For more than 80 years, a cornerstone of the United States’ military strength has been its unparalleled ability to project power through the air. Washington has the most sophisticated fleet of combat aircraft in the world. Because these planes can be refueled by the country’s many tankers, they have global reach. From domestic bases, stealthy bombers can fly through heavily defended airspace unmolested and destroy multiple targets in one mission. American short-range fighter aircraft can drop bombs and take out enemy planes and surface-to-air missiles.

But the U.S. fleet is shrinking, and its airpower advantage appears to be eroding. Rivals such as China and Russia have invested in air defenses that deny the United States superiority over the skies and force it to rely on expensive standoff missile strikes—that is, attacks launched far enough away to be beyond the reach of enemy defenses. China, the United States’ main rival, unveiled two new stealth aircraft designs in December, demonstrating surprising progress in its fighter technology. Other adversaries have produced large numbers of cheap drones and missiles that allow for low-cost airstrikes.

The effects of inexpensive drones are evident in today’s conflicts. In Ukraine, both Kyiv and Moscow try to overwhelm the other’s air defenses by bombarding them with disposable drones. Traditional planes have stayed in safer airspace behind the frontlines, while cheaper uncrewed systems strike deep into enemy territory. In the Middle East, Iran and its proxies have used drones and missiles to launch standoff attacks against Israel, commercial shipping, and U.S. forces. Although these attacks have not caused widespread damage, they are expensive to interdict. Cumulatively, the U.S. Navy has spent more than $1 billion on munitions to stop them, far more than the attacks cost. The United States, for example, has been firing AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missiles—worth more than $1 million each—to shoot down Iranian-made drones that cost $50,000.

From these conflicts, the Pentagon appears to have learned that it needs to invest more in cheap drones. In August 2023, it launched the Replicator Initiative, which aims to field thousands of expendable autonomous systems within two years to counter China’s growing military. In 2024, the U.S. Air Force awarded initial contracts for another program designed to produce a thousand advanced drones that fly alongside crewed fighter jets. But this bet on cheap drones seems to be coming at the expense of high-end planes. The navy and air force have delayed their next-generation fighter programs, and the Trump administration is likely to continue this pause. Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has exempted drones from his planned budget cuts.

That is unfortunate, because not all future wars will look like the ones in Ukraine or the Middle East. A U.S.-Chinese war, in particular, would be radically different. The belligerents would be separated by the Pacific Ocean, so their weapons would need to have longer ranges than most drones provide. The United States would also face unusually fierce air defenses, which cheap drones lack the ability to penetrate. Washington instead would need large numbers of sophisticated aircraft.

There are other drawbacks to neglecting traditional planes. Most of the long-range kamikaze drones and missiles employed in recent conflicts have been shot down; those that get through tend to inflict little damage on their targets. Moreover, because affordable systems rely on saturation to overwhelm defenses, the United States could build a massive drone fleet that would be used only once. In contrast, more survivable and expensive aircraft, crewed or uncrewed, could be sent on multiple missions. They would thus prove to be more cost effective, especially in a protracted conflict. The Pentagon will still need more affordable aircraft and missiles. But it must build a well-rounded fleet, not go all in on cheap drones.

MASS APPEAL

The United States retains the most sophisticated aircraft and missiles in the world. But quality alone is not enough. The United States also needs what former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Michael Horowitz has called “precise mass”—or large numbers of accurate weapons. And today, Washington’s resources are spread too thin to attain it. In 2023, the U.S. Air Force had 2,093 attack aircraft and 141 bombers, about half the size of its fleets in 1991. Consequently, the Pentagon is struggling to provide enough aircraft to support crises and operations in Europe and the Middle East while remaining prepared for a large-scale conflict with Beijing. The Pentagon has also failed to stockpile adequate numbers of high-end conventional weapons, such as stealthy standoff cruise missiles, because Congress and the Department of Defense have historically preferred funding large platforms, such as ships, aircraft, and tanks. In a war game run by the Center for a New American Security, a think tank, for the House Select Committee on China, U.S. forces used more than 80 percent of their long-range missiles within a week of the outbreak of war over Taiwan.

These supply issues have been 30 years in the making. After the Cold War ended, the Pentagon focused on building planes and missiles with stealth and precision—an expensive pursuit because they are difficult to develop and require exotic materials and subcomponents. As a result, Washington could afford fewer planes and bombs. The Pentagon also downsized its inventories because it no longer faced an enemy that matched its power. The Defense Department slashed modernization programs for aircraft, including the B-2 bomber, and canceled orders for F-22 fighters. At the same time, the Pentagon bet heavily on its technological superiority as a way of offsetting Washington’s remaining enemies—an approach that was successfully debuted in the first Gulf War against Iraq. U.S. advancements in targeting, stealth, precision, and information sharing enabled the United States to hit the same number of targets with fewer aircraft and weapons. These improvements gave birth to a warfighting strategy premised on the idea that a small number of accurate attacks against critical enemy nodes could force an adversary to rapidly capitulate.

