Air University Review, May-June 1984
Colonel Thomas A. Cardwell III
TO ACCOMPLISH theater military objectives in support of national policy requires a coherent approach to war fighting. Such an approach involves a detailed knowledge of warfare that includes military history, service doctrine, tactics, and the capabilities of one's own forces. History suggests that an important aspect of this approach is a unified command structure in which a single commander controls all forces assigned to a theater for operations. So widely accepted is this concept of unity of command that it is often viewed as a basic principle of war. A unified command structure permits combat power to be effectively directed toward an objective and redirected in response to contingency requirements, thus ensuring concentration of combat power against the enemy and increased flexibility.
In the U.S. military context, forces are allocated to theater commands to accomplish combat missions based on their ability to contribute to the overall effort. These assigned forces are divided into functional components--land, air, and sea--and placed under commanders who are responsible to the unified or joint force commander.
Although all U.S. services claim to accept the unity of command principle, we have been unable to develop a structure and policy that permit true unity of command. Since 1940, the concept underlying U.S. command structures has gradually evolved from a doctrine of cooperation to a doctrine of unified operations, and now, back to mutual cooperation. But mutual cooperation is not the doctrine in Joint Chiefs of Staff Publication (JCS Pub) 2, which outlines doctrine and principles formally accepted by all the military services.
In reviewing the evolution of the U.S. military's command structure and doctrine for joint and combined operations since 1940, I would argue that we have failed to achieve true unity of command. Furthermore, when one examines current service philosophies, it appears that these philosophies thwart efforts to achieve unity of command as required by JCS Pub 2.
World War II was a turning point in the development by the United States of a unified organization for theater war, as it was the first time the United States used the unified approach to war fighting.1 When the war started, the United States did not possess a unified command structure. In the event of war, the services were expected to cooperate voluntarily; this was known as the doctrine of mutual cooperation.2 However, the United States had the option to invoke the doctrine of unity of command if cooperation proved inadequate.3
By early 1942, it was apparent to many military leaders that the doctrine of mutual cooperation would not work under the pressure of war. Thus, in the spring of 1942, overall command of the Pacific Ocean area was vested in the Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet. At nearly the same time, General Douglas MacArthur was placed in charge of a second unified command, with responsibility for the Southwest Pacific area. Some months later, in the European theater, the British Chiefs of Staff recommended a command structure along the lines of the U.S. unity of command doctrine. The Combined Chiefs soon established a unified command arrangement for the 1942 Allied invasion of North Africa and approved a unified command structure for the European theater.4
The unified command structure that was developed in Europe during World War II placed the combined allied armies, navies, and air forces under a single commander in each of two European theaters. Within the combined armies structure, separate commanders were named for land and air forces. This structure became the foundation for three important developments in the U.S. command structure for theater warfare: it confirmed the unity of command doctrine, laid the groundwork for a separate air force, and established a model for the unified command structure.
In 1947, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) proposed a reorganization of the U.S. military. The National Security Act of 1947 embodied some of the JCS recommendations and provided for the unified direction of the armed forces and for their integration into an efficient team of land, sea, and air forces. Additionally, this act created three military departments (Department of the Army, Department of the Navy, and Department of the Air Force), established the Air Force as a separate service, and formally recognized the unified command structure. In 1949, the National Security Act of 1947 was amended to give the Secretary of Defense direct authority and control over the services.5
Associated with these developments in the postwar era were discussions of military command structures, as the newly created military departments attempted to develop a workable command arrangement for theater war. Each service had its own view of how to make the command organization function. Against this backdrop, the United States entered the Korean conflict in 1950.
Early in the war, General Douglas MacArthur, Commander in Chief, United Nations Command, did not organize his forces along the lines of the approved unified command structure.6 Basically, the United Nations Command did not have a naval, land, or air component.7 Soon General MacArthur recognized that the command arrangement he had developed was not operating as he desired; he then established a land component command and directed the other two components, Far East Air Forces and Naval Forces Far East, to provide the air and naval support that he, as theater commander, required.8
MacArthur's Korean structure set the stage for the first full-scale experiment with a true unified command structure having three components. There were problems, for the Navy would not put the naval air assets involved in supporting the land war under the control of a single air component commander, preferring instead to "coordinate" its air operations with those of the Air Force. However, on the whole, the unified command system proved an effective means to control theater-assigned assets.9 The Korean War provided the conceptual foundation for the control of operational theater forces in Vietnam.
