Joint Europe To Deter Russia

Conventional deterrence of Russian aggression in the Euro-Atlantic area requires a demonstrable NATO capacity to defeat Russian ground force incursions within politically acceptable timeframes. In the context of increasingly strained transatlantic relations and US prioritisation of the Indo-Pacific – where deterrence of a war over Taiwan is strongly in the interests of European NATO, and the US military is increasingly overstretched – European NATO members need to demonstrate that they can deter conventional aggression by Russian forces.

NATO land forces are overwhelmingly dependent on air power for fires. Without large-scale US assistance, however, European air forces would currently struggle to roll back dense and integrated air defence systems (IADS) such as those protecting Russian forces. Accelerating the degradation of the Russian IADS in any conflict is therefore critical to enabling the defeat of Russian ground forces. This is increasingly a joint task, and therefore this paper considers the issues of land-air integration in achieving the suppression and destruction of enemy (Russian) air defences (SEAD/DEAD).

Recommendations

This paper gives several recommendations for NATO’s European members that would help make this realisable:

• Many complex command and control (C2) challenges emerge from the need for an inter-echelon and joint SEAD/DEAD campaign, for which there is currently no suitable platform for training and thus testing requirements. Joint NATO SEAD/DEAD exercises are therefore needed, with the design of appropriate Alliance C2, a critical exploitation activity.

• European air forces should invest in the production of stand-off weapons suitable for SEAD/DEAD campaigns. Specifically, these include the American AGM-88G Extended Range Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missile, or potentially the Norwegian AGM-184A Joint Strike Missile, or the British SPEAR and SPEAR-EW cruise missiles. The latter three are especially important, as they can be manufactured in Europe. Air forces should also invest in greater stockpiles of the GBU-39/B small diameter bomb for affordable stand-off mass, and in aerial decoys such as the ADM-160 MALD or equivalents: both can force the Russian IADS to waste missiles, and provide saturation effects to enable other weapons to get through to targets. Another option is the GBU-53/B Stormbreaker II, which can automatically hit moving targets, but is significantly more expensive than the GBU-39/B and is highly vulnerable to interception due to it being a slow-flying glide bomb.

• For offensive counter-air capabilities to support a SEAD/DEAD campaign and provide cover to ground forces, European countries should invest in increasing stockpiles of METEOR long-range air-to-air missiles to improve the combat effectiveness of existing fourth-generation platforms such as Typhoon, Rafale and Gripen when these are forced to remain a significant distance from front lines.

• Land forces should prioritise fielding corps artillery groups of rocket artillery and bringing divisional artillery groups of general support howitzers up to strength. Stockpiles of precision strike missiles, the US Army Tactical Missile System and the Extended Range Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System–Extended Range should be prioritised, with a particular emphasis on manufacture of a European munition at scalable cost that can be launched from the M270 or M142 HIMARS launchers. Priority munitions natures include submunitions, thermobaric and sensor-fuzed payloads. These natures are critical to efficiently engaging ground targets on a battlefield where it is becoming harder to concentrate and sustain a large number of firing pieces. However, to be able to purchase and use many key submunitions payloads for SEAD/DEAD targets, and to attrit Russian ground forces in the open, European NATO members would need to withdraw from the Convention on Cluster Munitions (as Lithuania already has).

• There is significant advantage in investing in loitering munitions, one-way attack munitions, and aerial decoys that can be launched from land to suppress, stimulate and strike air defence systems. In combination with a reorganisation of traditional artillery capabilities, the deployment of hunter-killer and loitering top-attack UAS should also be able to help compensate for the close air support (CAS) that would not be generally available to ground forces until the SEAD/DEAD campaign was well advanced. In all cases, however, these uncrewed assets need to remain cheap and easy to produce in large numbers to have the effects described. They are a potent lethality multiplier for traditional fires and air-delivered weapons, rather than a substitute.

• Investment in significantly increasing the long-range precision fires stocks of European air, maritime and land forces is a prerequisite for rapidly generating a credible capability to degrade and ultimately roll back the Russian IADS. It is also vital for providing sufficient lethality to enable ground forces to survive until SEAD/DEAD operations have degraded the IADS to a point where more traditional CAS missions become possible again. However, investment in long-range precision munitions is not sufficient on its own. Europe must also develop electronic attack, special operations forces and orbital ISR capabilities to replace the critical joint enablers for SEAD/DEAD operations currently only provided by the US.

Introduction

For three decades, NATO land forces have operated with assured air supremacy and thus ubiquitous close air support (CAS). NATO air forces developed a robust methodology for defeating relatively centralised and static air defence networks, fielded during the 1980s, while significant investment in targeting pods and precision weapons made CAS progressively more precise and therefore more widely applicable against a broader range of targets.

However, modern Russian air defence systems have far greater range, are more mobile, more resilient and significantly more lethal than any faced by NATO forces in conflict so far. This, combined with the limited training and capability development for the suppression and destruction of enemy air defences (SEAD/DEAD) in most European countries since the end of the Cold War has made the availability of CAS doubtful during the initial period of any war between peer adversaries. Only the US has retained the stocks of suitable munitions, electronic attack (EA) assets and aircrew training to execute a comprehensive SEAD/DEAD campaign against modern threats, and even US Air Force and US Navy leaders frequently acknowledge that this task is becoming increasingly resource intensive. As the military balance in the Indo-Pacific tilts away from the US towards the People’s Republic of China (PRC), US SEAD/DEAD capabilities will be prioritised in this theatre of operations. This leaves unanswered the question of how European NATO members are to regenerate the ability to conduct SEAD/DEAD operations without the US doing most of the heavy lifting, and, because such operations will take time, how European land forces should plan to fight through at least the initial phases of any Russian attack in the absence of ubiquitous CAS.

While the problem of executing SEAD/DEAD is getting harder, a range of emerging land and air capabilities means that these tasks may be approached differently by the joint force, while capabilities are also being fielded that replicate some of the effects previously achieved through CAS. It is not, therefore, simply necessary to consider how the capability can be rebuilt, but how it can be redesigned, given modern tools. This is not a trivial task, since it demands a level of inter-echelon joint command and control (C2) which current force structures and command relationships do not currently support.

This paper endeavours to answer three critical questions. First, what are the gaps in SEAD/DEAD capabilities in the European theatre, and why is there an imperative to overcome them? Second, how will land forces need to organise their fires capabilities in an environment where forward echelons lack CAS and there is a strong burden placed on land fires to support a joint SEAD/DEAD campaign? And third, what C2 relationships and sequencing challenges would be required to field such a joint capability?

To answer these questions, the paper is divided into four chapters. Chapter I covers how modern Russian air defences work and the challenges they create for NATO air forces. Chapter II considers how land forces have depended on CAS, and thus what they must be able to achieve without it, as well as the demands placed on land forces to be able to contribute to joint SEAD/DEAD operations. Chapter III explores how both SEAD/DEAD and CAS effects may be partially serviced using UAS and other capabilities where there is convergence between the land and air domains; the space domain is an intimate enabler of all these activities, but classification means that this has been excluded from the discussion in detail. Chapter IV explores the existing C2 relationships in a NATO context, and those that will be required in the future. The paper concludes with a series of recommendations.

This is the third paper in a series drawing on lessons from Ukraine. The first considered the principles of fielding mass precision strike complexes within land forces, while the second set out an approach to counter the threat from UAS. This paper is also an extension of a paper published in 2022 which looked at methods for overcoming complex air defences, and which in essence produced a targeting methodology for applying joint effects against a modern integrated air defence system (IADS). This paper is more concerned with how the force is structured and equipped to execute those complex strikes.

