Geopolitics and Defense Affairs

Modern fighters are easy to count. Their ability to keep flying after the first missile arrives is not. Ukraine, Finland, Taiwan and the United States are showing that credible airpower now rests on an operating web of dispersed sites, mobile support, resilient command and rapid repair.

By Frank Farnel | Responsible Public Affairs | September 9, 2026

Executive summary

• The strategic value of an air force is not the number of aircraft in its inventory. It is the number of useful sorties it can continue to generate after its principal bases, fuel systems, communications and maintenance facilities have been attacked.
• Air forces are responding by dispersing aircraft across highway strips, civilian airports, secondary military fields and austere sites. The U.S. Air Force calls this Agile Combat Employment, or ACE; Nordic air forces have practiced versions of dispersed operations for decades.
• Ukraine’s survival in the opening phase of Russia’s 2022 invasion provides wartime evidence that movement, temporary basing and mobile air defense can frustrate an attacker’s plan. Ukraine’s June 2025 strikes on Russian bomber bases provide the reverse lesson: valuable aircraft concentrated in the open remain vulnerable even far from the front.
• Finland has made road-base operations a recurring national practice and increasingly an allied one. The United States has demonstrated wide-area dispersion and command during major Pacific exercises. Taiwan’s August 2026 Han Kuang drills tested rapid runway repair and fighter turnaround. Exercises demonstrate procedures and interoperability; they do not prove sustained performance under missile, drone, cyber and logistics pressure.
• The governing concept should be an operating web, not a list of alternative runways. Five layers must work together: places, packages, paths, picture and protection. A weakness in any one can turn dispersal into the geographical distribution of grounded aircraft.

The inventory illusion

Airpower debates are drawn toward objects. How many fighters has a country ordered? Which missile travels farther? When will the next squadron become operational? These questions matter, but they encourage a dangerous accounting habit: treating an aircraft in the inventory as an aircraft available to influence a conflict.

Between the two sits an operating system. Aircraft need usable pavement, fuel of the correct specification, weapons, spare parts, diagnostic equipment, secure mission data, air traffic control, weather information, trained crews, and an authority able to assign the next mission. At a large peacetime base, much of that system is fixed, specialized and efficient. It is also visible.

Precision missiles and long-range drones have changed the value of visibility. A major airbase concentrates aircraft, fuel, munitions, repair shops, communications and personnel inside a target area that can be studied for years. Hardened shelters, air and missile defenses, decoys and runway repair can make that target harder to suppress. None makes it disappear.

The U.S. Air Force’s January 2025 operations doctrine states the problem plainly: air bases can no longer be considered sanctuaries, regardless of location. Its answer, Agile Combat Employment, shifts activity from centralized infrastructure toward a network of smaller, dispersed locations designed to complicate adversary planning.^[1] The change is larger than basing. It moves airpower away from an industrial model optimized around a small number of permanent hubs and toward a contested network in which forces must move faster than an opponent’s targeting cycle.

That transition matters to more than air-force staffs. Governments must negotiate access and overflight. Civil aviation authorities and airport operators may become part of continuity planning. Energy suppliers, construction companies, telecommunications providers and transport networks become defense enablers. Manufacturers must support aircraft with smaller equipment packages and fewer specialists. Local authorities and communities encounter military activity outside familiar bases. What looks tactical from a cockpit becomes geopolitical, industrial and public-affairs work on the ground.

The theory: the base becomes an operating web

Dispersion is often described as a geometry problem: move aircraft away from a few large targets and an adversary must search and strike more locations. That is correct but incomplete. Every new site adds uncertainty for the attacker while adding distance, coordination and support requirements for the defender.

RAND’s 2024 assessment of ACE for Pacific Air Forces explicitly modeled the degradation in sortie potential that can occur when fighters and maintenance resources are distributed before any attack. Its analysis considered ground-servicing time, pilot duty limits, flightline capacity, back-shop repair, fuel, munitions, spares and schedule alignment.^[9] The strategic trade is therefore not “concentrated and efficient” versus “dispersed and safe.” It is a balance among efficiency, survivability, endurance and uncertainty.

