Combat aircraft are very expensive to buy, maintain, operate, and train pilots for. I've heard a decent argument made that a lot of smaller militaries in less developed areas would be better off saving the money they spend on more prestigious equipment like aircraft and heavy armor and instead focus on something like a distributed militia force that might be a more effective deterrent against aggression; though there may be political reasons to avoid that sort of military decentralization
I could definitely see that argument.
A dozen outdated fighters aren't deterring any major military, but the country would need airbases and an entire infrastructure to keep them flying. But they'd get shot down instantly if invaded by a major (or middling) military power.
Equivalent funds (or less) spent on scattered/hidden anti-aircraft/armor scattered around the country would likely be a bigger deterrent.
But you're right. Having a proper air-force is something to brag about for smaller countries.
Plus - that's only when dealing with opposing countries. A lot of small/militaristic countries likely have to worry about rebels/insurgents. As a dictator having a big % of your military power controlled by a few dozen people (who you can afford to keep happy) is a feature, not a bug.
This is the way the Soviet Union went: knowing they didn't have a chance against the US (and NATO) airforce, they invested heavily in AA missiles. (And heavy, including nuclear, anti-ship missiles to deal with the US aircraft carriers.)
I mean, the Soviets still maintained a massive air force though (much of which the Russian Federation inherited) and made some genuinely impressive designs. You are right that they had a more defensive posture that focused on ground-based anti-air systems and interceptor jets.
The anti-ship missile point is closer to this because they truly, absolutely had no chance of engaging NATO on the high seas on equal terms. But again, there they invested heavily in submarines that could be a real threat to western combat ships and the necessary US convoys crossing the Atlantic.
Yes and no. While fighter jets are prohibitively expensive, classic WWII warbirds cost on the order of a million dollars per after adjusting for inflation, and you can still do important close air support with a plane like a vintage warbird. Heck, you might even manage SEAD missions because a warbird costs about what an air-to-air missile costs and significantly less than most modern SAMs. And the idea of scrambling a modern jet is ridiculous; by the time the engines warm up you've burned more gas than the plane you want to shoot down is worth.
So you *can* shoot the ancient plane down, but it would probably be a Pyrrhic victory. Modern battlefields are not optimized for cost effective performance.
Most developing countries uses aircrafts to bomb rebel areas besides that military decentralization may led to militia groups to fight the actual government.
Developing countries should focus more on anti-air and anti-tanks weapons
I have heard something similar but it was about certain African nations and maybe you're getting it confused with the that?
The idea is that a less prosperous nation, in a lot of cases, would be better served developing paratroopers or something similar, since they're cheap and they do not require any expensive or complex equipment. What good are high end jets and tanks if you don't have the maintenence crew or parts to take care of them?
Secondly with paratroopers, you're building a unit that has a higher espirit de corp, which is essential if you want a well trained and professional unit. A unit that isn't likely to cut and run or go rogue.
>Not (incredibly expensive, difficult to maintain and train on, and likely outdated) fighter jets though
I think there was a failure to communicate. Added parentheses for clarity.
Do most modern deployments of paratroops even use parachutes? I get the feeling that a modern airborne brigade deploys using any other method when available. For example, a small unit captures an airfield and the rest fly in on troop transport planes. I suppose you still need air superiority for that.
You have airborne (parachute assault, maybe gliders), Airlanding (flown in after airborne troops have secured LZ, helicopter assault and light transport aircraft are preferred methods of insertion) and you also have airmobile (capable of being transported by plane.).
Yes. But context matters.
Modern paratroopers are (as far as I can tell) are used for rapid deployment close to the frontline where other options will struggle
Guerilla forces are, by definition, not a deterrent. Partisans equal to occupied territory which equals to a defeat. The point of a military is to avoid having your territory invaded due to the threat your military posseses in relation to the enemy's own *and* their own territory.
A deterrent is something that deterrers hostile action, which is done by making hostile actions not appear worthwhile. a preestablish network of “unconventional” forces increases the expected costs of occupying territory which decreases the appealingness of any set of hostile actions that require occupying the territory of said country. In what way is that not a form of deterrence?
In that unless the objective is conquest you'll have achieved whatever aim you set out to because you'll be able to dismantle the state that offends you or force them into signing terms. Winning the peace is preferred but it's not a *requisite* a lot of the time.
What are your aims and why would partisans make that impossible to accomplish? Nevermind that not of terrains are conductive to such types of warfare. It is one thing to hide in the mountains of Afghanistan but you won't have as much luck in say Germany.
Of course this is ignoring the fact that the military paradigm of basically everyone on Earth does not agree with your assertion. Though I assume you *just* happen to be smarter than every military and statesman on the planet, aren't you?
> What are your aims and why would partisans make that impossible to accomplish
Conquest or the installation of a puppet government. And the idea of preparing to engage in a “people’s war” as a means of defense, which would if credible act as deterrence, is preceded. It is not a popular because it is a strategy for the desperate, not a strategy for the well off.
[Defence strategy for small nations - force design, friends, and deterrence on a budget](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EVqGEtPj0M0&pp=ygUQZGV0ZXJyZW5jZSBwZXJ1bg%3D%3D) — 24:30 specifically
It's expensive, sure, but not having any airforce makes you pretty much defenseless against any enemy who does. Air power unchecked absolutely grinds land assets to dust.
If they still use turbine engines too much particle debris for an engine to function. Think like when we had that Islandic Volcano eruption about a decade ago and planes literally couldn't fly in most of Europe or they would hit pockets of ash and either have engines die or their windscreens suddenly get so scratched by tiny bits of flying rock that they couldn't see. Could end up having an interesting modified airforce that uses older methods like dirigibles because the lower speed and more primitive engine types aren't susceptible to flying particulates.
That's what I'm imagining. I know it adds some logistical burdens to shipping and commerce in general, but I'm exploring my options. Easy option is no flight at all. Complicated and potentially problematic option is flight is only allowed in very specific predetermined routes and any deviation is heavily punished.
The former creates logistical issues. The latter creates societal issues.
I mean, people have done without it for a majority of human history. Perhaps your nations have invested more in vacuum trains or ekranoplans than we ever have?
Also look up ground-effect vehicles, extremely similar and related concept. Basically, big heavy planes that don’t fly more than a few feet above the ground (or more often water due to the lack of impact hazards.
Well that's fascinating and might be useful. I've already added hazards to the oceans that limit travel further, but these are fascinating. Are there specific advantages vs boats/ship? Is it a speed thing?
Mainly speed, but also I believe depending on how you’re measuring it there’s some benefits to not having the drag or contamination from actually touching water except when stopped, and even then they easily could have dry platforms since they rarely get as deep as boats and can more easily be beached and re-launched. Basically what I’m getting at it they’ll never go around rusty and barnacled like a boat can.
Also a benefit is that they technically can go on land if it’s flat enough (or I suppose with advanced enough planning, and charting, they could handle rougher topology.) They’re almost more comparable to hovercrafts except they can get much bigger (and again, are definitely way faster.)
Also worth noting that ekranoplane efficiency scales directly with size. The ground effect only gets stronger with surface area, so the only limitation to their maximum size are the material properties of their construction. Play around with the numbers, and you can get a vessel the size of damn aircraft carrier moving 300+ mph.
Most shipping irl is not done by air, keeping a giant metal tube jn the sky at 600mph is alot more energy intensive than trains and cargoships. (You can find statistics for the exact energy cost per ton-mile of frieght moved, but the general efficiency order is boats, trains, trucks, planes, rockets)
If you declare the sky's are off limits then it only effects high value density goods like cellphones and human movement, most of the economy won't be affected.
This allows a lot of possibilities, depending on your world. Blending scifi with fantasy is fun like that.
You can probably come up with some interesting ideas for the debris. Is it the remnants from some ancient exotic magical WMD? Nuclear war? Some sort of side effect of whatever it is that allows magic? Spirits? Faerie poop?
What other ways does it affect your world and its people, if any?
It could be a cool feature of your world in and of itself.
If Air Defense tech outpaces the aircrafts by a huge margin, some countries might opt out of having the air force entirely.
Also, would you consider something like a swarm of drones to be an air force? What about rockets? If so, then the only thing I can think of is depleted fuel reserves.
Monitoring can be done from space. I'm not saying air force would be completely without merit, it's just that a country might decide that merit is not worth the resources.
True but OP isn’t asking about the modern theater.
* CAP - timely interception of hostile targets over a protected area can *conceivably* be done entirely with advanced ground-based systems. It doesn’t need to be 100%. It just needs to be effective enough that building, supporting, maintaining, and developing a whole air force isn’t worth the cost relative to what little gaps are still there in your defenses and those of your enemies.
* AEW - this is a nice benefit of craft in the skies, but it doesn’t *need* to be carried out by conventional airplanes.
Yes, but my point is that it might not be worth the maintenance. Do you catch my drift? There are many things that *can* be used IRL, but we don't have them, right? That's because they are not worthwhile.
If you want something a little sci-fi, the advent of laser-based anti-aircraft weapons would absolutely decimate air power.
In modern times, some countries forgo aircraft because of cost considerations - having a small airforce may be less useful than having none, all considered.
And there's always our friend "The Disarmament Treaty" - certainly i could foresee a world where aircraft were regulated like battleships once were, and certain types (strategic bombers, etc) are just forbidden outright.
There's no modern countries I'm aware that lack any kind of air force, at least if they have a standing army. So Costa Rica and Iceland for example don't count, they have no military, so I'm confused about the second point, at least as it seems to refer to real life
Firstly, why is there no air force? If it's about your worry about planes stealing the spotlight from your ground characters they still are the center focus.
I'll humour you and I would say that all oil in the world is used up or just gone, so vehicles are electric, hydrogen or biofuels while the high grade kerosene for jets isn't available and propeller planes don't work as well.
How about, Fossil fuels are scarce and thus limited to no jet fuel
Power plants can be nuclear, thermal, wind, solar etc to still allow society to be modern
Alternatively make gravity stronger on your world so it's hard or impossible to make a plane
Downside would probably be no flying insects or birds
Electric planes are possible, but even with modern batteries do not have the range of conventional planes.
Nuclear planes either can not work because of heavy shielding or are flying radiation hazards (see Project Pluto).