The evidence base for this paper is diverse. Both authors have spent several years examining Russian air defence systems, including physically inspecting examples. They have also spent significant time with aviation and fast air units, have observed exercises and operations, and flown in military aviation and – in the case of one author – fast jet aircraft with several NATO countries. Both authors have also interviewed a significant number of air defence officers and observed air defence engagements. One of the authors has spent significant time working with land forces testing targeting processes and conducting targeting, while the other has similarly engaged with air forces. The C2 challenges and planning obstacles to these issues have also been a subject of observation across NATO and non-NATO states. Additionally, the authors have spent considerable time with the scientific and technical personnel working to overcome Russian air defences in Ukraine, using a range of emerging tools, and have worked with Ukraine’s international partners seeking to derive lessons from the current conflict. Due to the sensitivity of the subject, a significant number of these research interactions cannot be cited individually, but care has been taken to show the sources of information and judgements, where possible.

I. Barriers to the Suppression and Destruction of Enemy Air Defences

Perhaps the most critical military challenge currently facing NATO is that the Alliance would have a serious SEAD/DEAD deficit against Russian forces in an Article 5 scenario. The air assets likely to be available in Europe currently have a range of capabilities for detecting and locating ground-based air defence (GBAD) radars, and some capacity to suppress them, but they have insufficient air-delivered firepower to reliably destroy them within the Russian IADS deployed on NATO’s borders.

There are three key aspects to this DEAD lethality challenge. The first is the demonstrated capability of many Russian GBAD systems to intercept Western air-delivered weapons in terminal phase. This is partly a function of NATO air forces currently possessing very few weapons that are specifically designed to destroy air defence targets in a highly contested airspace. The second, linked, challenge is the layered coverage of the various GBAD systems deployed by Russian forces, which makes it very difficult to engage any one threat system in isolation. The third aspect is that many Russian radar systems move regularly and must be emitting for most Western sensors to reliably and accurately detect and geolocate them. Therefore, the IADS must be stimulated by threats either to it or assets that it is protecting as part of any SEAD/DEAD operation. These three aspects are discussed in more detail later, but what they essentially mean for NATO forces is that SEAD/DEAD operations must be closely coordinated with a range of simultaneous effects that are difficult for European air forces to mass without joint support from other domains.

Several of the main Russian surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems have a proven capability to shoot down most kinds of Western air-delivered munitions, as well as some ground-based and maritime long-range weapons. The SA-20 (S-300PMU-1/2 Gargoyle/Favorit), SA-21 (S-400 Growler) and SA-23 (S-300VM Gladiator/Giant) are all so-called “strategic SAM” systems that provide coverage over very long ranges against aerial targets flying above the radar horizon. However, they are also designed to shoot down ballistic missiles, including the MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) over a significantly smaller coverage area. In addition, they provide some capability to intercept other weapons, such as cruise missiles like the BGM-109 Tomahawk Land Attack Missile (TLAM), anti-radiation missiles like the AGM-88 HARM series, and battlefield rockets such as the Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (G-MLRS) fired by the M270 and HIMARS launchers. Other Russian systems, most notably the SA-15 (9K331/332 Tor-M1/M2) and SA-22 (96K6 Pantsir M-1) short-range air defence systems (SHORAD), and the medium- to long-range SA-28 (S-350 Vityaz) SAM are optimised for intercepting cruise missiles and other incoming precision guided munitions such as HARM and glide bombs. Both the SA-15 and SA-22 offer short engagement and coverage ranges but are often emplaced as “goalkeeper” systems that share situational awareness data with the long-range SA-20/21/23 systems they are protecting, and provide a formidable inner defensive layer against attacks on those systems. While they are optimised primarily for intercepting aircraft, the more modern variants of Russia’s “Buk” medium-range SAM family, the SA-17 and SA-27 (9K317/M Grizzly), also offer some capacity to intercept cruise missiles and potentially other incoming munitions, at least in self-defence.

The capacity of Russian SAM systems to shoot down incoming munitions of various kinds has been demonstrated hundreds of times over the three years since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine began on 24 February 2022. Details remain scarce in the public domain due to the high levels of sensitivity and operational security applied to data on such engagements. However, for those with visibility on the data either from Ukrainian sources or Western operational analysis, the results are clear. Russian GBAD forces have become steadily more proficient since the start of the invasion, and in particular have gained a thorough understanding of how to engage several important classes of Western air-launched and ground-based long-range weapons and SEAD munitions as the latter have been introduced into theatre for use by Ukrainian forces. The result is that strikes, either against Russian air defence systems directly, or against targets protected by them, generally require careful layering of multiple near-simultaneous strikes and non-kinetic effects to get weapons through successfully.

Weaponry to Counter Russian Air Defences

There are clear implications for the SEAD/DEAD campaign that NATO member countries would have to wage as a critical first step in any defence of Alliance territory against future Russian aggression. Russian air defences are far from impenetrable, as Ukrainian forces themselves have repeatedly shown. Indeed, those Western partners who have worked closely with Ukrainian forces since February 2022 now have a far more detailed understanding of the weaknesses, as well as the strengths, of Russian GBAD systems. However, simply firing limited numbers of traditional precision-guided weapons at GBAD systems as they are located will generally result in those weapons being intercepted by layered SAM systems in the IADS. This is particularly true for weapons that fly relatively slowly and/or on a predictable flight path without complex manoeuvring capability, such as glide bombs.

Unfortunately, NATO air forces currently lack sufficient stockpiles of munitions with both the stand-off range and terminal survivability and guidance capabilities required to reliably penetrate and cause DEAD effects within a representative Russian IADS. Suitable weapons do exist; notably the American AGM-88G Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missile – Extended Range (AARGM-ER), the Norwegian AGM-184A Joint Strike Missile (JSM) and the British SPEAR miniature cruise missile. These weapons are all designed expressly for the purpose of penetrating heavily defended airspace to strike radars, command nodes and other key IADS components. To do so, they use either reduced radar cross-section (AARGM-ER and JSM) or powered manoeuvring capabilities in flight (SPEAR and JSM) to make interception much more difficult; and they also carry seeker heads able to complete terminal target identification and guidance automatically even if a SAM has stopped emitting and is moving. However, the trade-off is a high unit cost (around $3 million per missile for foreign customers in the case of AARGM-ER and JSM). Moreover, the AARGM-ER and JSM are comparatively large, which limits internal carriage to two weapons for the F-35A/C fighter aircraft and external carriage only for the F-35B. Currently, there are none in operational service with frontline squadrons.

The Netherlands, Finland and Poland have ordered the AARGM-ER for their F-35A fleets, while Norway and the US Air Force have ordered the JSM, and the US Air Force has selected the AARGM-ER to form the basis for a munition called the Stand-in Attack Weapon (SiAW) that will be capable of striking well-defended targets from the F-35A. The UK has funded the development of SPEAR and its electronic warfare (EW) variant, SPEAR-EW, but has yet to order operationally significant quantities, partly due to cost and partly to integration delays on the F-35B. Overcoming these delays and getting weapons delivered to users will take time. The number of weapons procured by European users remains in the order of a few hundred for each country, according to US Foreign Military Sales/Defense Security Cooperation Agency authorisation notices.

