The Sir Richard Williams Foundation convened its second seminar of 2026, titled The Requirement for Air Combat Mass and Depth in the Indo-Pacific, on 1 October 2026 at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra. The discussions centered on how modern air forces must build operational capability and capacity rather than relying simply on high tail counts or cheap, disposable platforms.
Mass Is an Effect, Not a Count
Tail count does not equal combat power. That was the central message delivered by Lt Gen David Deptula, USAF (Ret.), Dean of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, during the Canberra seminar. Geoff Brown, Deputy Chair of the Foundation, pressed Deptula from the operator’s seat to test the American strategic case against real operational experience.
Deptula argued that land power creates mass by physically massing forces. Through speed, reach, precision, coordination, and sequencing, airpower produces its equivalent by concentrating impacts across time and space. A small force of highly capable aircraft that can penetrate, find the right targets, communicate, employ weapons and return to do it all again generates far more operational effect than a massive fleet that cannot reach the battlespace or survive within it.
Drawing on historical precedent, Deptula highlighted the performance of the F-117 during Desert Storm. Less than 2 per cent of combat sorties were flown by the aircraft, which nevertheless accounted for over 40 per cent of the fixed targets struck. By comparison, early non-stealth packages required dozens of aircraft to achieve a fraction of those results. The F-117 cost more per airframe and far less per desired effect.
Depth Makes Mass Last
Mass without depth is temporary. Lt Gen Deptula stressed that maintaining effects over time requires sufficient supplies of aircraft, weapons, crews, maintenance capacity, fuel, basing, command and control, and logistics. Without these elements, a force might generate massive effects for two days before exhausting its weapons and serviceable platforms.
Procurement announcements frequently highlight countable, photogenic airframes while underplaying the logistics required to sustain them. For Australia, facing long distances and thin infrastructure, the distinction is acute. Depth determines whether a capability can be sustained at the tempo and duration a crisis demands.
| Operational Metric | Surface-Level Procurement View | Combat Reality (Deptula Framework) |
|---|---|---|
| Primary Focus | Unit flyaway price and tail count | Cost per desired effect and sustainment depth |
| Attrition Strategy | Designing for cheap, disposable loss | Absorbing attrition without making it the theory of victory |
| Logistical Dependency | Airframe delivery on ramp | Tankers, munitions, spares, maintainers, and basing |
Rejecting Affordable Failure and Attrition Contests
Both Brown and Deptula critiqued the modern defense budgeting habit of treating low unit price as a virtue in itself. Brown warned against “affordable failure,” echoing George Kenney’s Second World War analogy of an air force as a poker hand where a cheap, inferior hand costs money and yields nothing. Deptula noted that a $10 million aircraft requiring massive formations that suffer heavy losses is ultimately more expensive and less effective than a penetrating platform that achieves the mission securely.
On the subject of attritable aircraft, Deptula drew a sharp line between operational risk and resource allocation. Willingness to risk an uncrewed platform is an operational choice for commanders, but designing a force around the expectation of high loss rates is a flawed strategy. Every lost platform reduces capacity, and replacements depend on industrial output.
Against a production powerhouse like China, Deptula argued that Washington and its allies must not choose a theory of victory based on replacing inexpensive airplanes faster than Beijing can build them. Relying on an attrition contest plays directly into China’s structural advantages in scale and industrial output. Air superiority remains the essential mechanism to impose disproportionate costs and avoid a prolonged stalemate.
