Air Power – What Is Going Wrong?

The escalating confrontation between Washington and Tehran has revived long-standing assumptions about the political effectiveness of coercive air campaigns. Yet the limits of aerial warfare remain poorly understood in contemporary strategic discourse. This article examines why technological superiority in the air does not necessarily translate into political control on the ground, particularly in the pursuit of regime change.

Following an initial round of successful strikes against Iranian installations which led to the death of key figures including the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on February 28th, 2026, it appeared very possible that the US leadership would be able to topple the Mullah regime through a series of precision strikes (Hansberry, 2026). But despite the initial success, the Iranian regime has not just remained stable, it has even proven that it is still fully capable of launching counterattacks, having matched attacks on their infrastructure or military installations in kind against the US and their allies in the region (Jensen, 2026). This forces us to ask the question, “Why has Airpower failed to deliver the desired objectives the US had set out to achieve?”. Against the backdrop of the still ongoing war between the US and Iran, I will explore in 2-part series common misconceptions about the usage of Air Power. In this first part we shall explore the first of the 2 US objectives: Regime Change.

Airpower Fundamentals

Fundamental to answering the central question is understanding Air Power and its characteristics. Air Power will therefore be defined as outlined by Brig Gen William Mitchell as “the ability to do something in or through the air, and, as the air covers the whole world, aircraft are able to go anywhere on the planet” (Gray, 2011). While the definition itself is very rudimentary, it does communicate the core idea of Airpower, the projection or application of power through the air domain. 

This definition will further be understood to encompass not just jets, but also missiles or other flying military crafts like drones which reflect the evolving military technology of the modern age. Airpower will be characterised as outlined by Colin Gray, who, based on JDP 0-30, “British Air and Space Power Doctrine”, prescribes the following characteristics: “enduring physical features: speed, reach, height, and as a consequence, ubiquity, agility, and concentration” (Ministry of Defence, 2013). While “impermanent presence, limited payload, fragility, cost, dependence on bases, and some vulnerability to the weather” are its limitations (Gray, 2011). With the basis of Airpower established, this research will shift towards exploring the political aim of regime change.

Regime Change

“War is the continuation of Politik by other means” is not just Clausewitz’s most widely known quote, it more importantly defines the core relation between war and politics. All military action is taken to achieve or create the conditions for a desired political outcome which in turn means that this desired end state must be achievable by military means. Regime change, meaning the removal of the ruling elite (Sfakianakis, 2025), is unlike a war on terrorism, a militarily achievable aim with known targets and therefore a tangible goal of the current US intervention (Rasgon, Bergman and Halbfinger, 2026). For this research those types of external regime change will be considered that classify as military action, through either direct intervention or support of a local proxy through covert or overt means. While they differ in commitment and scale, such actions do share a defining characteristic, ground presence. Either through own forces or proxy, successful US regime changes including covert operations in Argentina, Chile or Iran (1953) (Koeppel, 2026) to overt interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan , in all instances the US forces were present to project control (O’Sullivan, 2013). 

This is important because the regime to be targeted exists in the land domain. Fundamental to conduct of a land war is the control of the contested territory to destroy the enemy’s military assets, making them defenceless (Clausewitz, 2013), but also to separate the regime from the people, thereby delegitimizing the former while establishing control over the latter (Jordan, 2016). Having established the foundation of regime change, we shall now explore why airpower alone cannot win a land war.

Airpower Application in Iran

What remains unclear is the way in which the United States thought regime change would unfold through their attack on Iran and as such speculations must be made. The US approach appeared to have hinged on the execution of decapitation strikes against key leadership targets with the presumable aim to either collapse or at the least destabilise the regime. Given the clear aim to avoid the deployment of US forces, the Trump Administration must have anticipated that with sufficient damage inflicted, the government in Tehran would either submit to a regime change, or that following a lack of centralised control either popular or institutional opposition would be able to effectively dislodge the regime (Cho, 2026). 

Decapitation strikes, while successful in destabilising command chains and depriving organisations of key personnel (Johnston, 2012), are lacking the impact required to collapse more complex structures. This is the case because, while organisations lacking established procedures or depending on a singular central leader will lack coherence once deprived of central authority, sophisticated structures like governments are much more resilient (Jordan, 2014).

A nation’s government is a hierarchical institution which can promote junior ranks into new authority (Jordan, 2014). Airpower, lacking a permanent presence as outlined prior, can disrupt the regime but cannot prevent them from reorganising and having survived the first round of attacks, Tehran will have implemented more countermeasures to insulate its leadership. Airpower cannot collapse a government institution as sophisticated as the Iranian state because the regime is able to withstand and compensate for decapitation strikes. On the contrary, the regime in Tehran has proven its ability to retaliate, showing that coercing them into relinquishing control will not be possible; consequently, Tehran can survive US airpower while increasing the economic costs of this conflict.

What can be seen is a clear misunderstanding of the nature of airpower in line with Meilinger’s assertion that “Whoever controls the air generally controls the ground”. Airpower cannot project lasting control onto a battlespace as it cannot control land, but control of land is a necessity to forcefully remove a government. To achieve this desired aim of the US government, it would require forces on the ground to occupy territory and dismantle the regime structures. Such control could have been facilitated through a local opposition proxy or, if timed right, with outbreaks of popular upheaval, both of which the US is lacking right now. 

The Iranian security apparatus has not just removed any internal organised opposition long ago; they also remain well equipped to break any popular movement (Akram et al., 2026). With no sign of any factions of the regime defecting through which the US could gain influence, the US will be hard pressed to achieve its aims. Having failed to achieve regime change through air power, the White House has shifted to a naval blockade against Iran on the 13th of April 2026 (Munroe and Liu, 2026), yet another strategy to project power onto the land without a presence on the ground. If the United States remains adamant about regime change, it is likely that the only option open to them will be a full-scale invasion on the ground.

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