This strategy was never truly put to the test, however, because the United States spent nearly three decades fighting small-scale conflicts against adversaries with little airpower. Uncontested air superiority was critical to fights against terrorists and insurgents: drones and crewed aircraft patrolled the skies searching for enemies on the ground and then dropped small, accurate weapons against them from close range. But without a real challenge, the Pentagon’s faith in capability over capacity never wavered—even when the United States repeatedly found its small stockpiles of precision-guided munitions seriously depleted by long-running, low-intensity wars.

Then Russia attacked Ukraine, leading to a drone war unlike anything else in human history. Over the course of the last three years, Kyiv and Moscow have launched and lost millions of unmanned aerial vehicles in the fighting. Doing so has allowed them to identify targets, seize positions, and even knock out expensive weapons, such as tanks and surface-to-air missiles. The inescapable conclusion is that mass—that is, having more forces or materiel than an enemy—is important. As a result, the Pentagon has begun shifting course, emphasizing drone programs instead of advanced aerial weapons.

PUNCHING HOLES

The Pentagon is right to build large quantities of cheap drones. Defeating a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would require airstrikes against thousands of Chinese military targets that are geographically dispersed across the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea, and the Chinese mainland. The Pentagon has too few aircraft and weapons to achieve this goal. It will need more inexpensive uncrewed aircraft and missiles to repel China’s military, which is bigger than that of the United States.

Yet cheap airpower, whether it be cruise missiles or kamikaze drones, will be useful only against a subset of Chinese targets. Standoff attacks must be complemented by stand-in strikes delivered by stealth aircraft that penetrate enemy defenses and deliver multiple large weapons. In October 2024, for instance, the United States was able to destroy Houthi weapons facilities hidden deep underground, but only by having stealthy B-2 bombers fly through contested airspace. Lloyd Austin, then the U.S. secretary of defense, described the B-2 attack on Yemen as a “unique demonstration of the United States’ ability to target facilities that our adversaries seek to keep out of reach, no matter how deeply buried underground, hardened, or fortified.” Drones and conventional missiles fired from long range cannot carry the large payloads required to significantly damage hardened or sprawling targets like the ones in Yemen. They would struggle even more to reach targets inside China.

Kyiv and Moscow have launched and lost millions of drones.

In addition to being too small to have a sizable impact, cheap missiles and drones lack range. For drones to provide air support to Taiwanese forces and potentially strike targets on the Chinese coast, they would need to fly to the strait from bases hundreds of miles away in Japan, the Philippines, or Guam. Today’s cheap drones and missiles could not make the trip. They would also likely be intercepted by China’s air defenses. Ukraine, for example, expects about 85 percent of its kamikaze drones to be shot down. A country must have very large salvos, therefore, to ensure that even a fraction of their weapons reach their targets, and the cost per weapon must be very low to create necessarily massive stockpiles. This cost-benefit calculus would not be favorable for the United States, especially in the early days of a war with China when the country’s air defense network is fully operating. Drones could help eat up some of China’s ground-based air defense interceptors. But ultimately, this system is simply too effective and well stocked to be exhausted by cheap drones. It certainly would not let many cheap drones through.

Saturation strikes may be more effective against Chinese ships that have a limited number of surface-to-air missiles. But penetrating China’s ground-based air defense network requires stealth aircraft. Stealth bombers, which carry big bombs and can fly many missions, are thus a better option for taking out mainland targets protected by air defenses. Today, these bombers have a pilot, but in the future, they may be remotely piloted or fully autonomous.

Stealth aircraft are also necessary to take out air defense systems themselves, which will then allow cheap weapons to work. Israel used such a two-pronged approach when it sent 100 aircraft to attack Iran in October 2024. Israeli stealth fighters destroyed most of Iran’s long-range air defenses, leaving Tehran exposed to follow-on attacks by older aircraft carrying long-range missiles. American aircraft will not be able to entirely dismantle China’s expansive and sophisticated air defenses before conducting other offensive operations. But they can punch holes in those defenses that less capable weapons can then exploit.

QUALITY AND QUANTITY

U.S. policymakers should study today’s wars for lessons in modern combat. But they should also remember that a conflict between China and the United States would look different. It would be devastating and sophisticated. Many targets would need to be repeatedly attacked. To have a chance at success, the United States would need more low-end drones and missiles that can provide it with mass. But it would also need more high-end aircraft, including stealthy fighters, bombers, and drones, that can be sent on multiple missions and take on Chinese air defenses and advanced fighter jets.

The United States must therefore pair initiatives to produce cheap drones with ones aimed at making survivable and reusable airpower, especially stealthy planes. Today, the only U.S. stealth aircraft in production are the F-35 and B-21. Washington will also need to figure out how to use these aircraft in conjunction with cheap systems, compounding their utility. For instance, F-35s could eventually be used to control drones that will accompany them in flight, and B-21s could deliver drone swarms close to their targets behind enemy defenses, enabling them to independently hunt for multiple enemy targets.

Building such a well-balanced fleet won’t be cheap. Unless the Department of Defense makes significant cuts in other domains, such as closing bases it doesn’t need, investments in its airpower will likely require larger defense budgets. But that may be the price of American air supremacy. For decades, the United States took this dominance for granted. Now, it must carefully invest in a mix of airpower to maintain its edge.

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