Originally Posted by
Pontius Navigator
Consider counter air mission. The ultimate aim is to destroy the enemy aircraft. The traditional approach was to crater the runway thus pinning the aircraft to the ground. The program then continued with further attacks on the runway with the hope of collateral damage hitting the aircraft. HAS were a counter and area denial a counter-counter.
These programs need lots of aircraft. PGM may reduce the number of aircraft needed to crater the runway and PGM can more easily plink the HAS, but you still need lots of weapons over target. 4 Paveway on a Typhoon don't cut it.
I think the answer these days is now a lot more clinical, and I suspect you could stop a Sqn getting airborne without ever even dropping a bomb on the airfield. Identify key personnel - arrange an RTA, bring people on base for security - unfortunate Gas explosion in the Mess, aircraft need IT for key parts of their operation - computers catch a cold just like humans. And those options are far more calculating and sinister because they are far more personal than dropping a bomb and bring with them a whole host of considerations that would tie the chain of command in knots rather than actually doing their warfighting role.
Of course, a degree of depth and resilience would go some way to mitigating those risks.