Document created: 15 September 03
Air University Review, November-December 1975

Tactical Air Forces in a
Period of Uncertainty

Major Gordon A. Long

In both analysis and planning we are too prone to ignore the certainty that things change over time: that a number of years hence national objectives and strategies will be different from what they are today. In planning for the future the appearance of uncertainty at a given time is perhaps less interesting than the certainty that changes in objectives and strategies will take place over time.

JAMES R. SCHLESINGER
Secretary of Defense

UNITED STATES tactical air forces are presently confronted with a challenging and paradoxical situation. On a global level they constitute a more critically important national resource than ever before. As the events of the past decade have demonstrated, the strategic impasse has driven armed conflict downward into the tactical arena. In recognition of this fact our principal opponent, the Soviet Union, is steadily increasing both the amount and the degree of sophistication of its total military power.l  Accordingly, the current United States diplomatic posture favoring international détente requires the backing of a strong, credible deterrent capability across the entire spectrum of conflict in order to be effective.

To United States tactical air forces, therefore, falls the formidable responsibility of staining the ability to wage effective warfare on all levels of conflict below general war in the face of a steadily increasing threat. Unfortunately, global concerns tend not to e considered as urgent as domestic problems, and there is the temptation to put off. This tendency has been accentuated by recent foreign policy reverses, and the United States military involvement in Vietnam has left in its wake a profound national distaste for war and all things military. As a consequence, the United States is currently directing the preponderance of its attention inward, as has been its inclination at the conclusion of past wars, and is becoming increasingly preoccupied with the host of internal problems plaguing the nation, problems that demand an ever growing share of national resources. Moreover, the effects of inflation and the energy crisis daily reduce the total amount of resources available. Under these conditions direct, large-scale United States military involvement overseas seems highly unlikely in the immediate future, and it is only to be expected that budgetary justification for expensive, technically complex, energy-consuming tactical air forces should prove difficult. Thus, with public perception of the need for their employment at a low ebb, the tactical air forces of the United States embark on what promises to be their third period of inaction since World War II in an environment of scarce resources and stringent constraints.

There is a clear contradiction between the need for an expanded tactical air capability to counter the Soviet threat, on the one hand, and the strong possibility of years of inaction and increasing scarcity of resources available to tactical air forces, on the other. It is a contradiction that tends to become more pronounced with the passage of time and could eventually threaten U.S. national security. The purpose of this article, therefore, is to examine the nature of this contradiction, identify specific problems that derive from it, and offer suggestions for their long-term resolution.

The Dimensions of the Contradiction

The requirement to maintain a tactical air capability during periods of austere funding and military inactivity is not new to the United States Air Force. In the quarter-century since the Air Force became an autonomous service, the problem has arisen twice before, once prior to the Korean War and once prior to Vietnam. In both instances significant deficiencies in Air Force tactical capability were revealed in the opening weeks of the conflict that followed each of the two periods of inaction. The causes of the deficiencies were many, but the primary one was the same each time: failure to anticipate correctly the nature of the conflict that was to come. This failure was due in part to the widely accepted belief that U.S. strategic nuclear forces would provide a deterrent to all types of armed conflict—a belief rendered explicit by former Secretary of State John Foster Dulles’s proclamation of the doctrine of massive retaliation.2 A corollary to this doctrine was that tactical air forces had become obsolete save as augmentation for the power of Strategic Air Command.3 This doctrinal posture had two primary effects: it greatly reduced the amount of military resources devoted to acquiring and supporting tactical air assets; and it strongly influenced the design characteristics of the few tactical aircraft and systems that were approved for purchase, rendering them largely unsuited for general purpose use.

There were those who detected the fallacy of this single-option strategy, notably the same group of scientists who were primarily responsible for the development of the atomic bomb itself. As early as 1950 this perceptive group maintained that there was a considerable likelihood that the world would respond to the developing nuclear standoff by entering an era of limited war, in which the power of atomic weaponry would be impotent.4 In spite of such efforts to correct the nation’s conceptual error, it remained unremeded and generally unnoticed until the Korean War provided a practical demonstration of the correctness of the scientists’ position.

