6 months ago
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The early years of the 20th century saw dizzying progress in aviation. The Wright Brothers’ first flight in 1903 barely made it off the ground for 12 seconds. A little more than a decade later, planes would be conducting dogfights over Europe and launching bombing raids during World War I.
In the years between World War I and the start of World War II, military experts like American Billy Mitchell and Italian Giulio Douhet began theorizing about a new form of strategic warfare: making use of air power’s ability to strike civilian sectors of the enemy to destroy public morale. It was a concept that would see use by both sides of the conflict in what would become known as “terror bombing.”
The development of international law and firmer restrictions on deliberate targeting of civilians has seen this tactic recede into the past, at least on any large scale.
That was until the fall and winter of 2022-23 in Ukraine, when the Russian military launched a coordinated and sustained series of attacks on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure and citizenry. The methods had changed, though; Russia relied on the use of massed volleys of cruise missiles and Iranian Shahed suicide drones rather than conventional bombers. The aims—terrorize the citizenry and cripple the economy—had not.
What has increasingly become clear is that this winter, Russia will almost certainly repeat this strategy. These coming attacks will represent a significant test of Ukrainian air defense capabilities. There are good reasons to think Ukraine is far readier than it had been in December 2022.
