Air University Review, November-December 1979

There is a cautionary tale which appears in children's books called "The Emperor's New Clothes." In it an emperor famed for his sartorial extravagance is persuaded to order a set of garments finer and more splendid than any ever seen before. These garments are costly; their price goes up even further while they are being made, and the emperor has to dig deep into the royal treasury to pay for them--in the process committing his chamberlain and his ministers to the purchase. The catch is that the garments do not exist, but the artful tailors who are supposed to be making them have let it be known that only those who are wise can see them. Eventually the emperor shows off his finery in a grand procession, parading through the streets of his capital with nothing on. His subjects gaze on in wonder, each of them persuaded by the reactions of the rest of the crowd of the splendor of the emperor's new clothes.

But what has this tale to do with close air support? Well, let us forget the emperor for a while and see. First, what is close air support? In official parlance it is: ...air attacks, requested by the ground commander, against hostile targets which are in close proximity to friendly forces and which need the detailed integration of each air mission with the fire and movement of those forces.*

This is a definition with which most of us are familiar. As definitions go it is quite a good one: clear, understandable, and seeming to leave

*This is a paraphrase of the definitions in a number of sources: TACM 2-\, ATP 33. AAFCE Manual 802.

nothing in doubt. But perhaps it is too good, for its air of certainty inclines us to accept it without question, hardly noticing that it masks a number of uncertainties and begs a number of questions. My purpose here will go beyond formal definition to take a more careful look at close air support (CAS) and see what it really is in simple, everyday terms. And since we intend to take nothing for granted, we shall begin at the beginning.

There is a war on. The army commander in one sector of the front is in a pitched battle with the enemy. The situation at this level is always a confusing one; everything is on the move, and most things are out of sight. It is difficult for a commander to know from minute to minute the position of his own troops; the position of the enemy and, in particular, their strength and intentions are often a matter of conjecture. Our ground commander is totally involved with the battle at hand. He well knows that it is a part of a larger battle and that it is supported by other echelons which reach out and back from the battlefield. But his concern is with his own segment of the enemy and with enemy targets in his area of contact. To deal with these, he has a range of weapons: machine guns, mortars, artillery, antitank and antiaircraft guided missiles, and possibly his own armour. But he could use more; that goes without saying. And he has access to more in close air support, so he calls for it. Wouldn't you?

His request for air support, if it can get through, is transmitted by radio to an air support operations center (ASOC) at a higher level of command. The ASOC is dealing with a number of similar requests and, for reasons which may already be apparent, always more requests than it can grant. The ASOC's job is to allocate the ground attack aircraft according to priorities, and that is a very hard judgment to make at this level. Understandably, each requesting commander thinks his own needs are paramount. (We shall ignore for the moment the fact that even he may be unsure of the true priority of targets within his own sector, let alone their importance in relation to the rest of the battle.) The ASOCs eventually allocate their precious ground attack aircraft to tasks. Each task accepted displaces a number of others that have to be turned down. Thus the ground commander cannot count on his request being granted, and even when it is he cannot be sure that the aircraft will get through or be Successful.

There is now a wait while the mission is passed on to the fighter squadron, the pilot is briefed, and he flies to the area where he is required. (We shall have to assume that the ground commander desists from using his own weapons while he is waiting, notwithstanding the threat that this target poses for him.) This wait is typically 30 to 90 minutes, accepting that it could be less but has been known to be more. Steps have been taken to shorten it, but beyond a certain point this can be done only at self-defeating cost. For example, one remedy which has been tried is to keep a number of CAS aircraft continuously in the air, armed up and waiting to be tasked. But measures like this are highly inefficient and, despite the lavish use of resources, still do not entirely eliminate the waiting time. The point is that it is in the nature of this operation that there will be a delay. Aircraft, unlike the ground commander's own weapons, do not have immediate response. This is simply one of their characteristics and has to be accepted. (Indeed, the whole subject of weapon characteristics is often overlooked here. All weapons have characteristics, and the trick in each case is to exploit the positive ones and avoid situations that call for the negative ones.)