A useful framework is to treat dispersed airpower as a five-layer operating web:

1. Places: main bases, reserve airfields, civilian airports, highway strips and temporary sites, each with known pavement, clearance, access and repair characteristics.
2. Packages: the minimum combination of maintainers, engineers, communications, security, fuel, weapons, spares and ground equipment required to generate a defined mission for a defined period.
3. Paths: the air, road, sea and contractual routes that move those packages before and during a crisis. A dispersed site without replenishment is a cache with an expiration date.
4. Picture: the resilient command-and-control system that gives separated teams a common understanding of threats, missions, aircraft status and support. When connectivity fails, delegated authority and prior intent must carry the operation.
5. Protection: active defense, counter-drone measures, camouflage, deception, emission control, local security and rapid recovery. Dispersion lowers concentration risk; it does not eliminate detection or attack.

The five layers are multiplicative rather than additive. A perfect road strip is useless if no fuel reaches it. A multi-skilled crew cannot launch an aircraft without a mission order. A strong data link can expose a location if its emissions are poorly managed. A dispersed formation may survive the first strike and still fail operationally if it cannot regenerate sorties on the second day.

This leads to a more demanding definition of deterrence. An adversary must believe not merely that some aircraft will survive, but that the network will continue to produce relevant combat power after absorbing disruption. Resilience is not survival in isolation. It is survival connected to purpose.

Case study: Ukraine demonstrates survival—and exposes concentration

Russia’s opening campaign in February 2022 was expected to damage Ukrainian airpower severely. The Swedish Defence Research Agency’s study of the war’s first six months found that Ukraine had dispersed aircraft before the invasion and had trained to operate and service them from temporary field bases. The study concluded that this was a crucial reason the air force remained capable of defensive and, at times, offensive sorties despite being technically and numerically outmatched.^[11]

The lesson should not be simplified. Ukraine’s air-force survival was tied to a wider air-denial system: mobile surface-to-air missiles, warning, deception, repeated movement and Russia’s own targeting and campaign-design failures. A 2026 peer-reviewed study of European ACE lessons argues that the war validates dispersion but also shows how much it depends on mobility, infrastructure, logistics and operational security.^[12] No single technique explains the outcome.

There is also an important difference between survival and air superiority. Ukraine kept aircraft flying; it did not gain uncontested control of the sky. Dispersal preserved options and imposed costs. It could not erase the effects of limited fleet size, contested airspace, ammunition constraints and repeated strikes against infrastructure.

The reverse lesson arrived on June 1, 2025. Ukraine’s Security Service launched short-range drones concealed in truck-mounted structures near Russian strategic bomber bases. Russia acknowledged attacks, and subsequent commercial satellite imagery and open-source analysis showed multiple aircraft destroyed or damaged. The exact totals and the Ukrainian claim that 34 percent of Russia’s strategic cruise-missile carriers were affected were not independently verified at the time.^[14][13]

What did not require a precise loss count was the operational fact: high-value, difficult-to-replace aircraft parked in visible concentrations had been reached by inexpensive systems launched from close range. Geography had offered distance, not sanctuary. The attack made base defense a local counterintelligence and counter-drone problem as much as a long-range air-defense problem.

Established fact: Ukraine dispersed aircraft before the full-scale invasion and continued flying; Russian bombers were damaged or destroyed in the 2025 attacks. Analysis: together, the episodes show why an air force must combine movement with concealment, protection and a replenishable support network. Dispersing aircraft into predictable parking patterns would only create more targets.

Case study: Finland turns a road into a repeatable institution

Finland’s contribution to the debate is not novelty but routine. Its air force regularly operates outside main bases and treats road-base training as part of fighter-pilot development. During Baana 24, held from August 31 to September 6, 2024, Finnish F/A-18s, Hawk trainers and support aircraft operated from two highway strips and the main base at Rovaniemi, alongside allied aircraft from the United States and Germany.^[4]

Baana 25 extended the allied dimension. From May 26 to 29, 2025, Finland closed a section of Highway 4 near Tikkakoski for dispersed operations involving Finnish aircraft and Royal Netherlands Air Force F-35As. Approximately 2,000 active-duty personnel, reservists, conscripts and allied participants were involved in the broader exercise at its peak.^[3]

The visible event is an aircraft landing on a road. The strategically significant work sits around it: traffic management, engineering, fuel handling, security, communications, reserve mobilization and the ability to coordinate allied aircraft inside a national dispersal system. Finland’s model benefits from continuity between peacetime infrastructure, a reserve-based defense structure and a long-established mobile-battle concept.

