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Achieving space superiority is required to achieve air superiority in modern warfare, according to recent comments from US Air Combat Command commander, Air Force General Ken Wilsbach.
Air Force General Wilsbach made the statement during a 'Next-Generation Air Superiority: How Are We Going to Fight' panel discussion at the 2025 Air and Space Forces Association Warfare Symposium in Aurora, Colorado earlier this week.
The US Air Force will need to maintain its advantage through seamlessly integrated air and space superiority, according to General Wilsbach.
"The entire joint force counts on air superiority... Anything else you want to do in the battle space, if you don't have air superiority, it becomes much more difficult, if not impossible," he said.
"They're very much linked and combined... You're likely not going to be able to achieve air superiority in the modern sense without space superiority as well.
"There's been some talk in the public (that) the age of air superiority is over, and I categorically reject that... It's the first building block of any other military operation that you need to establish if you want to achieve objectives."
Wilsbach also championed the continued effectiveness of air superiority into modern warfare as a stalemate breaker.
"If you don't achieve air superiority, especially if neither side attains air superiority, you're going to have a stalemate... That's the big takeaway we can look and see from the differences between (Ukraine and Israel)," he said.
"If we can sustain our aircraft to the point where we can fly them frequently, and we get our crews reps and sets, they become proficient at what they do... The most important thing we do is fly and fix airplanes."
"We've been challenged with the fixing part of it lately, which then translates to the number of sorties that we can fly. But one of the aspects of what we do is reps and sets.
"We can have the lower cost level (of munitions)… that perhaps can cause the adversary to run themselves (out of resources).
"We've spent a lot of our time in public talking about these very exquisite weapons that are unbelievably expensive, and we need some of those, but we don't need to spend all of our money on those."
"We have some choices to make as we observe what China has produced... I don't believe that nothing is an option."
