Global Power from American Shores

A new doctrine is taking shape. The Air Force of the future may eliminate artificial divisions of labor and project flexible power at great distances from US bases. Global Power from American Shores

BY JAMES W. CANAN, SENIOR EDITOR

'A1RPOWER is indivisible. We cial writ. It is updating the doctrine don't speak of a 'strategic' or by which it lives, the doctrine for a 'tactical' Army or Navy, yet those employing airpower. In the process, terms are constantly applied to the distinctions long drawn between Air Force. The overriding purpose strategic and tactical airpower and of every plane, whether it is a bomb- between the combat locations of air er or a fighter, is to win the air battle and space are going by the wayside. on which victory on land or sea is That's not all. Ideas for projecting predicated. " indivisible airpower in new and dif- Those words were spoken thirty- ferent ways are percolating in the eight years ago, in 1951, by Gen. Air Staff shop of Maj. Gen. Charles Hoyt Vandenberg, then Chief of G. "Chuck" Boyd, Director of Plans Staff of the Air Force. His message for Lt. Gen. Jimmie Adams, Air that strategic airpower and tactical Force Deputy Chief of Staff for airpower are all of a piece in terms of Plans and Operations (XO). their military purpose had been Says General Boyd: "We're borne out in World War II and in the thinking about alternative futures, Korean War, being waged even as he about the kinds of aerospace power spoke. Its truth would again be- that will be required. We're giving come evident in Vietnam. thought to what the world might In each of those wars, bombers look like ten years from now to forty assigned to strategic missions were years from now, and we're thinking used to support tactical opera- about what kind of an Air Force, tions-B-29s in the Pacific and Ko- what kind of a national defense rean theaters and, in Vietnam, structure, might be appropriate for B-52s in close air support of US Ma- that altered world. rines besieged at Khe Sanh. In Viet- "We're going about this in a very nam, obversely, F-105s were flown serious way." on countless missions that purists To General Boyd and his plan- would have defined as strategic. ners, the only thing that really mat- Now the Air Force is moving to ters about airpower, when you get endorse indivisible airpower as offi- right down to it, is its effect on the

