Air University Review, September-October 1982
Major Stephen C. Hall
How far is 150 miles? One hundred fifty miles is roughly the distance between Atlanta, Georgia, and Birmingham, Alabama. One hundred fifty miles, as the crow flies, is all that separates New York City and Baltimore, Maryland, and, as the Flogger flies, it is all that separates USAFE air bases from Warsaw Pact countries.
United States Air Force in Europe (USAFE) aircraft charged with supporting the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) are pooled at selected bases in Western Europe. Can these air bases survive a conventional or chemical air attack by Warsaw Pact forces and still execute their assigned missions? This is a disturbing question for planners in European operations, since U.S. air bases have not been subjected to enemy attack for more than 35 years. Does the U.S. Air Force take safe and secure air base sanctuaries for granted? Has the Air Force concentrated these many years on increasing aircraft capability while ignoring air base survivability? Can USAFE really survive and fight?
USAFE aircraft in place and in reserve comprise a significant portion of NATO’s total air power, and these aircraft are tasked with performing some of the organization’s most difficult missions. The F-111 is the only aircraft that can evade complex defenses, penetrate deep within enemy territory, and accurately deliver conventional ordnance in darkness or inclement weather. The F-15 possesses exceptional beyond-visual-range air-to-air capability and thus carries a major share of NATO’s air defense burden. The A-10 is a key resource for countering the armor advantage of the Warsaw Pact. The venerable F-4 Phantom in the reconnaissance mode provides NATO with its only true capability for reconnaissance at night and in adverse weather. The fighter version of the F-4 and the new F-16 possess both sophisticated air-to-air missile systems and extremely accurate bombing capabilities.
To employ these aircraft effectively against numerically superior Warsaw Pact forces, USAFE must generate many sorties in a short time span. Although specific sortie rates for various aircraft and missions are classified, one need not be a tactical scholar to understand that many sorties per available aircraft must be flown to neutralize a three-to-one enemy advantage in both armor and attacking aircraft.1 USAFE’s challenge will be to launch the fleet with little or no warning, recover hundreds of returning aircraft, "turn" the fleet (reservice, repair, reload, and relaunch) several times each day, and sustain these surge operations for days. This is a tall order, an order that many believe USAFE may not be able to fill.
Literally hundreds of tasks must be performed during surge sortie generation, and examination of each element would require volumes. This article addresses only the most critical elements needed to launch and recover, turn, and sustain high sortie rates during combat operations by tactical aircraft. How will a conventional attack affect these three key elements?
The Achilles’ heel of launch and recovery is the vulnerability of runways and taxiways. An enemy can neutralize an air base without attacking individual aircraft: destruction of runway and taxiway strips will restrict aircraft to the ground for subsequent destruction. This comes as no surprise to Warsaw Pact planners, who consider runway destruction a high-priority task. USAFE air bases are especially vulnerable to such attacks because U.S. aircraft, except for the A-l0, do not have "off road" capability. A British Jaguar or a Russian MiG-21 can taxi off a damaged concrete runway onto a stabilized soil strip, but heavyweight F-111s, F-4s, F-15s, and F-16s are limited to operations on paved areas.
Operations restricted to paved strips present two corollary problems. First, construction of alternate or contingency strips to improve the overall survivability of runways is an inherently expensive proposition. Warsaw Pact bases rely on low-cost strips built of compressed soil for alternate launch and recovery surfaces, but USAFE does not enjoy this luxury. Second, repair of hardened surfaces is a complicated and slow process; thus, an entire squadron of aircraft could possibly be neutralized for several hours because of bomb craters at one or two key chokepoints. This prospect is both probable and unacceptable.
Even if one assumes that launch and recovery surfaces can survive a conventional attack, what about the second key element for sortie generation, aircraft turnaround? Returning aircraft must be fueled, repaired, and loaded in minimum time to support subsequent launches. Similarly, aircrews must debrief and plan their next mission.
