Antiaircraft warfare

Antiaircraft warfare or counterair defence is defined by NATO as "all measures designed to nullify or reduce the effectiveness of hostile air action." They include ground-and air-based weapon systems, associated sensor systems, command and control arrangements and passive measures (e.g. barrage balloons). It may be used to protect naval, ground, and air forces in any location. However, for most countries the main effort has tended to be 'homeland defence'. NATO refers to airborne air defence as counter-air and naval air defence as antiaircraft warfare. Missile defence is an extension of air defence as are initiatives to adapt air defence to the task of intercepting any projectile in flight.

In some countries, such as Britain and Germany during World War II, the Soviet Union's and NATO's Allied Command Europe, ground-based air defence and air defence aircraft have been under integrated command and control. However, while overall air defence may be for homeland defence including military facilities, forces in the field, wherever they are, invariably deploy their own air defence capability if there is an air threat. A surface-based air defence capability can also be deployed offensively to deny the use of airspace to an opponent.

Until the 1950s, guns firing ballistic munitions ranging from 20 mm to 150 mm were the standard weapons; guided missiles then became dominant, except at the very shortest ranges (as with close-in weapon systems, which typically use rotary autocannons or, in very modern systems, surface-to-air adaptations of short range air-to-air missiles).

The term air defence was probably first used by Britain when Air Defence of Great Britain (ADGB) was created as a Royal Air Force command in 1925. However, arrangements in the UK were also called 'antiaircraft', abbreviated as AA, a term that remained in general use into the 1950s. After the First World War it was sometimes prefixed by 'Light' or 'Heavy' (LAA or HAA) to classify a type of gun or unit. Nicknames for antiaircraft guns include AA, AAA or triple-A, an abbreviation of antiaircraft artillery; "ack-ack" (from the spelling alphabet used by the British for voice transmission of "AA"); and archie (a World War I British term probably coined by Amyas Borton, and believed to derive via the Royal Flying Corps, from the music-hall comedian George Robey's line "Archibald, certainly not!").

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