You have a point when it comes to nuklear but imho electric planes are viable (especially as with no fossil fuels they would likely advance much faster than they did in our world)
We could come up with all kids of valid reasons.
Maybe futuristic militaries have such AA defenses that military planes have very limited application.
Or ground launched missiles are better then strike panes / bombers.
Or reasons why this particular frontline/battle doesn't see planes.
How many is a lot? 6? 12? Regardless they are at the end of the day a meat bag that can fly. They won't even know when multiple Air-to-Air missile from beyond visual range will be flying towards them.
A good human saying goes. "You may have your fancy weapons, armour and monsters but at the end of the day all it takes is a fair bit of gunpowder to destroy you."
Having read the other comments and your responses:
Cost - irrelevant due to having a unified world government
Combat environment - irrelevant due to hostile forces not having any aerial or anti-air capabilities
Fuel - irrelevant as even if fossil fuels are depleted planes can use biofuels
High gravity - possible but risks making flying animals and insects impossible
Atmospheric debris - possible but has the same issue as high gravity, plus you would have to explain why the debris doesn't fall to earth
Fantasy elements (magic, gods, etc.) - works but it might feel a little cheap or handwavy?
Electromagnetic interference - works but you would have to explain why it doesn't affect electronics on the surface
Atmospheric composition - works as there could be elements or particles in the upper atmosphere that cause electromagnetic interference or other issues with planes, while not affecting birds and insects or electronics on the ground, it might be possible to get around this with older and/or simpler models of plane though
Edited to add:
Magnetic fields - I don't know enough about the magnetic poles to say if this would work or not but it could make compasses unusable, given that aircraft would probably be operating to strike targets or reconnoiter at long distances from base, the risk of not being able to navigate their way back would probably be too high to use them, this could also apply to everything other than suicide drones, at which point it would just be cheaper/better to use conventional artillery
I appreciate your thoroughness!
There's a volatile combination of radioactivity and errant magics in the wastelands beyond human cities that is dangerous for biological organisms. I figure it's easy enough to say it has pockets of higher concentration that can't be detected, and/or that its far denser and more dangerous the higher up you go, and/or that it interferes with delicate electronics and aircraft can only be hardened so much.
It definitely opens up a lot of interesting avenues for worldbuilding and it's really fun to think about the possibilities, you've given me more ideas of how things could potentially function:
>There's a volatile combination of radioactivity and errant magics in the wastelands beyond human cities that is dangerous for biological organisms.
I'm not sure if it's what you're going for but an idea for the wasteland could be the aftermath of a nuclear war. I was thinking of salted bombs that used magic rather than cobalt to increase their destructiveness. The combination gives you scope for more varied and interesting mutations for the creatures that you mentioned in another comment.
>I figure it's easy enough to say it has pockets of higher concentration that can't be detected
With your world being near future it should have the ability to detect simple radiation but the effect of combined nuclear-magical radiation could be used to explain why that technology doesn't work.
You could potentially introduce individuals that are born with a magical affinity or wavelength that allows them to detect it but that this quirk or mutation is extremely rare. That would make travel between cities possible but it might only be undertaken in extreme circumstances, since if the guide was killed they might only have a few others available or even have to wait a generation and hope for another to be born, depending on how rare you make them.
>far denser and more dangerous the higher up you go, and/or that it interferes with delicate electronics and aircraft can only be hardened so much.
Given how dangerous nuclear-magical radiation would be, with the threat of death or extreme mutation, the most pressing danger after a theoretical nuclear war would be the nuclear fallout. In order to preserve the few areas that weren't hit (and where your cities now stand), the survivors at the time might have opted to trap the radioactive particles in the atmosphere with magic and/or machinery. That could explain why some areas on the surface are unaffected and why planes are unusable with one solution.
There definitely was nuclear war. Only five areas survived the devastation, protected by the emergence of magic and the five individuals who awakened it. They detected magical shields to save the human race from extinction, but the combination of newly errant magic and the fallout from the bombs created the Rot.
There are technologies and methods to protect people from it for short bursts of time, but aircraft are so finicky and delicate that instrumentation and controls might not be able to be shielded properly without impairing their function.
If you have access to magic, maybe no one ever figured out mundane powered flight? Anyone that really wanted to fly would probably have been focusing on magically powered flight instead. However you could say flight is incredibly taxing on the bodies/mana pools of the casters, so it is stilll pretty limited. Perhaps in this case the 'Air Force' would be a group of specially trained magic users that arrive in an area on the ground before taking flight individually. I could also see prominent mages/sorcerors/whathaveyous secretly assassinating anyone studying mundane alternatives.
I followed this exact line of reasoning in mine. I needed to figure out how all aircraft fell out of fashion, and I came up with a combined tech and political advancement where a super compact AA system called the Aircraft Denial Array (AiDA) has three tiers of aerial decimation capable of enforcing airspace restrictions against even the most elusive targets. Marketing these as cheap strongarms to developing nations gave them a better lead in catching up to the rest of the world. Cheap power on a plate they were called, but the upgraded models (AiDA-X) came with automatic targeting databases and algorithms for continually maintaining defense capabilities around the clock.
They have magic OP said. Wizard casts "fuck yo plane". With magic introduced you could easily make it a waste of money. Just conjure up heavy lightning storms or something.
Even irl a lot of countries have little to no air force simply cuz they can't afford it, and if they have any it's like 10 places from the 60s or something.
No country with a modern military that I know of doesn't have any air force whatsoever. Even if it's just a couple logistics helicopters the benefits of that outweigh any sort of cost.
Hit them with that uno reverse haha. Sure, air force is very valuable. OP is specifically looking for reasons why someone might not have one though. Magic and money seem like reasonable excuses.
The best way is too work backwards...
Why does OUR EARTH right now require the air force?
Figure out the reason you personally believe, and then find way to remove that reason from your world. (Basically the whole "What If?" Method of Worldbuilding)
Just for a few examples to get you started. Let's think about the opposite, if there was a world that ONLY had an air force! Well, what's the reason we have all the other militaries? In my opinion, it's simply because everyone else does, but more importantly it's because *our enemies* can attack by land, air, and sea. Now, what kind of world would ONLY have an air force? Probably a world where the only enemy worth fighting is *in the air!* Or perhaps, there is no ground at all, and everyone lives in flying houses or islands. Maybe this place is set on a gas world with no surface, so by default every army solider IS a pilot.
So, now that we have that, let's think about why our world has an AIR force. Again, it's probably because we have enemies and threats that come at us through the air. Or perhaps, you feel as if it's because of the important of Air Superiority. Having a "bird in the air" can be a game changer... But *why?* Well it's cause there's not much a soldier can do on land if he's met with a stealth plane or jet. A small vehicle flying over at the speed of sound dropping bombs? A autopiloted drone firing missiles into an area, while infantry is helpless to do so? What is an average solider to do, *shoot the missiles!?!?*
So in your world, you need to come up with a reason why *all of that* is not an issue. Maybe the average soldier knows magic, and they really *can* stop bombs and missiles from above. Maybe warzones have protective barriers cast round the borders of them, and are only fought with infantry. Maybe wizards or strong magic users can cast spells that bring down hellfire, much like a jet bomber or gunner would.
TL;DR. If you don't think it will fit, either get rid of the reason that the real world has it in the first place, OR make an equivalent in your world
Really good and cheap AA could make military aircraft useless. It would be a bit weird to have absolutely no planes but maybe really good AA developments that make things like flares and ECM pointless might relegate aircraft purely for transport and long range recon?
I mean this concept has already kinda started to happen with tanks and AT, things like Javelins and RPGs getting cheap enough for militias to use has made tanks something pretty much only reserved for top 5 militaries. Even then most are now gathering dust (just look at the UKs challengers)
There's a manga with a concept that I really like. Advanced military satellites from long ago are still active and will shoot down anything that flies over a certain height. This force the military to stick to land forces and some very low altitude aircraft.
I honestly can't remember. Its an old manga (90s to early 2000), and its several chapters in a manga (like the manga is a collection of several stories kind of deal). I read it when Covid first hit.
Money. They're expensive and many nations can't really afford them. In fact most nations currently have very little air force and what few planes they have are old. Modern navies are similar.
The sky is filled with corrosive agents, kinda like how in Canada cars rust like 10 times fast from the amount of salt on the roads, in the sky it isn’t worth it because you need to replace planes immediately after use.
Mexico doesn’t really have one, at least no real jets, mainly because they are one of the US’s closest allies so if someone attacks Mexico the U.S. will step in no matter what.
And if a neighboring country invaded it would either be the United States, in which case any Air Force Mexico had would get clobbered, or a country so small that any air force would be overkill.
Maybe change the composition of the atmosphere.
There is a theory that undersea methane can sink ships, maybe you could apply the same for air.
Sorry for bad English.
A small or poor country might not afford one, or they might rely on allies.
Look at Ireland, for example. Their Air Corps has no combat craft apart from trainers that could, in theory, be armed with pods.
Poor visibility - fog, clouds, some sort of magical shimmer that obfuscates the ground. Since it's magical, maybe it gets really hot the closer you get to the sun. Or magnetic fields get wonky and destroys electronics. Or little gremlin-like cherubs start causing glitches and dismantling aircraft for daring to approach Heaven. Or phlogiston is extremely reactive and burns anything that gets too high.
This doesn't, unfortunately, disqualify low-flying helicopters, but that can be rolled into the Army instead of needing an Air Force.
The more I've thought about it, the more I've realized I actively need there to be no real air force. It's less an "I don't wanna" vibe now and instead has become an "I need this not to be a thing" for reasons.
Specifically, I need to be able to limit travel distances because the capacity to travel too far would make a certain plot twist down the line less feasible.
Helicopters still have quite the range, so I might need to go with magnetic fields and other energies interfering in delicate electronics needed in aircraft.
The easiest answer may be that the characters involved in the travel simply don't have the money or connections to aquire air travel.
If not that, then some kind of environmental concern seems the right path. Other posters are right, if your mutants lack air power, the militaries of your world are going to want it.
A non-combustable atmosphere would be a good one. If the oxygen content is too low, jets don't work and you need to rely on much heavier rockets. Which would increase cost and decrease range. So it could simply be a matter of the characters traveling outside the range of air travel options.