Aircraft refueling is a particularly dangerous task. Present USAFE procedures require movement of fuel by trucks from storage tanks to individual aircraft housed in protective shelters. Though relatively safe while awaiting dispatch from their concrete garages, the trucks are completely unprotected at the storage tanks and during transit to and from aircraft shelters. An alternate method is to use fuel hydrants located on the parking ramp, but this technique completely exposes aircraft during the time required for refueling. Loading aircraft with munitions poses similar problems because munitions must be assembled at distant storage sites and transported to the flight line via vulnerable convoys. Finally, aircrews are exposed to enemy attack between missions as they transit to and from squadron facilities for mission planning. Obviously, aircraft turnaround during surge sortie generation is an extremely complex sequence requiring timely performance of a series of complicated tasks. Many of the most essential functions are extremely vulnerable to attack and thus endanger the entire process.
If one assumes for the sake of discussion that USAFE can launch, recover, and turn aircraft with sufficient survivability and speed to meet required sortie rates, can it sustain this level of operations for weeks or even months? The survivability of munitions, spares, and people— three critical sortie sustainers— poses special problems. Individual loads of munitions are vulnerable to attack during aircraft turnaround, but more serious is the vulnerability of munitions stockpiles both on and off base. Limited real estate on base forces USAFE to concentrate large quantities of munitions in a few centrally located but highly vulnerable storage depots off base. This situation is little better on base because munitions are stocked in high density, easily identifiable storage areas. Much the same conditions apply to aircraft spares. Avionics black boxes, spare engines, and other scarce, expensive parts are often centrally stored in vulnerable supply warehouses. One well-placed bomb, or one lucky "bad" bomb, could totally eliminate every spare radar set, landing gear, and generator on base. Furthermore, aircraft crew chiefs, weapons loaders, and maintenance specialists are housed during sortie generation near the highly targeted flight line in structures no more protective than one’s home. Many of these people will become casualties of direct targeting or collateral damage.
Countless peacetime exercises have shown that operations requiring sustained high sortie rates are difficult under the best of circumstances. Hundreds of complicated tasks must be properly orchestrated to accomplish the mission. When a conventional weapons attack is introduced, an inherently demanding task becomes even harder; when chemical weapons are introduced into the scenario, a none-too-rosy picture becomes even darker.
The term force multiplier in military jargon refers to some tactic or function that increases an existing capability many times over. Command and control, mobility, and a defender’s friendly terrain are often considered to be force multipliers. If these elements are, in fact, force multipliers, then chemical warfare (CW) must surely be a force divider. Chemical weapons introduce a qualitative difference into aircraft operations and can significantly degrade USAFE’s capability. Although the United States distinguishes between conventional and chemical warfare, the Warsaw Pact nations make no such distinction. They regularly exercise with chemical weapons, and they have incorporated chemical operations into their order of battle.2
Any task that is simple to perform in a clean-air environment becomes extremely difficult in the presence of toxic chemicals. Protective suits, gloves, boots, and masks currently issued to Air Force personnel protect against liquid and gaseous agents but, at the same time, severely limit one’s ability to perform essential tasks. For example, the protective suit acts as a thermos bottle that retains body heat generated during heavy exertion, decreases work efficiency, and requires frequent rest cycles for personal recovery. Tasks requiring tactile dexterity (stringing arming wire on bombs and adjusting electronic components) are very difficult to accomplish in the bulky rubber gloves. The rubber overboots are not only difficult to don; they tend to wear out quickly. Finally, the gas mask severely restricts rapid breathing during exertion. Performance of essential tasks in the protective ensemble will obviously be extremely difficult, and these problems are only the tip of the chemical warfare iceberg.
The problems with the protective ensemble become even more significant when one realizes that, with today’s state of the art, USAFE personnel will wear those suits for long periods. Since current technology for identifying chemical weapons is so rudimentary, a wing commander must assume that every attack includes toxic chemical agents. Thus, an unarmed enemy aircraft spewing harmless smoke over a USAFE base would automatically force that base into chemical defense and all the inherent degraded capability. Even if personnel can endure and operate in the suit for three or four hours, the basic functions of eating and using the bathroom force removal of the suit and exposure to toxic agents.
And the list of problems goes on and on. Must all chemically contaminated aircraft be decontaminated before crew chiefs and weapons personnel reservice and reload? If so, how can aircraft be decontaminated fast enough to meet any realistic sortie rate? Can a radar set from a chemically contaminated aircraft be repaired in the shirtsleeve environment of the avionics shop? Can a chemically contaminated casualty be treated without endangering other patients, doctors, and nurses? If chemical contamination is limited to one portion of a base, how can transient vehicles be prevented from spreading the contamination?3 As always, the questions outnumber the answers.
