At first sight, the skies over Iran remind one of a piece of dystopian science fiction. Perhaps H.G. Wells’ The War in the Air of 1908, or Nevil Shute’s What Happened to the Corbetts, written exactly thirty years later. Both plots revolve around hostile forces commanding the skies and raining down destruction on defenceless cities. It was the Italian Giulio Douhet (1869-1930) who really picked up on the potential of the aeroplane, and is thus considered the father of modern airpower doctrine. In his seminal volume, Command of the Air (1921), he advocated that skyborne operations alone were capable of breaking a nation’s will to fight.
Today we find the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) are ruling the heavens over their deadly Shia opponent, via Operation “Rising Lion”, which now appears to have been years in the planning. Pundits are discussing Tehran’s possible defeat and regime change, achieved solely by the IDF’s deft use of drones, its aging fleet of 320 F-15 and F-16 fighters, newer squadrons of 36 F-35-I stealth strike aircraft, given extended range by KC-707 and newer KC-46 and air-to-air refuelling tankers, and directed by its five EL/W-2085 airborne early warning and control machines. Many top Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) air force and army commanders, the modern equivalent of the Waffen-SS in the Ayatollah’s regime, have been assassinated by drone or smart munitions, with their immediate replacements also targeted. Damage was reported to the Kermanshah underground holding facility in the Zagros Mountains, near the Iraqi border, where the IRGC Aerospace Force store and launch site their ballistic missiles.
Other attacks hit include the Tabriz air base, home to three squadrons of the Iranian Air Force’s MiG-29s and F-5s. Known in the trade as SEAD (Suppression of Enemy Air Defence), fully two-thirds of Iran’s protective systems of tracked and wheeled gun, surface to air missile, and radar devices, around 120 units, appear to have been taken out, and the IRGC-controlled rocket batteries are firing fewer, more poorly aimed munitions at Israel in return. Israeli and American pilots boast of being able to cruise over Iranian airspace, with minimal interference, as though part of an H.G. Wells or Nevil Shute novel. Perhaps the tipping point came with the regime’s underground nuclear facilities being targeted by American bombers in the aptly-named Operation “Midnight Hammer” on 22 June. Journalists and commentators who should know better are asserting all this has been achieved by air power alone, with no boots on the ground.
However, history teaches that air power does not prevail on its own. It was a lesson first apparent at the 8 August 1918 battle of Amiens when the then principal assets of infantry, engineers, armour, artillery and air shared the victor’s laurels in what became known as the “Black Day of the German Army”. When we war historians look at the bigger wheels of history, one factor rises to prominence again and again. The siren lure of technology. Time after time, a new development, whether gunpowder, rifled weapons, steam, the machine-gun, dreadnoughts, submarines, aircraft carriers, gas, tanks, or aircraft, offer politicians a cheaper way to maintain their armed forces and fight wars, exposing fewer lives to slaughter. And it never works. Reliance on one arm to prevail brings a “Maginot Line” mentality and invariably leads to disaster, whereas we now know the “golfbag” approach to war of many different clubs, leading to a multiplicity of solutions, if expensive, has always proved to be the winning formula.
The Israeli-American campaign does not amount to a triumph solely achieved by air. Drones were videoed being assembled by detachments of Israeli special forces at secret bases inside Iran, while strikes against many individuals and headquarters will have been laser target marked beforehand by Israel commandos and agents operating on the ground. As I found, sitting in military headquarters in the 2003 Gulf War, the key to success is swift and effective Battle Damage Assessment (BDA) which negates the need for multiple hits on the same target and is achieved through both physical damage assessment (PDA) and functional damage assessment (FDA). Although satellite imagery plays a role, this will be best achieved through Israeli-American reconnaissance and surveillance by trained eyes on the ground. Thus, even in fast-paced ultra-modern war, reliance on airpower has a vital land element.
The most recent American strikes on Iran were enabled by over 30 USAF KC-135R and KC-46A refuelling tankers, which open source civilian analysts and plane-spotters picked up arcing eastwards into Atlantic skies, to enable long-range missions to Iran, a 7,000-mile round trip. Given that these are the key enablers of American and British air power (a “centre of gravity”), the recent attacks on two RAF Voyager tankers at their Brize Norton base in Oxfordshire and alleged spying on RAF Akrotiri, Cyprus, are also matters for grave concern. The attack at Brize with paint by pro-Palestinian militants could so easily have been with explosives by pro-Russian agents. Air assets, except those on carriers, are ultimately vulnerable to activity on the ground.
The debate of recent days, in which every armchair strategist seems determined to participate, has focussed on the Iranians’ two uranium enrichment facilities at Fordow and Natanz, and a research station at Isfahan, home to 3,000 scientists and headquarters of Iran’s nuclear programme. Isfahan is as Peenemünde was to the Nazi special weapons programme. Natanz is 40-50 yards beneath the surface in subterranean tunnels, while Fordow is an estimated 100 yards down, both located in lonely mountainous regions south of Tehran, not unlike the terrible Nordhausen V-weapons factories of the Third Reich.
