Vice Admiral Harinder Singh (Retd)
The last half-decade has rewritten the rules of aerial warfare. From the grinding resilience of Ukraine to the sharp lessons of Operation Sindoor and the asymmetric blows traded around Iran, three conflicts expose a single, uncomfortable truth: airpower is no longer decided by platform prestige or the romance of the dogfight. Sensors, standoff reach, missile mass, and unmanned systems now shape outcomes. For nations that still equate air superiority with fleets of high-end fighters, the message is urgent and unambiguous: adapt or be outflanked.
When Russia’s invasion settled into a prolonged war, Ukraine’s survival became a study in distributed resilience, and it still stands four years later. Skilled pilots and capable aircraft mattered, but they mattered within a broader system: mobile air defence batteries, resilient sensor networks, dispersed logistics, and an industrial base that could sustain attrition. The conflict demonstrated that survivability in contested airspace is not an attribute of a single platform; it is a property of an integrated force. Fighters could not operate with impunity where layered defences and long-range fires dominated. Ukraine’s endurance was less about individual airframes than about the ability to combine sensors, missiles, and improvisation under pressure, aided substantially by Western support.
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