The purpose of offensive counterair (OCA) is to destroy, disrupt, or otherwise neutralize the adversary's air assets (including cruise missiles), ballistic missiles, missile launch platforms, and supporting command and control (C2) networks and structures that enable them--before or after launch--as close to the source as possible.
Pages I-4 through I-7 include the definitions for offensive counterair (OCA), defensive counterair (DCA), and air and missile defense (AMD).
He shows how achieving these transformational operational goals requires performance of the four offensive counterair functions of surface attack, fighter sweep, escort, and suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD), as well as defensive counterair.
Offensive counterair (OCA) operations destroy, disrupt, or degrade enemy air and missile threats, with the goal of defeating these threats at their origin.
4, "Offensive Counterair Planning and Operations"), currently guides US SEAD doctrine.
For example, when discussing deliberate and dynamic targeting with regards to offensive counterair, it states that
Rather, US aircraft will have to rely on stealth and advanced avionics systems to penetrate enemy airspace in small packages to perform
offensive counterair missions against enemy aircraft carrying WMD, and to deliver punishing bombardment against WMD storage facilities and delivery systems.
Accordingly, attack operations--another important aspect of IAMD--are synonymous with
offensive counterair or strike operations, whereby we destroy the enemy's systems first so he cannot use them against us.
All of this implies that "offensive counter cyberspace," a term presented without comment in AFDD 3-12, may prove meaningless or at least radically different from
offensive counterair (OCA), after which it is clearly modeled.
Today's Red Flag mission still marches to that drum, but it also includes a full spectrum of scenarios involving air and space operations centers; intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance; defensive counterair;
offensive counterair; combat search and rescue; bombers; tankers; ground controllers; and space assets.
Offensive counterair (OCA), an obvious amalgam of attack-operations missions, represents the freedom from attack and the freedom to attack.
The latter, contained in AFDD 2-1, Air Warfare, divides the counterair mission into
offensive counterair (OCA) and defensive counterair (DCA).