It also illustrates why access arrangements must precede crisis. A technical arrangement signed by Finland and Sweden in 2025 set procedures for host-nation support and cross-border military activity, including logistics and movement. Such documents are unglamorous, but they determine whether an allied unit can legally enter, draw fuel, move equipment and receive support when time is compressed.^[5]

What the evidence supports: Finland can repeatedly close selected roads, deploy a mixed military workforce and operate national and allied aircraft from them. What remains unproven publicly: how long that network could sustain a high sortie tempo while sites, roads, communications and supply convoys were under repeated attack. A successful exercise validates procedures under controlled conditions; it does not simulate every form of enemy adaptation.

Case study: the United States tests scale across the Pacific

The Indo-Pacific turns dispersion into a continental logistics problem. Distances are immense, islands offer little maneuver space, tankers are essential and alternative locations may depend on allied political consent. The U.S. Air Force has therefore moved ACE from a specialist concept into mainstream doctrine. Its 2025 doctrine says effective execution requires command and control, logistics under attack, counter-drone capabilities, air and missile defense, space and cyber support, multi-skilled personnel and agreements rehearsed before conflict.^[1]

Resolute Force Pacific 2025 was a major practical test. According to Pacific Air Forces, the department-level exercise involved more than 350 joint and coalition aircraft and more than 12,000 personnel at over 50 locations across 3,000 miles. From July 10 to August 8, forces launched, recovered and maintained aircraft from dispersed sites across more than six time zones.^[2]

Scale, however, does not settle the hardest question: can dispersed units make good decisions when data paths degrade? Bamboo Eagle 26-1, reported by Pacific Air Forces in February 2026, treated resilient command and control as the enabling “nervous system” for forces operating from separated locations. The exercise used end-to-end evaluation of decision and data-link performance under pressure.^[6]

Human capacity is equally consequential. RAND’s 2025 work on mission-ready airmen found uncertainty over roles, difficulty filling key support specialties, inconsistent cross-utilization standards and no enterprise-wide system for tracking the relevant qualifications.^[10] These are not minor personnel issues. A concept designed to operate with small teams at many sites depends on whether those teams contain the right skills at the right time.

A separate warning comes from infrastructure. In August 2026, the U.S. Government Accountability Office reported an estimated $285 billion backlog in Department of Defense installation maintenance for fiscal 2025 and found that the services funded about 80 percent of identified maintenance needs against a 90 percent goal. The study covered the department’s overall facility portfolio, not ACE sites specifically, and its sample of eight installations was not generalizable.^[7] Still, the institutional tension is clear: distributed operations require more usable infrastructure and skilled maintenance, while the existing estate already carries substantial deferred work.

Analysis: the United States has moved beyond demonstration landings toward large-scale rehearsal. The remaining credibility gap lies between episodic exercise success and persistent wartime endurance. Deterrence will depend on whether adversaries believe the fuel, repair, command and access network can survive long enough to keep the aircraft relevant.

Case study: Taiwan rehearses recovery under a compressed clock

Taiwan has less geographical depth and less time. Its airbases face dense missile and drone threats, while mountains, cities and coastlines restrict the number of suitable operating areas. Dispersion therefore cannot be separated from rapid repair and rapid turnaround at bases that may be struck repeatedly.