The picture is not all gloomy, however, because much has been done to improve survivability against both the conventional and chemical threat, and more improvements have appeared on the horizon. Recognizing that peacetime procedures, facilities, and equipment are ill-suited for employment in a hostile combat environment, the Air Force and USAFE have embarked on a program to improve the survivability of U.S. air power in Europe. The European NATO nations are assisting in this effort with increased emphasis on funding for critical survivability items. Important accomplishments in conventional and CW survivability have been made in the three critical areas of launch and recovery, aircraft turnaround, and sortie sustainability.
The biggest pluses on the launch and recovery scenes are the advent of alternate contingency runways and taxiways and the development of streamlined procedures for base recovery. If USAFE is limited to operations on paved surfaces, the only sure method of improving runway and taxiway survivability is to pay the price and build alternate strips, and USAFE has built such strips at several bases. To repair runway damage after attack, a concept known as base recovery after attack (BRAAT) now combines all key agencies concerned with recovery under a single base director.4 In combat conditions, the base commander will direct fire fighting and personnel responsible for explosive ordnance disposal, civil engineers, security police, and other key players to ensure the fastest possible response.
USAFE has taken several innovative actions to improve the survivability of critical links in the turnaround sequence. To protect aircraft during refueling and reduce dependence on tank trucks, USAFE is developing a prototype underground fuel pipeline to connect aircraft shelters with the fuel storage tanks. To reduce exposure of trucks and aircraft to enemy attack, operating procedures now permit tank trucks to back into aircraft shelters during refueling. Munitions survivability has been improved with the development of in-shelter storage racks for air-to-air missiles. Missiles can be delivered to aircraft shelters during safe periods to avoid the possibility of attacks on weapons convoys in transit. The installation of small personnel cubicles in aircraft shelters for aircrew briefing and rest between sorties contributes directly to the survivability of aircrews. With proper support, aircrews need not transit to and from operations facilities.
USAFE has also improved the survivability of the spare munitions and critical supply items needed to sustain sortie generation. It has not only developed procedures for dispersing spare munitions and equipment but has also built protective facilities for spare avionics components and aircraft engines. These actions improve USAFE’s chances of surviving a conventional attack and are important strides in enhancing total combat capability.
The major accomplishment in the chemical warfare arena is the realization that the chemical threat is here to stay and must be dealt with. Only five years ago, USAFE bases routinely practiced CW defense techniques for only a few hours during five-day training exercises; these token practices did little to instill a sense of imminent threat. Today, all bases generate sorties in a simulated chemical environment for six or more hours at a time. Individual bases test new ways to protect aircrews, decontaminate aircraft, and assemble munitions and fuel tanks, to mention only a few tasks. Furthermore, chemically protected facilities for squadron operations have been constructed at several USAFE bases, and other bases have been programmed for these facilities.5
Finally, recent establishment of the Survivability Systems Management Office at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, represents the first Air Force effort to address survivability from one agency specifically designed for such a task. This office will deal with the problem of surviving and fighting worldwide, analyze the many competing needs of all survivability players, and develop solutions that will enhance combat capability in the near term. Problems as varied as aircrew vision in a gas mask, explosive ordnance reconnaissance, and rapid runway repair are only a few of the areas that will be addressed by the systems management office.6
What is the final verdict in the case for and against the survivability of European air bases? Can USAFE survive a conventional or chemical attack by the Warsaw Pact and still perform its mission? Is the tremendous U.S. investment in aircraft, facilities, equipment, and people survivable enough for the task at hand? Regretfully, the answer is "maybe" at best and "absolutely not" at worst.
Despite efforts to develop alternate runways and improve capabilities for runway repair, much remains to be done. Severely cratered runways will still require extensive repair, and, with existing capabilities, the repair job will take many hours or perhaps days. Just when high sortie rates will be critical, the time required for repairing runways and taxiways may severely curtail sortie generation. Realistic remedies are not expected in the immediate future.
Survivability of the turnaround operation is only slightly more encouraging. Efforts in developing a complete capability for in-shelter turnaround will certainly go far toward protecting essential fuel, munitions, and aircrews, but because of funding constraints, these efforts may not be fully implemented for years, if at all. Without this capability, fuel, munitions, and aircrews will still be unacceptably vulnerable.