Even afterward, much credence was given to the idea that Korea was but an anomaly in the larger environment of the cold war and would not recur.5 For the Air Force the net results of such thinking were the initial and nearly disastrous reverses of Korea and Vietnam, where defeat was averted by the narrowest of margins through the skill and dedication of men flying a strange assortment of ancient and modern aircraft on missions for which they were never intended. In both locales only the combination of the limited nature of the conflict and the rapid response of America’s prodigious industrial capacity enabled national military and political leadership to recover their lost initiative.

Nor can the nation count any longer on its industrial capability to provide more than token assistance after the fact in future situations of this sort; the exponential advance of technology has denied the United States its traditional recourse. Unprecedented increases in the potential efficiency and lethality of tactical weapons require response times that must be reckoned in minutes. At the same time, the increasingly complex design criteria required for practical realization of potential capability result in decade-long production lead times. Such constraints lend new significance to forces-in-being. Of necessity, we find ourselves deeply involved in a technological chess match on an international scale—one in which we enjoy but scant advantage.6

To compound the intractability of the national predicament, we rapidly approach the limits of an industrial capacity that has traditionally been regarded as without limit. National options are constrained by increasing scarcity of resources, energy, and funds. “Silent” problems such as inflation, a depressed economy, and public failure to perceive the need for a strong military in times of peace also take their toll. Closely interwoven with these constraints is the peculiarly relative nature of tactical deterrence. Unlike the forces that support an all-out attack option, the tactical air forces of a major power require an active operational capability suited to both conventional and limited/regional nuclear warfare in order to be credible. This is so because of the relatively less critical stakes involved in limited war. The leaders of other nations may elect to test the tactical capability of the United States without necessarily placing their nation’s vital interests at risk. It would be logical, therefore, for them to do so at any time that they perceive a weakness on the part of the United States (either in actual capability or in national will) together with an advantage to be gained by exploiting that weakness. In consequence, tactical air forces must be sufficiently strong to be simultaneously capable of coping with such probing attacks while deterring other potential opponents. The thrust of this argument is to emphasize further the overriding importance of forces-in-being in the tactical air environment. Under such demanding circumstances, a repetition of the unreadiness that has affected tactical air forces of the United States during interwar periods could have disastrous consequences.

Two conclusions may be drawn from this discussion. First, the problems confronting architects of tactical air forces today in the immediate future are not strictly military in nature; rather, they involve a combination of technological, economic, and political considerations. Second, a systematic procedure is needed for anticipating both advances in technology and changes in the tactical environment in order that the scarce resources available to United States tactical air forces can be utilized most effectively. If the design process for tactical air forces is to be realistic, it must be responsive to the total context within which those forces are likely to be employed; and, most important, it must allow for the inevitable alteration of that context over time.

Simplifying Assumptions

If one decides to take this broader view, a way must be found to reduce the resulting composite problem to manageable proportions. One promising method for accomplishing this reduction is being employed by the Air Staff Directorate of Doctrine, Concepts and Objectives. In their long-range planning study, Alternative Future World Contests, they identify a small number of possible futures, each with its own major theme and simplifying assumptions.7 For the purposes of this discussion the world of the future is assumed generally to follow the “Dissonant” model* with several additional limiting assumptions:

*The “Dissonant” world context postulates three poles of nuclear power: the U.S., the U.S.S.R., and the P.R.C., and is interdependent but slightly disintegrative economically.8

(1) Existence of capable U.S. strategic nuclear forces will continue to deter general nuclear war indefinitely. (If for some reason it should not, the question of the future of U.S. tactical air forces becomes immediately academic.)

(2) The international strategic military stalemate will continue until the present indefensibility of nuclear weapons is overcome by a technological breakthrough that will serve to negate or considerably restrict their utility.