During the ten-day Han Kuang exercises in August 2026, Taiwan demonstrated the refueling and rearming of Mirage 2000-5 fighters at Hsinchu Air Base and the repair of simulated runway craters. Air-force personnel told Reuters that wartime repairs were intended to restore damaged pavement within four hours, using civilian contractors where necessary. The exercise also extended activity to Taoyuan International Airport and other critical infrastructure.^[15]

The earlier command-post phase had emphasized more rigorous rehearsals, backbriefs and delegated understanding so that frontline units could act rather than wait passively for orders. Taiwan’s government-linked Overseas Community Affairs Council reported that the 2026 cycle incorporated several U.S.-style rehearsal methods and, for the first time, military intelligence units in the tabletop war games.^[8]

Those measures address two different failure modes. Runway repair restores the physical path. Backbriefs and battle drills protect the decision path. Both will be needed if central communications are disrupted and local commanders must operate from intent rather than detailed instruction.

But Taiwan’s challenge cannot be solved by pavement alone. A repaired runway remains observable. Ground crews, weapons storage, fuel delivery, shelters and air-defense coverage remain targetable. Civilian contractors may be indispensable and vulnerable at the same time. The relevant measure is not the time required to patch one crater during an exercise; it is the capacity to repeat recovery while managing casualties, ambiguity, damaged utilities and simultaneous attacks.

Established fact: Taiwan rehearsed rapid fighter turnaround and runway repair in August 2026. Analytical limit: public exercises do not reveal the survivability of the full system under a sustained campaign, and the four-hour repair objective should not be mistaken for a guaranteed wartime restoration time.

Four models, four different tests

Model	What has been demonstrated	Strategic advantage	Primary bottleneck	What remains uncertain
Ukraine	Prewar aircraft dispersion, temporary-field support and continued wartime sorties; attacks on concentrated Russian aircraft	Survival through movement, uncertainty and a wider air-denial system	Fleet size, munitions, infrastructure and repeated long-range strikes	Transferability to air forces built around different aircraft and maintenance models
Finland	Recurring road-base operations with active forces, conscripts, reservists and allies	A practiced national system with social, infrastructure and alliance depth	Protection and replenishment of many small sites	Sustained sortie generation under continuous attack
U.S. Indo-Pacific	Large multinational exercises across wide distances; doctrinal integration of ACE	Scale, alliances, advanced aircraft and distributed command	Distance, tanker dependence, maintenance packages, access and communications	Endurance when logistics nodes and data links are actively contested
Taiwan	Rapid turnaround, runway repair and civil-military rehearsal	Fast recovery and local initiative inside a compact theater	Limited depth and a dense missile, drone and surveillance threat	Ability to repeat recovery across multiple damaged sites

What the comparison changes

First, resilience cannot be procured as a platform accessory. It cuts across air forces, armies, civil aviation, transportation, energy, telecommunications, industry and local government. A new fighter contract that excludes dispersed maintenance, deployable support equipment and sovereign access to technical data may buy performance without continuity.

Second, efficiency and resilience use different accounting. Centralization lowers peacetime cost, concentrates expertise and simplifies compliance. Dispersion creates duplicate equipment, more training demands, larger inventories and less predictable productivity. Those apparent inefficiencies purchase options under attack. They should be evaluated against mission continuity, not compared only with the cost of an optimized main base.

Third, people are the scarce connective tissue. Multi-skilled teams can reduce a site’s footprint, but cross-training has limits. Some maintenance, weapons and safety tasks require deep certification. Overloading a small team can preserve the appearance of agility while creating fatigue, error and single points of human failure.

Fourth, alliances become operational software. Aircraft interoperability is visible; permissions, contracting rules, fuel standards, customs arrangements, liability, spectrum access and intelligence release are less so. A partner airfield is not available because it exists. It is available when political authorization and technical procedures can be activated within the threat timeline.

Finally, public communication has strategic effects. Announcing road-base exercises can reassure allies, prepare communities and complicate adversary planning. Excessive detail can reveal routines and dependencies. Governments must explain disruption and civilian roles without turning resilience communications into a map of vulnerabilities.

