For thirty years, American wars have contained a quiet assumption: that the skies were uncontested. From Grenada and Panama, through Desert Storm, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya - the US could reliably achieve air superiority very quickly, almost a preordained fighting condition. Operation Epic Fury, however, has challenged that assumption, marking the first time in a generation the US has been forced to establish air superiority. And though air superiority was achieved over Iran in less than 100 hours, that superiority required a massive, multi-layered effort that contrasts with three decades of precedent.
For a generation, US policymakers and military planners have taken air superiority as a starting condition of war. No adversary, not since Korea or Vietnam, has had the capacity to challenge US warplanes for control of the skies. Panama for example, during Operation Just Cause, had neither fighter jets nor surface-to-air missiles (SAMs), and had to rely on small arms fire to thwart American air power. In Afghanistan, during Operation Enduring Freedom, the Taliban’s air force featured a handful of Cold War relic aircraft and MANPADS, left over from the Soviet-Afghan War, against which US forces could operate with impunity. Even during Operation Desert Storm, the US leveraged electronic warfare and stealth aircraft to destroy Saddam’s French-built, centralized “KARI” Integrated Air Defense System (IADS) in a concentrated effort, establishing air superiority rapidly. And again, in Serbia, NATO was able to dominate the air by effectively bypassing Serbia’s capable, yet fragmented, SAMs. On different continents, in different decades, against different adversaries—the outcome was always the same: the US expected to achieve air superiority and did so quickly.
But Iran offered the US a different kind of challenge. Tehran, long hampered by sanctions, understanding they could never achieve parity with the US, didn’t try to build an equivalent air force. Instead, Tehran spent decades building a defensive system that could complicate access, making the establishment of air superiority costly and uncertain. Rather than invest in cutting-edge fighters that could go toe-to-toe with the F-22, Iran invested in IADS, including layered SAMs, radar networks, ballistic missiles, drones, and hardened infrastructure. The result was a patch of airspace that the US would need to fight to dominate.
Iran’s air defenses fell quickly, too, in just four days, but it was only after the execution of a massive, multi-domain campaign that relied on unprecedented intelligence sharing from a regional partner; unlike recent conflict that leaned heavily on limited air assets, Iran required a coordinated multi-domain effort across cyber, space, and air. Phase one featured the blinding and spoofing of Iranian defenses with cyber, space, and electronic warfare systems. Phase two featured the Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD), the destruction of Iranian radars and missiles with stealth aircraft (i.e., the B-2 Spirit) and standoff missiles (i.e., Tomahawk, PrSM). And phase three, penetration, with full strike operations and heavy bombers dropping guided bombs. In all, more than a thousand targets were struck. The point being: that even for the world’s most capable air force, dismantling Iran’s IADS required an enormous and coordinated effort; air superiority was achieved - but it was far from automatic.
Ultimately, American and Israeli forces needed just four days to establish air superiority over Iran, whose airspace now, more than one month into the conflict, is essentially permissive. And while the four-day timeline suggests a rapid collapse, the speed of victory masks the exertion that was needed to achieve air superiority, and what that exertion suggests about future wars.
Iran is formidable only by regional standards; their IADS is modest when compared to the air defense networks of major powers like Russia or China who can boast dense IADS, long-range missiles, layered air defenses, and distributed networks. And the major powers, no doubt taking notes on the hindering effects of Iran’s IADS, will likely be inclined to continue bolstering their own IADS networks. From the American perspective the problem here is clear: if dismantling Iran’s system required such a massive opening campaign, the challenge of gaining air superiority against a near-peer will certainly be far greater. Epic Fury may well have established a new precedent, setting the tone for the next generation of US warfighting, in which control of the air is no longer a default starting point, but rather the first objective.
For thirty years, American military power has operated under an assumption gained through the Cold War’s end: that the skies are ours. Operation Epic Fury suggests the first meaningful counter to that assumption. And though the US maintains a technological advantage in the air, the next generation of war could require the US to once again fight for control of the skies.
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