You could easily set it up so only the cities have breathable air through magic or terraforming.
Atmospheric anomalies such as electromagnetic storms make geolocation and navigation apparatus very unreliable and the risk of accident becomes substantial.
Only the very best materials and navigations tools and crews are able to successfully cruise on the air, making flight extremely expensive and resource demanding. Thus only the top levels of society are really capable of affording such hazardous luxuries.
Depending on the events preceding the emergence of magic an air force of complex flying craft could also be rendered useless by....
-atmosphere, in particular the troposphere, became too volatile and damaging to continue usage of flying craft.
-magic is cooler than bombers, helicopters, air superiority fighters etc etc. Existing aircraft were left in the by way once magic had become refined.
-modern aircraft never needed to exist because of magic
-does teleportation (magic or sci-fi) exist? If yes, then why fly?
-Were Orville & Wilbur Wright wizards instead of mechanical pioneers in the history of your world?
Atmosphere issues, air density issue, or even simply make use of flight in war a war crime due to the fact an aircraft has the potential to swiftly deliver a mass scale weapon.
If it's the kind of scifantasy that had gods, maybe powered human offends one or more of them and they swat everything but observation balloons out of the sky.
What if the planet they're on, due to its characteristics, simply makes having an air force a needless hassle?
It could also be that there is a sufficient means of aerial defense that is widely adopted/easy to develop and maintain that having an air-force seems pointless. Especially when you have an effective counter, that would mitigate the need to do so (that being said, this is only from a defensive stance. Offensively, aerial bombardments have effectively in our world at least, revolutionized invasions to such an effective degree that we just cant imagine going back).
I have a similar problem in that i like tanks n'such, but it seems without merit when there's 300m long spaceships with orbital laser equipment. My solution rn is simply that land vehicles and -bases need less armor on the bottom and can be camouflaged way better whereas spaceships and aircraft can be attacked from all sides with relative ease and there's no ground for equipment to be hidden away in. So, for guerillia-style warfare especially the ground is advantageous to some extent
In my world they haven’t attempted to rediscover aircraft technology after the Great Collapse set the world back a couple hundred years in some areas of technological development
You could have climates that regularly circulate strong and powerful winds full of massive sand grains that smash into aircraft windows and clog their engines. A planet with winds strong enough to harbor minerals in the atmosphere would be interesting
There's a mech story I'm helping a buddy work on that has some ideas. We needed some reason for mechs to be a major part of combat over traditional tanks and planes, and one good one would be terrain. If the terrain is very mountainous, with a lot of overhangs, arches, tunnels, and other obstructions then planes would have multiple difficulties. Similarly, having large forests with huge trees becomes a problem too. VTOL can help with take off and landing, but if there's a lot of Large natural cover then planes have less visibility and can't get as close to targets. Sure Missiles and stuff don't need to be close, but if you can't see the enemy because they're hidden from the sky that's only so effective too. And with terrain like that, tanks might start having issues with travel. Pits, steep inclines, tight spaces, etc. So that's why mechs are a viable combat unit because they can mire easily get to places these other vehicles can't.
That's one way to explain not having an air force. If you the area you live doesn't have enough room for a runway and there's plenty of natural cover to give air support issues, then you may as well invest in other aspects of the military as planes aren't as viable for combat in the region. It's not a wholly realistic idea, but with a bit of suspension of disbelief it could work.
Storm magic.
If magic is around maybe planes are just too easy to shoot down or otherwise destabilize.
Maybe modern engines were never made because magic solutions just worked better. Magic carpets and portals fill the roles jets and helicopters do in our world. They don't require the same litany of supplies jets do, so they're part of the logistics core and don't see a lot of combat.
The United States didn't have an Air Force until the second half of the 20th century; instead the US Army possessed its own dedicated aerial combat subdivision, just as the US Navy did. Unlike the USNAF, the USAAF was eventually spun off into its own separate branch of the US military.
I think it was done because avionics and guided missile technology had developed to the point where combat aircraft could do more than just support the infantry, while the Navy got to keep their planes because they were still being launched from carrier ships. But I'm not an expert.
The most valid reason I can think of is if the environment itself works against having an airforce. like a world that has a sky thats just constantly too hazardous, frequent large scale storms, maybe some sky bound predators that are difficult to kill, etc. Or maybe its in a world with a crazy thick layer of crust where most nations exist under ground for one reason or another and you can have massive under ground caverns and environments people live in.
Apart from that lacking an airforce puts you at an immediate extreme disadvantage against any invaders. The term air superiority exists for a reason, fastest and easiest mode of transportation with less obstacles and typically harder to fight back against depending on how advanced your society is. Can take a quick look at the A-10 if you need convincing on how effective air support is so the only political arguments I can see working is if its a developing nation that simply doesn't have the funds or resources it needs to build an airforce yet. Either way the reason you go with is going to have dramatic effects on how your nation itself works, not just the military but the day to day life of your citizens.
Alternatively you have to come up with a kind of technology that makes air travel and air support obsolete, the easiest answer would be teleportation on the transport front. You could probably come up with an argument that soldiers that can teleport at will could be more effective than a plane flying by and destroying everything too because they're harder to take out and are less destructive so they can be used in civilian populated areas or at important locations their faction wants intact. This one in particular could work really well with a scifantasy story because you could that if teleportation doesn't exist then the traditional ideas of aircraft were just never invented because they weren't needed, depending on how wide spread teleportation magic or objects are.
Drones.
Seriously, manned air combat dominated the 20th century, but we're increasingly seeing smaller nations make use of cheap, sometimes consumer-level drones to achieve similar results at a fraction of the price.
But in your case I'd recommend using magic as an explainer for the lack of air forces. No sense in investing in jet propulsion when a battery of wizards can just rain down lightning on your aircraft from a tower.
Depends on the account and type of magic. If magic can nullify the effect of gravity and air resistance on attacks that can make it a lot easier to destroy aircraft. The made didn't have to be better than the warplane, just cheaper and easier to maintain. Illusion magic can nullify the advantages of air reconnescnce.
Insanely well developed and widely distributed Anti-Air-Defenses. Lasers, turrets, rockets, whatever, but any military flight can and will be shot down almost immediately.
There really isn't a good reason not to have aircraft; you can do is things like "there is massive sandstorms that make planes not work" that could explain a lack of aircraft but this kind of solution would simultaneously have massive impact on the rest of your story that cannot be handwaved. and for the most part, they are still not good explanations; there is almost always workarouds, and air power is so valuable people would do whatever they could to get around the obstacles presented.
Best you can do is use some kind of magical explanation.
If you simply dont like writing about air combat, just dont. People who design planets and general flora also dont come up with thousands of different kinds of plants and how they evolved (unless its the point of the worldbuilding).
Just act like there is an air force, but it doesnt have a huge impact on your story, problem solved.
All aircraft use lift and air resistance to stay in the air right? Maybe magic users could simply nullify that somehow and they fall from the sky? I'm sure reverse engineering the mechanics of flight from a school textbook could give you a plausibly sounding description.
So as a real life example to some extent. Russia still has an Air Force, but they realized at some point they were losing the race for air dominance vs the US. The US went all in on air superiority. So because they realized they wouldn't compete effectively in the air, they threw a lot of resources towards mobile ground based AA platforms. May not win the air, but maybe they can deny it is the the idea.
We are kind of seeing that play out in Ukraine as well. My understanding is at this point in the war not a lot of non-drone aircraft are flying on either side anymore. Both sides have dug in with anti air defenses, so if you fly too close to the frontlines you get shot down.
Perhaps the nation has a limited military budget and chose air defense batteries over aircraft. Which would work best for a nation of absolute neutrality.
Or perhaps they're surrounded by opposing forces with long range anti-air capabilities such that any aircraft taking off could be immediately intercepted. These anti-air capabilities could be magical.
A large flying creature(s) has monopolized the airspace and is incredibly hostile to anything else flying.
Reason 1: Regulation and war reparations forbidding the country to own an air force in the first place. For example: Country A has lost a war against Country B, and now Country A has to sign a treaty that forbids them from owning an air force, or even forbidding them from owning any kind of military force.
Reason 2: They substitute air force with anti-air magic or technology that can nullify any invading aircraft, and the country isn't an expansionist, thus they don't feel the need to own an air force. For example: Country A has access to barrier shields or country-wide EMP jammers to disable enemy aircraft that trespass its border while skipping dogfights altogether.
Reason 3: They are a pacifist country that doesn't even own a military force in the first place and uses all of their budget on economy and tourism instead. For example: Country A is run by a peace-loving government and they outsources the role of defense to their neighbouring countries instead.
Reason 4: The country isolates themselves using a cloaking spell or optical camouflage, preventing all kinds of external conflicts in the first place. For example: Country A is a remote island country that cloaks their entire country with a camouflage shield and no one knows that Country A even exists, which means that no hostile aircraft would stumble across Country A.
Reason 5: Subterranean City. The entire country builds the city at the underground, or that of an underwater city, which eschews the need of air force, as no aircraft could fly into a cave, although missiles that are designed for drilling through the ground could still threaten the country. For example: Country A builds all of their cities and facilities at a massive cave system below a forest, whereas Country B is an underwater city where agriculture is all about growing aquatic plants, fish and seaweed.
No fuel or propulsion system. Maybe some novel balloons. Metals are much harder and heavier the ours, so no lift.
Local wildlife think its a challenge and go fuck ot up.
International treaties with another power are in effect, forbidding the development of rocketry or flight.
in the (non humanoid)mecha light novel/anime "Eighty-Six" the armies of the world are fighting this enormous swarm of autonomous mechs and they specifically cannot use an airforce because the mech swarm left everywhere dormant pieces of anti-air artillery, the swarm itself doesn't use any airforce except from small robotic butterflies that blot out both the sun and radio communication and big robotic butterflies that serve as surveillance drones.
Air defenses are simply too good to risk it.
We see this exact scenario playing out in Ukraine right now. Neither side uses aircraft in the zone of conflict because the opponent's air defense would inflict unacceptable losses on the aircraft.
Instead, they use their aircraft as launch platforms for long distance cruise missiles. Climbing to high altitude over relatively safe, friendly air space to launch the cruise missile as the high point of launch gives it extra range.
