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In 1968, in the face of the very mediocre results obtained by the US Air Force in Vietnam during Operation “Rolling Thunder” (the bombardment of North Vietnam from 1965 until 1968), Commander Frank Ault, US Navy, was assigned to conduct a study. The result was the 1969 “Ault Report”, which recommended significant changes in air combat tactics. The report’s findings seemed to dictate, as self-evident, modifications in the equipment itself, as well as changes in the employment of tactical air forces. Specifically, Ault found:
• The US F-4 combat aircraft, the main USAF and USN fighter, was heavy, lacked maneuverability compared to the enemy’s MIG-19 and MIG-21 aircraft, and possessed inadequate armament for air combat (lack of a fixed cannon, a shortcoming that began to be corrected as from 1967 with the addition of a pod with a 20 mm cannon and with the arrival of the F-4E, the USAF version of the F?4, equipped with a fixed 20 mm cannon).
• The pilots were trained in accordance with rigid rules, providing little freedom of action for the pilot, and none at all for dogfight air combat tactics -- situations in which the Americans had sustained their major losses.
The Ault Report resulted in an immediate modification in the training of US Navy pilot training, with the activation in 1970 of the famous Top Guns training facility at the Miramar Naval Air Station. The USAF rapidly followed suit with the 64th Fighter Weapons Squadron, the Aggressor Squadron, at Nellis Air Force Base, part of the USAF Weapons School. When the air campaign against North Vietnam resumed in April 1972 (Operation Linebacker), the ratio of air combat losses showed a substantial change, especially for the naval air forces (the Navy went from a ratio of one aircraft lost against 2.75 North Vietnamese aircraft in 1965-68 to a ratio of one aircraft against 10.25).
These events had significant consequences. They decisively influenced American military-industrial thinking, by confirming the choices for the F-14 and F-15 aircraft, and by orienting the doctrine leading to the F-16 and F-18 aircraft. All these aircraft enjoy extremely high acceleration capability and high maneuverability. These aircraft -- especially the F-16 and the F-18 -- were built in accordance with Frank Ault’s suggestions, and they obviously involved a recognition of the role of the pilot, whose freedom of action in dogfight air combat and whose tactical engagement in general were recognized as essential in terms of visualization, identification, engagement and destruction of the enemy. It represented a step back, compared to the fifties and the sixties, when blind confidence was given to linear speed and stand-off engagements via radar and using guided missiles. These doctrines triumphed in the seventies and eighties and were often contrasted with Soviet or Warsaw Pact (WP) doctrine. A key criticism of the Soviet approach was directed against the centralized control or Ground Control Intercept (GCI), which left very little freedom of action to WP pilots. The decisive contest between these competing doctrines took place in the Middle East in the course of the Israeli?Syrian June 1982 conflict in the al-Biqa’ Valley in Lebanon: on the Israeli side, the Western doctrine of pilot freedom of action flying highly maneuverable aircraft (F-15 and F-16 primarily), and benefiting from general information on the battlefield which they would make appropriate use of; on the Syrian side, strict GCI control left pilots no room for initiative. The Biqa’ Valley was the scene of the greatest air battle the world had known since 1945. The Israelis shot down 82 Syrian aircraft, against 3 downed Israeli aircraft. A new page was written in the history of combat aviation.
And there matters lay... The Gulf War was of no real utility for tactical lessons -- so great was the effect of the initial disorganization of the Iraqis and the success of the allied/US offensive in preventing any serious air battle from ever developing. The power of the initial strategic strike, with the destruction of the enemy air defense system, excluded any possibility of a real tactical battle. Since then, it has been learned that the “Iraqi model” constitutes more an exception than a model, i.e. not only does the tactical dimension continue to matter, it constitutes the key element in any military operation.
Thus we come to Kosovo. The characteristics of the campaign are its duration, the diversity of its phases (strategic and tactical), the difficulties encountered, and finally, the, at best, mixed results obtained despite the general appearance of total victory. It is, in any event, a clear example of what the air battle has today become, especially for Western forces, and especially for American forces.
