The New Playbook for Effective Multilayered Air Defence: Adaptation, Not Escalation

By Ivor, Thales in the UK

The arms race was forged in an era of binary threats, when overmatch was measured in mass and tonnage. Today’s battlespace is asymmetric, accelerated and unbounded. As faster, more fragmented, more unpredictable threats take to the skies, the idea of outpacing them simply with larger numbers of heavier munitions grows increasingly obsolete.

The concept of an arms race assumes a finish line but in an environment of evolving, multi-vector threats, that assumption no longer holds.

Relevance, not dominance, is the new measure of air superiority

On today’s frontlines, a tactical advantage can expire in a matter of weeks. In Ukraine, where countermeasure cycles move fast and systems evolve in near real time, a capability that takes too long in transit may already be