(3) Throughout the period prior to this breakthrough, priority must be given to the deterrent requirements of strategic forces.9 Because the time at which this breakthrough will occur cannot be accurately forecast, some reference time period is required for planning purposes. A convenient 7interval for this purpose is the production lead time (PLT) required for a new major weapon system to become operational. At present, one PLT is on the close order of ten years.10

(4) Weapon system development will continue to constitute the critical path for defense planners concerned with tactical air forces.11 Personnel considerations are generally not pertinent in this context except insofar as personnel-related costs consume a growing share of a shrinking defense budget.

(5) During the next PLT, armed conflict will continue to be a prevalent form of international interaction, particularly among the less developed countries and their neighbors. This conflict will be nonnuclear for the most part and, from a United States perspective, will be on a tactical level of operations. It will most probably be subsidized to a great extent by nuclear powers in furtherance of their own political ends.

(6) U.S. military forces are likely to see little action during the next PLT, as a result of widespread resource and energy shortages and a reluctance (generated by the Vietnam experience) on the part of national leadership to commit forces unless vital interests are clearly at stake.

(7) In the absence of legislation fixing the military share of government revenues at some percentage of the U.S. gross national product, resources available to the military at large will be steadily reduced below their present levels during the next PLT. This will be due to a combination of political and economic influences, headed by a growing public perception of the urgency of domestic problems and an accelerating inflationary spiral.

Major Tactical Air Force 
Problem Areas

Given an environment described by the foregoing assumptions, three major problems facing tactical air forces and force planners can be identified: the problem of long-term planning, the problem of tactical economics, and the problem of continuity of effort.

the long-term planning problem

The innate difficulty of conducting effective long-term planning to meet changing world conditions continually plagues military forces in times of peace. Without the adaptive stimulus provided by actual involvement in combat operations, planners and analysts suffer from a natural tendency to become preoccupied with detail, in the process missing basic changes in the world environment. Consequently strategies and plans tend to diverge increasingly from reality with the passage of time. The resultant fundamental misdirection comprises the heart of the long-term planning problem. The symptoms are many: increased emphasis on that which is traditional, rejection of innovative employment concepts (frequently without trial), inability to distinguish between major problems and minor ones, and so forth. Such tendencies are reinforced by the diminished public and Congressional support for expensive new military programs, which has become almost characteristic of the United States during times of peace.

More critical still is the temptation to revert to a single-option type of defense forecasting, which Defense Secretary James R. Schlesinger has termed “Cook’s-Tour planning,” rather than deal with uncertainty in an explicit manner by multioption analysis or “Lewis-and-Clark planning,” in recognition of the alternative courses of action that are certain to appear.12 As Secretary Schlesinger has noted,

Whenever the uncertainties are substantial the balance should shift in the direction of Lewis-and-Clark planning. Despite its messiness, its relative advantage then increases. The appropriate planning concept is one that is conducive to (1) facing uncertainties (not pushing them aside) and (2) hedging against uncertainties (i.e. not biased against hedging). Nevertheless, in all bureaucracies there are strong pressures to go too far in the quest for Cook’s-Tour planning . . . . The cost of acquiescence is neglect of uncertainties, lost flexibility, neglected and suppressed options, and less than optimal adjustment to changing opportunities and threats existing in the external environment.13 [See Figure 1.]

Figure 1. Defense forecasting may range from the single-option method of Cook’s-Tour planning to the multioption concept of Lewis-and-Clark planning.

When allowed to persist for even a fraction of one PLT, Cook’s-Tour planning adversely impacts on the design of military hardware, usually restricting its usefulness severely. Furthermore, the degree of restriction increases as PLT’S grow longer. Extrapolated to a logical conclusion, the ultimate result could be fully as damaging as the French experience with the Maginot Line in World War II.

Because of the extreme flexibility required of tactical air forces, this tendency toward institutionalization of conceptual rigidity ring periods of inaction is particularly detrimental to both their effectiveness as operational force and their credibility as a deterrent. Because tactical air forces necessarily operate on an “anyplace, anytime” basis, they occupy themselves during interwar periods by updating their capabilities and maintaining proficiency in a wide variety of technical skills. In the absence of the empirical facilities laboratory that active warfare provides, it becomes the responsibility of planners and analysts to anticipate which of these basic skills and capabilities will be pertinent at any given time, and too often in the past this anticipatory function has been found wanting. In view of the stated economic constraints, the United States literally cannot afford failure of this sort in the future.

