AirLand Battle was the overall conceptual
framework that formed the basis of the
US
Army's European warfighting doctrine from 1982 into the late
1990s. AirLand Battle emphasized close coordination between land
forces acting as an aggressively maneuvering defense, and air
forces attacking rear-echelon forces feeding those front line enemy
forces. AirLand Battle replaced 1976's "Active Defense" doctrine,
and was itself replaced by the modern "
Network-centric warfare".
DePuy Reforms
For much of the 1950s and early 60s the US warfighting doctrine was
based on the use of nuclear weapons. Air forces were the primary
delivery mechanism of these strikes, relegating land forces to a
secondary role of briefly holding terrain while the nuclear strikes
took their toll. It was expected that any attempt to concentrate
forces for conventional land attack would only invite a nuclear
strike against them, so if the Army was to play a role they would
have to be dispersed and able to rapidly concentrate. The US Army
attempted to adapt to this battlefield with their
PENTANA concept, but found little interest and were
constantly underfunded in their attempts to produce the more mobile
force PENTANA demanded.
The
Vietnam War demonstrated that not
only was a very real role for conventional armed forces, but also
that focus on the European theater as the basis of any future
conflict was obviously misplaced. As the war in Vietnam wound down,
the US Army started studying their organization and structure,
looking for ways to better align it with real-world conflicts. In
1973 they formed the
U.S. Army Training and
Doctrine Command (TRADOC), under the direction of General
William E. DePuy, to study these issues and produce
better doctrine for their forces.
TRADOC concluded that there were two main possibilities for future
conflicts, a major armored conflict in Europe, or a primarily
infantry fight in other locations around the world. The later
possibility led to the ill-fated
Rapid Reaction Force. The former was
more problematic given the Warsaw Pact's massive numerical
superiority, especially given the ending of
Selective Service.
When the
Yom Kippur War broke out in
1973, it demonstrated a new lethality of conventional weapons,
especially the
anti-tank guided
missile (ATGM). The new vulnerability of tanks, combined with
the improved defensive power of the infantry, led to a revolution
of thought within the US Army – that a war in Europe was winnable
with conventional weapons. Impressed by the new weapons, DePuy
started the process of re-arming the heavy divisions with weapons
that would dramatically improve their firepower.
In DePuy's view, firepower had increased so much that war would be
won or lost almost immediately, in the first few massive battles.
Whereas the conventional response to armored attack,
defense in depth, required the defending
forces to be spread out to avoid the armor concentrating and
overrunning them, with ATGMs the opposite was desired, destroying
as many tanks as possible as quickly as possible in order to
disorganize any attempt to form a spearhead. As Field Manual 100-5
noted, "The US Army must above all else, prepare to win the first
battle of the next war."
Since forces from the rear could not move forward quickly enough to
take place in the titanic battles being envisioned, everyone had to
be placed as close to the front lines as possible. The result was a
new battlefield organization that moved the vast majority of US and
allied forces much closer to the border between East and West
Germany, in what became known as "forward defense". As
reinforcements from the US could play only a minor role, the war
was a "come as you are" affair. Air power was key; as the battle
increased in tempo and the Soviet forces attempted to break through
the defenders, channels would naturally form that would be attacked
by air.
One problem that was noted soon after the introduction of the 1976
Operations was the problem of how to deal with the enemy's
reserve forces in the rear. There was the possibility that the US
could win the first battle, only to meet a second unattrited
reserve force soon after. A solution to this problem was not
immediately forthcoming.
Patterns of Conflict
In 1976 Colonel
John Boyd presented
"
Patterns of Conflict", a study
outlining a number of historical matchups in which the victor was
able to disrupt the "observation-orientation-decision-action time
cycle or loop" of their enemy. This, he stated, made them "appear
ambiguous (unpredictable) thereby generate confusion and disorder".
His primary example of such action was the
Blitzkrieg, where highly mobile forces were
quickly concentrated as small points and then used to force a
number of simultaneous thrusts through the front in order to hide
the real aims of the advance and confuse the enemy. The Blitz aimed
at forcing the enemy into a continuous battle of maneuver instead
of an outright fight, bypassing any strongly defended areas and
extending into their rear. In order to guarantee supply movement
and avoid being encircled, the enemy is forced to retreat in an
attempt to reform continuous defensive lines.