Eventually our CAS aircraft arrive in the vicinity of the battle--let us say a pair of them. They are flying low and fast. Rushing past beneath them is open countryside. Possibly there are evident signs of battle, possibly not. Where in this vast expanse is the target? Well, what kind of target are they looking for? In all probability it will be isolated, because if the enemy has any sense he will not mass his forces once in contact. It will be small--a tank as seen from an aircraft is very small--and it may be on the move. It will not be exposed and may even be camouflaged or hidden by smoke, perhaps self-generated. Our aircraft cannot reconnoiter the battlefield or they will be shot down. In any case they could not locate this kind of target unaided, so they stand off to get a briefing from a forward air controller (FAC). If the FAC is back where the aircraft are, he will not be able to see the target either; for this reason he is forward and generally on the ground. From here he may be able to see the target (though if that is so, we shall forbear to ask why he has not done something about it himself). But from the ground his view is still limited so it is now increasingly the practice for him to be airborne. At first FACs flew in light aircraft, but they got shot down. So they graduated to faster piston aircraft, then to older jet aircraft like the F -100, then even to current aircraft like the pair we still have standing off awaiting instructions, and with whom the airborne FAC would now be sharing identical problems. We shall not belabor this progression except to note that the target on the ground seems to be attracting a luxurious amount of our attention and resources. Furthermore, it has become the subject of an incredibly cumbersome set of procedures. If simplicity is an unwritten principle of war, we are already violating it with a vengeance.

Our aircraft holding off are now in touch with the FAC, wherever he is, and are being briefed by radio. (Note to the enemy: no jamming please while this critical briefing is going on.) Eventually the fighters set course for the battle zone with a precalculated heading and distance to run to bring them to a point from where they may be able to see the target. This point will be about three to five miles out to allow for last-second realignment to bring the sights to bear, plus a distance equal to the release range of the weapons.

What chance do the attackers have of seeing the target in time? Many trials have been conducted to assess this, and the results can be summed up in a single word. The chances are negligible. (Readers who doubt this may check the archives for themselves.) The FAC might therefore improve upon his verbal briefing by marking the target, perhaps with smoke or in the near future with a laser beam. If the smoke is literally on the target and is not obscured by the dense pall already hanging overhead, and if the target, recognizing that it has been marked, obligingly stays put while it is being attacked given all this, then smoke can be effective. But a question arises. If the FAC is in a position to fire smoke or a laser at the target and hit it, why does he not avail himself of something with more punch, like an antitank guided missile, for example? This is an awkward question and, as with some of the preceding ones, we shall delicately step around it in order to press on with the business at hand.

At last our pair of aircraft flash into view. At this point they are very vulnerable. They are having to hold a steady aim while committed to weapon delivery and will probably have pulled up for a dive attack. (We might add that if they do not pull up but just fly through, as for a low-level delivery of a retarded weapon, their vulnerability will decrease but their chance of spotting a typical battlefield target becomes virtually nil.) We now have a blurred, menacing impression of attacking aircraft, diving for the kill in such close proximity to our own troops that only the pilot in the cockpit can see precisely where his aircraft is aiming. The air defenses of both sides, surface-to-air missiles and antiaircraft artillery, fire off in unison. If the experience of recent wars is any guide, the aircraft have almost as much chance of being hit by their own troops as by the enemy. But wait a minute. What happened to the requirement for detailed integration with the fire of their own forces stipulated in our definition? Unfortunately, the only watertight integration that would work at this stage would be to place such stringent restrictions on the rules of engagement of our own air defenses that we might as well not have any.

Let us assume though that our pilots are having a lucky day. They find the target, launch their weapons at it, pullout unscathed, and fly back to base. Leaving the target well and truly destroyed? Well, not exactly. Weapons-effect calculations show that with expected accuracies, if two aircraft each fire four pods of armour-piercing rockets at a single tank, they have a 50 percent chance of destroying it. That is another way of saying that the tank has an even chance of getting away. Of course, the estimate will vary with accuracy, type of weapon, number of attackers, etc., and this example is offered purely to give the reader some idea of the probabilities. But our calculation ignores all the other imponderables touched on previously. These are cumulative and independent of weapon type and accuracy but have just as significant an influence on the end result. When all the factors are multiplied together, we have to accept that the chance of a successful outcome is slim, the loss rate could be high, the resources we have invested are considerable, and the exchange rate is exorbitant.