The survivability of logistics spares to sustain sortie production is no better. Although a few protected storage facilities are available, construction of such facilities is an expensive and slow process. Interim remedies, such as dispersal of critical spares, certainly improve survivability, but because of increased delivery times, dispersal also makes it more difficult to supply the flight line.
What would be the impact of chemical warfare on all of these actions? With periodic exercises, USAFE personnel have demonstrated that task efficiency and heat stress acclimation can increase, but the cumbersome protective clothing nevertheless decreases work performance. Personnel protection and the consequent degraded capability to perform critical tasks are only two of many persistent problems, however. Accurate and quick detection and identification of both liquid and gaseous agents remain as pacing issues. How can a base respond properly to a chemical attack when it cannot discriminate a real from a bogus threat, when it cannot quickly isolate the location and boundaries of the agent, and when it cannot speedily and accurately identify the agent? Hand in hand with detection is decontamination. Current decontamination procedures and equipment are antiquated, labor intensive, and use corrosive liquids. Decontamination of aircraft and ground support vehicles is a painfully slow process, limited by existing equipment and the absence of a well-developed decontamination plan. What, in fact, must be decontaminated? How should it be decontaminated? When should it be decontaminated? Who should be responsible? These are basically unanswered questions.
WHAT is the answer? Significant progress must be made in three general areas.
First, equipment must be designed and procured, and realistic defensive procedures must be developed to enable field units to defend themselves properly. For too long, survivability has been a catch-as-catch-can proposition. Runways, vehicles, avionics components, and the like must be designed so that they will function not only in peacetime but also in war. Similarly, realistic defensive procedures must be developed and tested and then implemented by every operational unit. "We’ll worry about that when the balloon goes up" is simply not an adequate response to the issue. The tendency is to think that all survivability problems can be solved simply by pouring more concrete when, in fact, many survivability problems can be solved by ingenuity, planning, and practice.
Second, the Air Force must press hard for survivability funding, and this is easier said than done. Survivability is not glamorous. It is one thing to spend U.S. dollars for shiny new airplanes whose construction and operation will employ many American workers. It is quite another thing to spend money for a survivable telephone system developed by the Dutch, purchased by the Germans, and installed in U.S. aircraft shelters in Italy. Survivability enjoys no natural constituency and thus competes at a disadvantage for scarce dollars.
Finally, the Air Force must publicize the survivability problem. Survivability is similar to insurance: one tends to ignore it for fear of having to use it. The United States may ignore the problem, but the Soviets do not. They know USAFE weaknesses and can exploit them.
The issues raised in this article are not easily resolved. The stakes are high, the penalties great, and the margin for error slim. The actions needed to improve survivability are neither cheap nor easy. Nonetheless, the military community must attack these problems in earnest to guarantee the effective operation of U.S. air power in Europe. After all, the enemy is only 150 miles away, and 150 miles is simply not very far.
Air Command and Staff College
Notes
1. "The East-West Theater Balance in Europe," The Military Balance 1978-1979 (London: The International Institute for Strategic Studies, September 1978), p. 108.
2. Lieutenant Colonel Gary Eifried, "Russian CW: Our Achilles’ Heel, Europe," Army, December 1979, pp. 24-28
3. Major Neil V. Raymond, "Is USAF Ready for Chemical Warfare?" Air Force, November 1979, pp. 100-03.
4. Hq USAFE, Program Guidance Letter on Base Recovery after Attack, 11 July 1980.
5. NATO Document, Infrastructure Program, Slice XXIX-XXXV, Brussels, Belgium: Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers in Europe.
6. Program Management Directive for Airbase Survivability and Recovery, U.S. Air Force Document RQ2015(l)/63307F, Headquarters USAF/RDQT, 18 November 1981.Contributor
Major Stephen C. Hall
(B.S., Georgia Institute of Technology and Troy State University) is Squadron Commander, 416th Field Maintenance Squadron, Griffiss AFB, New York. He has had previous assignments at 81 Avionics Maintenance Squadron, RAF, Bentwaters, United Kingdom; USAFE IG Team; and USAFE Readiness Center, Ramstein AB, Germany. Major Hall is a graduate of Squadron Officer School and 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.Air & Space Power Home Page | Feedback? Email the Editor