Air University Review, July-August 1985
Lieutenant Colonel Paul A. Reid
IN his Fire/Counterfire article, Major John Fal reminded us about our limited effectiveness as warriors when we are poorly educated in doctrine; and since the conduct of war involves more than the policies and procedures of any single job, we can't limit the career fields needing to seek out that knowledge.* All warriors need to know and understand doctrine--Air Force doctrine and that of the other services.
The senior U.S. Army school in tactics, Army Command and General Staff College, doesn't leave education in doctrine to chance. The Army's how-to-fight manual, FM 100-5, Operations, serves as the foundation for Army service school curricula. The Army believes that its leaders must be prepared to meet a variety of operational situations and knows that these officers can conduct only operations they understand.
*
Major John W. Fal, "Deficiencies in Air Force Doctrinal Education," Air University, January-February 1985, pp. 96-98.
"Retaining the initiative" and "disrupting the opponent's fighting capability in depth" are more than buzz phrases to Army officers. They form the nucleus of the AirLand Battle, a doctrine developed to allow U.S. forces to go a step beyond averting defeat. The AirLand Battle doctrine focuses on winning, and every Air Force officer needs to understand its significance. We are expected to support operations requiring better rapport with the Army, better communications with all levels of Army organizations, and more real-time mission direction than ever before. As with other skills needed during military operations, there will be no time to learn about the AirLand Battle doctrine when we implement it in the crucible of combat. The April 1983 Memorandum of Understanding between the Army and the Air Force points out that the AirLand Battle doctrine demands more joint training, but joint training alone will not prepare the majority of us. We need to take the time to prepare ourselves. For example, it should be clear to us why the Joint Surveillance and Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS) is absolutely essential to the Air Force as a ground force support system. In addition, topics of follow-on forces attack, Army 21, integrated battlefield, deep battle, and battlefield air interdiction also speak to how the Air Force must prepare to participate in the battlefield of the future.
The AirLand Battle is Army doctrine, but it is a basis for much of the training and planning done by Air Force tactical forces. We are not an independent tactical force in the sense that there will be two battlefields, air and land, in the future. The Army corps (level of command above division) is charged with maintaining areas of interest and influence as much as 300 kilometers in front of our own troops (i.e., beyond the FLOT, forward line of own troops). That fact alone tells us the Air Force must be integrated into all corps commanders' plans. Echelons above corps (EAC) deal with enemy forces that are as much as three times farther away from the FLOT than those being scrutinized by the corps planners. Even more so, at EAC the Air Force is a key partner in the conduct of intelligence-gathering and operations. In fact, at the division level of operations, the AirLand Battle is still primarily an Air/Land Battle. Even at the brigade level, which is the command level below division and comparable in size to our wing, the battle is a balanced Land/Air Battle. The total battle includes the deep battle, as well as the close-in battle and the rear battle. But remember that total battle is fought under the concept of a single commander, and Air Force actions must complement that approach.
It is important to recognize where Air Force leaders stand in the decision-making process of the conduct of war, and it is equally important that every professional officer know why we have any particular doctrine. So it is important to ask why the AirLand Battle was proposed in the first place and why it was accepted as doctrine. Let me refer to my earlier comment about the outcome of the next war. We need a doctrine that can win against those forces we might expect to meet on the battlefield, and we need a doctrine to take advantage of the enemy's inherent vulnerabilities, the most important being the echelonment of forces.
The AirLand Battle proposes to win and to capitalize on enemy vulnerabilities. It does so by stressing the offensive and by developing plans that preemptively strike deep at enemy formations. To accomplish this mission, the commander not only must know where those deeply placed enemy units are but also must have the means to attack them. JSTARS allows the commander to "view" the ground much as AWACS is designed to "view" what takes place in enemy airspace. The commander who knows where enemy forces are and understands their likely intentions could then disrupt, delay, and even destroy those forces before they reach the forward edge of the battle area (FEBA). By so doing, the commander would multiply the relative combat power at the critical point of contact. The enemy's freedom of action would be limited or eliminated. No longer would U.S. forces simply react to onslaughts of echelons. They would prey upon the echelons, well forward of the FEBA, deep in the enemy's own territory. The U.S. forces would then be able to seize the initiative, to take the battle to the enemy, and to win.
The AirLand Battle is doctrine for winning, a doctrine to suggest how we buy future weapon systems, a doctrine to define parameters of operational requirements that must be understood by operators, logisticians, and everyone else who has a role in how a next war might be fought. It is a doctrine worthy of our study.
Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio
Contributor
Colonel Reid is a faculty member of the Air Force Institute of Technology School of Systems and Logistics.
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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