducted a pulse radar test. The army was, fortunately, able to deflect radio waves from an aircraft out to a radius of seven miles.

During the Second World War, a war that drew all the world’s superpower into what is considered to be the most lethal conflict in human history. Reports from the fight confirmed the dominance of airplanes in modern war. Major General Henry H. Arnold was given the command of the Air Force Combat Command after he assumed the title of chief of Army Air Forces (AAF) on 20 June 1941. The AAF became the most potent air force during the Second World War, and this was due to their vast personnel. The independence of the Air Force was unavoidable after the Second World War. The AAF initiated three significant combat commands in the United States in 1946. The first one was Strategic Air Command (SAC), which became the hub of planning of the Air Force. The second command was the Tactical Air Command (TAC) and the Air Defense Command (ADC).

There was an integration of the Department of Defense in the 1950s. The ADC and the SAC were under the management of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by 1958. The influence of officials such as Major General Bernard A.  Schriever, who was the founder of Space and Missiles Centre enabled the Air Force to develop ballistic missiles. By the late 1960s, the Air Force had already put I place a thousand intercontinental ballistic missiles. During this period, the then Secretary of defense emphasized the need for “flexible response” as a strategy. As a result, the Air Force obtained two components of the strategic weapons. The Air Force had land-based missiles and bombers, and the NAVY had the submarine-based missiles. As if “flexible responses” were not enough, the Air Force indulged in earth satellites. “Suddenly the skies were no longer high enough, as the man began reaching for the stars. And Airmen continued to test the boundaries of the human body by flying faster and higher and longer than anyone had ever traveled before.” In 1961, an office that would be a charge of satellite intelligence was created and was called the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). The majority of the staff at NRO were from the Air Force, and the head of this office was put to be the Secretary of the Air Force. The existence of the NRO was not disclosed up until the 1990s.

During the Vietnam war in 1960, the Air Force sent consultants to the Vietnam Air Force as an initiative to assist the government of South Vietnam. The Air Force diverted most of its tanker and bomber forces to Southeast Asia during the war that advanced into climatic bombings of 1972 in a struggle to remain ready in other locations. The emphasis on defense forces declined, and this had a significant effect on the Air Defense Command, which was later renamed to be the Aerospace Defense Command. The Aerospace Defense Command was then abolished in 1980. The Air Force focused on heightening combat readiness despite the setbacks the Air Force experienced after the war in Southeast Asia. In the Middle East war of 1973, the Military Airlift Command gave Israel humanitarian and military support as part of the national global commitments. The increase in appropriations reached its peak between 1985 and 1986 when the Air Force attained a force of 600,000 and annual spending of 97 billion dollars. The deployments to support operations in Grenada, Libya and Panama reflected the capacity of the Air Force to respond quickly to a local crisis. Major General Henry H. Arnold’s most significant achievement of committing to development and research was seen in the 1990s during the application of low observables technology such as the F-117 fight-bomber and the B-2 bomber. The advancement of F-22 continued to dominate the air, while unmanned combat air vehicles (UAVs) indicated innovations.

Today, the United States Air Force is the most technologically advanced, most capable, and the largest in the world. The United States Air Force has 450 intercontinental ballistic missiles, 156 unmanned combat air vehicles, about 5,778 human-crewed aircraft, and 2,130 Air-launched cruised missiles. The United States Air Force has 328,439 active personnel on duty, 106,000 in the Air National Guard, and 74,000 in the Individual and Selected Ready Reserves.