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Document created: 1 December 05
Air & Space Power Journal - Winter 2005
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PIREPs |
Editor’s Note: PIREP is aviation shorthand for pilot report. It’s a means for one pilot to pass on current, potentially useful information to other pilots. In the same fashion, we intend to use this department to let readers know about air and space power items of interest.
J. C. Sullivan*
During an inbriefing, I asked Maj Gen Charles N. Simpson, at that time the director of air and space operations for US Air Forces in Europe (USAFE), what services he expected from USAFE’s History Office (HO). “I’m not exactly sure what you provide me,” he responded. “Frankly, if you cannot provide me real-time service—what I need, when I need it—then you really cannot help me at all.” His answer was direct, to the point, eye-to-eye, and delivered exactly as most of us in the history business want our dealings with our commanders. However, the statement was both revealing and alarming. It was revealing because it followed on the heels of comments from Gen John Jumper, then the chief of staff of the Air Force, who challenged the service’s historians to “do whatever it takes to be more involved in, and help improve the combat capability of the United States Air Force.”1 It was alarming because if we historians fail to provide our leadership with timely services, then perhaps our career field may soon become extinct!
An unofficial survey of 20 current and former wing commanders elicited a fairly unanimous understanding of the day-to-day functions of a wing historian.2 Most saw the emphasis on maintaining lineage and honors, organizing historical displays, providing material for speeches, and writing the wing’s required periodic historical reports.3 Unfortunately, few gave even cursory indications of mirroring General Jumper’s call for historians to involve themselves in and help improve the combat capability of the Air Force. Historians improving combat capability? What a concept! Do wing commanders believe that this is possible? In fact, very few commanders saw their historians as combat multipliers. Furthermore, they nearly always found themselves pulling information from historians instead of historians pushing data and historical perspectives forward. Education, however, can significantly improve these issues.
Sensitive to the call of General Jumper, Mr. C. R. “Dick” Anderegg, director of the Air Force History Office, organized a strategic plan underwritten by the need not only to maintain the stature of the service’s history program, but also to convey the Air Force’s unique historical culture and a deep belief that history can make direct and continuing contributions to tomorrow’s combat capability.4 Major command (MAJCOM) historians quickly realized that this new plan required closer interaction among command leadership, wing commanders, and historians. The daily working relationship that exists between the wing commander (or vice-commander in units whose HO reports to the vice- or deputy commander) and the wing historian poses a unique challenge to a MAJCOM historian, who is concerned with timely collection of the periodic wing histories that form the foundation of the Air Force’s historical archives—so critical to future research. Wing commanders see higher headquarters’ suspense dates and want them met. Both historians and commanders need not only to look for ways of meeting those requirements without sacrificing content, accuracy, and quality, but also to increase the use of history as a combat multiplier—a significant challenge!
Overseas historians are positioned to stay abreast of international issues that can demonstrably enhance commanders’ decision making as well as affect the local wing, MAJCOM, the Air Force, and even the Department of Defense. At every opportunity, historians should push the historical perspective of this kind of information to leadership in short studies or bulleted background papers. Again, they must not wait until the tasking arrives.
Although all challenges are exciting, perhaps HOs staffed by only a single individual face the most substantial one: without factoring in rank or experience, expecting him or her to research, compile, and write periodic histories; deploy as part of an air and space expeditionary force; and take on ever-expanding historical-services requirements—not to mention meeting increasing expectations in a decreasing amount of time. My point is that if commanders receive less and then settle for less, won’t they ultimately expect less from “history”? The results of this spiral of descending expectations may lead commanders to look to other staff organizations for help in resolving critical issues. Interestingly, the very information those staff offices seek more often than not resides in the databases of HOs.
Clearly, the former chief of staff called on history to become a combat multiplier. Moreover, the Air Force historian signed the strategic plan that restated this goal. Surely wing commanders should welcome the infusion of accurate historical insight into the decision-making process. And historians want to provide their commanders with meaningful historical services. Thus, we have unanimous agreement!
Is it also possible to agree that we should use Air Force history primarily to enhance Air Force operations? Asking historians to do their part in improving the service’s combat capability does not require reinventing the wheel. Historians already provide a number of services to their commanders. For example, Air Mobility Command historians recently worked with their commanders to help develop a plan for transporting special types of military equipment. Specifically, wing historians accessed and interpreted information from Exercise Noble Shirley, a deployment from Ramstein Air Base, Germany, immediately enabling commanders to build a successful scenario calling for 45 C-17s that transported 165 people and more than 1,000 short tons of cargo.5
Starting with Operation Desert Storm, hundreds of enlisted historians have deployed “down range,” helping coin the phrase history as a weapon system. Their efforts entail four phases: collection, preservation, interpretation, and dissemination. During collection, commanders play critical roles in helping historians, especially by allowing unrestricted access to their e-mails, permitting attendance at staff meetings, and granting oral history interviews. The fact that today’s Air Force historians must possess Top Secret clearances facilitates such complete access. They are also trained to collect, retain, and use classified information found in useful histories and to organize and preserve historical archives in easily accessible systems. Ultimately, civilianization of the program may enhance interpretation, if for no other reason than the assigned historian’s longevity and experience. Lastly, the dissemination phase has proved key to historians’ efforts to help commanders, particularly in the decision-making process. Because commanders require information at a moment’s notice, historians must learn to anticipate and push relevant information before being tasked to do so.