Therefore, despite the prospect of significant improvements by the late 2020s, NATO air forces currently remain largely dependent on glide bombs such as the GBU-39/B small diameter bomb and the GBU-53/B Stormbreaker II for air-launched DEAD effects. These have a very limited capability to penetrate through and hit Russian SAMs and radars within the IADS due to their relatively slow and predictable behaviour in flight. On the other hand, they can still perform a useful SEAD function because (at least in the case of the GBU-39/B) they are a comparatively cheap way to force the IADS to light up and engage them – thus exposing radar locations and depleting expensive interceptor missiles. They can also be carried and launched in comparatively large numbers due to their small size, light weight and quadruple carriage rack. Nonetheless, they are far from ideal for DEAD, not only due to their vulnerability to interception but also their reliance on GPS and their small warhead size (which limits their kill potential against armoured SAM systems in the event of a near-miss). Russia has a very well-developed capability to deny and spoof GPS, which has seen consistent use and improvement in terms of both equipment and tactics during the war in Ukraine, so munitions that depend on GPS for terminal guidance and mid-course navigation will need advanced anti-jam functionality to avoid serious degradation in effectiveness.

As far as dedicated SEAD munitions are concerned, American F-16CMs and EA-18G aircraft, as well as German and Italian Tornado ECRs (electronic/combat renaissance aircraft), field the legacy AGM-88B HARM and a limited number of more modern AGM-88E AARGM weapons. Both the HARM and AARGM are based on the same basic missile body, and Russia has now had more than two years of combat experience against the HARM, which the Ukrainian Air Force has used extensively for SEAD since late 2022. After an initial period of surprise, its performance as a DEAD weapon decreased rapidly as Russian GBAD operators learned to react to launches by pausing radar emissions and sometimes relocating. HARM is also periodically intercepted in flight by the more capable Russian SAM systems, and their operators have had plenty of practice up to late 2024.

Electronic Attack Capabilities

In terms of EA capabilities, which are critical for enhancing the survivability and lethality of aircraft and weapons during SEAD/DEAD operations, almost all NATO capabilities are American, including the EA-18G Growler and EA-37B Compass Call aircraft from the US Navy and US Air Force, as well as the latest variants of the ADM-160 Miniature Air-Launched Decoy (MALD) family, which can be launched from a variety of aircraft types. Germany is developing the Eurofighter EK to replace the Tornado ECR in Luftwaffe service, but in its first iteration it will only be capable of self-protection jamming alongside passive emitter-location capabilities to cue in AARGM launches for SEAD. Thus on current plans it will not be a stand-off EA asset, although that might change if a “Phase 2” variant of the aircraft is developed and introduced in the mid-2030s. Italy, therefore, is so far the only European country that has a dedicated airborne EA platform on order, having received Foreign Military Sales authorisation for two EA-37Bs that should be in service by the late 2020s.

Given the air-launched munitions inventory in Europe, therefore, air forces operating without cross-domain support would struggle to reliably destroy Russian SAMs at large scale within a functioning IADS. There are probably insufficient weapons and airborne EA capacity in European air force inventories to generate the required penetrating or saturation effects, in the absence of simultaneous weapons and effects employed from other domains. The self-defence capabilities of many key Russian systems are impressive in themselves and, as a compounding problem set, they are deployed in a layered and mutually supporting way.

Russian Integrated Air Defence System Layering

The layering of air defences is the second key consideration for understanding the challenge that Russia’s IADS poses for NATO SEAD/DEAD efforts. When Russian forces fight, they deploy with large numbers of SHORAD, medium-range air defence (MRAD) and long-range air defence (LRAD) systems that both accompany and provide cover to ground forces and protect key areas and facilities from attacks in depth. This ensures that it is very challenging to engage any one type of Russian SAM threat without simultaneously having to contend with the capabilities of multiple other systems.

For instance, aircraft and weapons must avoid being successfully engaged by multiple SHORAD and MRAD systems en route to attack LRAD systems in operational depth that are likely to be the primary targets of any SEAD/DEAD campaign. Equally, however, it is difficult for aircraft to locate, suppress and destroy SHORAD or MRAD systems closer to the front lines while operating in the missile engagement zone of an LRAD system such as the SA-21. The problem goes deeper than geographically overlapping coverage, however. Russian strategic SAM units operating equipment such as the SA-21 or SA-23 use C2 vehicles that are designed to be connected to nearby MRAD and SHORAD systems. When operating as intended as a truly integrated air defence system, this allows Russian SAM batteries to share situational awareness and coordinate target prioritisation to provide the most efficient possible engagement of targets. This also means that many of the MRAD and SHORAD systems deployed closer to the front lines may be able to maintain good situational awareness without emitting regularly using their own radars, by using information from the target acquisition radar on an LRAD system further back. This makes them much more difficult to locate and allows them to pose a more dangerous “pop-up” threat to any aircraft or weapons unknowingly transiting their coverage area to attack the strategic SAMs or provide CAS to nearby NATO forces.

Thus, geolocating and identifying the SAM systems throughout an IADS so that they can be suppressed, attacked or bypassed is a prerequisite capability for any SEAD/DEAD effort. Space-based ISR assets play a vital role in identifying the rough pre-sited locations that the IADS components tend to use, and specialised assets may also be able to provide SAM launch detection and electromagnetic spectrum analysis that can help identify radar sites and signal patterns. However, most of the current military space-based ISR capabilities in NATO are provided by the US, and commercial providers – which are an increasingly important source of ISR data – generally have a response time measured in at least hours.

Unfortunately, Russian target acquisition radars typically move between pre-sited locations every few hours and relocate significantly more frequently if commanders are expecting an attack. The consequent need to force them to emit to find, fix and target them in real time further emphasises the need to synchronise effects from across domains for any predominantly European SEAD/DEAD campaign to be effective. If Russian SAM operators are aware that a large SEAD/DEAD operation is underway but face no concurrent threats to the units or facilities they are protecting, it is likely that they will keep most radars across the IADS passive until either the threat passes or is deep inside their engagement zones, with limited time to react to pop-up threats. Therefore a key component of any successful SEAD/DEAD package coordinated by air forces will be to employ simultaneous long-range strikes from either maritime cruise missiles or ground-based rocket artillery systems and one-way attack UAVs against static targets within the IADS coverage area.

Deploying cruise missiles, one-way attack UAVs or rocket artillery salvoes at key static targets will force the IADS to switch most SHORAD, MRAD and LRAD radar systems into active mode to perform their core task of defending Russian ground forces and installations from strikes. This will not only allow NATO forces to geolocate them (predominantly, but not exclusively, using airborne assets such as the F-35), but will also split the finite fire control and interceptor capacity of the SAM systems. The goal must be to force the IADS to defend against SEAD and DEAD weapons in self-defence while simultaneously having to intercept significant numbers of long-range strike munitions aimed at ground targets and installations, such as ammunition dumps and C2 nodes.

In addition, if suitable Alliance C2 and networking architectures are in place, ground-based weapons in particular can contribute greatly to the DEAD effectiveness of a joint SEAD/DEAD operation by contributing responsive artillery or rocket artillery strikes against SAM targets found and fixed by aircraft such as the F-35. Of course, the artillery systems would need to be in place, briefed on their part in the planned operation, supplied with suitable munitions against the SEAD/DEAD task, and so on. However, given that some of the most potentially problematic layered IADS concentrations for NATO – for example, Kaliningrad – are potentially within 155-mm howitzer range, let alone G-MLRS and ATACMS range, this sort of cross-domain integration needs to be prioritised and exercised as a matter of urgency. This will require not only air and space forces but also armies to concentrate on the problem set. And this may be essential, since achieving the required SEAD/DEAD capability in Europe to ensure credible deterrence will require simultaneous use of both SEAD/DEAD effectors from multiple domains – at least until and unless a far greater quantity of DEAD munitions, one-way attack UAVs and EA capabilities for supporting SEAD effects sits in the inventories of European air forces.

