The Air Campaign Returns: From Epic Fury to Midnight Hammer

Operations Epic Fury, Midnight Hammer, and Absolute Resolve have brought renewed focus on the role of American airpower in modern warfare. Together, these campaigns are challenging long-held assumptions about the design, employment, and sustainment of U.S. airpower while highlighting new operational realities. At the same time, adversaries' access to inexpensive drones and precision missiles is raising new questions about how air forces defend what they field and maintain combat operations when the cost of interception increasingly favors the attacker. 

What lessons are emerging from these recent and ongoing air campaigns? How have sustained operations affected aviation readiness, munitions inventories, and the defense industrial base? How should the joint force balance exquisite and attritable systems in its force design and operating concepts? And, what does air superiority look like in an age of one-way attack drones and AI-enabled swarms?

Please join the CSIS Aerospace Security Project for a conversation featuring General James "Jim" Slife, U.S. Air Force (Retired), former Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force and former Commander of Air Force Special Operations Command, and Lieutenant General S. Clinton "Q" Hinote, U.S. Air Force (Retired), former Deputy Chief of Staff for Strategy, Integration, and Requirements. Both serve as non-resident advisers to the CSIS Aerospace Security Project. The discussion will be moderated by Kari A. Bingen, Director of the CSIS Aerospace Security Project.

This event is made possible by general support to CSIS.