The traditional method of dealing with an armored breakthrough was
to pick away at its sides, forcing it to maneuver away in order to
find less-defended areas of advance. If these attacks can be set up
on both sides of the route of attack, the armored spearhead is
forced into an ever-decreasing frontage, eventually being pinched
off and losing the ability to maneuver.
The classic example of
a successful anti-blitz was during the Battle of the Bulge, where US units
repeatedly forced the German spearhead inward, eventually pinching
it off just short of the Meuse River
. However, this approach required the forces
to be deployed in depth, and the massive numerical superiority of
the Warsaw Pact was the reverse of the numbers during the Bulge.
Additionally, the concentration of low-mobility forces that formed
the channelizing groups would invite nuclear strikes.
Instead of meeting the Blitzkrieg head-on, Boyd suggested what he
called the "counter-blitz", where equally mobile forces would pick
away at the lines of thrust and then move on to the next in a
series of hit-and-run attacks. There was no necessity to retain any
sort of front line, and the attacks deliberately moved from point
to point in order to avoid being bogged down or getting trapped.
The idea was not to force the blitz to lose its ability to
maneuver, but instead upset its ability to understand where it
should be maneuvering to — the attacker would have no idea which of
these counteroffensives represented a real threat, and would have
to respond to all of them. The key idea was to "Smash blitz
offensive by inconspicuously using fast-tempo/fluidity-of-action
and cohesion of counter-blitz combat teams as basis for shifting of
forces and quick focus of air and ground effort to throttle
momentum, shatter cohesion, and envelop blitz in order to destroy
adversary's capacity to resist." The battle was less about the
weapons than it was about the ability to command them; it was
believed that the US's devolved command structure would be able to
react to changes on the battlefield more quickly than their Soviet
counterparts, overwhelming the Soviets ability to maintain cohesion
as their higher-echelon commanders became overwhelmed.
Whereas Active Defense envisioned the Army units moving from one
blocking position to another in a series of largely static
defenses, in the counter-blitz they would be far more mobile,
conducting a series of limited offensives instead. Another
difference was the role of the reserves; under Active Defense their
role was very limited and even battlefield reserves were expected
to be placed directly in the front, but under Patterns the reserves
could be introduced where and when they became available, and be
just as effective as the troops that had been there from the start.
Boyd felt that the continual pattern of harassment and shifting
positions could continue throughout a conflict, as opposed to
attempting to win the entire war at the front in a single
battle.
When Boyd introduced the concept, the Pentagon was being led by
power groups that new inductees considered hidebound and moribund.
As illustrated in "
The Pentagon
Wars", Boyd and like-minded up-and-comers formed the "Reform
Movement" and staged a revolution from within to overturn existing
chains of command and introduce new weapons and tactics across the
entire armed forces.
Extended battlefield
The major driving force in the evolution of AirLand Battle was
General
Donn A. Starry, who had taken over TRADOC from DePuy
in 1977 and had been the primary force in implementing Active
Defense. Since its introduction Starry had been attempting to find
solutions to the problems of the enemy's reserves, and had been
developing the concept of the "extended battlefield".
The extended battlefield noted that different commanders had
different views of the battlefield in geographical terms. The
brigade commander had to consider actions beyond the immediate
front lines, up to 15 km into the enemy's rear where his
artillery was operating. The division commander considered the
battlefield as far as 70 km out, while the corps commander had
a field of view out to 150 km. Starry introduced the idea that
there was not only a geographical dimension to the battlefield
organization, but a time dimension as well; the brigade had perhaps
12 hours to respond to actions, while the division had 24 and the
corps 72. It was this coordination both in space and time that
defined the extended battlefield.
The reason that the time dimension was important was the result of
studies in nuclear weapon employment at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, in
December 1979. These studies demonstrated that interdiction in the
enemy's rear could seriously delay the movements of the rear
echelon forces and create "time windows" during which the US would
have the tactical advantage. By ensuring that the command structure
was aware of the time dimension of the battlefield, they would be
better prepared to take advantage of these windows when they
occurred.