By this point any soldier reading the article is becoming uneasy, maybe even indignant. The Air Force is about to let him down, talking its way out of a commitment and leaving him to face the enemy single-handed while it goes off to fight private wars of its own. Not so. But there are far more profitable ways of using our aircraft to help the Army than close air support. We need to think again about the principle of weapon characteristics. The Army's own weapons are immediate, responsive, continuous, all-weather, day/night, and cheaper than aircraft. In general they have short range, cannot be quickly redeployed, and while they are extremely accurate against line of sight and known targets, they are less so against indirect targets whose precise locations may be uncertain. Aircraft on the other hand are not as responsive, not as accurate, and not as destructive against hard, point targets. They are scarce, costly, and highly vulnerable--especially in places where the enemy's air defenses are intensive and alerted. In their favour they have surprise, an over-the-horizon capability, and enormous flexibility in their arc of employment. It follows that if we are to exploit all these characteristics to best advantage we should in principle rely on the Army's integral weapons for the contact battle and task the ground attack aircraft against battlefield targets in the enemy's rear, which the Army cannot so easily deal with itself. *

A number of advantages now accrue to us. First, we can wreak more havoc among the enemy's second echelon targets. The contact battle depends entirely on the lifelines which support it from the rear. The enemy cannot be allowed to operate these lifelines with impunity. Anything that can be done to impede and disrupt them will weaken the enemy's strength in the front line just as surely as attacks directed against the front line itself. Just as surely, but more efficiently. Targets in this area could include road and rail movement, river crossings, vehicle parks, headquarters, signals units, assembly areas, forward administrative areas, POL (petroleum, oil, and lubricants) and ammunition storage, and so on. There is no problem now of disentangling the enemy's troops from our own, for out here everything beneath is fair game. These targets could range up to 100 kilometers behind the front line (less than eight minutes' flying time), and target priorities should still be decided by the ground commander. Our attacks will have a twofold effect: in addition to destroying enemy targets we force the enemy to use concealment and dispersion and a degree of circumspection that will harass and slow him down in areas where his needs rely heavily on freedom of movement.

Second, by increasing the area over which we operate we force the enemy to spread his air

*It would be naive of us at this point not to acknowledge the quite unhelpful influence of interservice rivalries on this issue, and terms like "Army weapons" and "Air Force weapons" have acquired emotive and divisive overtones. The real issue is simply one of choosing the best weapons for the job. The conflict is with the enemy, not among ourselves. These are all "our" weapons, and aside from the needs of objective description, we should have sense enough to see them in that light.

defenses, thereby complicating command and control, reducing intensity, and reducing our vulnerability. There is an inverse square law in effect here, and the greater the area over which we range the more this dispersion works in our favour. True, our aircraft must still cross the front line, but they need not do so at points of known enemy concentration. Furthermore, as long as we were doing close air support, the enemy knew where to mass his defenses to best advantage. Without the certainty of close air support he no longer knows where they should be sited. In the event, many will be in the wrong places and, in a continuous attempt to rectify this, a portion will always be on the move. Those left at the front line will probably take a greater toll of their own aircraft than of ours.

This brings us to a final and very significant point. If our aircraft are usually not operating over our own forward troops, the Army's surface-to-air defenses could often be given virtually carte blanche rules of engagement. Imagine the vast increase in their effectiveness if, for most of the time, they were free to fire at nearly every fixed-wing aircraft making attacks in their sector. Remember that the enemy's attempts at close air support will be dogged by the same inefficiencies as would have affected our own; perhaps more so because our own troops, being in the defense, will have the benefit of better concealment. The exchange rate would swing hard in our favour, and with the accuracy of today's air defense weapons, enemy losses could be devastating.

There is one important caveat. The above considerations will apply as a general rule to the tactic of close air support. We must recognize though that there will be exceptions, situations where the use of ground attack aircraft in close support may be vital. Such situations might be, for example, an enemy breakthrough in a weakly defended front or the support of particular ground units which for one reason or another are lacking their own combat support firepower. And we have left out of the account some other atypical situations like Vietnam and the British use of close air support in the Radfan campaign the Aden Protectorate. But these cases will be the exception, not the rule.

In conclusion we return to our starting point. What now of the emperor? We have examined his raiment very closely, the warp and the weft. We cannot say that it is nonexistent, but we have to admit that the fabric is rather threadbare. Yet it is expensive, certainly not worth the money, and hardly suits the purpose for which he is buying it. But we have suggested other ways in which his investment could be turned to good advantage. Let us hope we can catch his attention before it is too late. For one day the emperor might have to go to war. And while his delusions may work for himself and even for some of his courtiers, we cannot believe that his enemies will be so indulgent.

Group Captain Ian Madelin, Royal Air Force, is RAF Adviser to the Commander at Air University (ATC), Maxwell AFB, Alabama. A graduate of RAF College of Air Warfare, he has served on fighter/ground attack squadrons in the United Kingdom. Germany, Middle East, and Far East. Group Captain Madelin has served on the faculty at RAF Staff College and presently serves on the faculty at Air War College, and he is a graduate of both colleges.

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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