The “Air Littoral” Does Not Solve the Low-Altitude Problem
Robbin Laird’s recent article, “The Air Littoral Is a Maritime Problem Too,” attempts to move the debate over the so-called “air littoral” beyond terminology and toward force design. That is a worthwhile objective. The United States does need better and more affordable ways to detect, track, and defeat large numbers of low-cost threats operating at low altitude.
But Laird’s argument rests on several mistaken assumptions about my position, about the responsibilities of the military services, and about what the maritime experience actually tells us.
The central disagreement is not whether serious operational challenges exist in low-altitude airspace. They plainly do. The disagreement is whether renaming that airspace as an “air littoral” helps solve them.
It does not.
Worse, the construct risks obscuring the genuinely important issues: what missions must be accomplished, which organizations are responsible for them, what capabilities are required, how command relationships should be arranged, and how military effects must be integrated to achieve political objectives.
The Challenge Is Real; the Label Adds Little
Laird correctly notes that I do not deny the operational challenge posed by numerous, inexpensive, dispersed, and increasingly capable low-altitude threats. I have repeatedly called for persistent sensing, affordable interceptors, electronic warfare, directed-energy options, mobile defenses, passive protection, resilient basing, integrated command and control, and deeper magazines.
Those are not the recommendations of someone defending the status quo.
The problem is that Laird accurately describes my position and then proceeds as though I hold a different one. He acknowledges that I recognize the low-altitude challenge but do not believe the “air littoral” label improves force design, doctrine, or command relationships. That is exactly right.
The fact that low-altitude threats are becoming more numerous, affordable, distributed, and difficult to defeat does not mean that low-altitude airspace has become a new domain or requires a new geographical metaphor.
Operational problems evolve. Technology changes. Threat density increases. Cost-exchange ratios become unfavorable. Sensors, weapons, command arrangements, and force structures must adapt accordingly.
But none of that demonstrates that the United States needs to invent an “air littoral.”
A useful military concept should improve decisions. It should identify the nature of the problem, clarify responsibility, establish command relationships, inform force design, guide resource allocation, and help commanders integrate capabilities to achieve defined objectives.
The “air littoral” does none of those things. It applies a new label to a set of threats, missions, and operational challenges that joint doctrine already addresses.
Hormuz Is a Joint Mission, Not an Air Force Mission
The most consequential error in Laird’s analysis is the continued attribution of responsibility for the Strait of Hormuz to American airpower.
Ensuring freedom of navigation through the Strait is not an assigned Air Force mission. It is an inherently joint and combined mission conducted under the authority of USCENTCOM. It involves multiple service components, coalition partners, intelligence organizations, diplomatic efforts, economic pressure, and commercial maritime coordination.
The Navy has sea control as a core competency. Naval forces provide presence, escort, maritime interception, mine countermeasures, protection of shipping, and the defeat of hostile maritime forces.
Air forces can detect and strike launch networks, suppress missile and airborne threats, protect friendly maritime forces, conduct surveillance, attack command-and-control nodes, and neutralize adversary capabilities ashore and at sea.
The Army and Marine Corps can contribute ground-based air and missile defense, long-range fires, base protection, sensing, logistics, and other capabilities. Space and cyber forces support detection, warning, tracking, communications, targeting, and disruption.
That is the nature of joint warfare.
Yet the continued contest over Hormuz is repeatedly presented as evidence of an airpower failure. Why?
If Laird believes the Air Force was assigned responsibility for reopening the Strait and maintaining freedom of navigation through it, he should identify the tasking, command relationship, and assigned military objective. If it was not assigned that responsibility, then judging it against that outcome violates the mission-metric discipline he otherwise endorses.
The persistence of a joint operational problem does not establish the failure of one service component.
It could reflect shortcomings in campaign design, maritime strategy, mine warfare, force protection, intelligence, command relationships, rules of engagement, force availability, logistics, political guidance, coalition participation, or interagency coordination.
Assigning the outcome primarily to airpower is analytically convenient, but it is not operationally sound.