II. Land Operations in the Absence of Close Air Support

US doctrine during the inception of AirLand Battle hypothesised the close cooperation of air and ground forces at both the operational and tactical level. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, the lack of resilience in adversary air defence networks allowed air forces to devote a large proportion of their capabilities to supporting ground forces. With the subsequent investment in targeting pods and precision weapons, the resulting CAS capability proved highly addictive for land forces, for three reasons. First, the speed of aircraft meant that the support was available across the frontage of a land formation, without the need to manoeuvre firing assets into position, protect them, and – most laborious of all – sustain them in the field. Second, the weight of air-launched munitions (and therefore the lethality of these effects against targets in hard cover) exceeds almost anything that land forces can themselves generate. Third, it was institutionally convenient for ground forces to divest from fires, sustainment units and stockpiles while retaining effective battlefield lethality through an air force’s budget; for air forces, meanwhile, the criticality of the mission gave them continued relevance and thus investment even in the absence of a complex air threat.

Although the divestment in ground-based fires made sense during the sustained period of counterinsurgency, it creates a serious problem for land forces and the joint force in the current context of needing to urgently strengthen NATO’s conventional deterrence posture. The disproportionate difficulty of a reclamation battle, combined with the anticipated behaviour of Russian troops on terrain they have seized, means that NATO now has a strategic posture of deterrence by denial. This means that land forces cannot wait for air forces to complete the SEAD/DEAD campaign before they themselves are committed – they must be able to operate for a sustained period while the air space is still heavily contested. It is also the case that much of the land component’s higher echelon fires will be needed to support the SEAD/DEAD campaign being led by the air component, as outlined in the previous chapter. This means that while corps fires assist in the deep battle to eventually create permissibility in the air to the benefit of the land component, many of these launchers and ready ammunition stocks will not be available for missions to assist land forces in the early stages of fighting. Precisely because these corps fires will need to support the air-led SEAD/DEAD campaign, they will need to manoeuvre to fire, and contribute land-based sensing to the mission. These corps assets will need protecting, further committing land forces to fight before the airspace becomes sufficiently permissive for air support to be a reliable planning assumption.

The question therefore arises as to how land forces can assure their own mission requirement with organic fires while also servicing the requirements for SEAD/DEAD. The conventional argument would be to simply regenerate a level of firepower at an echelon comparable to Cold War doctrine. This would provide ubiquitous fires availability, replicating the coverage of air assets. It would not replicate the lethality of air-launched weapons, however. Land-based weapons are generally small-yield munitions because they need to be transported and must include enough propellent to climb, rather than simply descend. The traditional answer to this has been volume of fire, but dense enemy ISR, combined with a responsive precision strike complex and dynamic counter-battery capabilities (for example, hunter-seeker munitions such as Lancet-3M) make sustaining a high volume of fire impracticable.

Battlefield geometry contributes to this challenge. In 1991, there were enough howitzers concentrated in northern Saudi Arabia for fire controllers to direct “fire mission Regiment” onto targets, with the ammunition replenished through Saudi ports and thereafter by road transport along uncontested ground lines of communication. While it is theoretically possible for NATO to invest in an Army Group’s worth of howitzers in the Baltics, it is not a safe planning assumption that ammunition for so many howitzers could be reliably transported, either across the Baltic Sea or through the Suwałki Gap.

The usual response to the prospect of constrained munitions supplies is to argue for the use of precision weapons. Precision is undoubtedly part of the solution but is insufficient on its own. Precision munitions are, in the first instance, too expensive to be relied on exclusively: a strategy that relies solely on precision munitions ensures insufficient magazine depth to enable mission success. Furthermore, precision is enabled by precision navigation and timing, or by connectivity – all of which are vulnerable to extensive Russian EW capabilities. Although it is possible to overcome EW, doing so in an assured manner tends to be expensive, or slow. A rapid targeting cycle at large scale creates a level of inefficiency in fires that leads to a requirement for area effect munitions. Because of the payload limitations of most land-based fires, this further drives a requirement for increased lethality, but without increasing the mass of the munition.

Land Fires Requirements

Consideration of the land fires requirements within this context can be divided by target set and mission. For deep strikes using long-range weapons in support of a SEAD/DEAD campaign, there is significant utility in land forces launching loitering munitions, because of the scale at which they can be generated and the shaping effect they can have on the behaviour of air defence systems, thus enabling other kinds of strikes. The other munitions of disproportionate utility for this mission are tactical ballistic missiles (TBMs), owing to their speed into action, difficulty of interception, and payload leading to a high probability of kill (Pk). In terms of loitering munitions, the efficacy of Harrop and Orbiter has been demonstrated persistently. Further opportunities arise from the use of EW and decoy munitions to massively complicate the adversary’s air defence challenge. The reduction of Ukrainian air defences over time by Russian 9M723 Iskandr TBMs is testament to the potential efficacy of these munitions for DEAD, as is the utility of ATACMS in striking Russian GBAD radars in Crimea.

In terms of their Pk, cluster munition warheads have consistently proven more effective for DEAD fire missions than unitary variants. This is because a single round that gets through defences can damage or destroy multiple elements of a SAM battery, while cluster munitions’ wider area of effect means that they suffer less severely from degradation of accuracy due to hostile EW. Extended Range Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (GMLRS-ER) are also highly useful in this role. However, while cluster munitions are also useful against some land targets, others – such as headquarters, ammunition depots and infrastructure relevant to a deep strike campaign that would directly affect the land battle – tend to be hardened structures against which cluster warheads would have little effect. Instead, a unitary penetrating warhead is necessary for such fire missions.

For targets in tactical depth, the relevant tasks for fires may be broken down as fire missions against dug-in personnel, mobile personnel, vehicles in hides, vehicles on the move, and hardened targets. Historically, a significant distinction has been drawn between general support fires and close support fires designed to directly enable manoeuvre. Today, however, close support fires are likely to be provided by organic mortars, since the counterbattery threat is so high – both from loitering munitions such as the Lancet 3M and from conventional artillery threats, exacerbated by the supply chain to sustain howitzers. With sustained fire missions being too dangerous, general support artillery is likely to be more viable. The tactical support of SEAD/DEAD may be considered the same as engagement of moving vehicles, while the counterbattery fight can be likened to engaging targets in hides, or moving vehicles if they are using carousel tactics. As with the air defence battle, the limited number of fire missions likely to be available mandates a shift in emphasis from suppression towards destruction of targets. Thus, the key is to match appropriate munitions to targets.

Against dug-in personnel, High Explosive-Fragmentation is an inefficient round. While air burst can improve lethality, it can be countered if defensive positions have overhead protection. One-way attack munitions that can fly into a trench, or laser-guided artillery and mortar rounds, can be highly effective at landing rounds inside a defensive position. However, the Pk of all these attack vectors is significantly improved if the munition is thermobaric or at least an enhanced blast munition. As troops become more dispersed in defensive positions, there is disproportionate utility in munitions that can achieve lethal effect around corners. This has often been achieved with air-launched munitions because of the yield of the munition, which is why Russian UMPK-fitted glide bombs have been so lethal for Ukrainian troops. For ground-based fires, thermobaric munitions can help to reduce the lethality gap resulting from a lack of air support.

For hostile troops moving in the open, air burst munitions can achieve a comparable level of lethality to cluster munitions. However, air burst proximity fuzes are more susceptible to interference from Russian EW systems, whereas time-based fuzes are more robust. Nevertheless, the lethality of such munitions is comparable to what can be achieved with cluster munitions, if simply considering manoeuvring land forces. Cluster munitions are also highly effective against the radar sites and EW complexes that are likely to become increasingly prevalent and critical in tactical echelons as counter-UAS operations become an all arms and all echelon concern. The evidence from Ukraine demonstrates that there is a difference in effectiveness such that any military that is constrained on the number of fire missions it can conduct should probably prioritise cluster munitions for its artillery.

