Report

The case for greater mission specialisation by NATO’s European air forces

This report from UK think tank RUSI argues for greater mission specialisation among NATO’s European air forces to effectively deter and defeat potential Russian aggression.

However, the current approach of most states attempting to field small multirole fighter fleets that has preserved apparent sovereign freedom of choice in the relatively permissive or semi-permissive operations since the end of the Cold War may not be practical as a deterrent to Russia.

Meeting the cost of ensuring that pilots are sufficiently well trained to survive and be effective against the high-end ground-based and airborne threats that they would face, and that they have adequate stockpiles of suitable munitions, decoys and other enablers, is likely to only be possible for most European air forces if they focus such efforts on a few mission sets each.

The only viable alternative would seem to be a huge increase in funding to fill in the gaps across the board.