It also creates a peculiar double standard. Iranian cruise missiles and uncrewed aerial systems are treated expansively as evidence of successful “airpower” when they disrupt commercial shipping. But when the desired outcome is not achieved, American responsibility is defined narrowly around the Air Force.
Iranian capabilities are counted broadly. American responsibility is assigned selectively.
That framing does not clarify the problem. It distorts it.
“More Fifth-Generation Aircraft” Is Not My Answer
Laird also asserts that “more fifth-generation aircraft” is my implicit answer to the low-altitude challenge.
It is not.
He attempts to connect that supposed position to a prediction I made in 2020 about the potential effectiveness of fifth-generation capabilities in a conflict with Iran. But he then acknowledges that the prediction may not have been fair to judge against a different mission.
That acknowledgment should end the argument.
A prediction about the ability of advanced airpower to achieve particular objectives in one set of circumstances cannot simply be transferred to a different mission and then used as evidence that I believe fifth-generation aircraft are the answer to every operational problem involving Iran.
I have never argued that additional fifth-generation aircraft alone would reopen the Strait of Hormuz. I have never argued that they could provide continuous defense against thousands of inexpensive, distributed threats. I have never argued that they are the sole, or even primary, answer to the low-altitude problem.
In fact, the capabilities I have advocated include precisely the kinds of systems that Laird says are needed: persistent sensing, affordable weapons, electronic and non-kinetic defeat mechanisms, mobile and layered defenses, resilient infrastructure, integrated command and control, and sufficient capacity to sustain operations over time.
Fifth-generation aircraft remain essential for defeating sophisticated air defenses, penetrating contested airspace, conducting long-range precision strikes, achieving air superiority, performing electronic attack, and attacking the systems that generate threats.
But the United States also needs affordable mass, persistent coverage, deeper magazines, and more economical methods of defeating inexpensive weapons.
These are complementary requirements, not mutually exclusive alternatives.
A force optimized only for exquisite capabilities would be incomplete. A force built primarily around defeating low-altitude threats while neglecting enemy fighters, bombers, ballistic and cruise missiles, integrated air defenses, and command networks would also be incomplete.
The U.S. military needs both.
The Answer Is Not to Reuse the Tools of the Last War
Laird concludes that a force accustomed to winning one kind of contest will be tempted to use “the same tools that won the last fight.”
That may be true as a general observation. But it is not my argument.
I am calling for the development of the appropriate tools to address the threats proving so challenging in low-altitude airspace. What I reject is the assumption that those tools are the sole institutional responsibility of the Air Force.
Consider artillery.
Which service component is responsible for dealing with enemy artillery—the Air Force, Army, Marine Corps, or Navy?
The answer depends on the theater, the target, available forces, assigned missions, command authorities, and operational circumstances.
Enemy artillery might be addressed through counterfire, air attack, electronic warfare, deception, maneuver, special operations, attacks on logistics, strikes against command-and-control systems, or active defense against incoming rounds.
The fact that an artillery projectile travels through the air does not make artillery an Air Force responsibility.
The same principle applies to cruise missiles, loitering weapons, helicopters, uncrewed aerial systems, and other low-altitude threats. Their presence in the air domain does not assign the entire operational problem to the Air Force.
Missions and responsibilities must be determined by the joint force commander according to the objectives of the campaign. They should not be inferred from the altitude at which a threat operates.
Yet Laird ultimately describes Hormuz as “the airpower community’s turn” to learn a lesson.
That formulation converts a joint operational and force-design challenge into a service-specific indictment. It assumes the conclusion that should instead be examined: who was assigned the mission, who possessed the relevant authorities, and which service or combination of services was best positioned to execute it?
The Maritime Analogy Does Not Establish an “Air Littoral”
Laird’s work on maritime kill webs, distributed autonomy, and Ukraine’s innovative use of uncrewed surface vessels offers important insights.
The experience of the Black Sea demonstrates how low-cost, distributed, attritable systems can impose disproportionate costs on a force built around smaller numbers of expensive platforms. It highlights the operational importance of persistence, mass, distributed sensing, resilient command and control, and favorable cost exchanges.
