An air offensive is a type of military operation conducted using aircrew, airborne

Airborne forces

Airborne forces are military units, usually light infantry, set up to be moved by aircraft and 'dropped' into battle. Thus they can be placed behind enemy lines, and have an ability to deploy almost anywhere with little warning...

 and strategic missile troops to allow securing of war, campaign or operational initiative, air-space superiority or ensure defeat of enemy forces through use of air-delivered ordnance, or destruction of enemy air, ground and naval forces.

The air offensive can be conducted by the air forces independently, or in coordination with the Land and Naval Services within the scope of Combined Operations

Combined Operations

Combined Operations Headquarters was a department of the British War Office set up during World War II to harass the Germans on the European continent by means of raids carried out by use of combined naval and army forces...

. In some countries the air offensive can be conducted by the ground forces using aviation

Army aviation

Army Aviation refers to aviation-related units of a nation's army, often described as an air corps. These units are generally separate from a nation's dedicated air force, and usually comprise helicopters and light support fixed-wing aircraft....

 assets such as troop carrier operations during the Second World War or the post-war use of helicopter

Helicopter

A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by one or more engine-driven rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forwards, backwards, and laterally...

s.

Air offensives, also known as the aviation offensives in Russian, are sometimes referred to by their principal type of aircraft or missile as the Air superiority offensive such as the Luftwaffe

Luftwaffe

Luftwaffe is a generic German term for an air force. It is also the official name for two of the four historic German air forces, the Wehrmacht air arm founded in 1935 and disbanded in 1946; and the current Bundeswehr air arm founded in 1956....

 Operation Adlerangriff

Operation Eagle Attack

Adlertag was the first day of Unternehmen Adlerangriff , which was the codename of a German military operation by the Luftwaffe to destroy the British Royal Air Force . By June 1940, the Allies had been defeated in Western Europe and Scandinavia...

, bombing air offensive such as the Anglo-American air offensive against Germany from 1943 until the German surrender in 1945

Strategic bombing during World War II

Strategic bombing during World War II is a term which refers to all aerial bombardment of a strategic nature between 1939 and 1945 involving any nations engaged in World War II...

, assault air offensive as exemplified by the operations during the Battle of Kursk

Battle of Kursk

The Battle of Kursk took place when German and Soviet forces confronted each other on the Eastern Front during World War II in the vicinity of the city of Kursk, in the Soviet Union in July and August 1943. It remains both the largest series of armored clashes, including the Battle of Prokhorovka,...

, and air-assault offensive such as Operation Shiny Bayonet by the 1st Cavalry Division during the Vietnam War

Vietnam War

The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...

.

Air offensives tend to be strategic in nature, with one of the largest conducted was by the Red Army Air Force, commencing in August 1943, when some 10,000 aircraft took part in the support of the Kursk Strategic Defensive, Orel Strategic Counter-offensive (Operation Kutuzov), Belgorod-Kharkov Strategic Counter-offensive (Operation Rumyantsev), Smolensk Strategic Offensive (Operation Surorov), Donbass Strategic Offensive and Chernigov-Poltava Strategic Offensive Operations.

Ordinarily the air offensive consists of three phases: air preparation of the offensive (including intelligence preparation of the battlefield), immediate preparation for the offensive, and offensive support operations.

Sources

• Allen, Matthew, Military helicopter doctrines of the major powers, 1945-1992: making decisions about air-land warfare, Greenwood Press, London, 1993
• Coleman, J.D. (Maj.), editor-in-chief, The 1st Air Cavalry Division: Vietnam August 1965 to December 1969, Dia Nippon Printing Company, Tokyo, 1970
• Jackson, Robert, The Red Falcons: The Soviet Air Force in action 1919-1969, Clifton Books, London, 1970
• Kozlov, M.M., Gen. of Army, Prof., editor-in-chief, Great Patriotic War 1941-1945 encyclopaedia (in Russian), Soviet Encyclopaedia, Moscow, 1985.
• Schlight, John, Help from above: Air Force Close Air Support of the Army 1946-1973, Air Force History and Museums Program, Washington D.C., 2003