What Leaders Should Do Now

1. Measure generated combat power, not nominal access. Count the missions each site can support by day and under degraded conditions—not simply the number of usable runways.
2. Design the smallest honest package. Define the personnel, tools, data, weapons, fuel and protection required for specific missions and durations. Do not describe a site as operational if a hidden specialist must still arrive from the main base.
3. Exercise the seams. Test transfers among military commands, civil airports, fuel suppliers, road authorities, contractors and allies. The unowned handoff is usually more dangerous than the familiar technical task.
4. Contract for contested continuity. Defense manufacturers and service providers should be evaluated on deployable maintenance, data availability, repair time and support at austere sites—not only platform availability at permanent bases.
5. Give local teams bounded authority. Specify what commanders may decide when communications fail, what evidence triggers relocation and how mission intent is updated without exposing the network.
6. Protect logistics as a maneuver force. Fuel trucks, repair teams, munitions movements and communications nodes require route variation, deception, security and alternatives. An aircraft that moves while its support follows a fixed pattern is not truly dispersed.
7. Audit the civilian dependencies. Identify which airports, utilities, telecom providers and contractors are mission-essential; examine legal authority, workforce availability, cybersecurity and continuity obligations before crisis.
8. Report the trade-offs upward. Boards, ministers and legislators should see how dispersion changes operating cost, staffing, infrastructure maintenance and risk. A resilience concept that is not funded across those categories is an aspiration.

Conclusion: deterrence begins after the first salvo

The runway has not become irrelevant. It has become one component in a moving system. The same is true of the fighter, the base and even the alliance agreement. Their strategic value emerges only when they remain connected through people, supplies, decisions and protection after disruption begins.

Ukraine has shown that a smaller air force can survive an opening campaign when it moves and when a wider air-denial system prevents the attacker from exploiting every strike. Russia’s bomber losses showed the price of visible concentration. Finland has made road operations a repeatable national and allied practice. The United States is exercising dispersed command and logistics at continental scale. Taiwan is rehearsing recovery under a much tighter clock.

None offers a universal template. Geography, fleet design, political access and the threat determine the right network. All point toward the same strategic correction: airpower cannot be judged from the day before the war. Its credible measure is the useful sortie generated after the first base has been hit, the first data link has failed and the first planned route is no longer available.

That is when inventory ends and deterrence becomes visible.

Key Evidence

• January 22, 2025: U.S. Air Force doctrine formally described ACE as a shift from centralized infrastructure to a network of smaller dispersed locations and stated that air bases are no longer sanctuaries.^[1]
• More than 350 aircraft, 12,000 personnel and 50 locations: the announced scale of Resolute Force Pacific 2025 across 3,000 miles and more than six time zones.^[2]
• May 26–29, 2025: Finnish aircraft and Royal Netherlands Air Force F-35As operated from a closed section of Highway 4 during Baana 25; the broader exercise reached roughly 2,000 participants.^[3]
• June 1, 2025: Ukraine struck Russian strategic aircraft using short-range drones launched from trucks near airbases. Aircraft losses were visually confirmed, but larger Ukrainian damage totals remained disputed.^[14][13]
• Four hours: the wartime runway-repair objective described by Taiwanese personnel during the August 2026 Han Kuang exercise; it is an exercise target, not a guaranteed wartime result.^[15]
• $285 billion: GAO’s estimate of the U.S. Department of Defense installation-maintenance backlog in fiscal 2025, illustrating the existing infrastructure burden around new resilience ambitions.^[7]

Glossary

Agile Combat Employment (ACE)The U.S. Air Force concept for moving and operating forces within adversary threat timelines to improve survivability while continuing to generate combat power.

Sortie generation The process and rate at which an air unit prepares, launches, recovers, services, and relaunches aircraft for missions.

Dispersed operations The distribution and movement of aircraft and support elements among multiple locations to reduce concentration and complicate targeting.

Austere site A location with limited permanent infrastructure that can support defined air operations through deployable personnel and equipment.

Mission command A command approach that gives subordinates intent and delegated authority so they can adapt when detailed direction is unavailable.

Host-nation support Civil and military assistance provided by a country to allied forces operating from or moving through its territory.

Air denial Preventing an opponent from using the air domain freely, without necessarily establishing one’s own full air superiority.

