The Quest for Relevant Air Power

56 │ POST–COLD WAR CHALLENGES
basically reiterated, with an added emphasis upon improvements
in combat effectiveness, including PGMs and SEAD. 271
In parallel, the EU has undertaken Helsinki Headline Goal and
HG 2010 initiatives aimed at improving its military crisis management
capabilities. 272 Identified areas of air power shortfalls were
generally identical to those that the NATO initiatives had pinpointed—strategic
air mobility, AAR, PGMs, theatre ballistic missile
defence (TBMD), and RPAs. 273 HG 2010 laid the foundation
for the EDA, established to coordinate development, research,
and acquisition. 274 On 10 November 2008, the EDA facilitated a
meeting of European defence ministers, who declared their intention
of establishing a future European Air Transport Fleet. Its objective
is to provide a framework for facilitating European cooperation
through such existing structures as the European Air
Transport Command. 275
The Pillars of Air Power
The physical components of air power are essentially made up of
four pillars—combat aircraft; air mobility; command, control, communications,
computers, information/intelligence, surveillance, target
acquisition, and reconnaissance (C4ISTAR); and ground based
air defence. While the first pillar has always been regarded as the
backbone of air forces, the second and third pillars have gained in
importance. This has to do with the increasing thrust towards deployed
operations and with technological developments in the information
age. The fourth pillar, ground based air defence, has also experienced
an evolution, with its tasks having been extended from
primarily defending against combat aircraft to defending against a
panoply of airborne threats, especially theatre ballistic missiles.
Combat Aircraft. Though Western fighter designs of the 1960s
and the 1970s were built to perform secondary ground-attack
roles, this supposedly multirole capability did not stretch much
beyond qualifying a once pure fighter to deliver air-to-ground
munitions with mediocre accuracy. Complex air-to-ground missions
still required dedicated all-weather strike aircraft such as the
A-6, the F-111, or the Tornado. Only since the later stages of the
Cold War era have true multirole aircraft designs become a viable
option due to a number of remarkable technological achievements.
This step was further facilitated through the introduction