38 AIR FORCE Magazine / October 1989

enemy in the pursuit of US military emphasizes the enormous military the missions that we perform in the and political objectives. Whether value that it expects from the bomb- atmosphere today we will be able to the flying machines that apply air- er-value far surpassing the B-2 perform from space. power are called strategic or tac- program's skyscraping price tag. "We should not turn to perform- tical, or whether they are flown in Says General Boyd: "The B-2's ing them from space just to be able air or space or both, is unimportant. principal role will be that of a SlOP to say we can. However, as technol- For now, USAF's planners are -[single integrated operational plan] ogies evolve, and if they make it continuing to call airpower just penetrating bomber, because the possible for us to do our missions that-"air" power-even though mission of nuclear deterrence will more efficiently, more effectively, they are factoring space into it. remain the most important one that and at less cost from space, then we They are inclined to make space we perform. I cannot envision a must do so, whether those missions synonymous with air for purposes world just yet in which we can effec- be close air support, interdiction, of simplification. But the term "aero- tively deter nuclear war without a offensive counterair, defensive coun- space power," as used by General penetrating bomber, a land-based terair, or whatever." Boyd, is an option. ICBM, and a sea-based ICBM-in The National Aerospace Plane Under whatever heading, USAF short, the triad. program is the seedbed of such tech- is making provision for projecting "But the B-2 may also be the best nologies. The ultimate goal of the airpower into faraway conventional system for nonnuclear conflict that NASP program is a family of hyper- conflicts from bases in the United we have. Right from the outset, we sonic aircraft/spacecraft for mili- States. Plans are afoot for long- have been thinking about, and plan- tary and commercial purposes. range combat aircraft to weigh in, if ning, how to use it across a wide They would be capable of taking off need be, with nonnuclear weapons variety of tasks. We can't help but from runways, vaulting directly into in various scenarios all around the be intrigued by how useful this air- orbit, and flying in the atmosphere globe. This concept has already craft ultimately will be." at speeds up to Mach 25. But the taken hold with B-52Gs and B-1Bs The B-2 translates into "open ses- NASP program has been stretched and is in the works for the stealthy ame" for indivisible airpower and to cut its short-term costs and long- B-2s. the doctrine to make that airpower term technical risks, and Air Force The Air Force has never made come to pass. planners must take a wait-and-see any bones about the B-IB's poten- Asserts General Boyd: "Abso- approach to its power-projection po- tial for projecting nonnuclear air- lutely fundamental to the concept of tential. power as a penetrating bomber. indivisible airpower is the notion of Action central for the updating of Four years ago, Gen. Lawrence a long-legged, stealthy penetrator airpower doctrine is XO's Deputy Skantze, USAF (Ret.), then the that can be armed with conventional Directorate for Warfighting under Commander of Air Force Systems or nuclear weapons." Such a bomb- Col. John A. Warden III. He took on Command, declared that "the B-IB er becomes all the more important the job more than a year ago at the has been designed to support tac- "if we have to put even more of a direction of General Boyd and his tical forces behind the FEBA [for- premium on our ability to project boss, Gen. Michael Dugan, then the ward edge of the battle area] .... power from the shores of this na- three-star DCS/XO, who is now the There's no doubt it can playa signif- tion. " four-star CINC of US Air Forces in icant role in the kind of tactical war- Europe. General Dugan's successor fare expected in the AirLand Battle More Integrated Airpower as DCS/XO, General Adams, con- scenario. " The B-2 is shaping up as the tinues to back the directorate's doc- cleanup hitter in a new lineup of Air trinal endeavors. In a Class by Itself Force operational organizations, Amen, and then some, for the now under conceptual development A Redefined Threat B-2. The Air Force puts the B-2 in a in General Boyd's shop, for doing The blue-suiters do not have stars class by itself and has given it super- just that. Each such unit might em- in their eyes about the Soviets. No star billing in the streamlining of air- body all, or most, types of combat one in Air Staff planning circles ex- power doctrine. The B-2 can be seen aircraft-for example, long-range pects the Soviet threat to go away. as both cause and effect of that bombers, shorter-range ground-at- In fact, says General Boyd, "I have effort. tack aircraft, air-combat fighters, not seen any substantive changes in USAF trusts that it will be better and radar-attacking Wild Weasels- Soviet force structures or correla- able to justify its need for the con- that are now segregated in single- tion of forces. . . . We are not at all troversial, costly B-2 by weaving purpose units. certain that the world is changing in into its updated airpower doctrine The combat units with catch-all significant ways, but we are doing all the things that the bomber can aircraft would also contain space some conceptual thinking on the do, thus making its prowess indis- specialists, perhaps formed into basis of the possibility that it is." pensable to that doctrine. However, "space squadrons," responsible for Whether the Soviet threat dimin- the revolutionary capabilities of- making optimum use of such orbital ishes or resurges, it seems obvious fered by the B-2 have made it possi- assets as communications satellites to Air Force strategists that ever- ble-indeed, necessary-to update and reconnaissance satellites. graver threats to US interests-and the doctrine in the first place. "We can't think of the future with- to US national security-will rise In arguing that the US should out thinking about space," General up elsewhere, especially in the in- ante up for the B-2, the Air Force Boyd declares. "Most, if not all, of creasingly well-armed Third World. 40 AIR FORCE Magazine / October 1989 As of now, those threats are non- they'll be more likely to create ten- Range Planning Division. "In the nuclear, but there are disturbing in- sions as the superpower influence past, we've tended to focus on mili- dications that they may not stay that recedes. tary threats. Now we're taking a way. They cannot, in any case, be "It may be difficult to explain this broader look at all threats to our taken lightly. to the American people, but the national interests." The increasingly worrisome di- threat to the US will nonetheless be From that viewpoint, certain mensions of Third World threats at least as real as it is now. The kinds of threats are seen as emerg- have prompted the Joint Chiefs of potential threat to the United States ing from nations that are-now allied Staff to conclude that deterring or at the height of the Cold War was militarily and geopolitically with the waging a so-called low-intensity probably greater in terms of nuclear US. Such nations may find it expe- conflict in those parts of the world exchange. But now the real threat, dient to team up with one another, will be the most demanding job for in terms of Americans really being as in western Europe, or with na- US military forces in the foresee- able future. US politico-military strategists evidently have come to believe that the prospect of US involvement in such conflicts is greater than the likelihood of either general nuclear war with the USSR or a Warsaw Pact nonnuclear attack on NATO. To USAF, a threat is a threat is a threat. Says Colonel Warden: "We need to examine whether the world changes all that much simply because the Soviets seem to be going away. The Soviets have been our principal, almost our exclusive, enemy, and everything that happened around the world was somehow associated with them. "Because we've had that focus, we might conclude that when the Soviet threat recedes-it isn't going away-the world becomes much safer. But in fact it may not." Cases in point: the recent order- ing of advanced Soviet MiG-29 and Su-27 fighters, respectively, by Iran and Libya, two demonstrably war- like nations likely to remain hostile to the US and to other states in their regions that support, or are sympa- thetic to, US interests. There will almost certainly be many more instances of US-baiting put at risk and dying, could come at tions unfriendly or cool to the US, nations arming to the teeth-not us from all angles and could be, in as perhaps in the Pacific basin and just with modem variants of fight- fact, much worse in a multipolar the Mideast, in order to strengthen ers, tanks, and the like, but also world." their own economies and mount with globally scarier things like bal- stronger economic challenges to the listic missiles and the makings for Drawing the Right Conclusions US. chemical and biological warfare. For USAF strategists, drawing Some such US allies may also see Lt. Col. (Col. selectee) Mike the right conclusions about the di- fit to oppose US policies vis-a-vis Hayden, acting director of the XO mensions and directions of future the Third World. Accordingly, they warfighting shop's Strategy Divi- threats is the first order of business. may forbid the US to use bases on sion, suggests that "the world may Those conclusions are the well- their soil and may deny the US over- actually become more fearsome for springs of Air Force thinking on flight rights to carry out military ac- us, not safer" if the Soviet threat how best to project airpower in the tion in the furtherance of those poli- lessens. The reason, he says, is that future and on the forces and weap-- CIes. "there are lots of 'Balkans' all ons that will be required. There is already plenty of prece- around the world where war could "We're looking at threats in a dif- dent for this kind of policy. It could start. The Soviet influence tended ferent way," explains Lt. Col. (Col. get out of hand if US allies no longer to keep them under control. But selectee) Dail Turner, chief of the see the Soviet threat as big enough they have their own dynamics, and warfighting directorate's Long- to warrant their common cause with

