History of Air Defense Artillery

Student’s Name Professor’s Name Course Date History of Air Defense Artillery Air defense encompasses all the strategies that are put in place to minimize the effectiveness of hostile air action. Some of these operations include command and control arrangements as well as passive measures which are meant to safeguard the air forces and naval ground wherever they could be. Nevertheless, for most nations, the main focus has been homeland defense. Airborne defense is referred to as counter-air while naval air defense is regarded as anti-aircraft warfare. Missile defense is an extension of the air defense in efforts or equipping the air defense with the ability to potentially intercept any projectile during flight. In other nations such as Germany and Britain during world war II, the air defense craft and the ground-based air defense has been under-regulated control and command. However, although the entire air defense may be meant for homeland defense, including the military facilities and forces in the field regardless of where they are, they invariably utilize their air defense abilities which are commonly referred to army air defense. A surface-based air defense ability can also be deployed offensively to deny the use of air space to an opponent. This article looks into the detailed history of air defense artillery while identifying the key events that have taken place within it. History of Air Defense Two significant aspects bring out the essence of air defense, which are an airborne threat and something to defend whereby the air threat came into existence before the airplane. There was the idea of air defense before the flight of the white brothers in 1903. In August 1861, am American aeronaut during his trip in a ballon witnessed and reported the first ballon fire which was among the first pioneering attempts in active air defense. The air defense artillery started its evolution when the Col RP Davidson of USA constructed the primary automatic weapon during the year 1909 (Johansson, Fredrik &Goran,189). Nevertheless, there was minimal work done in the AD doctrine field because the military leaders were yet to discover the essence of air defense. The significant air threat that was experienced in World War I geared the development of a dedicated Air Defense Artillery. In 1914, when the allied attacks on Germany became more rampant, the Germans utilized the new weaponry and named it Flugzeug Abwehr, or Flak whereby the significant surveillance methods were searchlights and sound detection. The launching of London Air Defense in July 1917 was the initial step towards integration and centralization of assets such as the FF units, searchlight batteries and AA gun batteries in one group. At the end of World War I, to promote speedy demobilization, the active elements of air defense were broken up. In the inter-war period with the invention of Airforce to monitor the England Airspace, the Britain Air Defense was formed in 1925 (Werell et al., 87). The formation of this ADGB led to an integration of the air force for the air defense, which had two different aspects, the Royal air force Bombing formations, and the fighting area. The combative area was composed of ten sectors under the Ground troops who had control over the ground...