AirLand Battle
Prior to the 1970s the air forces had been seen primarily as
delivery mechanisms for tactical nuclear weapons, or for attacks on
enemy air forces. Their counterpart to FM 100-5 listed only eight
missions, only one of which required direct interaction with the
Army forces in the field.
During the Vietnam War much of the US air power had been directed
against supply buildup and movement points; roads, bridges, supply
depots and the like. Attacking these targets with conventional
weapons was an expensive process, requiring considerable amounts of
ordnance to be expended to guarantee a "hit". In the late 1960s and
early 1970s the introduction of
smart
weapons allowed conventional forces to directly attack point
targets like bridges and roads, dramatically improving the ability
to interdict the enemy, while at the same time allowing the
aircraft to operate from safer, higher altitudes. These had little
real impact during Vietnam when they were still very new, but their
potential was obvious.
Starting in the early 1970s the Air Force took its first steps at
looking at a conventional war in Europe. In late 1975,
RAND completed a study that examined the merits of
additional manned aircraft, remotely piloted vehicles, and
stand-off munitions for improving air-ground capability in NATO. A
follow-up two-day workshop at RAND studied what vulnerabilities the
Warsaw Pact might have to NATO airpower, which was followed by a
series of additional studies that clearly demonstrated their
reliance on the continued movement of supplies. Air planners were
beginning to look for ways to best employ these new weapons at the
same time Starry was working on the extended battlefield
concepts.
Starry emphasized the close coordination between the Army and Air
Force to produce an integrated attack plan that would use the land
forces in a counter-blitz while air power,
artillery and
special
ops forces stopped the movement of the reserves toward the
front line.
The result would stretch out the Warsaw
Pact's advance in time, allowing the smaller NATO
forces to
continually attrit the enemy all along the battlefield while the
reinforcements arrived piecemeal. The result was a single
AirLand Battle.
Although the focus of AirLand Battle was on conventional warfare,
it did not ignore the threat of nuclear or chemical warfare. It
suggested planning for nuclear strikes or
chemical weapons use from the beginning of
combat, using them as a threat from the start that would force the
enemy to disperse his forces or run the risk of a nuclear strike as
they concentrated. The plans did, however, suggest they only be
used if first attacked in kind.
The overall message conveyed by the AirLand Battle concept of 1981
was that the Army must leave behind the restricted notion of
winning the fight only in the traditional "main battle area."
FM 100-5
When Active Defense had been introduced in 1976 it faced a wave of
criticism, both from within the Army, and from highly influential
civilian advisers outside. Having witnessed this first-hand, Starry
took measures to ensure this would not happen a second time.
Foremost in these efforts was the early dissemination of the
concept through briefings and wide circulation of Fort
Leavenworth's draft of the new FM 100-5 in 1981. These were well
received, especially its newly offensive orientation, which it
summed up neatly with this statement:
"... once political authorities commit military forces in pursuit
of political aims, military forces must win something--else there
will be no basis from which political authorities can bargain to
win politically. Therefore, the purpose of military operations can
not be simply to avert defeat--but rather it must be to win."
AirLand
Battle became the primary NATO battleplan
in 1984. Its roll-out required upgrades to the
C3I equipment of all branches of the military, along
with similar changes in the command and control structures to take
advantage of the massive amounts of information the new C3I assets
would be generating.
Today, the Pentagon embraces a new doctrine:
network-centric warfare, made
possible by the
Digital
Revolution.
References
Notes
- Doughty, pp. 40
- Winton
- Romjue, The DePuy Reforms
- Doughty, pp. 41
- Field Manual 100-5, "Operations", US Army, 1 July 1976
- Boyd, Blitzkrieg
- Boyd, Counter-Blitz
- Lt Col Harold E. Raugh, Jr, "The Pentagon Wars: Reformers Challenge the Old
Guard", Defense Journal, May 2002
- Donn A. Starry, "Extending the Battlefield", Military
Review, March 1981, pp. 31-50
- Winton, Forming the Partnership, 1973-1979
- Message 291305Z January 1981, Commander TRADOC: to
distribution, subj: "The AirLand Battle"
- TRADOC Pamphlet 525-5, "Military Operations: Operational
Concepts for the AirLand Battle and Corps Operations - 1986", 25
March 1981
- "Field Manual 100-5, Operations", 4
September 1981
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