This trio of plants have long been known to western governments and the International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA). It is the very secrecy of their locations, concealed deep in the hills, plus their protected underground ceilings of up to 8 yards of reinforced, hardened concrete that is giving Israel, the IAEA and America most cause for concern. I remember from my nearly 20 years lecturing at the UK Defence Academy, our concrete expert (yes, we had one) revealing that the world’s leading developers of bomb-proof-grade concrete were — yes, you’ve guessed it —the Iranians. Think Albert Speer, or James Bond’s adversaries, and you have the picture.
There is no doubt that Iran was enriching far more uranium that it needed for civil purposes, which meant only one conclusion. Tehran was making a nuclear bomb. That process needed to be halted and reversed, preferably for ever. This is not dissimilar to the RAF’s conclusion when they studied aerial photography of Nazi V-weapons at Peenemünde, where cruise missiles (V-1s) and ballistic rockets (V2s) were being developed. During Operation “Hydra”, the research facility was badly hit on the night of 17-18 August 1943 when over 500 Lancasters, Halifaxes and Stirlings rearranged the local landscape and deconstructed most of the surrounding bunkers and buildings. Valuable personnel were killed and V-weapon research and production was set back by several months and moved underground.
The American “Midnight Hammer” air raid of 22 June was identical in purpose and methodology. Whilst the surface buildings and access points had been destroyed or damaged in earlier raids, it appears the IDF did not have the appropriate munitions to finish the underground warrens. Enter the American GBU-57 MOP (Massive Ordnance Penetrator) precision-guided “bunker buster” bomb. New-found war experts are savouring every detail of its 20.5-foot length, 30,000-pound weight, and alleged ability to penetrate down to 60 yards.
The only US aircraft capable of carrying a pair of these monsters is the B-2 Spirit bomber, mostly based at Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri. Best estimates suggest the US Air Force commissioned the manufacture of only a few MPOs, of which fourteen were reportedly used in the 22 June mission. Around thirty US Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from the submarine USS Georgia, cruising in the Gulf region, were also used against Isfahan. MOPs are the equivalents of Sir Barnes Wallis’ special-purpose munitions ranging from “Upkeep” bouncing bombs and 12,000-pound “Tallboys” to 22,000-pound “Grand Slams”, paired to the adapted 617 Squadron Lancaster bombers of old.
However, satellite imagery picked up Iranian trucks removing equipment beforehand from the areas, which may include some enriched material. Given that the trigger for Israel’s kinetic action in this lightning war was the destruction of Iran’s nuclear capabilities, I would not wish to pack up and return home for tea and medals without ascertaining in person that these facilities, their delicate equipment, and associated uranium, have been put beyond use — for ever. That requires detailed, scientific, ground-based Battle Damage Assessment by special forces or trained observers.
The United States and Israel have pursued a very proactive, high-risk air campaign, precisely to avoid inserting large numbers of ground forces into Iran, whose population of 92 million vastly outnumbers that of Israel’s 10 million. Yet, there can never be victory by sky war alone. This is a vital stratagem Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump, in their haste to hit Iran when at its weakest, appear to have overlooked. The currently damaged state of Iran’s underground centrifuges and other nuclear equipment mirrors the fragile government in Tehran. The Ayatollah regime is down, but not yet out. Normally, it might call for asymmetric campaigns against Israel, America, maybe other states also (hence prime minister Starmer being at pains to stress the UK’s non-involvement), by its allied militias in the region, but they have mostly been degraded almost to extinction, and scattered by Israel.
Iran will be reaching out to Russia, China and possibly North Korea for military assistance. All will support Tehran diplomatically, but Moscow has its hands more than full with Ukraine, Beijing is focussed on Taiwan and dominating the wider Pacific, whilst Pyongyang’s current military adventurism in Ukraine has not gone well. It is now apparent that Israel and America jointly struck Iran to remove its nukes and effect regime change. A replacement leader, Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, born in 1960, eldest son and legitimate heir of the last Shah, overthrown in 1979, is waiting in the wings, based in Egypt with a fully-formed government-in-exile. He may have the loyalty of many Iranians, but they are disorganised, currently leaderless, and their country is still under the thumb of the Ayatollahs and their IRGC fanatics.
Whatever you achieve from the air, strategic success requires boots on the ground
Who will occupy Iran, how and when, even if only temporarily, to prevent the rise of another militant Shia republic, bent on Israel’s very destruction? Air power cannot manage revolution or regime change. As in Kosovo in 1999 or Libya in 2011, it can help trigger it, but not control or steer it. Post-war Germany, Japan, and latterly the Balkans, required substantial land force components which had to remain until democratic elections took place. British Forces in Germany had a life of 75 years from 1945-2020, while manpower-heavy peacekeeping missions between “frozen-conflict” states such as Korea and Cyprus remain, as I write.
An enormous military machine launching a major kinetic attack against a weaker neighbour in the early hours of 22 June, as did America against Iran, has dangerous precedents. Nazi Germany’s Operation Barbarossa began against the USSR in 1941 on this day, as did Russia’s counter-stroke, Operation Bagration, of 1944. Despite substantial air activity, both assaults were ultimately decided on the ground. The 22 June 2025 conventional munitions hit on a hostile power’s nuclear capabilities was a first for air power. Yet, whatever you achieve from the air, strategic success requires boots on the ground, the way the Roman Legions did, by deploying your soldiers into the mud.