Although the efficacy of cluster munitions has always been clear, there are significant ethical arguments against their use. These primarily relate to dud-rates leading to a dispersion of unexploded ordnance across the battlefield. Because of this risk, many states signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions from 2008, disavowing their use. However, states that perceived a risk of major ground operations – including Finland, Poland, South Korea, Ukraine, the US, Russia, China, India, Pakistan and others – did not. In 2024, Lithuania, recognising the expanding threat on its borders, withdrew from the convention. It seems that many European nations may have to do the same if they are to be able to guarantee their security in the absence of a major US commitment to the theatre, mitigating the ethical concerns by limiting the context in which such munitions are employed, and investing in reducing the dud-rate of newly produced munitions. It is also worth noting that Russian forces make extensive use of cluster munitions, so in the context of Russian armed aggression against a frontline NATO state, ethically motivated self-limitation by the defending side would not obviate the need for a large-scale post-conflict unexploded ordinance clearance and disposal effort to avoid lasting risk to civilians.

Vehicles in concealed positions (hides) present another important class of target. As offensive action has become more deliberate, the need to degrade enemy reserves has increased. When moving in the open, there are many options for both detecting and engaging these targets. When static and concealed, radio traffic and ground sign may give an indication that a unit is inhabiting an area of woodland, but finding specific hides would take substantial ISR efforts, while striking them is challenging. Sensor-fuzed sub-munitions and other anti-vehicle systems may struggle to find targets that have overhead cover, while one-way-attack UAS, long-range anti-tank guided missiles, and rockets will often strike trees, limiting their impact. Air strikes have bypassed this challenge via the vertical attack profile of air-dropped munitions and their heavier weight and explosive payload, but the effect is reduced by increased dispersion. The most effective means of overcoming this impediment is to set fire to the hides. While persistent incendiaries would be ideal for such a mission in regard to effect, they are prohibited by Protocol III of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, and in any case are not necessary. Thermobaric munitions are highly likely to set fire to hides, forcing the displacement of vehicles. While this may not destroy many vehicles, it can rapidly turn a static vehicle grouping into a mobile vehicle grouping. Thermobaric munitions in this context can also be highly effective against emplaced guns in the counterbattery role.

There is ample evidence to demonstrate the indispensability of sensor-fuzed munitions for the engagement of moving vehicles. Whether from air-delivered CBU-105 Wind Corrected Munitions Dispenser (WCMD) in Iraq, or BoNUS artillery shell engagements in Ukraine, sensor-fuzed munitions have an exceptionally high Pk against moving vehicles. There is a high cost to these munitions, which means they must be conserved for use against vehicles when they are exposed, but under the right conditions their efficiency makes the investment highly worthwhile. Such munitions can also prove a reliable means of engaging mobile air defence vehicles, especially where the target is the transport erector launcher rather than supporting radar.

Against hardened targets such as buried command posts, a penetrating warhead with greater velocity is indispensable, driving a reliance on an appropriate GMLRS-ER munition with a unitary warhead – at least until conventional air support and deep strikes are available following a successful SEAD/DEAD campaign.

The proposition that artillery units supporting deep fires should have two munition types, while general support artillery should have three, imposes implications for the echelons at which these capabilities are held. If deep fires are to be supported by appropriate targeting capacity and the command links to collaborate with air assets, they probably sit at the corps level. For general support fires, a typical howitzer carries between 28 and 48 rounds. To split this between three natures would mean that each howitzer could carry out only a very small number of missions before needing resupply. If different batteries are allocated different ammunition natures, this requires a constant movement of batteries, which will increase attrition and require more batteries to be available for a given area. A brigade is unlikely to be able to assure the sustainment requirements for howitzers with multiple munitions natures or have enough organic artillery to have natures assigned by battery. This dynamic therefore pushes artillery upwards to the division, where the concentration of guns allows for the cycling of batteries and the flow of munitions to be coordinated more efficiently. For genuine close support fires, therefore, the emphasis shifts to mortars and probably the retention of high explosive fragmentation as an inefficient but valuable all-purpose round that simplifies sustainment.

Without a properly resourced divisional and corps artillery group with appropriate munitions, it seems unlikely that ground forces can replicate the responsiveness or lethality derived from CAS. One capability that stitches much of this together is UAS, but, as these straddle the air and ground domains, their role will be addressed in the next chapter.

III. Uncrewed Aerial Vehicles and Joint Strike

SEAD provided some of the earliest use cases for UAVs on the modern battlefield, most notably by Israeli forces in the 1970s and 1980s. Aerial targets originally developed to train air defenders were repurposed as aerial decoys that emulated the radar cross-section and flight profile of aircraft, causing air defences to illuminate and reveal their positions. These decoys also forced operators to deal with the cognitive load imposed by the need to filter out false detections, or even expend interceptors.

When used in a similar vein in more recent times, Russia’s E95M target UAV caused significant C2 problems for Ukraine’s air defenders early in the full-scale invasion. Israel pioneered the use of radar homing seekers for UAVs for the express purpose of suppressing or destroying air defences. Anti-radiation missiles (ARMs) such as the AGM-88B HARM and Russian Kh-31P series are a useful toolfor attacking air defences, but are limited by the fact that the speed at which they travel enables defenders to turn off their system for a minute or two, likely causing the missile to miss, before the radars are turned on again. ARMs, therefore, are most useful in creating short windows of opportunity to enable other strikes, and have a poor track record of actually destroying air defences. As UAVs are slower in flight and can loiter over a target until it emits again, they are less immediately responsive but can significantly extend the duration of suppressive effect. Israel and Azerbaijan have both demonstrated the effectiveness of these munitions in conflict. In combination with one-way-attack munitions, UAVs also force air defences to expend interceptors in self-defence. When a Patriot system was first deployed to Ukraine, for example, Russia fired 75 Shahed-136 UAVs at the system, which had to exhaust its interceptors in self-defence. While 73 UAVs were shot down, the two that got through damaged the Patriot system.

Despite this long history, however, there have been several relatively recent changes in the relationship between UAVs, air operations and air defence operations, driven by changes in technology.

First, the mass employment of UAVs for aerial reconnaissance – especially electro-optical observation – has arguably reduced joint force dependence on traditional air assets for ISR. This does not mean that the air component’s ISR capabilities do not have utility, but rather that they can be focused on a narrower set of tasks, such as identifying and classifying air defence radars.

Second, although air strikes have long been the preferred means of engaging a very wide range of targets, many of the targets do not actually require the payloads deliverable from fast air to engage successfully. For many targets, UAVs with 10–50 kg warheads offer a cheaper and more widely available – albeit slightly less responsive – means of strike. This, therefore, should help the air component narrow its CAS offering to target sets where it has a uniquely useful capability, especially in the early phases of a SEAD/DEAD campaign, when opportunities for CAS will be limited.

Third, the pervasive threat of UAVs to land formations and joint military installations means that counter-UAS (C-UAS) capabilities are now an all-arms and all-echelon concern. Because the challenge for C-UAS operations is to ensure the economical defeat of cheap, relatively slow-moving targets, few of the munitions would threaten aircraft at medium or high altitude, although they could pose a threat at low altitude. The sensors required for successful C-UAS coverage for ground forces, however, are likely to also enable widespread passive tracking of conventional air threats. Thus, hostile C-UAS capabilities will contribute to the challenge for friendly air operations over the battlefield. Equally, however, friendly ground force C-UAS sensor coverage may be able to reduce the burden on air force assets for wide-area detection, classification and tracking of potential air threats over the area of operations, allowing defensive counter-air assets to prioritise high Pk engagements.