Understanding the nature of the opposition is another critically important dimension of the long-term planning problem. In the past, forecasting difficulties have been compounded by ignorance or misinterpretation of the nature of the threat, represented primarily at present by the Soviet Union and its allies,14 a circumstance which, if permitted to occur in today’s complex military environment, would probably negate long-term planning efforts altogether. Presently the Soviets appear to be pursuing an integrated grand strategy of gradual erosion of Western power through political, economic, ideological, and military attrition, typified by their activities in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. Such a strategy poses a difficult problem for national and military policy-makers committed to a strategy of deterrence. There is also the question of how much effect United States policy initiatives have on Soviet actions and vice versa. There are indications that this reactive effect is significant.15 If so, it is imperative that the implications of this effect be assessed correctly and considered at all levels of United States planning. The assessment and consideration are particularly important in forecasting the evolution of those portions of the military force structure most likely to be affected by enemy reaction, for example, tactical air forces.

the problem of tactical economics

The economic problem confronting the Air Force has two distinct aspects. The first and most obvious is the direct impact of reduced military purchasing power. As noted earlier, inflation, budget cuts, increasing technological costs, general scarcity of raw materials, growth of personnel-related expenditures, and a variety of other factors all contribute to the Air Force’s present economic difficulties. In view of the requirement to give priority to strategic forces,16 it seems likely that tactical air forces will bear the brunt of future force reductions, as has been the case during both earlier postwar periods. The total effects of such reductions are magnified by the diseconomies of reduced production and procurement rates for weapon systems. Fixed production costs must be distributed over a smaller number of finished products when production funds are cut, causing the price per unit to rise. In this manner a given funding reduction can produce a more-than-proportional reduction in net output. Very little of this sort of arithmetic is required to create a destructive impact on the capability of tactical air forces.

But there is another, far more damaging effect that derives from the combination of escalating technological costs and economic inflation. After a weapon system is purchased, its replacement cost increases under these twin pressures until in certain cases it becomes so high that later replacement of destroyed or damaged systems is not economically feasible. Thus the affected systems assume the status of national resources, in that their unit replacement costs become disproportionately high in relation to the system’s replacement value. Examples of aircraft that have attained this status are the C-141, B-52, and F-106; the F-14, F-15, and C-5 seem likely soon to join them. The net result is a perceptible hesitancy to commit the affected system to any combat situation where the risk of its loss appears high, unless U.S. vital interests are perceived to be at stake. Clearly there are a number of qualifications to this principle. Older systems generally grow to be regarded as expendable as they approach the end of their useful service life spans and follow-on systems take their place. Strategic systems, too, tend not to be affected by this phenomenon because they are, for the most part, expressly intended for use in support of vital interests.*

Yet consider the effects on tactical air forces: if the proportions of high- and low-cost systems are not balanced properly, there is a distinct possibility of pricing tactical air forces out of their primary role. Any noticeable reluctance to commit tactical forces in support of less-than-vital national objectives would produce a significant lack of credibility in the U.S. tactical deterrent posture. If suitable alternatives for the affected systems are unavailable for defense of less-than-vital national interests, the resultant gaps in tactical deterrent capability tend to invite coercion.17

*However, the distinction between tactical and strategic air forces is becoming less distinct. A case in point is the use of B-52s in a conventional role when the bombing of Hanoi was resumed in December 1972.

the problem of continuity of effort

Because of the necessarily abstract and conceptual character of force structure design, it is relatively easy to lose track of the central issue in tactical force design: the need for continuity. U.S. tactical forces must be designed to provide a continuous and credible spectrum of military capability in support of national policy, a spectrum spanning the entire range between national economic sanction and the use of nuclear force. Thus national interests and national military capability can be viewed as parallel continua, related by the concept of deterrence. Theoretically, the primary goals of a policy of deterrence in the nuclear age are (1) to prevent conflict altogether; or, failing that, (2) to contain conflict at the lowest practicable level (thereby deterring escalation of conflict); or, failing that, (3) to deter allout nuclear war.18 Deterrence, therefore, is as applicable after initiation of hostilities as before, and it remains an important and active concept along a continuum of conflict that parallels national interests and military capability. Practically speaking, such an argument makes a case for flexible tactical forces able to deter conflict or escalation of conflict on any level.