Those are valuable lessons, and many may apply across domains.
But they do not validate the term “air littoral.”
The maritime littoral has a recognizable geographic, historical, and doctrinal meaning. It concerns the interaction of land and sea in coastal regions, where naval, ground, air, and other forces operate in a distinct physical environment.
Ukraine’s uncrewed surface vessels operate in an actual maritime setting against naval targets. Their effectiveness may demonstrate the utility of distributed maritime systems. It may reveal vulnerabilities in traditional naval force structures. It may support a different balance between exquisite platforms and inexpensive mass.
But none of that means low-altitude airspace is a littoral.
What Laird has identified is a broader technological and force-design dynamic: inexpensive, distributed, persistent systems can challenge forces composed of a limited number of expensive, difficult-to-replace platforms.
That dynamic can occur on land, at sea, in the air, in space, or in cyberspace.
Similarity in force economics does not make the physical environments equivalent. Nor does the transferability of a command-and-control concept transform one domain into another.
The maritime kill-web analogy may support investment in distributed sensing, attritable systems, autonomous or semiautonomous capabilities, and more resilient sensor-to-shooter architectures.
It does not establish that low-altitude airspace should be understood as an “air littoral.”
That conclusion does not follow from the evidence. It is a metaphor being presented as an organizing concept.
Altitude Is Not an Organizing Theory of Warfare
The central flaw in the “air littoral” construct remains that it mistakes a physical portion of the battlespace for an organizing theory of warfare.
Airpower is organized around missions, objectives, and effects—not arbitrary bands of altitude.
A cruise missile flying at 100 feet, an aircraft operating at 30,000 feet, a ballistic missile descending from space, an electronic attack against a sensor network, and a cyberattack against command and control may all be parts of the same coordinated offensive.
Defeating that offensive requires a common operational picture, integrated authorities, layered defenses, resilient command and control, and offensive action against launchers, sensors, production facilities, logistics networks, command nodes, and the organizations directing the attack.
Dividing the problem by altitude risks obscuring those relationships.
“Destruction” and “disruption” are effects, not altitude bands. Either can be generated from the air, land, sea, space, or cyberspace. What matters is whether the effect advances the military objective and the political purpose of the campaign.
The central lesson is not that America fought the wrong “air war.”
It is that military campaigns must be designed around clearly defined political objectives and the integration of effects across domains. Air, land, sea, space, cyber, intelligence, economic pressure, and diplomacy must be synchronized to produce the desired outcome.
Dividing the air domain into fashionable subcategories does nothing to meet that requirement.
Clarity Before Vocabulary
The low-altitude challenge is real. It demands urgent attention, new capabilities, revised force structures, better integration, and clearer assignment of responsibilities.
But calling low-altitude airspace an “air littoral” does not build sensors, produce affordable interceptors, expand magazines, allocate authorities, establish command relationships, or determine which service component is responsible for a given mission.
It does not create a strategy.
The phrase is conceptual clutter where clarity is required. It applies a new label to threats and missions that joint doctrine already encompasses. It is no substitute for campaign design, joint integration, capability development, or a strategy designed to achieve clear political results.
Robbin Laird and I have worked together for approximately 20 years, and his website identifies me as part of his “core team of strategic thinkers.” Given that long professional association, I would have expected him to ask whether I actually believed that more fifth-generation aircraft were the answer, or that the United States should rely on the same tools it used in the last fight, before attributing those positions to me.
I do not hold either view.
My position is straightforward: the challenge in low-altitude airspace is serious; different and improved capabilities are required; responsibility for developing and employing them is joint; and relabeling that airspace as a “littoral” adds confusion rather than clarity.
Editor’s Note: I have clarified the argument in my original piece and noted: “But then again, to be accurate, the littoral refers specifically to a maritime-land intersection is not naturally thought of as an air domain precisely because this implies sea control which is exercised on and below the water or on the adjacent land.”
The Air Littoral Is a Maritime Problem Too: What the Kill Web Fleet Can Teach the Airpower Debate