Finally, between the 1970s and 2010s, UAVs were predominantly operating in blocks of airspace relevant to air operations, with a small number of UAVs flying at lower altitudes to assist tactical activity. It made sense, therefore, to treat these systems as aircraft and for their C2 to sit within air forces. Today, however, land forces can launch a wide range of highly capable UAVs that can (but will not always) enter blocks of airspace relevant to air operations. There is also considerable tactical utility in having UAVs that are organic to land forces and can therefore be launched closer to the target, reducing both transit time and allowing the UAV to be smaller relative to the effect it can have on the target. This means that, between friendly and enemy UAVs, the air space above land formations is liable to be increasingly congested with assets operated by both land and air forces, reporting to two very different C2 structures.

Historically, the small number of UAVs being used and their role in day-one SEAD or flying routine “orbits” made the question of airspace deconfliction either bespoke, or straightforward. Today, however, it may be highly desirable for UAVs to be launched from multiple land force elements, targeting distinct parts of an IADS, in a manner that must synchronise with air operations and long-range munitions that travel at orders of magnitude greater speed. To give a simplified example of both the potential utility and complexity, consider the following hypothetical strike:

A Composite Air Operation (COMAO) is planned to destroy a strategic LRAD system in operational depth. The COMAO combines a mixture of fifth- and fourth-generation strike aircraft, with the former tasked with the location and both electromagnetic suppression and direct attacks on key radars, and the fourth-generation aircraft carrying greater numbers of stand-off munitions and decoys for suppression purposes. To locate and attack the mobile fire control and target-acquisition radar assets of the target LRAD system, the IADS must be stimulated to illuminate and engage either real or illusory threats. To have an acceptable Pk against the LRAD system, the fifth-generation aircraft must get well inside its potential engagement range. However, the LRAD system is protected by, and networked with, a much greater number of SHORAD and MRAD SAMs that are located in the gap between friendly territory and the LRAD system in the enemy deep. Since these systems are also mobile, some of them are also likely to be unlocated during the COMAO planning phase, thus presenting a “pop-up” threat for aircraft attempting to work their way into the IADS to attack the LRAD system. In short, it is difficult to effectively attack the LRAD system without also engaging the SHORAD and MRAD systems on the route towards it that strike aircraft and munitions are trying to use. However, it is difficult to safely and reliably locate, suppress and either bypass or destroy the SHORAD and MRAD systems without having first successfully suppressed the LRAD system that is supplying their cover and situational awareness.

Ground-based capabilities and UAVs can assist with this problem set in several ways. First, airborne ISTAR sensors such as those on the F-35 that can detect and geolocate SHORAD and MRAD systems can (if adequately supported by joint C2 networks) generate and pass real-time target coordinates to land-based fires to destroy, suppress or displace threats on the intended flight path of the COMAO.

Second, launching loitering munitions from ground units against known MRAD sites near the front lines, with a loiter time covering the period of the COMAO, can impose significant risk on MRAD systems that choose to illuminate and engage the aircraft and air-launched weapons. Loitering munitions use is unlikely to stop all MRAD systems engaging the COMAO. However, between suppression from the COMAO’s self-defence EW capabilities, the threat from the ground-launched loitering munitions, and strikes from the aircraft where required, the risk can be substantially reduced. In terms of provoking sustained radar illumination by the strategic LRAD system, the use of aerial decoys and massed, cheap, one-way-attack UAS may force longer-range radar to stay active to support the elimination of false positives for other parts of the IADS, and in extremis to defend itself.

Finally, the combination of the air-launched stand-off weapons and ground-based TBMs can present the defensive systems with both manoeuvring cruise and quasi-ballistic targets that can better saturate SHORAD capacity to protect the main LRAD systems. This kind of multidomain strike involving at least three (land, air and space) and probably four (adding naval or cyber) domains of operations, with a need for precise synchronisation, takes significant levels of planning and must deal with the latency introduced by the friction of operations for land forces. How to coordinate such a strike is the subject of the next chapter.

For land forces, contributing ISR and firepower in support of air operations may pay off in the long run, but it does not explain how the force is to have sufficient lethality in the absence of regular CAS before the SEAD/DEAD campaign has progressed sufficiently to enable control of the air where and when required. UAVs also play an important role in reducing some of the deficiency but are insufficient to provide a like-for-like substitute. It is important to consider how UAVs shape ground force demands of the air component, because this determines where force development in the air domain can prioritise effects against ground targets.

Speed of response and heavy explosive payload constitute the real distinguishing features of air-launched munitions that are difficult to replicate using ground-based munitions. To that end, air is disproportionately valuable for engaging hardened or dug-in targets. Speed of munitions also makes air-launched weapons harder to intercept than most classes of UAV – at least in the absence of a functioning GBAD system. UAVs, however, are highly effective in conducting top attack, either against point targets or moving targets such as armoured vehicles. As the passive terminal homing capability of strike UAVs improves, the combination of rocket- or artillery-launched sensor-fuzed munitions, alongside UAVs, can probably obviate much of the traditional doctrinal emphasis placed on air interdiction of ground targets. Engaging hardened point targets is a mission where air-launched munitions are likely to retain disproportionate effectiveness compared with UAVs or ground-based artillery, but for less hardened targets like fighting positions, heavier UAVs, such as Russia’s Privet and Molnya UAVs have a sufficient payload and accuracy to replicate what would previously have been achieved with CAS.

One intriguing question that emerges here is the data relationship between UAV crews and ground forces, especially regarding Joint Terminal Attack Controllers. With UAVs now the primary means for locating targets in the close and deep battlespace, the generation of strike coordinates is generally conducted at the level of the brigade headquarters. This is the structure that both the Ukrainian military and Israeli military have arrived at in the light of what is probably the most extensive experience of widespread UAV employment in joint operations. The result is that there is significantly less need for pilots to have assured communications with forward units, which was, in any case, one of the more vulnerable C2 links in a contested electromagnetic spectrum. However, if ground forces are to contribute corps or divisional deep fires such as precision strike missiles (PrSM), ATACMS or G-MLRS as responsive DEAD munitions as part of the wider SEAD/DEAD campaign, then that trend is reversed. This is because those artillery units would need to be able to receive and rapidly action time-sensitive target coordinates that are overwhelmingly likely to come directly from pilots in fifth-generation combat aircraft or potentially national-level orbital ISTAR assets. Getting the C2 structure right is therefore critical, and this is the subject of the next chapter.

IV. Command and Control for Joint Suppression and Destruction of Enemy Air Defences

While in theory there is huge potential to rapidly build up the much-needed capacity to degrade Russian air defences through expanded joint planning and campaign execution, in practice there are major challenges that must be solved if such an operational approach is to work.

Most of the C2 arrangements for air-land integration for counterinsurgency and stabilisation operations at longer ranges have involved land as the supported and air as the supporting component, due to the nature of those campaigns. However, most of the find, fix and suppression capabilities needed for SEAD/DEAD are fielded by air and/or space forces. Furthermore, other critical capabilities also sit within national air forces and at NATO Allied Air Command (AIRCOM): most of the key ISTAR assets; the required processing, exploitation and dissemination (PED) capacity; and the personnel and expertise needed to continuously and rapidly conduct intermediate and advanced target development (ITD and ATD) at scale to populate the Joint Prioritized Target List (JPTL). Insofar as such capabilities have sat within corps headquarters in the land component, there is an identified need to disperse higher-ground force echelon C2 nodes in a way that is likely to complicate the capacity to develop such targets at these echelons.