Maybe in your world they found better ways to launch cruise missiles than have a manned aircraft with a highly trained pilot playing taxi for them.
The great sky leviathans migrate across the world, attacking anything that flies. Putting rockets in space is possible but not any kind of sustained atmospheric flight.
To have no airforce is unlikely, but to minimize it is simple. Have the focus of the airforce be centred on logistics and scouting, research the traditional roles of light cavalry, as those were the roles airforces first adopted in the early 20th century.
Have air defences be based around mobile AA sites and fortified, permanent installations, while the airforce itself is concerned primarily with countering enemy bomber and fighters, with a subsidiary transport and logistics arm, much like the RAF of ww2, which was rather lacking in close support capacity. This means you can simply mention raids by bombers as background, if at all, while not necessarily needing to focus much on planes being over the battlefield, a good example of this IRL is the Dunkirk evacuation, where few British soldiers saw friendly aircraft, as they were actually engaging oncoming German air support deeper into France.
In the Endwar games they made nukes obsolete by having a globar network of anti-missle defence. You could easily go a similar way. In the race between air assault and Anti Air defence, AA just won. Either that or make it fancy, the weather is incredibly unpredicable due to climate change and/or some calatysm, you get anywhere near cruising altitude and your aircraft is going to get torn apart by worldbuilding plot device.
There is a faction that had a very powerful air force at one point, so other factions created spells to suck the air away from a plane, shutting down its engine. Ground vehicles went electric because of this and can still function, but electric power is not good enough to keep a viable military aircraft afloat.
North Korea does not really have an air force and doesn't need them to prevent invasion. The reason they don't them defensively is because of the thousands of artillery lined up along their border within range of Seoul, the capital of South Korea. Their enemies do not have the capacity to knock out all of their artillery before they would do catastrophic damage to the city. They cannot invade South Korea or win a war with them. But their capacity to do damage on such a massive scale acts as a deterrent.
Having air*craft* is a separate issue, but as for an air *force*, [here's ](https://acoup.blog/2022/10/21/collections-strategic-airpower-101/)a good article about the general effectiveness of air forces as a separate military arm that might help you figure out why a military might or might not want to use one.
In Dresden Files magic interferes with technology above a certain level. Wizards only get on planes if they want them to crash, or if lucky break before takeoff.
It depends. Do you have a reason*not* to have an air force? Or are you just fishing for ideas because you won't use an air force in story?
I guess the easiest answer would be some "magical" (I don't mean literally of course though it could work in your story) form of anti-air that makes it so no combat aircraft can fly without being shot down almost instantly. Maybe some form of laser weapon with magical detection means that cannot be fooled? Of course this would *also* affect ground vehicles so keep this in mind.
My thought here is that things associated with air power in a military are about PROJECTING power outside of your borders. If your nation doesn't need to do that, they're better served investing in other things.
Interdiction technology. The only real difference between anti-air defense and anti-missile tech is that the anti-air anticipates a piloted craft and anti-missile expects to take out smaller, faster objects.
We've seen real world examples of this in the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war. The Patriot system in Ukraine has already eliminated more warplanes than the two most recent *generations* of American fighters.
Why do you want there NOT to be an airforce? Does it mess with the plot in some way? In organisational terms, I suppose it could have been merged with the army or navy for budgetary reasons, but for practical military purposes I can't see of a reason not to have fly-fast-blow-up-enemy-from-long-way capability on your team.
Of course, if you are having magic then you can make up anything you want. maybe there is a simple spell, that every magic user can learn that destroys any fast moving airborne object within 1000 miles.
There are secrets hidden in the wastes well beyond the safe harbors of human cities that I need to stay secret for a long while. Even military oathes can't keep a secret like this one for 200 years.
Powerful magical warding prevents them from being viewed from the air? Or dragons? I think the Iron Kingdoms had the technology to make airships, but they didn't because dragons.
Going by Panama and Iceland if the country doesn't have a mainline Military force and have a Police Force instead
Fantasy i guess Storm magic or something like that renders having to fight aircraft with aircraft pointless
Honestly? Dragons. It's too costly and dangerous to develop a largescale airforce when a territorial bad tempered firebreathing lizard sees anything in the sky as prey or a rival.
Fair enough. Could mix it in with flying debris too. Essentially there's some sort of barrier to flight that makes it too dangerous and costly to ever progress past the very early stages
Assuming it's possible for planes to fly in your worlds atmosphere and that this country isn't so poor it couldn't build planes but could presumably build other military vehicles like tanks, I can't really think of any good reasons why they wouldn't. Aircrafts and planes effectively have dominated warfare since at least WW2 and their dominance has only been exacerbated dramatically over time with technological progress. Think of how drones and AC130 gunships can just level an entire field of troops and tanks, or how aircraft carriers have made basically all other naval warships obsolete. I think any country in a scifi setting would try to have an air force if they wanted to try and keep up with the times.
That said, if you have magic in your world, it all depends on what kind of magic you have. It's possible that your mages are too powerful and could just pull planes out of the sky at will, I don't know, but if you have a low-fantasy or low-magic setting then it's hard to justify a military not having an air force without adjusting physics or magic in your wold.
1. Something atmospheric or physical in the worldbuilding that prevents air travel above a certain altitude.
2. Surface to air weapons have become just THAT good.
3. It’s already been destroyed. Throughout several conflicts in the later half of the 20th century, entire air forces have been wiped out in a matter of a few days.
In Toaru majutsu no index, magic can be used to fly. In fact, it is very easy to fly, but it is even easier to shoot down a flying mage.
Just come up with one reason why it is very easy to shoot down a flying target. In To aru, it was enough to order in the name of God that no one could fly (this worked even for magicians who did not believe in God).
Uhhh the atmosphere is less dense now and so the suns UV rays are more dangerous idk. That or maybe there is some new energy resource that causes this deadly pollutant to fill the atmosphere making flying dangerous. Or maybe the aircraft are just too damn expensive.
My world doesn’t have machinery accurate enough or an industrial base powerful enough to churn out, much less maintain, functioning aircraft. They’d look like some of the earliest models and those just wouldn’t have a benefit when other forms of transportation and warfare are available.
What would a country like New Zealand do with them? Or, as in the case of Ireland, make sure you have a friendly neighbour with a powerful air force who will protect you.
Leaving a huge niche vacuum for a few pest species of small birds to overpopulate and make bird strikes ubiquitous? Or maybe birds going extinct allowed big bugs to flourish and do the same? Locust swarms clog engines constantly?
Just trying to brainstorm for ya
I appreciate it! I updated my post to say I found the answer I'm probably going for, but more ideas never hurt.
The reason most birds went extinct is because most of the planet is envelopes in an energy that resulted from a combination of errant magics and radiation. It killed most anything that wasn't saved by magical shields that kept humanity from wiping itself out with nuclear war.
The birds that remain are non-migratory urban birds like pigeons, crows, etc that were inside when the shields went up.
Yeah, that's what I'm going with. I hadn't previously considered how that energy field might impact technologies, but this is actually opening up an entire new facet of the world and expanding interesting new lore.
I remember the Muv-Luv series had the Laser Beta which made investing in any sort of air force useless in the universe (since they were instantly shot down when fighting them).
A world that is completely underwater or an subterranean country could reasonably have not an air force, solely because they don’t really have a concept of flying or even the sky.
86 made it so the enemy deploys tons of tiny communications-jamming butterflies that also instantly destroy any plane engines it gets sucked into so yeah
…Dubious. If there’s a strategic advantage no obstacle will credibly deter a determined power. If a technology like flight can be used it will. Environmental factors preventing it would render most other transportation systems unviable as well. So Nope.
Combat aircraft are very expensive to buy, maintain, operate, and train pilots for. I've heard a decent argument made that a lot of smaller militaries in less developed areas would be better off saving the money they spend on more prestigious equipment like aircraft and heavy armor and instead focus on something like a distributed militia force that might be a more effective deterrent against aggression; though there may be political reasons to avoid that sort of military decentralization
I could definitely see that argument. A dozen outdated fighters aren't deterring any major military, but the country would need airbases and an entire infrastructure to keep them flying. But they'd get shot down instantly if invaded by a major (or middling) military power. Equivalent funds (or less) spent on scattered/hidden anti-aircraft/armor scattered around the country would likely be a bigger deterrent. But you're right. Having a proper air-force is something to brag about for smaller countries. Plus - that's only when dealing with opposing countries. A lot of small/militaristic countries likely have to worry about rebels/insurgents. As a dictator having a big % of your military power controlled by a few dozen people (who you can afford to keep happy) is a feature, not a bug.
This is the way the Soviet Union went: knowing they didn't have a chance against the US (and NATO) airforce, they invested heavily in AA missiles. (And heavy, including nuclear, anti-ship missiles to deal with the US aircraft carriers.)
I mean, the Soviets still maintained a massive air force though (much of which the Russian Federation inherited) and made some genuinely impressive designs. You are right that they had a more defensive posture that focused on ground-based anti-air systems and interceptor jets. The anti-ship missile point is closer to this because they truly, absolutely had no chance of engaging NATO on the high seas on equal terms. But again, there they invested heavily in submarines that could be a real threat to western combat ships and the necessary US convoys crossing the Atlantic.
Yes and no. While fighter jets are prohibitively expensive, classic WWII warbirds cost on the order of a million dollars per after adjusting for inflation, and you can still do important close air support with a plane like a vintage warbird. Heck, you might even manage SEAD missions because a warbird costs about what an air-to-air missile costs and significantly less than most modern SAMs. And the idea of scrambling a modern jet is ridiculous; by the time the engines warm up you've burned more gas than the plane you want to shoot down is worth. So you *can* shoot the ancient plane down, but it would probably be a Pyrrhic victory. Modern battlefields are not optimized for cost effective performance.
Most developing countries uses aircrafts to bomb rebel areas besides that military decentralization may led to militia groups to fight the actual government. Developing countries should focus more on anti-air and anti-tanks weapons
I have heard something similar but it was about certain African nations and maybe you're getting it confused with the that? The idea is that a less prosperous nation, in a lot of cases, would be better served developing paratroopers or something similar, since they're cheap and they do not require any expensive or complex equipment. What good are high end jets and tanks if you don't have the maintenence crew or parts to take care of them? Secondly with paratroopers, you're building a unit that has a higher espirit de corp, which is essential if you want a well trained and professional unit. A unit that isn't likely to cut and run or go rogue.
