The Air Force way of war : U.S. tactics and training after Vietnam

247 Pages·2016·1.87 MB·English

by  Laslie

The Air Force
Way of War
THE
AIR FORCE
WAY OF WAR
U.S. Tactics and Training
after Vietnam
BRIAN D. LASLIE
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Copyright © 2015 by The University Press of Kentucky
Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth,
serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky,
Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown
College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead
State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University,
Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville,
and Western Kentucky University.
All rights reserved.
Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky
663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008
www.kentuckypress.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Laslie, Brian D.
The Air Force way of war : U.S. tactics and training after Vietnam / Brian D.
Laslie.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8131-6059-7 (hardcover : alk. paper) —
ISBN 978-0-8131-6086-3 (pdf) — ISBN 978-0-8131-6085-6 (epub)
1. Air warfare—History. 2. Air pilots, Military—Training of—United States—History. 3. Flight training—
United States—History. 4. United States. Air Force—Officers—Training of—History. 5. War games—
United States. 6. Air power—United States—Case studies. I. Title.
UG630.L386 2015
358.4′120973—dc23
2015003607
This book is printed on acid-free paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for
Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials.
Manufactured in the United States of America.
Member of the Association of American University Presses
For Heather,
without whom none of this would have been possible,
and for Savannah and Aspen,
who make it all worthwhile.
Contents
Preface
1. USAF Pilot Training and the Air War in Vietnam
2. Training Tactical Fighter Pilots for War
3. Operational Exercises
4. Setting the Stage: Impact of New Aircraft on Training
5. Short of War: Air Power in the 1980s
6. Preparing for a Storm: Operation Desert Shield
7. Desert Storm: Execution
8. Reorganization after the Storm
9. Deliberate and Allied Force
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Appendix: Air Force “Flag” Exercises, 1975–Present
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Illustrations
Preface
The four-ship of F-15C Eagles raced across the sky at thirty thousand feet. The
flight lead, call sign Death-1, focused on his radar, looking for enemy aircraft he
knew were in the vicinity. He also knew those enemy aircraft were looking for
him. His F-15s were spread abreast of each other in a tactical wall formation,
and they swept ahead of a strike package that stretched out fifty miles behind
them. Death-1 flight’s mission was to engage and destroy any aircraft and ensure
that the strike package could get to its target unmolested. Each F-15 carried a
standard conventional load of both AIM-120 AMRAAM missiles for beyond-
visual-range targets and AIM-9 heat-seeking missiles and 940 rounds of twenty-
millimeter Gatling gun ammunition.
Four “bogey” contacts popped up on the flight lead’s radar picture. These
aircraft flew in a classic enemy box formation but were apparently unaware of
the F-15s. Death-1 queried the nearby E-3 airborne warning and control system
(AWACS) aircraft orbiting nearby to see if it had detected the bogeys. AWACS
confirmed the rogue contacts and began a long-range electronic identification.
After AWACS confirmed the F-15s’ onboard sensors, the bogeys became
bandits. Death-1 recalled the rules of engagement for today’s mission as he
watched the bandits enter the no-fly zone. The bandits had just become “hostile,”
and an air-to-air engagement was necessary. Death-1 directed his four-ship to
commit on the enemy formation. They lit their afterburners and climbed into the
contrails, accelerating well past Mach 1.0.
Once the wall of F-15s reached firing range, each pilot doublechecked his
radar lock, looking for subtle cues of a bad lock. He deliberately depressed the
missile pickle switch on the stick grip, the most important button among the six
multiaxis buttons on the stick grip. The tactical fight frequency rang out with
calls from individual F-15s as they communicated their shots. “Death-1, Fox-3, 2
Ship, Bullseye 090-45, eighteen thousand!” By watching the missile countdown
in the heads-up displays (HUD), the Eagle pilots knew exactly how long it
would take the AMRAAMs to reach their targets.
The Eagles split into two elements, floating their formation nearly ten miles
apart in an attempt to outbracket the enemy formation. As Death-1 watched the
countdown timer in his HUD reach fifteen seconds to impact, he noticed two
pinhead-sized dots on the horizon below him. Those were the enemy aircraft
about to meet their fate from his AMRAAMs. Death-1 watched the countdown
timer reach two seconds remaining as he transmitted on the tactical frequency,
“Death-1, Kill 2-Ship, Bullseye 110-52, nineteen thousand!”
A voice then responded to his call, “Copy Kill.” Death-1, piloted by a U.S.
Air Force (USAF) captain with over one thousand hours of flight time in the F-
15, hadn’t really killed anyone. No missile had left the rails, and no enemy
aircraft had really been shot down. Yet the maneuvers of the aircraft and the
tactics used had all been very real. The entire mission was part of an exercise
conducted on the Nellis test and training ranges outside Las Vegas, Nevada, as
part of a Red Flag exercise.
After the Vietnam War, the air force made significant changes to training
methods, leading to better tactics and doctrine. These changes came in the form
of new training exercises, most notably Red Flag, the creation of dedicated
squadrons teaching combat tactics used by prospective enemies, and in the
opportunity for a select few fighter pilots to train against actual enemy aircraft.
This new training, which greatly increased the realism of the exercises, also
accepted an increased level of risk.
This transformation in training better prepared pilots for combat in the 1990s.
The changes in training, primarily inside the Tactical Air Command (TAC),
combined with technological advances not only changed the way the air force
waged war but also overturned traditional theories of air power. In the decade