The requirements to sequence effects across domains within the extremely tight fuel–time–distance requirements of the COMAO plan for each pulse of activity will require the planning of maritime and land fires contributions to be largely synchronised with the timeline required by the air component, rather than the other way round. Thus, air will need to be the supported component during the initial SEAD/DEAD phase of any defensive campaign by NATO against Russian forces, which will require different C2 and planning arrangements from those that have provided synchronised joint effects in most Western overseas operations since the end of the Cold War.

For example, the Joint Force Command (JFC) centres in Norfolk, Brunssum (the Netherlands) and Naples have defined geographical areas of responsibility within which they are supposed to lead on campaign planning and execution, with support from other NATO Commands. However, for a SEAD/DEAD campaign in Europe against even localised Russian aggression, it would be necessary to conduct joint operations across the entire European theatre in a coherent way – from the Arctic to the Mediterranean. As a result, a C2 structure built around the assumption of either maritime or land forces being the supported component in each area of operations, with a JFC as the primary operational headquarters, presents a range of problems. While it might seem more logical for NATO AIRCOM to be the primary operation headquarters from an air perspective, this would present additional challenges for how land and maritime forces synchronise planning and execution of operations outside their currently assumed command structures. While the air component may have the expertise on targets relevant to setting the requirements for effects on target, the air component generally lacks relevant expertise in what is required to move land forces into position to fire, the protection of those forces, or the implications of cutting some land capabilities to these mission sets relative to their contribution to the land deep battle.

The need for simultaneous effects for both SEAD and responsive DEAD fires from maritime and land forces as a key part of the COMAO requires extremely tight coordination during both planning and execution. It also requires C2 networks with the bandwidth, latency, security and redundancy to assure connectivity between airborne sensors and ground-based shooters in what would undoubtedly be a contested electromagnetic environment.

Furthermore, there will be an urgent requirement to deconflict the flight paths of ground-based fires with friendly air assets, especially for high-apex quasi-ballistic weapons such as ATACMS, PrSM or GMLRS that would hopefully be fired in response to the identification of time-sensitive targets by air assets. That Concept of Employment (CONEMP) implies a strong possibility that friendly air assets would be considerably closer to the potential flight path of such weapons than traditional pre-planned deconfliction measures would rely on for safe separation. Electromagnetic deconfliction will also be a vital element of the joint planning process, to ensure that air-provided or orbital electromagnetic suppression of threat systems interfere as little as possible with friendly weapons in flight.

A further complication is that the echelon structure and battlespace geometry used to manage land operations do not correspond to those used by air operations. If it is a case of having M270 launchers at the corps echelon held ready to fire by the corps fire-control headquarters, to launch a missile that is synchronised with an air strike, then this is relatively straightforward. However, if the need is for UAVs to be launched from the brigade echelon, for general support artillery and EW to be applied from the divisional fires group, and for corps-level fires to be synchronised not with one another, but instead with a COMAO package and the threats that present themselves within the defensive system, then a level of inter-echelon C2 is required that land forces would struggle to achieve today within themselves, let alone in combination with the air component. Furthermore, it is highly unlikely that the flight plan adopted by the air component – and thus the sequencing of defensive fires – would correspond with the unit boundaries demarcating corps, divisional and brigade areas of responsibility. Nor can it be assumed that the assets to be engaged with corps, divisional and brigade fires would necessarily sit within the close and deep battle areas of regard used to federate responsibility by echelon within the land force. The risk, therefore, is not just that setting up the C2 structure to coordinate this mission would be complicated, but that it would require all fires across the corps to actively divert planning capacity and hold fires in reserve to respond to the air component’s needs, to such an extent that this could become detrimental to their efficiency in fighting the land battle.

At present, the organisations with the most relevant relationships and knowledge to manage this deconfliction are the air defence cells within current headquarters, but these do not have the C2 relationships or (usually) the planning capacity to coordinate offensive fire. Finally, there is the issue of battle rhythm. At present, air operations are planned according to the 72-hour Air Tasking Order. This aligns with the corps’ battle rhythm, but not with the 48-hour divisional battle rhythm or 24-hour brigade battle rhythm, creating the risk that something planned by the air component will disrupt plans for land operations in subordinate land component formations. There is, therefore, a significant amount of work that needs to be done to harmonise the C2 structures to make such a concept executable. The most likely solution to this is for the land component Joint Air-Ground Integration Cell (JAGIC) to become the lynchpin of a joint counter-anti-access/area-denial operation, but this would require a significant increase in the representation of air and space operators in these elements.

There is also the more prosaic concern about land (and maritime) asset/ammunition allocation and training schedules. A wide range of joint fires and UAV assets from multiple NATO member countries could be extremely useful as part of joint SEAD/DEAD operations, but all are unlikely to be of practical use if they are allocated and deployed according to other operational priorities during the critical phases of defending against a Russian attack. This is more critical for land assets than maritime or air systems, due to the need for them to stage closer to the target(s) from a range perspective, as well as their slower mobility and greater logistical tail when deployed. An aircraft can quickly fly from one base to another, re-arm, refuel and conduct a sortie where needed within only a few hours almost anywhere in the European theatre. Maritime assets at sea can transit in a few days. But land forces typically take weeks to deploy and once deployed in a combat zone take weeks or months to move to a different part of the theatre en masse.

If land-based fires are to play their potentially key role in enabling a successful NATO SEAD/DEAD campaign, therefore, there are several key requirements that must be met:

1. The units in question – most likely M270 or HIMARS GMLRS launchers in the first instance – need to be allocated to the SEAD/DEAD campaign, with stockpiles of suitable ammunition natures at both the army and joint planning levels.

2. Logistics plans at national and Alliance levels need to focus on deploying these land-based fires platforms, their crews, ammunition and other logistics enablers to the key areas on the borders of the Alliance during the first waves of any crisis mobilisation effort. This is a complex task and a major departure from the typically assumed role of these capabilities as part of the divisional or corps long-range fires group to be deployed as part of heavy follow-on forces.

3. Army units operating these systems need to regularly deploy as part of major annual SEAD/DEAD exercises run by NATO AIRCOM. Without doing so, it is almost impossible to anticipate and plan against the multitude of integration, planning and C2 challenges that are involved; and only by doing so can those problems begin to be credibly solved. Equally, Russian leaders will only be deterred by the enhanced SEAD/DEAD capability that greater joint integration can bring if they can at some level observe it being practically exercised. However, making participation in such exercises a regular feature of land (and maritime) long-range strike assets will require changing training and readiness schedules, which in turn will probably require altering how those assets are parochially viewed within their own service. At present, and despite a great deal of joint doctrine, there is a lack of joint training, which must be addressed.

Conclusion

The current situation – in which European NATO members would struggle to conduct a successful SEAD/DEAD campaign to rapidly degrade Russian air defences if the US were unable (or potentially unwilling) to conduct the bulk of the task – is a dangerous one, and must be tackled as a matter of urgency. The threat facing US forces in the Indo-Pacific means that there are multiple crisis scenarios that could see the bulk of US air and maritime forces committed far from Europe, and the first months of the second Trump presidency have already sparked major concerns about the level of US commitment to European security. At the very least, the new US administration has made it clear that it expects Europe to take on a far greater share of the burden in underwriting Article 5.