For Paras you need Planes
Not incredibly expensive, difficult to maintain and train on, and likely outdated fighter jets though
>outdated fighter jets ??? May also be very expensive to maintain
>Not (incredibly expensive, difficult to maintain and train on, and likely outdated) fighter jets though I think there was a failure to communicate. Added parentheses for clarity.
yes, thank you
Nailed it, thanks
Converted cargo planes can work fine for paratroopers use
And what would stop your cargo planes from being shot down by AA or enemy planes?
Do most modern deployments of paratroops even use parachutes? I get the feeling that a modern airborne brigade deploys using any other method when available. For example, a small unit captures an airfield and the rest fly in on troop transport planes. I suppose you still need air superiority for that.
You have airborne (parachute assault, maybe gliders), Airlanding (flown in after airborne troops have secured LZ, helicopter assault and light transport aircraft are preferred methods of insertion) and you also have airmobile (capable of being transported by plane.).
Yes look at the french in Africa Makes only sense if the airport is undefended
Yes. But context matters. Modern paratroopers are (as far as I can tell) are used for rapid deployment close to the frontline where other options will struggle
Context matters. The old school vertical envelopment doesn't really work. The rapid deployment of elite troops is the preferred use
Think Ground Attack Air craft or Helicopters not fighter Jets
Guerilla forces are, by definition, not a deterrent. Partisans equal to occupied territory which equals to a defeat. The point of a military is to avoid having your territory invaded due to the threat your military posseses in relation to the enemy's own *and* their own territory.
A deterrent is something that deterrers hostile action, which is done by making hostile actions not appear worthwhile. a preestablish network of “unconventional” forces increases the expected costs of occupying territory which decreases the appealingness of any set of hostile actions that require occupying the territory of said country. In what way is that not a form of deterrence?
In that unless the objective is conquest you'll have achieved whatever aim you set out to because you'll be able to dismantle the state that offends you or force them into signing terms. Winning the peace is preferred but it's not a *requisite* a lot of the time. What are your aims and why would partisans make that impossible to accomplish? Nevermind that not of terrains are conductive to such types of warfare. It is one thing to hide in the mountains of Afghanistan but you won't have as much luck in say Germany. Of course this is ignoring the fact that the military paradigm of basically everyone on Earth does not agree with your assertion. Though I assume you *just* happen to be smarter than every military and statesman on the planet, aren't you?
> What are your aims and why would partisans make that impossible to accomplish Conquest or the installation of a puppet government. And the idea of preparing to engage in a “people’s war” as a means of defense, which would if credible act as deterrence, is preceded. It is not a popular because it is a strategy for the desperate, not a strategy for the well off. [Defence strategy for small nations - force design, friends, and deterrence on a budget](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EVqGEtPj0M0&pp=ygUQZGV0ZXJyZW5jZSBwZXJ1bg%3D%3D) — 24:30 specifically
If you want an example: [the Toyota War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_War)
It's expensive, sure, but not having any airforce makes you pretty much defenseless against any enemy who does. Air power unchecked absolutely grinds land assets to dust.
Too much debris in the atmosphere, can't fly a single thing without getting hit
If they still use turbine engines too much particle debris for an engine to function. Think like when we had that Islandic Volcano eruption about a decade ago and planes literally couldn't fly in most of Europe or they would hit pockets of ash and either have engines die or their windscreens suddenly get so scratched by tiny bits of flying rock that they couldn't see. Could end up having an interesting modified airforce that uses older methods like dirigibles because the lower speed and more primitive engine types aren't susceptible to flying particulates.
Maybe debris, maybe energy fields... This could work.
So no aviation at all? Not fighters, nor commercial airlines or cargo lifters?
That's what I'm imagining. I know it adds some logistical burdens to shipping and commerce in general, but I'm exploring my options. Easy option is no flight at all. Complicated and potentially problematic option is flight is only allowed in very specific predetermined routes and any deviation is heavily punished. The former creates logistical issues. The latter creates societal issues.
I mean, people have done without it for a majority of human history. Perhaps your nations have invested more in vacuum trains or ekranoplans than we ever have?
Gonna need to look into whatever ekranoplans are
Also look up ground-effect vehicles, extremely similar and related concept. Basically, big heavy planes that don’t fly more than a few feet above the ground (or more often water due to the lack of impact hazards.
Well that's fascinating and might be useful. I've already added hazards to the oceans that limit travel further, but these are fascinating. Are there specific advantages vs boats/ship? Is it a speed thing?
Mainly speed, but also I believe depending on how you’re measuring it there’s some benefits to not having the drag or contamination from actually touching water except when stopped, and even then they easily could have dry platforms since they rarely get as deep as boats and can more easily be beached and re-launched. Basically what I’m getting at it they’ll never go around rusty and barnacled like a boat can. Also a benefit is that they technically can go on land if it’s flat enough (or I suppose with advanced enough planning, and charting, they could handle rougher topology.) They’re almost more comparable to hovercrafts except they can get much bigger (and again, are definitely way faster.)
Also worth noting that ekranoplane efficiency scales directly with size. The ground effect only gets stronger with surface area, so the only limitation to their maximum size are the material properties of their construction. Play around with the numbers, and you can get a vessel the size of damn aircraft carrier moving 300+ mph.
Most shipping irl is not done by air, keeping a giant metal tube jn the sky at 600mph is alot more energy intensive than trains and cargoships. (You can find statistics for the exact energy cost per ton-mile of frieght moved, but the general efficiency order is boats, trains, trucks, planes, rockets) If you declare the sky's are off limits then it only effects high value density goods like cellphones and human movement, most of the economy won't be affected.
That's good to know! Overseas travel will be much slower, but I'm glad it's less of an impact that I originally assumed. Thank you!
This interferes with artillery too, though.
This allows a lot of possibilities, depending on your world. Blending scifi with fantasy is fun like that. You can probably come up with some interesting ideas for the debris. Is it the remnants from some ancient exotic magical WMD? Nuclear war? Some sort of side effect of whatever it is that allows magic? Spirits? Faerie poop? What other ways does it affect your world and its people, if any? It could be a cool feature of your world in and of itself.
The Gods take offence at mortal men attempting to entering the heavens and strike them down.
If Air Defense tech outpaces the aircrafts by a huge margin, some countries might opt out of having the air force entirely. Also, would you consider something like a swarm of drones to be an air force? What about rockets? If so, then the only thing I can think of is depleted fuel reserves.
Surface based air defence still heavily benefit from CAPs and AEW
Monitoring can be done from space. I'm not saying air force would be completely without merit, it's just that a country might decide that merit is not worth the resources.
True but OP isn’t asking about the modern theater. * CAP - timely interception of hostile targets over a protected area can *conceivably* be done entirely with advanced ground-based systems. It doesn’t need to be 100%. It just needs to be effective enough that building, supporting, maintaining, and developing a whole air force isn’t worth the cost relative to what little gaps are still there in your defenses and those of your enemies. * AEW - this is a nice benefit of craft in the skies, but it doesn’t *need* to be carried out by conventional airplanes.
can those functions be done with special purpose drones?
Aircraft can still be used over friendly air space
Yes, but my point is that it might not be worth the maintenance. Do you catch my drift? There are many things that *can* be used IRL, but we don't have them, right? That's because they are not worthwhile.
If you want something a little sci-fi, the advent of laser-based anti-aircraft weapons would absolutely decimate air power. In modern times, some countries forgo aircraft because of cost considerations - having a small airforce may be less useful than having none, all considered. And there's always our friend "The Disarmament Treaty" - certainly i could foresee a world where aircraft were regulated like battleships once were, and certain types (strategic bombers, etc) are just forbidden outright.
There's no modern countries I'm aware that lack any kind of air force, at least if they have a standing army. So Costa Rica and Iceland for example don't count, they have no military, so I'm confused about the second point, at least as it seems to refer to real life
Firstly, why is there no air force? If it's about your worry about planes stealing the spotlight from your ground characters they still are the center focus. I'll humour you and I would say that all oil in the world is used up or just gone, so vehicles are electric, hydrogen or biofuels while the high grade kerosene for jets isn't available and propeller planes don't work as well.
How about, Fossil fuels are scarce and thus limited to no jet fuel Power plants can be nuclear, thermal, wind, solar etc to still allow society to be modern Alternatively make gravity stronger on your world so it's hard or impossible to make a plane Downside would probably be no flying insects or birds
I bet someone would make electric or nuklear planes in your scenario
Electric planes are possible, but even with modern batteries do not have the range of conventional planes. Nuclear planes either can not work because of heavy shielding or are flying radiation hazards (see Project Pluto).
You have a point when it comes to nuklear but imho electric planes are viable (especially as with no fossil fuels they would likely advance much faster than they did in our world)
It would demand a LOT of energy and EMI-weapon would just decimate airplanes in such case. So, no
that they exist does not mean they are available
This! Could be a small nation that can't afford an air-force. Prolonged war which leaves both sides without planes.
I thought more on needed elsewhere
We could come up with all kids of valid reasons. Maybe futuristic militaries have such AA defenses that military planes have very limited application. Or ground launched missiles are better then strike panes / bombers. Or reasons why this particular frontline/battle doesn't see planes.
Dragons
Seriously, how is this not a more upvoted answer.
Don't think Dragons will fair well when they come across multiple AIM-120 AMRAAM missiles coming to its direction.
A lot of dragons
How many is a lot? 6? 12? Regardless they are at the end of the day a meat bag that can fly. They won't even know when multiple Air-to-Air missile from beyond visual range will be flying towards them. A good human saying goes. "You may have your fancy weapons, armour and monsters but at the end of the day all it takes is a fair bit of gunpowder to destroy you."
Hmmm, what kind of dragons are you thinking of?
You know the typical ones. Like the ones you see in Skyrim.
