Arctic Air Corridor: Bombers, Refuelling, and the Return of Long-Range Deterrence

In the early Cold War, planners learned that the shortest line between rivals often ran over the top of the world - and that the polar route's apparent simplicity concealed a demanding system of bases, procedures, and alerts. Today, as long-range bombers again feature in exercises and crises, the Arctic and North Atlantic are once more treated as the connective tissue of deterrence. Yet the central dilemma remains: the aircraft that symbolise reach depend on fragile enablers that can be watched, pressured, and disrupted.

The Arctic Air Corridor argues that long-range air power is best understood through corridors: repeatable pathways made possible by permissions, support, and control. Jonas Hellqvist shows how aerial refuelling chains govern what can be flown, when, and for how long; why tanker vulnerability turns logistics into a strategic exposure; and how a2/ad systems reshape routing into a problem of geometry, warning time, and risk. He also examines airspace law and practice - FIRs, ADIZ expectations, and deconfliction routines - to show how safety procedures both reduce danger and create patterns that others can exploit. Across historical context and contemporary problem-sets, the book clarifies how corridor choices become messages: presence, restraint, ambiguity, and reassurance expressed through flight profiles as much as through statements.

Written for students, general readers, and analysts, this is a framework-building study rather than a platform-by-platform catalogue. Readers will come away able to interpret deterrence signalling in operational terms: which corridors are being exercised, what the support picture implies, where predictability is structural rather than intentional, and how escalation control is practiced through timing, distance, and coordination. The result is a clearer way to judge what long-range deterrence can credibly do - and what it quietly depends upon when the route itself becomes contested.