after American involvement in Vietnam had ended, the separation between
“strategic” and “tactical” uses of air power gradually disappeared; roles and
missions combined. As technology and training blended, the need for separate
strategic and tactical commands diminished. It took nearly twenty years for the
idea of eliminating the two commands to mature and come to fruition.
Although some authors, including air force historian C. R. Anderegg, labeled
these events the revolt of the “iron majors,” much of the impetus for more
realistic training came from the top down. Tactically minded generals, including
William W. Momyer and Robert J. Dixon, made changes in training possible by
removing restrictions, endorsing new exercises, and freeing up money and
resources that the junior officers used to make their ideas a reality. The generals
did not need to be convinced. The experience of Vietnam had impressed upon
them the need for change.1
The training changes that occurred in the air force initially shifted the
service’s “way of war” from a strategic concept to a tactical one, but this was
replaced by what may be called simply “theater air war” as roles and missions
combined. It is not that the focus on strategic bombardment was wrong, at least
not in the early days of the USAF. The proclivity to focus on nuclear delivery
during the cold war was sensible at the time. That said, this focus on nuclear
delivery did have cascading effects on the readiness of fighter pilots for combat.
The tactical fighters in service after World War II could not deliver the same
battlefield effects that bombers could. This changed with the advent of jets,
missile technology, and the ability to deliver munitions with precision.
Furthermore, as historian Martha Byrd states in her biography, Chennault, the
ability to deliver a particular result “depended on technology, on the relative
speed, range, maneuverability, and firepower of bombers and pursuit planes at
any given time.” During and after the Vietnam conflict, the ability of strategic
bombers to deliver results during combat operations was replaced by the ability
of smaller tactical fighters to do the same. This is not because tactical fighters
were more technologically advanced than bomber aircraft but because TAC
placed such emphasis on training its pilots for the kinds of wars America
engaged in after Vietnam. This paradigmatic shift affected every aspect of the air
force as an institution after the Vietnam War, and the changes in training that
occurred during this shift led directly to the successes in combat during the
1990s.2
Former air force chief of staff General T. Michael Moseley said that the U.S.
Air Force’s senior leaders prior to and during the Vietnam conflict had
“priorities centered primarily on nuclear delivery . . . and minimizing peacetime
training accidents.” The reasons for this aversion to risk will be explored later.
The fear of losses in training outweighed the fear of losses in combat, no matter
how incongruous that sentiment might seem today. However, Strategic Air
Command (SAC) and air force senior leaders might be forgiven for this aversion
to risk since it made perfect sense in the context of how they thought about
preparing for combat in the 1950s and 1960s. SAC assumed that the next war
would be mainly a nuclear exchange. Every bomber lost to a training accident
was one fewer available to drop bombs on real targets. It was not until combat
losses began to rise in Vietnam that this cognitive dissonance among air force
leaders was resolved.3
According to historian Donald Mrozek, “The ultimate limits of innovation are
set in the human mind and in the environment of prevailing policy—
unfortunately all too often tied only loosely to the material needs of forces
deployed. The limits in the hardware that we develop are more easily overcome
than those inherent in our own ‘human software’” After Vietnam, the air force
developed fighter aircraft, the F-15 and F-16, designed specifically for air
superiority. These aircraft overcame the technical limitations that had been
experienced in Southeast Asia. At the same time the air force, or more
specifically TAC, reprogrammed its own “human software” in how it trained
pilots to conduct warfare.4
Large-force exercises, including Red Flag, simulated combat experience to a
degree never before achieved or even believed to be possible. The idea was to
make training so realistic that it substituted for the first ten actual combat
missions, after which a pilot’s life expectancy drastically increased. The air force
that went to war in the 1990s was not just technologically advanced; it was also
far better trained to perform combat than any of its adversaries and, in some
cases, better than its allies as well. New methods of training represented the
perfect melding of technological innovations and the “human mind/environment
of prevailing policy” Both junior and senior officers infused into the air force
something that had been missing for far too long: innovation in training. From
the top down and from the bottom up, the air force inculcated new ideas in a
younger generation of officers. Dedicated officers used realistic training
exercises to teach tactics that challenged preconceived notions of preparing for
war. The generation of fighter pilots who came of age after Vietnam, commonly
called the “fighter mafia,” became coequal with their counterparts in SAC,
known as the “bomber mafia”5
After its separation from the U.S. Army in 1947, the air force clearly focused
on building, and billing itself as, a strategic force. This made sense in the 1950s
and 1960s, given the geopolitical realities of the time, but the air force’s
experience in Vietnam changed the view of what to expect during combat in a
way that had not happened after the Korean War. In short, air-to-air combat
proved to the air force that it needed to adapt its arsenal and the way it trained
for war. Changes in training and technology that occurred after Vietnam allowed
senior leaders in TAC to entertain ideas about how to operate that might have
been dismissed out of hand earlier, because entertaining those ideas might have
risked signing the death warrant for the air force’s hard-won independence.
From the days of Billy Mitchell, pilots had justified an independent air force
based on long-range “strategic” bombardment, heavy aerial attacks on an