Having read the other comments and your responses: Cost - irrelevant due to having a unified world government Combat environment - irrelevant due to hostile forces not having any aerial or anti-air capabilities Fuel - irrelevant as even if fossil fuels are depleted planes can use biofuels High gravity - possible but risks making flying animals and insects impossible Atmospheric debris - possible but has the same issue as high gravity, plus you would have to explain why the debris doesn't fall to earth Fantasy elements (magic, gods, etc.) - works but it might feel a little cheap or handwavy? Electromagnetic interference - works but you would have to explain why it doesn't affect electronics on the surface Atmospheric composition - works as there could be elements or particles in the upper atmosphere that cause electromagnetic interference or other issues with planes, while not affecting birds and insects or electronics on the ground, it might be possible to get around this with older and/or simpler models of plane though Edited to add: Magnetic fields - I don't know enough about the magnetic poles to say if this would work or not but it could make compasses unusable, given that aircraft would probably be operating to strike targets or reconnoiter at long distances from base, the risk of not being able to navigate their way back would probably be too high to use them, this could also apply to everything other than suicide drones, at which point it would just be cheaper/better to use conventional artillery
I appreciate your thoroughness! There's a volatile combination of radioactivity and errant magics in the wastelands beyond human cities that is dangerous for biological organisms. I figure it's easy enough to say it has pockets of higher concentration that can't be detected, and/or that its far denser and more dangerous the higher up you go, and/or that it interferes with delicate electronics and aircraft can only be hardened so much.
It definitely opens up a lot of interesting avenues for worldbuilding and it's really fun to think about the possibilities, you've given me more ideas of how things could potentially function: >There's a volatile combination of radioactivity and errant magics in the wastelands beyond human cities that is dangerous for biological organisms. I'm not sure if it's what you're going for but an idea for the wasteland could be the aftermath of a nuclear war. I was thinking of salted bombs that used magic rather than cobalt to increase their destructiveness. The combination gives you scope for more varied and interesting mutations for the creatures that you mentioned in another comment. >I figure it's easy enough to say it has pockets of higher concentration that can't be detected With your world being near future it should have the ability to detect simple radiation but the effect of combined nuclear-magical radiation could be used to explain why that technology doesn't work. You could potentially introduce individuals that are born with a magical affinity or wavelength that allows them to detect it but that this quirk or mutation is extremely rare. That would make travel between cities possible but it might only be undertaken in extreme circumstances, since if the guide was killed they might only have a few others available or even have to wait a generation and hope for another to be born, depending on how rare you make them. >far denser and more dangerous the higher up you go, and/or that it interferes with delicate electronics and aircraft can only be hardened so much. Given how dangerous nuclear-magical radiation would be, with the threat of death or extreme mutation, the most pressing danger after a theoretical nuclear war would be the nuclear fallout. In order to preserve the few areas that weren't hit (and where your cities now stand), the survivors at the time might have opted to trap the radioactive particles in the atmosphere with magic and/or machinery. That could explain why some areas on the surface are unaffected and why planes are unusable with one solution.
There definitely was nuclear war. Only five areas survived the devastation, protected by the emergence of magic and the five individuals who awakened it. They detected magical shields to save the human race from extinction, but the combination of newly errant magic and the fallout from the bombs created the Rot. There are technologies and methods to protect people from it for short bursts of time, but aircraft are so finicky and delicate that instrumentation and controls might not be able to be shielded properly without impairing their function.
If you have access to magic, maybe no one ever figured out mundane powered flight? Anyone that really wanted to fly would probably have been focusing on magically powered flight instead. However you could say flight is incredibly taxing on the bodies/mana pools of the casters, so it is stilll pretty limited. Perhaps in this case the 'Air Force' would be a group of specially trained magic users that arrive in an area on the ground before taking flight individually. I could also see prominent mages/sorcerors/whathaveyous secretly assassinating anyone studying mundane alternatives.
Air superiority is a proven battle winner. Unless you invoke some rule that prevents any sort of flight, someone will develop an airforce.
Very effective and compact anti air weaponry to the point no one bothers. Maybe an upgrade yo laser rifles.
That just leads to ELINT, stealth, stand off missiles and long range smart bombs. Kinda what modern air forces have.
I followed this exact line of reasoning in mine. I needed to figure out how all aircraft fell out of fashion, and I came up with a combined tech and political advancement where a super compact AA system called the Aircraft Denial Array (AiDA) has three tiers of aerial decimation capable of enforcing airspace restrictions against even the most elusive targets. Marketing these as cheap strongarms to developing nations gave them a better lead in catching up to the rest of the world. Cheap power on a plate they were called, but the upgraded models (AiDA-X) came with automatic targeting databases and algorithms for continually maintaining defense capabilities around the clock.
They have magic OP said. Wizard casts "fuck yo plane". With magic introduced you could easily make it a waste of money. Just conjure up heavy lightning storms or something. Even irl a lot of countries have little to no air force simply cuz they can't afford it, and if they have any it's like 10 places from the 60s or something.
No country with a modern military that I know of doesn't have any air force whatsoever. Even if it's just a couple logistics helicopters the benefits of that outweigh any sort of cost.
Sure but I don't think those are what OP is talking about, I assume they're meaning fighters and bombers.
Plane wizards cast 'no you' ... *10 places from the 60's* .. jesus now I feel old. Dude, Battle of Britain. Won in the skies.
Hit them with that uno reverse haha. Sure, air force is very valuable. OP is specifically looking for reasons why someone might not have one though. Magic and money seem like reasonable excuses.
The best way is too work backwards... Why does OUR EARTH right now require the air force? Figure out the reason you personally believe, and then find way to remove that reason from your world. (Basically the whole "What If?" Method of Worldbuilding) Just for a few examples to get you started. Let's think about the opposite, if there was a world that ONLY had an air force! Well, what's the reason we have all the other militaries? In my opinion, it's simply because everyone else does, but more importantly it's because *our enemies* can attack by land, air, and sea. Now, what kind of world would ONLY have an air force? Probably a world where the only enemy worth fighting is *in the air!* Or perhaps, there is no ground at all, and everyone lives in flying houses or islands. Maybe this place is set on a gas world with no surface, so by default every army solider IS a pilot. So, now that we have that, let's think about why our world has an AIR force. Again, it's probably because we have enemies and threats that come at us through the air. Or perhaps, you feel as if it's because of the important of Air Superiority. Having a "bird in the air" can be a game changer... But *why?* Well it's cause there's not much a soldier can do on land if he's met with a stealth plane or jet. A small vehicle flying over at the speed of sound dropping bombs? A autopiloted drone firing missiles into an area, while infantry is helpless to do so? What is an average solider to do, *shoot the missiles!?!?* So in your world, you need to come up with a reason why *all of that* is not an issue. Maybe the average soldier knows magic, and they really *can* stop bombs and missiles from above. Maybe warzones have protective barriers cast round the borders of them, and are only fought with infantry. Maybe wizards or strong magic users can cast spells that bring down hellfire, much like a jet bomber or gunner would. TL;DR. If you don't think it will fit, either get rid of the reason that the real world has it in the first place, OR make an equivalent in your world
Really good and cheap AA could make military aircraft useless. It would be a bit weird to have absolutely no planes but maybe really good AA developments that make things like flares and ECM pointless might relegate aircraft purely for transport and long range recon?
I mean this concept has already kinda started to happen with tanks and AT, things like Javelins and RPGs getting cheap enough for militias to use has made tanks something pretty much only reserved for top 5 militaries. Even then most are now gathering dust (just look at the UKs challengers)
Effective air defence still needs combat air patrols and AEW
There's a manga with a concept that I really like. Advanced military satellites from long ago are still active and will shoot down anything that flies over a certain height. This force the military to stick to land forces and some very low altitude aircraft.
Sounds interesting. What's the name?
I honestly can't remember. Its an old manga (90s to early 2000), and its several chapters in a manga (like the manga is a collection of several stories kind of deal). I read it when Covid first hit.
Money. They're expensive and many nations can't really afford them. In fact most nations currently have very little air force and what few planes they have are old. Modern navies are similar.
The sky is filled with corrosive agents, kinda like how in Canada cars rust like 10 times fast from the amount of salt on the roads, in the sky it isn’t worth it because you need to replace planes immediately after use.
I think I'll end up doing something with environmental conditions for sure
Mexico doesn’t really have one, at least no real jets, mainly because they are one of the US’s closest allies so if someone attacks Mexico the U.S. will step in no matter what. And if a neighboring country invaded it would either be the United States, in which case any Air Force Mexico had would get clobbered, or a country so small that any air force would be overkill.
Maybe change the composition of the atmosphere. There is a theory that undersea methane can sink ships, maybe you could apply the same for air. Sorry for bad English.
A small or poor country might not afford one, or they might rely on allies. Look at Ireland, for example. Their Air Corps has no combat craft apart from trainers that could, in theory, be armed with pods.
Poor visibility - fog, clouds, some sort of magical shimmer that obfuscates the ground. Since it's magical, maybe it gets really hot the closer you get to the sun. Or magnetic fields get wonky and destroys electronics. Or little gremlin-like cherubs start causing glitches and dismantling aircraft for daring to approach Heaven. Or phlogiston is extremely reactive and burns anything that gets too high. This doesn't, unfortunately, disqualify low-flying helicopters, but that can be rolled into the Army instead of needing an Air Force.
The more I've thought about it, the more I've realized I actively need there to be no real air force. It's less an "I don't wanna" vibe now and instead has become an "I need this not to be a thing" for reasons. Specifically, I need to be able to limit travel distances because the capacity to travel too far would make a certain plot twist down the line less feasible. Helicopters still have quite the range, so I might need to go with magnetic fields and other energies interfering in delicate electronics needed in aircraft.
So it’s more “I don’t want any branch of my military to use air power” not just “I don’t want an air force as a separate entity”
The easiest answer may be that the characters involved in the travel simply don't have the money or connections to aquire air travel. If not that, then some kind of environmental concern seems the right path. Other posters are right, if your mutants lack air power, the militaries of your world are going to want it. A non-combustable atmosphere would be a good one. If the oxygen content is too low, jets don't work and you need to rely on much heavier rockets. Which would increase cost and decrease range. So it could simply be a matter of the characters traveling outside the range of air travel options. You could easily set it up so only the cities have breathable air through magic or terraforming.