A general observation, according to a remark by a French pilot who participated in the operation, was that “the Allied air forces operated in accordance with very advanced integration procedures. Every mission was totally controlled by the electronic battle management centers -- either AWACS or J-STARS. For example, each target identification by an Allied pilot was relayed to the AWACS or to the J?STARS which he was operating under and which was responsible for deciding what action would be taken against the target, who it would be assigned to and under what conditions, and for communicating these decisions to the aircraft selected.” The centralization and the integration went a long way in providing gounds for satisfaction. Many national contingents found themselves boxed in, either by the initial specialization decreed by NATO, or by central decisions, in limited missions where such decisions have not always been very effective. Centralization -- both centralization of command and control, as well as operational centralization, led to cumbersomeness and lack of adaptability to the circumstances. It is significant, as we have already noted (see Context No. 34, Analysis), that the French were, after the Americans, the most active and the most effective: they were, however, by virtue of France’s political position since 1966, the least integrated in the NATO organization.
Thus, in terms of command and control, today’s NATO found itself in the tactical position of yesterday’s Warsaw Pact (of the seventies), so often impugned at the time and which had been considered to have been the basis of the countervailing but superior model of the West under American leadership. It is all the more significant, all the more disturbing, since Kosovo demonstrated that -- contrary to the Gulf War, which has been confirmed as an exception -- current crises entail a major role for tactical operations. The operational objective of the war was the destruction of the Milosevic army. The successful strategic operation paralyzed Serbia which was not the objective sought; the failed tactical operations left completely intact the Serbian army and substantially contributed to the disarray and confusion in Kosovo. The situation was effectively described by a senior RAF officer at the MoD quoted in the Daily Telegraph of 25 July: “NATO did all right on the strategic level (targets such as command centers, bridges and telecommunications buildings) but exceptionally badly on the tactical level (such as tanks and groups of soldiers).” The results of the tactical campaign (in Kosovo itself) are stupefying: approximately 3 000 smart bombs fired against the Serb III Army Corps, and, according to the British, only seven actual tanks destroyed (but with over 500 decoys included in the apparent -- or “virtual” -- tanks destroyed).
What has happened for NATO, and primarily the US, to arrive at a tactical doctrine close to the one that was rightfully criticized in the Warsaw Pact twenty-five years earlier? The answer can be reduced to two words: bureaucracy and electronics.
The centralization of the Warsaw Pact was ideological and was modeled on the Soviet paradigm, with its enormous police infrastructure (the Cheka, which became the GPU, then the NKVD and ultimately the KGB) and its machinery of surveillance and repression, culminating in the GULAG system of forced-labor camps. This centralization was based on the denial of the slightest confidence -- and a fortiori of the slightest autonomy -- to the citizen, in this case the pilot; this political approach totally dictated the tactical and the technical structuring of the Warsaw Pact forces. The Americans, in a totally different system, were obviously not subject to such pressures. On the other hand, the evolution of their doctrine has been dominated, since the very beginning of the US Air Force by two major concerns: maximum development of technology -- primarily electronics starting in the fifties -- and the desire to expose human lives to the dangers of combat as little as possible. These two concerns ended up by creating -- within the Washington military bureaucracy -- an ideology which reflected the prevailing political?industrial?technological philosophy and which generated a tactical doctrine in consonance with that philosophy. In order to control the situation in accordance with its ideology, the bureaucracy developed a doctrine that verges on absolute control (integration and centralization), by transferring the maximum number of functions to technology (especially electronics), with the pilot being relegated increasingly to the role of an interface tasked with verifying the sound operation of the equipment in his charge, while exposing the aircraft and himself to the least possible risk.
The result became apparent in the course of the Kosovo War. NATO’s war machine, i.e. the American war machine, is totally centralized and acts in conformity with strict planning. The massive employment of electronics -- especially in the identification of targets and in the guidance of smart bombs -- yields results in accordance with the planning. Strategically, where the targets are stationary and, for the most part, well identified (except in the case of an occasional Chinese Embassy), the outcome is satisfactory. At the tactical level, in cases where the eyes and judgment of a pilot are necessary to distinguish an immobile tank “decoy” from a moving tank (especially when the enemy is a past master in the art of camouflage), the outcome is a disaster of unprecedented proportions.
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