History as a weapon system has also improved combat capability across MAJCOM lines. A historical study on supporting Haitian refugees in Cuba by historians in Air Combat Command proved useful to commanders in USAFE when the latter prepared to accept refugees from the conflict in Kosovo.6 By carefully examining the study, organizational commanders at Royal Air Force Mildenhall, United Kingdom, prepared themselves for the influx of ethnic Albanian refugees. The historian pushed up to leadership the experiences and lessons learned about constructing camps with appropriate sanitation and about logistically supporting humanitarian relief.
In October 2001, the commander of the 366th Air Expeditionary Wing at Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar, needed a statistical compilation of all the people and cargo that had passed through the base. Minutes after leaving the meeting, the wing’s historian gave the commander detailed information collected from his records and the Tanker Airlift Control Element that outlined the total number of airlift missions through Al Udeid, as well as the total number of people and cargo tonnage coming in and going out.7 Amazed that the historian had such data at his fingertips, the commander went to him thereafter for information ranging from basic history questions about the Middle East to specific mission data from the flying squadrons.
During a staff meeting in November 2001, Gen Gregory S. Martin, then the commander of USAFE, received a request to deploy the 86th Contingency Response Group (CRG) to Kyrgyzstan. Turning to his MAJCOM historian, he said, “Make sure one of your folks goes with them.” The historical study that appeared a few weeks following that mission is required reading for all CRG members before every deployment and is shared by other MAJCOMs.8 One year later, the commander made sure that his historian accompanied the CRG when it deployed to Iraq, resulting in yet another useful historical study of lessons learned.9 Pacific Air Forces units that deployed in support of recent tsunami-relief efforts successfully used those and other studies written during Operation Shining Hope in Albania.10 The historical study written after Operation Provide Comfort for Iraq’s Kurdish population appeared on Headquarters US European Command’s required reading list for all assigned humanitarian-relief planners.11 Similarly, planners used the history of Operation Proven Force to design the evacuation of dependents from Turkey in 2003.12
Armed with a new sense of what history brings to the fight, wing commanders will quickly recognize their historians’ ability to pull together accurate information from a variety of sources and formulate it into useful products. Moreover, the commander can task the historian to produce easily distributed background and point papers on high-interest topics to keep the constant influx of newly assigned people well informed and, thus, more productive. To get to that point, both commanders and historians must reevaluate their relationship by seeking a better marriage of pushing information by historians and pulling it by commanders.
On the one hand, historians must discard their comfortable role as hunters and gatherers of information by evolving into providers of historical perspective and insight. On the other hand, wing commanders must alter their view of historians as mere keepers of the unit’s heritage and accept them as key members of their staffs to whom they can turn for historical insight. As Otto von Bismarck once put it, fools learn from their experience, while wise men learn from other people’s experience—that is, from history!
*Mr. Sullivan is director of the Office of History, Headquarters US Air Forces in Europe, Ramstein Air Base, Germany.
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Notes
1. Gen John Jumper (speech, Worldwide Historians’ Conference, Wright-Patterson AFB, OH, October 2004).
2. J. C. Sullivan, USAFE/HO, survey of wing commanders and historians, 12 April 2005.
3. Air Force Policy Directive (AFPD) 84-1, Historical Information, Property, and Art, 1 May 1997, establishes the requirement that all Air Force organizations, wing and above—including direct reporting units and other specified organizations—must prepare periodic organizational histories (annual or semiannual); Air Force Instruction (AFI) 84-101, Historical Products, Services, and Requirements, 12 March 1998, establishes content requirements for those histories.
4. “Air Force History and Museums Program Strategic Plan” (Washington, DC: Air Force History and Museums Program, March 2004).
5. “Noble Shirley,” GlobalSecurity.org, http://www.global security.org/military/ops/noble-shirley.htm.
6. CMSgt Michael Dugre, ACC/HO, and Mr. Randy Bergeron, USAFE/HO, telephone conversation with the author, 22 April 2005.
7. Ibid.
8. MSgt Randy Bergeron, Deployment of the 86 CRG to Kyrgyzstan, 16 Dec 2001 to 28 Feb 2002 (Ramstein AB, Germany: USAFE/HO, 2002); and Col Steven Weart, 86th CRG/CC, interview by the author, 12 March 2004.
9. MSgt Randy Bergeron, Deployment of the 86 CRG to Iraq: Supporting Joint Special Operations Task Force-North, 22 Mar–27 Apr 2003 (Ramstein AB, Germany: USAFE/HO, 2003).
10. Dr. Robert Sligh, Operation Shining Hope: The United States’ Humanitarian Operation in Albania, Apr–Jun 99 (RAF Mildenhall, United Kingdom: Third Air Force/HO, 2001); and Mr. Bill Harris, PACAF/HO, to author, e-mail, 7 January 2005.
11. History of Combined Task Force Provide Comfort, 6 Apr 91–30 June 1992, US European Command/ECJ6 classified Web site for lessons learned in Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom.
12. CMSgt Jerome Schroeder and SMSgt Thomas L. Raab, History of Joint Task Force Proven Force (Ramstein AB, Germany: USAFE/HO and Seventeenth Air Force/HO, December 1991).
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University
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