Gaps in tactical capability, however, may develop in several ways. As noted already, the problem of tactical economics can lead to a discontinuity at the lowest end of the tactical spectrum in the event that the least-expensive tactical options grow too costly. Allowing specific tactical capabilities to degenerate—either in terms of numbers of available systems able to provide a particular capability or in the design of follow-on systems—can produce an equivalent discontinuity at an intermediate level by requiring the use of inappropriate or prohibitively expensive weapon systems as substitutes. At the uppermost end of the tactical spectrum a third type of discontinuity may be caused through failure to match an improved enemy capability or technological breakthrough, thereby placing U.S. tactical forces at a qualitative disadvantage.

Any time such gaps are allowed to develop in U.S. tactical capability, the possibility exists for enemy coercion on corresponding levels of national interest. Lacking a response capability at the level of the coercive attempt, the nation would be faced with a decidedly unpleasant choice: either accept the additional costs involved in escalating national military response to the next higher level of capability available in the national tactical inventory or simply allow the coercion to proceed. The grim relevance of tactical economics in this regard has recently been demonstrated in the fall of Cambodia. A significant factor in the decision to terminate U.S. military aid to the Khmer Republic was the expense involved. Saigon suffered the same fate for similar reasons. As for these latter types of gap, the Arab-Israeli war of October 1973 is perhaps the best recent example. The air arm of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), although vastly superior to its opposition by virtually every qualitative measure, was nonetheless limited in the total quantity of its resources. Faced with a numerically overwhelming Soviet-assisted Arab attack, Israeli Air Force leadership deliberately and characteristically chose largely to ignore Arab counter air efforts in favor of providing close air support to the Israeli army.19

Furthermore, the IDF had been slow to develop countersystems for Arab/Soviet (air defense) weapon systems which, as a result, proved so successful during this latest war.20

The IDF lost a total of 115 aircraft during the 18-day war, including nearly one quarter of their tactical strike forces—losses they could ill afford.21 The Arabs, on the other hand, with the help of massive Soviet aid and materiel assistance, felt nowhere near the same proportional impact, although they suffered an exchange ratio that would make a rational man cringe.22

From the Israeli point of view, of course, the October War involved national survival; accordingly, the decision to accept whatever losses would be necessary was a foregone conclusion. From the United States’ position, however, the question of whether or not to provide replacement airframes from among its own resources must have represented a far more difficult choice. More to the point, consider the United States’ dilemma had it been the primary actor in an equivalent tactical situation where the issues at stake were less than vital. In either situation the resulting proposition is uncompromisingly straightforward: any time an enemy elects to test a discontinuity that has been allowed to develop in the spectrum of United States tactical deterrence, that nation must choose whether deliberately to escalate its response to compensate or to abandon whatever interests are involved.23 An austere environment tends further to compound this sort of dilemma. It is conceivable that the element of choice may be taken away entirely; lead time/response time ratios are presently so great that the misjudgments and miscalculations of today may well prove impossible to recoup tomorrow. Such missteps must be anticipated early, so that timely action may be taken to prevent them. For tactical air forces in times of peace, this anticipatory responsibility logically devolves upon the long-term planning function.

So the argument has come full circle, from long-term planning through tactical economics to continuity of effort and back to long-term planning again. What seems to be required is an approach to tactical air force development that is at once broad enough in scope to include all three problems simultaneously and carefully balanced so that each is maintained in proper perspective relative to the other two.