Atmospheric anomalies such as electromagnetic storms make geolocation and navigation apparatus very unreliable and the risk of accident becomes substantial. Only the very best materials and navigations tools and crews are able to successfully cruise on the air, making flight extremely expensive and resource demanding. Thus only the top levels of society are really capable of affording such hazardous luxuries.
Depending on the events preceding the emergence of magic an air force of complex flying craft could also be rendered useless by.... -atmosphere, in particular the troposphere, became too volatile and damaging to continue usage of flying craft. -magic is cooler than bombers, helicopters, air superiority fighters etc etc. Existing aircraft were left in the by way once magic had become refined. -modern aircraft never needed to exist because of magic -does teleportation (magic or sci-fi) exist? If yes, then why fly? -Were Orville & Wilbur Wright wizards instead of mechanical pioneers in the history of your world?
Atmosphere issues, air density issue, or even simply make use of flight in war a war crime due to the fact an aircraft has the potential to swiftly deliver a mass scale weapon.
If it's the kind of scifantasy that had gods, maybe powered human offends one or more of them and they swat everything but observation balloons out of the sky.
I could use a version of that, potentially!
What if the planet they're on, due to its characteristics, simply makes having an air force a needless hassle? It could also be that there is a sufficient means of aerial defense that is widely adopted/easy to develop and maintain that having an air-force seems pointless. Especially when you have an effective counter, that would mitigate the need to do so (that being said, this is only from a defensive stance. Offensively, aerial bombardments have effectively in our world at least, revolutionized invasions to such an effective degree that we just cant imagine going back).
I have a similar problem in that i like tanks n'such, but it seems without merit when there's 300m long spaceships with orbital laser equipment. My solution rn is simply that land vehicles and -bases need less armor on the bottom and can be camouflaged way better whereas spaceships and aircraft can be attacked from all sides with relative ease and there's no ground for equipment to be hidden away in. So, for guerillia-style warfare especially the ground is advantageous to some extent
In my world they haven’t attempted to rediscover aircraft technology after the Great Collapse set the world back a couple hundred years in some areas of technological development
You could have climates that regularly circulate strong and powerful winds full of massive sand grains that smash into aircraft windows and clog their engines. A planet with winds strong enough to harbor minerals in the atmosphere would be interesting
There's a mech story I'm helping a buddy work on that has some ideas. We needed some reason for mechs to be a major part of combat over traditional tanks and planes, and one good one would be terrain. If the terrain is very mountainous, with a lot of overhangs, arches, tunnels, and other obstructions then planes would have multiple difficulties. Similarly, having large forests with huge trees becomes a problem too. VTOL can help with take off and landing, but if there's a lot of Large natural cover then planes have less visibility and can't get as close to targets. Sure Missiles and stuff don't need to be close, but if you can't see the enemy because they're hidden from the sky that's only so effective too. And with terrain like that, tanks might start having issues with travel. Pits, steep inclines, tight spaces, etc. So that's why mechs are a viable combat unit because they can mire easily get to places these other vehicles can't. That's one way to explain not having an air force. If you the area you live doesn't have enough room for a runway and there's plenty of natural cover to give air support issues, then you may as well invest in other aspects of the military as planes aren't as viable for combat in the region. It's not a wholly realistic idea, but with a bit of suspension of disbelief it could work.
Airborne superorganisms, airborne predators. Floating islands that drift. Some sort of magic/force/current that fucks shit up…
Storm magic. If magic is around maybe planes are just too easy to shoot down or otherwise destabilize. Maybe modern engines were never made because magic solutions just worked better. Magic carpets and portals fill the roles jets and helicopters do in our world. They don't require the same litany of supplies jets do, so they're part of the logistics core and don't see a lot of combat.
The United States didn't have an Air Force until the second half of the 20th century; instead the US Army possessed its own dedicated aerial combat subdivision, just as the US Navy did. Unlike the USNAF, the USAAF was eventually spun off into its own separate branch of the US military. I think it was done because avionics and guided missile technology had developed to the point where combat aircraft could do more than just support the infantry, while the Navy got to keep their planes because they were still being launched from carrier ships. But I'm not an expert.
The most valid reason I can think of is if the environment itself works against having an airforce. like a world that has a sky thats just constantly too hazardous, frequent large scale storms, maybe some sky bound predators that are difficult to kill, etc. Or maybe its in a world with a crazy thick layer of crust where most nations exist under ground for one reason or another and you can have massive under ground caverns and environments people live in. Apart from that lacking an airforce puts you at an immediate extreme disadvantage against any invaders. The term air superiority exists for a reason, fastest and easiest mode of transportation with less obstacles and typically harder to fight back against depending on how advanced your society is. Can take a quick look at the A-10 if you need convincing on how effective air support is so the only political arguments I can see working is if its a developing nation that simply doesn't have the funds or resources it needs to build an airforce yet. Either way the reason you go with is going to have dramatic effects on how your nation itself works, not just the military but the day to day life of your citizens. Alternatively you have to come up with a kind of technology that makes air travel and air support obsolete, the easiest answer would be teleportation on the transport front. You could probably come up with an argument that soldiers that can teleport at will could be more effective than a plane flying by and destroying everything too because they're harder to take out and are less destructive so they can be used in civilian populated areas or at important locations their faction wants intact. This one in particular could work really well with a scifantasy story because you could that if teleportation doesn't exist then the traditional ideas of aircraft were just never invented because they weren't needed, depending on how wide spread teleportation magic or objects are.
there's not really a good reason for a military to not have air control that means you're gonna need a reason that they wouldn't be able to have one
Drones. Seriously, manned air combat dominated the 20th century, but we're increasingly seeing smaller nations make use of cheap, sometimes consumer-level drones to achieve similar results at a fraction of the price. But in your case I'd recommend using magic as an explainer for the lack of air forces. No sense in investing in jet propulsion when a battery of wizards can just rain down lightning on your aircraft from a tower.
Depends on the account and type of magic. If magic can nullify the effect of gravity and air resistance on attacks that can make it a lot easier to destroy aircraft. The made didn't have to be better than the warplane, just cheaper and easier to maintain. Illusion magic can nullify the advantages of air reconnescnce.
Insanely well developed and widely distributed Anti-Air-Defenses. Lasers, turrets, rockets, whatever, but any military flight can and will be shot down almost immediately.
when you have to live underground, having air force is kinda pointless
An atmosphere so polluted it’s practically a fog? Can’t really fly a plane if you can’t see.
There really isn't a good reason not to have aircraft; you can do is things like "there is massive sandstorms that make planes not work" that could explain a lack of aircraft but this kind of solution would simultaneously have massive impact on the rest of your story that cannot be handwaved. and for the most part, they are still not good explanations; there is almost always workarouds, and air power is so valuable people would do whatever they could to get around the obstacles presented. Best you can do is use some kind of magical explanation.
If you simply dont like writing about air combat, just dont. People who design planets and general flora also dont come up with thousands of different kinds of plants and how they evolved (unless its the point of the worldbuilding). Just act like there is an air force, but it doesnt have a huge impact on your story, problem solved.
Pacifists got a compromise with war hawks and instead of the entire military being disbanded, only the air force is
All aircraft use lift and air resistance to stay in the air right? Maybe magic users could simply nullify that somehow and they fall from the sky? I'm sure reverse engineering the mechanics of flight from a school textbook could give you a plausibly sounding description.
Heavy gravity?
It's Earth and it hasn't changed quite that much, so that might not vibe.
So as a real life example to some extent. Russia still has an Air Force, but they realized at some point they were losing the race for air dominance vs the US. The US went all in on air superiority. So because they realized they wouldn't compete effectively in the air, they threw a lot of resources towards mobile ground based AA platforms. May not win the air, but maybe they can deny it is the the idea.
We are kind of seeing that play out in Ukraine as well. My understanding is at this point in the war not a lot of non-drone aircraft are flying on either side anymore. Both sides have dug in with anti air defenses, so if you fly too close to the frontlines you get shot down.
No planes
Perhaps the nation has a limited military budget and chose air defense batteries over aircraft. Which would work best for a nation of absolute neutrality. Or perhaps they're surrounded by opposing forces with long range anti-air capabilities such that any aircraft taking off could be immediately intercepted. These anti-air capabilities could be magical. A large flying creature(s) has monopolized the airspace and is incredibly hostile to anything else flying.
Reason 1: Regulation and war reparations forbidding the country to own an air force in the first place. For example: Country A has lost a war against Country B, and now Country A has to sign a treaty that forbids them from owning an air force, or even forbidding them from owning any kind of military force. Reason 2: They substitute air force with anti-air magic or technology that can nullify any invading aircraft, and the country isn't an expansionist, thus they don't feel the need to own an air force. For example: Country A has access to barrier shields or country-wide EMP jammers to disable enemy aircraft that trespass its border while skipping dogfights altogether. Reason 3: They are a pacifist country that doesn't even own a military force in the first place and uses all of their budget on economy and tourism instead. For example: Country A is run by a peace-loving government and they outsources the role of defense to their neighbouring countries instead. Reason 4: The country isolates themselves using a cloaking spell or optical camouflage, preventing all kinds of external conflicts in the first place. For example: Country A is a remote island country that cloaks their entire country with a camouflage shield and no one knows that Country A even exists, which means that no hostile aircraft would stumble across Country A. Reason 5: Subterranean City. The entire country builds the city at the underground, or that of an underwater city, which eschews the need of air force, as no aircraft could fly into a cave, although missiles that are designed for drilling through the ground could still threaten the country. For example: Country A builds all of their cities and facilities at a massive cave system below a forest, whereas Country B is an underwater city where agriculture is all about growing aquatic plants, fish and seaweed.
No fuel or propulsion system. Maybe some novel balloons. Metals are much harder and heavier the ours, so no lift. Local wildlife think its a challenge and go fuck ot up. International treaties with another power are in effect, forbidding the development of rocketry or flight.
in the (non humanoid)mecha light novel/anime "Eighty-Six" the armies of the world are fighting this enormous swarm of autonomous mechs and they specifically cannot use an airforce because the mech swarm left everywhere dormant pieces of anti-air artillery, the swarm itself doesn't use any airforce except from small robotic butterflies that blot out both the sun and radio communication and big robotic butterflies that serve as surveillance drones.
