Ground attack aircraft during the Battle of Kursk An air offensive is a type of military operation conducted using

aircrew Aircrew, also called flight crew, are personnel who operate an aircraft while in flight. The composition of a flight's crew depends on the type of aircraft, plus the flight's duration and purpose. Commercial aviation Flight deck positions ...

airborne Airborne or Airborn may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Films * ''Airborne'' (1962 film), a 1962 American film directed by James Landis * ''Airborne'' (1993 film), a comedy–drama film * ''Airborne'' (1998 film), an action film sta ...

and strategic missile troops to allow securing of war, campaign or operational initiative, air-space superiority or ensure defeat of enemy forces through use of air-delivered ordnance, or destruction of enemy air, ground and naval forces. The air offensive can be conducted by the air forces independently, or in coordination with the Land and Naval Services within the scope of

Combined Operations In current military use, combined operations are operations conducted by forces of two or more allied nations acting together for the accomplishment of a common strategy, a strategic and operational and sometimes tactical cooperation. Interactio ...

. In some countries the air offensive can be conducted by the ground forces using

aviation Aviation includes the activities surrounding mechanical flight and the aircraft industry. ''Aircraft'' includes fixed-wing and rotary-wing types, morphable wings, wing-less lifting bodies, as well as lighter-than-air craft such as hot air ...

assets such as troop carrier operations during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

or the post-war use of

helicopter A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by horizontally spinning rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forward, backward and laterally. These attributes ...

s. Air offensives, also known as the aviation offensives in Russian, are sometimes referred to by their principal type of aircraft or missile as the

Air superiority Aerial supremacy (also air superiority) is the degree to which a side in a conflict holds control of air power over opposing forces. There are levels of control of the air in aerial warfare. Control of the air is the aerial equivalent of c ...

offensive such as the

Luftwaffe The ''Luftwaffe'' () was the aerial-warfare branch of the German ''Wehrmacht'' before and during World War II. Germany's military air arms during World War I, the ''Luftstreitkräfte'' of the Imperial Army and the '' Marine-Fliegerabtei ...

Operation Adlerangriff, bombing air offensive such as the Anglo-American air offensive against Germany from 1943 until the German surrender in 1945,

assault air offensive An assault is the act of committing physical harm or unwanted physical contact upon a person or, in some specific legal definitions, a threat or attempt to commit such an action. It is both a crime and a tort and, therefore, may result in crim ...

as exemplified by the operations during the

Battle of Kursk The Battle of Kursk was a major World War II Eastern Front engagement between the forces of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union near Kursk in the southwestern USSR during late summer 1943; it ultimately became the largest tank battle in history. ...

, and air-assault offensive such as Operation Shiny Bayonet by the 1st Cavalry Division during the

Vietnam War The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...

. Air offensives tend to be strategic in nature, with one of the largest conducted was by the

Red Army Air Force The Soviet Air Forces ( rus, Военно-воздушные силы, r=Voyenno-vozdushnyye sily, VVS; literally "Military Air Forces") were one of the air forces of the Soviet Union. The other was the Soviet Air Defence Forces. The Air Forces ...

, commencing in August 1943, when some 10,000 aircraft took part in the support of the Kursk Strategic Defensive, Orel Strategic Counter-offensive (Operation Kutuzov), Belgorod-Kharkov Strategic Counter-offensive (Operation Rumyantsev),

Smolensk Strategic Offensive The second Smolensk operation (7 August – 2 October 1943) was a Soviet strategic offensive operation conducted by the Red Army as part of the Summer-Autumn Campaign of 1943. Staged almost simultaneously with the Lower Dnieper Offensive (13 Aug ...

(Operation Surorov), Donbass Strategic Offensive and Chernigov-Poltava Strategic Offensive Operations.p.134, Jackson Ordinarily the air offensive consists of three phases: air preparation of the offensive (including intelligence preparation of the battlefield), immediate preparation for the offensive, and offensive support operations.

References

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Sources

*Allen, Matthew, ''Military helicopter doctrines of the major powers, 1945-1992: making decisions about air-land warfare'', Greenwood Press, London, 1993 * Coleman, J.D. (Maj.), editor-in-chief, ''The 1st Air Cavalry Division: Vietnam August 1965 to December 1969'', Dia Nippon Printing Company, Tokyo, 1970 * Jackson, Robert, ''The Red Falcons: The Soviet Air Force in action 1919-1969'', Clifton Books, London, 1970 * Kozlov, M.M., Gen. of Army, Prof., editor-in-chief, ''Great Patriotic War 1941-1945 encyclopaedia'' (in Russian), Soviet Encyclopaedia, Moscow, 1985. * Schlight, John, ''Help from above: Air Force Close Air Support of the Army 1946-1973'', Air Force History and Museums Program, Washington D.C., 2003 Aerial warfare strategy