Between the Korean and Vietnam wars, there was relatively little discussion of command and control of theater-assigned assets. One major development during this time, however, was the Defense Reorganization Act of 1958, which separated the forces of the unified and specified commands from the military departments and stipulated that operational control over all combat-ready forces would be exercised by unified and specified commanders. When theater operations were required, the services were to provide forces to a theater organization that would be commanded by a single commander.
The Vietnam experience provided another opportunity to achieve a unified command structure. During the early stages of our Vietnam involvement, the structure used to control activities in Vietnam was the Military Advisory Group (MAG), which was established on 17 September 1950. In 1955, the MAG was redesignated the Military Assistance Advisory Group, Vietnam, which supervised U.S. military activity that was limited to organizing and training Vietnamese units. This organization lasted until the early 1960s.
In 1962, the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, known as MACV, was formed. MACV was an operational headquarters and had the staff elements needed to direct military operations. Soon the Army and Air Force began to argue that MACV should be a theater unified command with land, sea, and air components. The Navy opposed such an arrangement and argued that the Pacific Command (PACOM) should provide the unified command structure for Vietnam, with the Commander in Chief, Pacific, controlling all forces assigned to Vietnam.10 The result of all this was an incredibly complex command structure in Vietnam. At the top of the structure was the Pacific Command, the unified command with three components: Pacific Air Forces; Pacific Fleet; and U.S. Army Pacific. The U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam was a subunified command, subordinate to Pacific Command: the MACV commander was responsible for the U.S. war e fort in Vietnam, yet PACOM controlled most of the air campaign against North Vietnam. Further, the MACV air component commander did not exercise operational control over B-52s taking part in the war, and during most of the conflict he had no authority over Marine air units based in South Vietnam. The commander, MACV, had no continuing operational control over 7th Fleet units operating off the coast of North and South Vietnam, and he had no authority over South Vietnamese forces.11
This command structure soon proved unworkable, and some senior military leaders began to argue for a single, simplified command structure to handle the expanding war. With the war spreading into Laos, new questions about command relations arose. In an effort to resolve these matters, the Army recommended that all forces in Vietnam and Thailand be placed under the commander of MACV. The Navy disagreed with this idea.12 After four years of discussion, the Joint Chiefs of Staff decided not to change the command structure but simply to realign some of the forces.
The issue of a single manager for air and questions about the command structure were raised in 1967. In 1968, the Deputy Secretary of Defense directed that Marine air assets based in South Vietnam would come under the control of the Air Deputy, MACV.13
In spite of considerable efforts to resolve command issues, numerous command problems remained until the Vietnam War officially ended in 1973. Since then, the services have confronted the issue of unified command in other situations, notably in the creation of the Rapid Deployment joint Task Force and the debate over the control of tactical air assets in theaters of operations. But we still do not have a command structure reflecting the philosophy in JCS Pub 2. A major reason for this continuing failure is conflicting service philosophies.
JCS publications provide guidance for the U.S. conduct of theater war. The basic principle of these publications is unity of effort, the idea that effective military operations require the combined activities of land, sea, and air forces. This combination of activities is accomplished through unity of command, which is provided through a unified command structure. Thus, when two or more services are required to accomplish a specific military objective, they are employed as a team under the direction of a single commander. The unified commander has operational command of these forces and exercises this command through his component commanders.14
While all of the services formally acknowledge the principle of unity of effort, each service applies the principle in accordance with its own service perspective. A basic difference that surfaces centers on how one defines the components that are integrated into the unified command. The Army and Air Force believe that the functional components (air, land, and sea) should be the basic elements of a theater organization--land forces would come under the land component, air forces under the air component, and naval forces under the naval component. However, the Navy and Marine Corps believe that service components (USA, USN, USAF, USMC) should be the basic building blocks of the theater structure, which means that control of air assets would be divided among the Marines, the Navy, and the Air Force.
Another important area of disagreement concerns disposition of Marine Corps forces. The Army and the Air Force believe that the Marine force should come under the naval component when involved in amphibious operations or other operations in support of naval campaigns, but they assert that Marine combat forces should be assigned to the operational control of the land and air component commanders during sustained operations ashore. The Marine Corps agrees that when operating in amphibious or naval operations its forces should come under the naval unified or naval component commander; but during sustained operations ashore, the Marine Corps believes that its forces should come directly under the theater or joint task force commander. Thus, the Marine Corps would operate as a uniservice command.15
In regard to control of naval air forces, the Navy has similar views to those of the Marines. According to the Navy, all naval assets, including naval aviation, should come under the naval component commander. Even when naval aviation assets are employed over the land, they should remain under the operational control of the naval component commander and operate in an in-support-of role.