The only clear route to a predominantly European NATO posture that can threaten a Russian force with sufficient combat power to make a “defence by denial” posture credible by the mid- to late 2020s is to generate the capacity to rapidly suppress and ultimately destroy the bulk of Russian ground-based air defences on the borders of Alliance territory, should a conflict start. If the IADS is badly degraded, Russian ground forces would be left exposed to the devastating firepower of hundreds of fourth-generation fast jets and attack helicopters against battlefield targets such as armoured vehicles, gun lines, command posts and logistics hubs. Despite likely local numerical and ground-based firepower superiority, the Russian armed forces would have little capacity to respond in such a scenario.

However, as this paper has attempted to explain, generating the required SEAD/DEAD capacity requires incorporating joint fires into SEAD/DEAD COMAOs to generate the necessary simultaneous effects to overcome the layered self-defence capacity of the Russian IADS. It also requires equipping land forces with capabilities that can substitute for the firepower traditionally provided by CAS – at least for the initial few weeks of defensive fighting until the SEAD/DEAD campaign is sufficiently well advanced to allow CAS to be conducted again, at larger scale, in support of forward forces.

Regardless of the wider force structure, organisation, doctrine, training and exercising implications – of which there are many – there are several munitionsprocurement decisions to be made, without which the task is almost impossible to achieve:

• European air forces must be provisioned with significant numbers of munitions with the required combination of stand-off range, automatic terminal target acquisition, guidance capabilities and survivability to reliably get through Russian defences and destroy high-priority GBAD radars and SAM systems. For F-35A operators, this primarily means the AGM-88G AARGM-ER, or potentially the AGM-184A JSM. However, those weapons are not a particularly attractive option for the UK, which operates the F-35B, since they would need to be carried externally, compromising the stealth capabilities of the aircraft. Instead, the focus must be on ordering the SPEAR miniature cruise missile and SPEAR-EW stand-in jamming variant in quantity for both F-35Bs and Typhoon to use in a stand-off support role. SPEAR could also offer a European production option of a critical class of munitions, if procured by other European members of NATO. Large numbers of GBU-39/B are still useful for suppressive effects, can force SAM operators to expend available interceptors inefficiently, and may get through to targets if used alongside other layered capabilities from other domains. Decoys such as the ADM-160 MALD family are also huge force multipliers for any SEAD/DEAD COMAO. While critical to engaging crucial elements of the IADs, however, they would be insufficient by themselves.

• For land forces, the key munitions for SEAD/DEAD support are likely to be the new PrSM, as well as extended range G-MLRS rockets and any older ATACMS stocks that the US might be willing to provide for forces equipped with compatible M270 or HIMARS launchers in Europe. In the longer term, establishing European production of cheaper munitions that can be launched from the M270 should be a priority. Submunitions-equipped warhead variants of long-range weapons systems are far more effective as DEAD weapons against Russian SAM systems than are unitary warhead versions, as they compensate for degradation in accuracy and can damage multiple elements of the SAM battery simultaneously. SAM batteries generally spread their elements out when deployed to minimise the damage from any unitary strike, and EW interference may degrade accuracy and reduce the reliability of fuzing. Submunitions warheads therefore offer a much higher chance of a few rounds successfully delivered onto the rough location of the SAM site destroying or damaging the key radar systems and as many launchers as possible. They are also necessary to enable land forces to significantly increase their lethality against Russian ground forces in the open and on the move – within likely logistical, financial and tactical weight of fire constraints.

• Countries purchasing such munitions natures would need to withdraw from the Convention on Cluster Munitions. The Convention is an important and admirable arms control success, but one to which countries acceded on the assumption that large-scale warfare between major powers was no longer a force-driving assumption – a situation that has indisputably changed. It is also important to note that in any conflict with Russian forces both they and some NATO member countries would be employing cluster munitions on a large scale, meaning that the problems associated with unexploded submunitions would be present in any contested territory, regardless of whether some NATO forces limited their own defensive options by foregoing them.

• Loitering munitions, especially those with anti-radiation seeker capabilities, could allow land forces to further contribute to the SEAD/DEAD campaign by providing suppressive effects against Russian SHORAD and MRAD systems relatively close to the front lines over a significantly longer period than conventional anti-radiation missiles. This would greatly increase the effectiveness of aircraft and air-launched weapons against the primary target set of long-range strategic SAMs and early warning radars. However, as with the use of long-range ground-based PrSM, ATAMCS and GMLRS-ER as DEAD weapons against those same LRAD targets, the use of loitering munitions for SEAD effects would need to be carefully planned and coordinated with the COMAO timings, with air as the supported command. These munitions also require much more regular updates to remain effective, which must be a consideration in their acquisition.

• To achieve the effects required, one of the first steps that the UK and other European NATO member countries should consider – alongside orders of relevant munitions – is to start incorporating army rocket artillery and one-way attack UAS units into regular SEAD/DEAD exercises run by NATO AIRCOM. This would require synchronising their training and exercise programmes with a different tempo and calendar, and initially might yield little in terms of useful strike contributions. However, such unit participation in AIRCOM large-scale multinational SEAD/DEAD exercises would start generating concrete data on the most urgent C2, data standardisation and airspace deconfliction bottlenecks that need to be addressed. It would also be a visible signal of joint SEAD/DEAD capability development that Russian military intelligence would notice, and might start to positively influence their expectations of European SEAD/DEAD capability growth – one of the best ways to increase deterrence.

• There are clear implications in terms of land forces maintaining sufficient firepower to fight in the absence of regular CAS during the initial weeks of operations. First, a proportion of the rocket artillery in corps artillery groups (and periodically howitzers from the divisional artillery groups) will not be available for supporting fire against targets in the corps and divisional deep, but will instead need to support air operations. European nations thus need to increase the number of howitzers in their formations. For rocket artillery, there is a desperate need to increase the magazine depth available. This should prompt the production of cheaper and simpler rockets in Europe, to fire from existing launchers. Munitions must also be stockpiled for divisional tube artillery. In both cases, the pushing of artillery into greater depth with loitering munitions imposes a limit on the weight of salvo that can be generated against a given target. Overcoming this again requires maximising the lethality of each round, and thus the fielding of thermobaric munitions, sensor-fuzed munitions, and rounds with submunitions. This too would require withdrawal from the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

There is a great deal of alarm in Europe about the state of readiness of conventional forces relative to the pace of Russian force generation. The alarm is justified, but conventional deterrence is also achievable. Making clear to Russia that munitions and UAS are being bought in sufficient numbers to make existing air- and ground-launched capabilities credible, and that training and reform of joint C2 is being undertaken to undermine the foundational protection of Russian military units, would significantly shift Russia’s calculus in terms of the feasibility of challenging the Alliance. A focused set of investments across European NATO to develop the industrial capacity to sustain these operations would similarly signal to the US that the continent is taking its own defence seriously. The resources, technology and time needed to secure Europe against further military aggression all exist; but there is no time for delay.

Jack Watling is Senior Research Fellow for Land Warfare at RUSI. Jack works closely with the British military on the development of concepts of operation, assessments of the future operating environment, and conducts operational analysis of contemporary conflicts. His PhD examined the evolution of Britain’s policy responses to civil war in the early 20th century. Jack has worked extensively on Ukraine, Iraq, Yemen, Mali, Rwanda and further afield. He is a Global Fellow at the Wilson Center in Washington, DC.

Justin Bronk is the Senior Research Fellow for Airpower and Technology in the Military Sciences team at RUSI, and Editor of RUSI Defence Systems. Justin has particular expertise on the modern combat air environment, Russian and Chinese ground-based air defences and fast jet capabilities, the air war during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, uncrewed combat aerial vehicles and novel weapons technology. He also holds a visiting Professor II position at the Royal Norwegian Air Force Academy.