References and Further Reading

Official doctrine and exercises

1. U.S. Department of the Air Force, “Air Force Doctrine Publication 3-0: Operations,” January 22, 2025, Appendix C.
2. U.S. Pacific Air Forces, “354th AEW Takes ACE, Interoperability to the Skies for REFORPAC 25,” July 29, 2025.
3. Finnish Air Force, “The Finnish Air Force’s Conscripts’ Final Exercise of the Unit Training Phase in Jyväskylä and Central Finland,” May 16, 2025.
4. Finnish Air Force, “Baana 24 Road Base Exercise in Rovaniemi and Ranua,” August 22, 2024.
5. Ministry of Defence of Finland and Ministry of Defence of Sweden, “Technical Arrangement Concerning Host Nation Support,” 2025.
6. U.S. Pacific Air Forces, “Connected to Win: Bamboo Eagle Strengthens Allied Decision-Making,” February 17, 2026.
7. U.S. Government Accountability Office, “Installation Maintenance: Better Information on Risks and Challenges Needed to Improve Oversight of DOD Facility Conditions,” GAO-26-107255, August 2026.
8. Overseas Community Affairs Council, Republic of China (Taiwan), reproducing Central News Agency reporting, “2026 Han Kuang Drills Test Key U.S. Military Rehearsals,” April 14, 2026.

Research and analytical studies

9. Patrick Mills, Rachel Costello, Matthew Sargent and Colby P. Steiner, “Assessing Agile Combat Employment for the Pacific Air Forces: Estimating the Impacts of Distributed Maintenance Postures on Sortie Rate Potential,” RAND Corporation, September 6, 2024.
10. Maria C. Lytell et al., “Developing Combat Support Mission Ready Airmen for Agile Combat Employment,” RAND Corporation, April 18, 2025.
11. Jonas Kjellén, “The Aerial War Against Ukraine: The First Six Months,” Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI), February 2023.
12. Maria E. Burczynska, “Can Europe ACE the Next War? Lessons from War in Ukraine for European Air Forces,” The Journal of Slavic Military Studies, vol. 39, no. 2, May 21, 2026, pp. 234–253.
13. Masao Dahlgren and Lachlan MacKenzie, “Ukraine’s Drone Swarms Are Destroying Russian Nuclear Bombers. What Happens Now?” Center for Strategic and International Studies, June 4, 2025.

Authoritative reporting

14. Tom Balmforth and Max Hunder, “To Attack Russian Air Bases, Ukrainian Spies Hid Drones in Wooden Sheds,” Reuters, June 1, 2025.
15. Yi-Chin Lee and Ann Wang, “Taiwan Scrambles French-Made Jets in Rapid Turnaround Drills During Annual War Games,” Reuters, August 7, 2026.

Source and methodology note

This article was researched through September 9, 2026. It prioritizes official doctrine, government and military exercise releases, a government audit, peer-reviewed research and studies from established defense-research institutions. Reuters reporting is used for events where official parties made competing claims and for direct observation of the 2026 Han Kuang drills. The Finnish-Swedish arrangement is cited for the existence and scope of host-nation procedures, not as evidence of wartime performance.

Important limitations apply. Military organizations disclose selectively, exercises occur under controlled conditions and public descriptions emphasize intended outcomes. Exercise size does not establish combat effectiveness. Wartime aircraft losses and sortie rates are difficult to verify independently; Ukrainian and Russian claims are therefore identified as claims unless supported by visual or independent analysis. The article does not disclose or infer nonpublic basing locations, readiness levels or vulnerabilities.

Facts include published dates, announced exercise participation, doctrinal definitions, observed runway-repair procedures and GAO’s documented maintenance estimates. The five-layer operating-web framework, the comparison among national models and the judgments about deterrence are the author’s analysis. They should not be attributed to the governments or institutions cited.

Suggested internal links

• The Cheap Drone Is a Supply-Chain Illusion: Who Controls the Age of Attritable Warfare? — in the Ukraine section, where low-cost systems change the economics of base protection.
• When the Clock Becomes a Target: GNSS Interference and the New Geography of Coercion — in the discussion of command, navigation and degraded data links.
• Europe Has Found the Money for Defense. Now It Must Learn to Buy Together — after the analysis of infrastructure, common standards and multinational support.
• The Strategic Asset Is Not the Cable. It Is the Ability to Repair It. — in the conclusion on recovery capacity as a measure of strategic sovereignty.

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