The Third World War: August 1985

Pact superiority in the air, as well as on the ground, looked as if it was to be a permanent feature in the balance of power. This placed a high premium on maintaining the Allied technological lead. It also demanded attention to methods of improving the effectiveness of the amalgam of national air forces through better standardization of their weapons and tactics and of their engineering and logistic support. These were not easy aims to achieve, for a variety of national reasons, and progress — though happily considerable by 1985 — had been slow and painful.

The NATO air forces in the Central Region were made up of two tactical air forces, 2 ATAF associated with the Northern Army Group and 4 ATAF with the Central Army Group. This structure was a hangover from the occupation of Germany after the Second World War. Its appropriateness came into question in the late sixties and early seventies. The problem was resolved in 1974, when an overall United States Air Commander (COMAAFCE) was established, with his own headquarters, to exercise central control of Allied air power at the highest level of air command in order to exploit the flexibility and concentration of the numerically inferior Allied air forces. COMAAFCE was responsible to the Commander-in-Chief, Central Region (CINCENT), and his two immediate subordinates were the commanders of 2 and 4 ATAF who retained, in peacetime at least, the same close contact with the army groups.

On the other side of the Iron Curtain we have seen how, during the 1970s, the Russians had developed a more sophisticated concept of air power. What had once been an air arm with very narrow aims, and an almost exclusively battlefield role, had evolved into an air force as the West understood the term. COMAAFCE saw the need to organize his air forces so as to counter this increased threat, while still being able to support the defensive land battle in the critical phase before full reinforcements arrived. He also saw the difficulties. Land and air commanders were agreed on the immediate, full-blooded use of air power in the first hours of an offensive. They saw it as a strategic task of the first importance to identify and slow the enemy’s main thrusts on the ground. At the same time, COMAAFCE realized better than anyone that the success or failure of this plan would depend on the security of his air bases. In particular, his mind often dwelt on the fact that the bases from which 2 ATAF operated were uncomfortably far forward.

On the other hand, he felt confident about his assessment of the enemy’s air objective. In a surge offensive with the initiative, and with an overall advantage in numbers of more than two to one, it was dangerous and misleading to think much in terms of what the enemy’s priorities might be — the Warsaw Pact would probably do everything they could do in the air, and would do it all at once. They would want to neutralize the Allied nuclear strike capability in the theatre; they would aim to ward off interference with the land battle and to establish a tolerable, and if possible favourable, air situation; they would need to protect their own air bases; and they would want to put all the weight of air power they could behind their forces on the ground. The prospect was one of air effort, at every level, of an intensity hitherto never experienced.

In the last fifteen years the development of the Soviet Air Forces had stimulated hard thinking and debate among the Allied air commanders and their staffs. This thinking had reinforced the three classic counters to the threat: offensive counter-air operations against the enemy’s bases; engagement in the air; point and area defence.

There had been general agreement among Allied airmen for many years that the most effective way of countering the Soviet air threat lay in ‘taking it out’ at its point of origin — but this, never an easy task, had become steadily more formidable as Soviet defences had advanced. The airfields would be hardened and very well defended. But major developments in fire-suppression missiles, in precision-guided stand-off munitions, and in airfield- cratering and area-denial weapons gave COMAAFCE cause for sober confidence, though he knew that losses would be high. Great improvements had been made in air-to-air capability since the late seventies. Ground-controlled long-range interceptions would still be possible and necessary, especially in the air defence of the United Kingdom and adjacent areas of sea, but the pressure of geography in Central Europe and the short warning time that this would allow, together with the confusion of electronic counter-measures that would reign in the battle zone, pointed to the need for a less rigid and more general air combat capability. COMAAFCE was well satisfied that the introduction of the F-15s and F-16s to supplement the F-4 Phantoms had gone a long way to meet the requirement. These were not only very potent aircraft, but had once more the agility and manoeuvrability that had marked the earlier generations of fighters. In addition, attention had been focussed on the need for far more SAM and gun defences with a rapid rate of engagement around the air bases, while passive defence measures such as provision of concrete aircraft shelters, command bunkers, and hardened fuel and weapon storage were seen as essentials. Happily, a NATO-wide programme of such improvements had been brought to an advanced state by the spring of 1985.