THIS article began with the observation that unity of command is virtually a principle of war. In reviewing forty years of U.S. military history, however, it is apparent that U.S. Armed Forces have failed to achieve full unity of command. While all four services in today's DOD establishment formally agree with the principles of war fighting and theater organization as specified in JCS publications, they apply the principles in different manners.
True unity of command will come only when all services accept a theater perspective of war fighting. Under such a perspective, all land combat forces are employed under a single land component commander, all naval forces are employed under a single naval commander, and all air combat forces are employed under a single air component commander--with each of these commanders responsive to the overall strategy mapped out by the theater commander. The doctrine guiding the operation of this theater command structure must be that of centralized control and decentralized execution. Centralized control permits combat power to be directed toward an objective and redirected in response to contingency requirements. On the other hand, decentralized execution gives to lower-command echelons the flexibility they need to take advantage of transient opportunities offered by a rapidly changing combat environment.
Mather AFB, California
I wish to thank Major Jeffrey W. Coyle, USAF, for providing editorial assistance in the preparation of this article.
Notes
1. Command and Employment of Military Forces, Vol. II, Part C, Air War College, Extension Program, Maxwell AFB, Alabama, 1952, p. 5. See also John L. Frisbee, " New Life for JCS at Forty," Air Force, February 1982, p. 86. Frisbee states that from the late 1700s until the early 1940s the direction of U.S. forces in wartime has been a loose process called mutual cooperation. From 1903 until 1942 the Joint Army-Navy Board operated tinder the doctrine of mutual cooperation. Thus, in the early forties, we in effect had two separate command structures--one for naval forces and one for land forces. The U.S. Chiefs of Staff did not approve the doctrine of command until April 1942.
2. Frisbee, p. 86.
3. Command and Employment of Military Forces, p. 5. The doctrine of unity of command could be placed in effect by agreement between the Secretaries of War and Navy, by the commanders of the service forces, or by the President.
4. Ibid.
5. John L. Frisbee, "Command Lines for Combat Forces," Defense/81, August 1981, p. 10.
6. It is interesting to note that as early as 1946, the Joint Chiefs of Staff had issued a directive (JCS 1259/27, 11 December 1946) to theater commanders which required unified commanders to establish a joint staff to provide the specialized knowledge and advice for the employment of land, naval, and air force forces. See Robert F. Futrell, The United States Air Force in Korea, 1950-1953 (New York: Duel, Sloan and Pearce, 1961), p. 44.
7. Futrell, p. 44.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., p. 55. General Otto P. Weyland reached this same conclusion when, on 10 October 1950, he stated: "Whenever combination of Air Force, Army, and Navy are in a joint command it is essential that the Commander-in-Chief have a joint staff with proportionate representation of the services involved."
10. General William W. Momyer, USAF (Ret), Air Power in Three Ways (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1978), pp. 66-68.
11. Lieutenant Colonel John J. Land, Jr., Command and Control and Communications Structure in Southeast Asia Area (Maxwell AFB, Alabama: Airpower Research Institute, 1981).
12. Ibid., pp. 68-78. For a discussion on the Air Force point of view on unified command and the air component, see Colonel Thomas A. Cardwell III, "Managing Theater Air Assets," Military Review, May 1982, pp. 40-45. This article traces the Air Force view on single manager for air. See also General Momyer's book Air Power in Three Wars, pp. 20-68.
13. "The Single Manager Problem: The Creation of an Operational Control System for US Tactical Air in I Corps of South Vietnam during 1968," (Washington: JCS Historical Division, July 1976), pp. 1-25. Previously classified. Declassified by SM-197-81, 20 March 1981. See also General Momyer, Air Power in Three Wars, p. 82; and General William C. Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports (New York: Doubleday, 1967), pp. 335-40.
14. JCS Pub 2, Unified Action Armed Force (UNAAF), October 1974, pp. 9, 44, 46.
15. JCS Publication 1, Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, September 1974, defines uniservice command as "a command comprised of forces of a single service."
Contributor
Colonel Thomas A. Cardwell III (B.B.A., Texas A&M University; M.S., University of Southern California) is Deputy Commander for Operations, 323d Flying Training Wing (ATC), Mather AFB California. He flew 100 missions in the F-4 during the Vietnam War and also has flown the F-102, F-106, T-33, T-37, T-39, and T-43. Colonel Cardwell has served in a variety of USAF and NATO staff positions. He is a Distinguished Graduate of Air War College and a graduate of Squadron Officer School, Air Command and Staff College, and Industrial College of the Armed Forces. Colonel Cardwell is a previous contributor to the Review.
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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