Some Suggestions

Although the following considerations involved in the design of capable and effective tactical air forces are necessarily presented as relatively distinct sets of recommendations, each set interacts with the others to a considerable degree. One must therefore take care to keep in mind that, like the problems to which they relate, these sets of suggestions constitute a system in the sense that a change in anyone area affects the remaining two.

long-term planning considerations

In peacetime, advance planning constitutes the primary way of deciding what tactical air forces of the future should be and what they should be able to do. During periods of inaction, a coordinated, centrally directed program for progressive and systematic improvement of tactical air capabilities is vital. What is needed is an approach that centers around deriving maximum utility from our present force structure while preserving adequate research and development options for the uncertain future (essentially, Lewis-and-Clark planning). The ongoing dialogue between Tactical Air Command and the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command is a firm step in the right direction. While the United States presently enjoys a significant technological advantage over its potential opponents, in order to maximize the positive effects of this advantage both developmental guidance and a performance yardstick are required. In the absence of actual warfare as a stimulus, a combination of conceptual thought, doctrine, and accurate threat analysis must be relied upon to supply both. Such an effort would necessarily involve the following specific considerations.

Figure 2 (left). Event-motivated cycle of cause and effect


Figure 3 (below). The place of concepts, doctrine, and threat analysis in the cause and effect cycle

*In particular, long-term commitment must be given to the area of alternate energy source research. Energy constraints are presently the greatest single limitation to the effectiveness of tactical are forces.

·         Finally, greater emphasis must be placed on threat analysis and anticipation of probable enemy developments and capabilities. This emphasis should extend well into the area of opponents’ military philosophy and grand strategy. In particular, attention should be given to understanding and taking advantage of the Soviet military decision-making process. As Secretary Schlesinger observed,

More allowance can be made in future work for the alteration over time of opponents’ objectives and strategies (partially in response to our own moves) and for our own adaptation to those anticipatable, if not predictable, changes in behavior.25

If tactical threat analysts can become sufficiently adept at this adaptation process, perhaps the very way in which future tactical weapon systems are developed could be structured to produce costly and inefficient responses on the part of our opponents, thereby reducing their total military capability while preserving for the United States both initiative and a multioption national strategy.

tactical economics

As tactical forces have little advance indication of where or under what conditions they may be employed, necessity drives them toward more flexible capabilities. Yet the increasing scarcity of resources available to their operation, maintenance, and replacement dictates economizing. These conflicting requirements can only be resolved by creating a balanced force within which the individual elements are mutually supporting and play multiple roles. A wide qualitative and quantitative range of tactical weapon systems that reinforce one another can in fact produce a sort of synergistic effect where capability is multiplied by virtue of flexibility; this is the idea behind the HI-LO mix concept. At present this concept appears to be most promising. Care must be taken, however, to preclude the LO end of the mix from becoming so expensive or few in number that its employment in support of less-than-vital national objectives cannot be risked. From this basic consideration follow certain specific recommendations:

First, tactical air force leadership should strongly advocate a maximum initial purchase of F -15 airframes. Despite its expense, it appears to be the only aircraft that has the performance characteristics and sophistication necessary to support the HI end of U.S. counterair forces, a consideration that more than justifies its price. The F-15 can be expected to remain competitive in the tactical air environment at least until the turn of the century (barring a major technological breakthrough), and the present opportunity to procure airframes is unlikely to recur. In view of the national economic and political climate, a 15- to 25-year retention of both the F-15 and the F-l11 should be anticipated (again, barring a technological breakthrough).

Second, with the HI end of the mix thus secured, the long-term area of concern should be LO-end capability, with the objective being several dependable, proven delivery systems that can be adapted as necessary to provide employment flexibility at moderate cost. (In effect, a state-of-the-art MiG-21. Perhaps the F-16 and the A-10 will be able to satisfy these conditions if their lifetime unit costs do not increase appreciably.)

Third, expanded utilization of various exposure-reducing devices is advisable in view of increasing enemy air defense capability. Examples are standoff weapon systems, guided munitions, and improved target-detection devices.26 The goal should be a night, all-weather, precision target-locating and ordnance-delivery capability. Not only can attrition be expected to be less under these conditions but the lack of such a capability constitutes a limitation to the employment of tactical air forces second only to energy constraints.