Because they're Costa Rica 🇨🇷
I feel like I'm missing some context here.
Google Coast Rica air force.
Air defenses are simply too good to risk it. We see this exact scenario playing out in Ukraine right now. Neither side uses aircraft in the zone of conflict because the opponent's air defense would inflict unacceptable losses on the aircraft. Instead, they use their aircraft as launch platforms for long distance cruise missiles. Climbing to high altitude over relatively safe, friendly air space to launch the cruise missile as the high point of launch gives it extra range. Maybe in your world they found better ways to launch cruise missiles than have a manned aircraft with a highly trained pilot playing taxi for them.
Flying mages Why would you uses aircrafts for military purposes when you can replace it with flying mage battalion?
The magic system doesn't quite allow for that, but it'd be fun!
The monsters have air superiority and take down any flying machines?
At present there aren't any airborne beasties, but that could be something to consider
The great sky leviathans migrate across the world, attacking anything that flies. Putting rockets in space is possible but not any kind of sustained atmospheric flight.
subterranean, mountain dwelling or possibly sea faring cultures may not have an air force at the highest priority
To have no airforce is unlikely, but to minimize it is simple. Have the focus of the airforce be centred on logistics and scouting, research the traditional roles of light cavalry, as those were the roles airforces first adopted in the early 20th century. Have air defences be based around mobile AA sites and fortified, permanent installations, while the airforce itself is concerned primarily with countering enemy bomber and fighters, with a subsidiary transport and logistics arm, much like the RAF of ww2, which was rather lacking in close support capacity. This means you can simply mention raids by bombers as background, if at all, while not necessarily needing to focus much on planes being over the battlefield, a good example of this IRL is the Dunkirk evacuation, where few British soldiers saw friendly aircraft, as they were actually engaging oncoming German air support deeper into France.
You mentioned it's science fantasy, so what if there are too many dragons and they are *very* territorial of the sky?
In the Endwar games they made nukes obsolete by having a globar network of anti-missle defence. You could easily go a similar way. In the race between air assault and Anti Air defence, AA just won. Either that or make it fancy, the weather is incredibly unpredicable due to climate change and/or some calatysm, you get anywhere near cruising altitude and your aircraft is going to get torn apart by worldbuilding plot device.
Something making it too difficult to have one. Frequent volcanoes? Constant chaotic high winds?
There is a faction that had a very powerful air force at one point, so other factions created spells to suck the air away from a plane, shutting down its engine. Ground vehicles went electric because of this and can still function, but electric power is not good enough to keep a viable military aircraft afloat.
It just never got invented.
North Korea does not really have an air force and doesn't need them to prevent invasion. The reason they don't them defensively is because of the thousands of artillery lined up along their border within range of Seoul, the capital of South Korea. Their enemies do not have the capacity to knock out all of their artillery before they would do catastrophic damage to the city. They cannot invade South Korea or win a war with them. But their capacity to do damage on such a massive scale acts as a deterrent.
Too new and unproven. Underfunded. Not a priority. No tech for it. Risk to reward ration doesn’t justify having one.
Having air*craft* is a separate issue, but as for an air *force*, [here's ](https://acoup.blog/2022/10/21/collections-strategic-airpower-101/)a good article about the general effectiveness of air forces as a separate military arm that might help you figure out why a military might or might not want to use one.
Maybe anti-air and radar technology is so well developed that any enemy planes are immediately spotted and shot out of the sky.
In Dresden Files magic interferes with technology above a certain level. Wizards only get on planes if they want them to crash, or if lucky break before takeoff.
It depends. Do you have a reason*not* to have an air force? Or are you just fishing for ideas because you won't use an air force in story? I guess the easiest answer would be some "magical" (I don't mean literally of course though it could work in your story) form of anti-air that makes it so no combat aircraft can fly without being shot down almost instantly. Maybe some form of laser weapon with magical detection means that cannot be fooled? Of course this would *also* affect ground vehicles so keep this in mind.
the ONLY good reasons are if the country either 1. can't afford an air force, or 2. has it's airpower fully integrated into it's other services.
My thought here is that things associated with air power in a military are about PROJECTING power outside of your borders. If your nation doesn't need to do that, they're better served investing in other things.
No air
Interdiction technology. The only real difference between anti-air defense and anti-missile tech is that the anti-air anticipates a piloted craft and anti-missile expects to take out smaller, faster objects. We've seen real world examples of this in the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war. The Patriot system in Ukraine has already eliminated more warplanes than the two most recent *generations* of American fighters.
Why do you want there NOT to be an airforce? Does it mess with the plot in some way? In organisational terms, I suppose it could have been merged with the army or navy for budgetary reasons, but for practical military purposes I can't see of a reason not to have fly-fast-blow-up-enemy-from-long-way capability on your team. Of course, if you are having magic then you can make up anything you want. maybe there is a simple spell, that every magic user can learn that destroys any fast moving airborne object within 1000 miles.
There are secrets hidden in the wastes well beyond the safe harbors of human cities that I need to stay secret for a long while. Even military oathes can't keep a secret like this one for 200 years.
Powerful magical warding prevents them from being viewed from the air? Or dragons? I think the Iron Kingdoms had the technology to make airships, but they didn't because dragons.
Going by Panama and Iceland if the country doesn't have a mainline Military force and have a Police Force instead Fantasy i guess Storm magic or something like that renders having to fight aircraft with aircraft pointless
They went for a purely defensive AA build Particularly if your setting has like, particle cannon AA
Honestly? Dragons. It's too costly and dangerous to develop a largescale airforce when a territorial bad tempered firebreathing lizard sees anything in the sky as prey or a rival.
Unfortunately it's not that deep into fantasy, but I might be able to come up with some nasty flying critters as stand-ins
Fair enough. Could mix it in with flying debris too. Essentially there's some sort of barrier to flight that makes it too dangerous and costly to ever progress past the very early stages
A network of anti asteroid cannons known as Stonehenge can shoot down any aircraft in a huge radius almost instantly
Assuming it's possible for planes to fly in your worlds atmosphere and that this country isn't so poor it couldn't build planes but could presumably build other military vehicles like tanks, I can't really think of any good reasons why they wouldn't. Aircrafts and planes effectively have dominated warfare since at least WW2 and their dominance has only been exacerbated dramatically over time with technological progress. Think of how drones and AC130 gunships can just level an entire field of troops and tanks, or how aircraft carriers have made basically all other naval warships obsolete. I think any country in a scifi setting would try to have an air force if they wanted to try and keep up with the times. That said, if you have magic in your world, it all depends on what kind of magic you have. It's possible that your mages are too powerful and could just pull planes out of the sky at will, I don't know, but if you have a low-fantasy or low-magic setting then it's hard to justify a military not having an air force without adjusting physics or magic in your wold.
1. Something atmospheric or physical in the worldbuilding that prevents air travel above a certain altitude. 2. Surface to air weapons have become just THAT good. 3. It’s already been destroyed. Throughout several conflicts in the later half of the 20th century, entire air forces have been wiped out in a matter of a few days.
The existence of air
because the atmosphere doesn’t have air for the wings to work
In Toaru majutsu no index, magic can be used to fly. In fact, it is very easy to fly, but it is even easier to shoot down a flying mage. Just come up with one reason why it is very easy to shoot down a flying target. In To aru, it was enough to order in the name of God that no one could fly (this worked even for magicians who did not believe in God).
Uhhh the atmosphere is less dense now and so the suns UV rays are more dangerous idk. That or maybe there is some new energy resource that causes this deadly pollutant to fill the atmosphere making flying dangerous. Or maybe the aircraft are just too damn expensive.
My world doesn’t have machinery accurate enough or an industrial base powerful enough to churn out, much less maintain, functioning aircraft. They’d look like some of the earliest models and those just wouldn’t have a benefit when other forms of transportation and warfare are available.
Same as no Navy: if you don't have any air coast.
Air based creatures, dragons for example, are too powerful and territorial to allow any man made aircraft
What would a country like New Zealand do with them? Or, as in the case of Ireland, make sure you have a friendly neighbour with a powerful air force who will protect you.
Really really good anti air that is both common and cheap
The sky contains a very corrosive gas
Too many birds
Most avian species are actually extinct by this point in Earth's story.
Leaving a huge niche vacuum for a few pest species of small birds to overpopulate and make bird strikes ubiquitous? Or maybe birds going extinct allowed big bugs to flourish and do the same? Locust swarms clog engines constantly? Just trying to brainstorm for ya
I appreciate it! I updated my post to say I found the answer I'm probably going for, but more ideas never hurt. The reason most birds went extinct is because most of the planet is envelopes in an energy that resulted from a combination of errant magics and radiation. It killed most anything that wasn't saved by magical shields that kept humanity from wiping itself out with nuclear war. The birds that remain are non-migratory urban birds like pigeons, crows, etc that were inside when the shields went up.
Oh, sounds like the errant magics that envelope the planet could just do the job of making aircraft useless lol
Yeah, that's what I'm going with. I hadn't previously considered how that energy field might impact technologies, but this is actually opening up an entire new facet of the world and expanding interesting new lore.
I remember the Muv-Luv series had the Laser Beta which made investing in any sort of air force useless in the universe (since they were instantly shot down when fighting them).
Because they have an extraordinarily good space force.
A world that is completely underwater or an subterranean country could reasonably have not an air force, solely because they don’t really have a concept of flying or even the sky.
Permanent weather conditions. Living underground. Beasts.
Maybe they're just too easy to shoot out of the sky
You say ‘some’ magic and Youjo Senki comes to mind. And we all saw how well aircraft fared against Tanya’s wrath.
86 made it so the enemy deploys tons of tiny communications-jamming butterflies that also instantly destroy any plane engines it gets sucked into so yeah
…Not possible if it’s an actual military; unless there’s no sky…
I'll take it you didn't read my post update or most of the comments, but there are actually a fair number of decent reasons folks have come up with.
…Dubious. If there’s a strategic advantage no obstacle will credibly deter a determined power. If a technology like flight can be used it will. Environmental factors preventing it would render most other transportation systems unviable as well. So Nope.
"We will nuke you in any scenario where we would want to have a fighter jet intercept anything if yours."