Turning from the air versus air battle to the central purpose of NATO’s tactical air contribution — intervention in the land battle — COMAAFCE saw two essential roles. First he would have to check the surge of the enemy’s ground offensive by hammering at the ‘choke points’ through which he would have to pass, then blunt the cutting edge of those armoured thrusts that did get through to the Allied area. This role called for an all-weather capability, very high sortie rates, and rapid reaction to army requests in a fluid ground situation. Second, he would have to take the momentum out of the assault by harassing and destroying the succeeding attack waves. He was completely against the so-called ‘panacea targets’ vaguely described in terms like ‘the enemy’s transportation system’. From hard practice and experience with their aircraft and weapons, the airmen were convinced that the best way of destroying armour was by area-denial and cluster weapons dispensing large numbers of bomblets. Fortunately, after the improvement programmes of the eighties they had such munitions in abundance.

On the morning of 3 August, as he mused on the characteristics of air power and the battles his aircrew might soon be fighting, COMAAFCE came back again and again to a major area of uncertainty. Twenty years earlier, as a squadron commander in South-east Asia, he had learned about electronic warfare at first hand, and he knew the sort of influence this could exert on all aspects of air war. The Allies were confident of their technological superiority, and especially so in this direction, but their closed society had enabled the Russians to shroud their electronic warfare methods and developments in such secrecy that positive identification of the best ways of countering them might not be available until hostilities were well under way.

These reflections led to thoughts on the past difference between the US and European (primarily British) approaches to the use of tactical air power. In the seventies the US, with great resources in technology and the experience of the Vietnam War behind them, had stressed the importance of suppressing the defences and of elaborate electronic command and control and communications systems. In the European view, however, this was prodigiously expensive, over-dependent on technology, and dangerously vulnerable to counter-measures. The US had seen tactical air power as a central force for the delivery of massive firepower on clear-cut targets. European airmen, on the other hand, saw it as more important to integrate the tactical air with the land battle, and they thought flexibility would be gained not by close control of aircraft at medium altitudes but from more autonomous and self-reliant procedures with very high sortie rates at very low level.

These divergences sprang naturally from differences in experience and resources, but it had latterly been seen, as in a blinding light, that this diversity in doctrine in fact had a very positive merit in compounding the problems facing the Soviet defences. Moreover, if the Europeans were wrong, they could still ride on the coat-tails of US technology, supplementing the US aerial task forces. And the Americans, realizing that they might be over- dependent on one thesis, started to pay more attention to autonomous and low-level operations as a re-insurance without departing from the main theme for the bulk of their air force.

Finally, as he thought about the human equation, COMAAFCE felt confident that, in the high standards of their training, his air and ground crews, if put to the test, would be second to none. The stringent tactical evaluation test of the NATO air forces over many years of hard practice and training gave him every cause for confidence.

The RAF Air Marshal who commanded 2 ATAF was also reviewing the state of his command — and in the main with satisfaction. The improvements in the last few years had been impressive, and nowhere was this more evident than in the RAF elements of his command. In the late 1970s Gordon Lee wrote in the Economist (17 December 1977): ‘Man for man the RAF is the finest air force in NATO, perhaps even in the world. The finest, that is, in the sense of being the best trained and most professionally skilled.’ If members of the RAF, on reading that, had felt, with justification, some pride and even a little complacency, it was short-lived; for in the next few lines he went on to say that the same unstinting praise could not be bestowed on all its aircraft and equipment. In fact, there was nothing wrong with the RAF in those days that money could not put right. Some money had been made available, and rightly the first tranches had gone to the improvements of the UK air defence. But by 1982 substantial improvements had also been made to the RAF in Germany.