Finally, overcommitment to any single option or scenario must be studiously avoided. Remotely piloted vehicles, airborne warning and control systems, remotely piloted re-entry vehicles, electronic countermeasures, and the improved navigation and communications systems presently in development—all should be employed in combinations to help increase total tactical air capability while keeping LO-end cost to a minimum. The central consideration for design and operation of tactical air forces must continue to be the maintenance of a credible, broadly capable deterrent force in spite of diminishing resources.

continuity of effort

At the risk of ending on a pessimistic note, one must conclude that the question of how tactical air forces are to maintain a continuous and responsive deterrent capability has no easy answer. Discontinuities and shortfalls are inevitable when the philosophy of doing more with less is carried too far. To make matters worse, the United States has repeatedly exhibited a distressing tendency to rest on its technological laurels in military matters. Yet it would be a fatal mistake to relax and accept trends that appear inevitable, particularly in view of our opponents’ greatly increased activities in recent years. Accordingly, the following suggestions are intended not to provide answers but to serve as warning:

(1) The destructive effect of steady reductions in available resources may for a time be offset by such intangibles as skill, ingenuity, foresight, and perception. Thus a systematic effort to stimulate conceptual innovation at all levels of the tactical air force organization is indicated. Necessary adjuncts to such an effort would be the opening of new and meaningful channels of communication and use of advanced management techniques. Recent developments in the management field make such  a program seem entirely feasible. In addition to the many promising applications of systems analysis in technological forecasting,27 at least one technique has already been developed that reduces creative generation of new concepts to an orderly and easily understood procedure, a procedure that can be taught in a classroom.28

(2) Wars of the future are almost certain to become increasingly politicized with the passing of time while remaining essentially tactical in character. Victories will seldom, if ever, be decisive; at best they will be phase points in a larger international struggle that incorporates elements of politics, diplomacy, economics, and ideology in addition to military power. Moreover, the future is likely to become conceptually oriented to an increasing degree—an environment characterized by subtle interplay of intangible forces, where wars may be won or lost without ever being fought. In such an environment tactical deterrence becomes a long-term consideration, requiring explicit allowance for such varied contingencies as attrition at various rates and under varying circumstances, enemy technological breakthroughs, and wars in several places simultaneously. These are challenging propositions, to be sure, but they must be faced squarely if U.S. tactical air forces are to remain a meaningful factor in the international equation.

(3) Tactical air planners and analysts must recognize that the central problem facing tactical air forces during prolonged periods of inaction and scarce resources does not consist merely of individual requirements and capabilities competing for meager funds but is instead the maintenance of a total, integrated, continuous tactical deterrent capability across the broadest possible spectrum of potential threats. Because the present military environment in the United States is austere, we cannot afford to spend even a small amount of our available limited resources in vain. In this world of accelerating change, parochialism equates to failure; let us not be guilty of building an aerospace equivalent of the Maginot Line.

TAKEN TOGETHER, the problems and suggestions presented in this analysis indicate the need for a radical change in national perspective. As was previously observed, the United States has an unfortunate history of complacency during times of peace, and it would be all too easy to forget that the present superiority of United States tactical air forces is the product of past commitment—a sustained and dedicated effort driven by a decade of continuous warfare. So to forget would be the gravest of errors. It is the peculiar nature of our rapidly changing world that actions taken today will determine the fate of the United States perhaps ten or twenty years hence. Considering present adverse military, economic, and technological trends in terms of this relatively long-term view, one could conclude that the outlook for United States tactical air forces is far from auspicious. Reversal of these trends will require articulate, logical, and convincing advocacy of a realistic long-term national security policy, one that explicitly recognizes the importance of tactical deterrence in the complex environment of international politics.

Such a profound change in national perspective cannot be accomplished overnight, nor can it be brought about by the efforts of Air Force leadership alone. In a very fundamental sense the fate of United States tactical air forces lies in the hands of those individuals who collectively comprise them. Those who are most intimately concerned with tactical air forces and who best realize the magnitude of the issues involved must themselves take the longer view and communicate it to national policy-makers and to the American public. Concurrently, these same individuals must undertake to sustain U.S. tactical air capability at the highest possible level, holding at bay the debilitating effects of inaction and austerity. It is a profound commitment and a heavy burden. Robert Frank Futrell expressed it well in his conclusion to Ideas, Concepts, Doctrine:

. . . men who believed and thought and lived in terms of air power were the makers of the modern Air Force. . . . Without a similar belief and thought and dedication to aerospace power on the part of the men and women of the modern United States Air Force, the future survival of the United States could well be in jeopardy.

Air Command and Staff College

Notes

1. James R. Schlesinger, Address before the Economic Club of New York (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense/Pubic Affairs), January 22, 1975.

2. Henry A. Kissinger, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, abridged ed., (New York: W. W. Norton, 1969), p. 24.

3. Lieutenant Colonel Edward O. Stillie, “Tactical Air Employment—Current Status and Future Objectives,” Air University Review, November-December 1967, pp. 50-61; Colonel William L. Gray, The Case for Combining SAC and TAC (Maxwell AFB, Alabama: Air University, March 1957), p. 20, Colonel Arvis L. Hilpert, Do We Need a Tactical Air Command? (Maxwell AFB, Alabama: Air University, March 1957), pp.28-29.

4. Eugene Rabinowitch, “Atomic Weapons and the Korean War,” Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, July 1950, p.194 ff.

5. Kissinger, p. 39.

6. Stefan T. Possony and J. E. Pournelle, The Strategy of Technology: Winning the Decisive War (Cambridge, Massachusetts: University Press of Cambridge, Inc., 1970), pp. 11-12.

7. Alternative Future World Contexts: Phase I Report to an Improved Approach to Air Force Long Range Planning, USAF Directorate of Doctrine, Concepts and Objectives, DCS/Plans and Operations, Washington, D.C., 1 August 1974 (hereafter cited as Alternative Future World Contexts).

8. Ibid., pp. 9-10.

9. Colonel Robert H. Reed, (The Six Man Group), CSAF Six Man Group White Paper on Deterrence, Maxwell AFB, Alabama, 21 November 1974. This white paper, in somewhat abridged form, appeared as “On Deterrence: A Broadened Perspective” in Air University Review, May-June 1975, pp. 2-17.

10. Lt. Gen. Otto J. Glasser, “Shaping the Future; “ Air University Review, November-December 1970, p. 4.

11. Alterative Future World Context, pp. 1-2.

12. James R. Schlesinger, Selected Papers on National Security, 1964-1968 (Santa Monica, California: The RAND Corporation, September 1974, P-5284).

13. Ibid., p. 58.

14. Ibid., p. 24.

15. Ibid., p. 25.

16. Reed, p. 9.

17. Ibid., p. 15.

18. Ibid., pp. 10-12.

19. “SA-6 Effectiveness in Mideast War ‘Exaggerated,’ House Panel Says,” Aerospace Daily, 14 December 1973, p. 243.

20. Kenneth S. Brower, “The Yom Kippur War; “ Military Review, March 1974, p. 33.

21. Ibid., pp. 25, 26.

22. “Egyptians Say Their SA-6s Are ‘Primitive’ Compared to Russia’s;” Aerospace Daily, 18 December 1973, p. 261.

23. Reed, p. 25.

24. Schlesinger, Selected Papers, p. 125.

25. Ibid., p. 35.

26. William P. Schlitz, “Aerospace World,” Air Force Magazine, March 1975, p. 25. 

27. Major Joseph P. Martino, “Forecasting the Progress of Technology,” Air University Review, March-April 1969, pp. 18-19.

28. Colonel W. H. Wise, The Future of the Tactical Air Force and Its Employment, Maxwell AFB, Alabama, Air University, February 1948.

Contributor

Major Gordon A. Long ( USMA; M.S., University of California, Berkeley; M.P.S., Auburn University) is an Air Operations Staff Officer, Tactical Air Warfare Center, Eglin AFB, Florida. He has been an F-4 aircraft commander since 1969, an instructor pilot since 1971, and has served in a variety of staff positions at wing and squadron level. He is a 1975 graduate of Air Command and Staff College.

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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