AIR FORCE Magazine / October 1989 41 Washington. Political pressures in The bombers became synonymous Real Military Value such places as western Europe, with "strategic" -interpreted as "nu- Refocusing on that real value is Korea, the Philippines, and even, in c1ear"-airpower only. On the other what USAF is now all about-in the long run, Japan, could wear out hand, shorter-range attack aircraft as- freshening up its airpower doctrine USAF's welcome at more and more signed to theater missions became and, not coincidentally, in justifying forward air bases, as at Spain's Tor- synonymous with "tactical conven- its beleaguered B-2 bomber. rejon, in years to come. tional" airpower, even though some The B-2 program has managed to On top of all that, the US may of these aircraft have long since car- stay alive, but has taken a pounding take itself out of the action abroad. ried nuclear weapons, just in case. in Congress this year. The outlook Washington and Moscow seem in- In wartime operations and in for a full-fledged force of the bomb- tent on working up an agreement to peacetime deployments aimed at ers is not bright. make big cuts in both sides' forces in stopping trouble before it starts, Air Force leaders past and pres- Europe, and this could well lead to a USAF has used its combat aircraft ent insist that the US needs all, or significant US pullback. more flexibly than its airpower dis- nearly all, ofthe 132 B-2s originally The increasing difficulty for the tinctions would seem to allow. planned and that a lesser force US in standing fast on foreign soil Strategic bombers have never won't be able to cover all nuclear was underlined in a 1988 report by flown SlOP missions against the and nonnuclear contingencies in the the White House Commission on USSR, but they have been used in threatening world seen ahead. Integrated Long-Term Strategy, every war on long-distance tactical General Dougherty, for one, main- which said in part: conventional missions. Thanks to tains that it will take "well over a "The United States must develop in-flight refueling, tactical fighters hundred" B-2s to give SAC a "mean- alternatives to overseas bases. In have ranged far beyond their as- ingful" force. Such a force, the for- some contexts, to be sure, bases signed theaters to make the US mer CINCSAC continues, "will pro- will continue to be critically impor- presence felt in relatively remote vide an entirely different-but conse- tant--especially when our problem parts of the planet. quential-global power projection is to defend against possible Soviet The Air Force, intent on preserv- and warfighting capability, with either aggression. ing the top-priority, nuclear-deter- nuclear or nonnuclear weapons, "But we should not ordinarily be rent, SlOP status of its long-range across a full spectrum of conflict sit- dependent on bases in defending bombers, has been reluctant to raise uations. our interests in the Third World. We its voice about their conventional "And, importantly, it [the B-2 have found it increasingly difficult capability-or, for that matter, force] can do these critical strategic and politically costly to maintain about the nuclear capability of its tasks from centrally located air bases there." in-theater, "tactical" fighter-bomb- bases within the United States." ers. The B-2 could also operate from Deploying From Home Now USAF is sounding off and overseas bases that the US owns or The Air Force is already hedging coming around. The service is occupies, such as those on Guam in its bets on overseas bases. "We may taking cues from a body of airpower the western Pacific and British- not have a whole lot offorward pres- literature that has built up in recent owned Diego Garcia in the middle of ence," says XO's Colonel Turner. years, such as the 1986 Air Univer- the Indian Ocean. The Air Force "Our units are more and more likely sity book Aerospace Power: alluded to those bases in a report to be based in the United States. So The Case for Indivisible Applica- last summer that summed up un- we're thinking in terms of deploying tion. classified congressional testimony airpower from home." The author, Maj. Grover E. on the B-2 by Chief of Staff Gen. Many influential strategic think- Myers, noted that General Vanden- Larry D. Welch and Secretary of ers are of like mind. For example, berg and other Air Force leaders of the Air Force Donald Rice. Gen. Russell E. Dougherty, who re- the post-World War IIera "support- The report depicted the B-2 as the tired from the Air Force as Com- ed an end to the parochial strategic/ premier means of projecting US air- mander in Chief of Strategic Air tactical division of labor," but that power until well into the next cen- Command and who still serves on they had to give way to "the require- tury. It emphasized that the B-2 is the Defense Science Board, is con- ments of nuclear deterrence and the needed, first and foremost, as a vinced that "the key to our future realities of budget allocations." SlOP weapon. It noted that non- will be our ability to project power Major Myers continued, "Since nuclear missions are in the cards as without being there." that time when we were still sorting well. In turn, the key to projecting air- through the lessons of World War II Air Force planners can easily en- power may well lie in making it truly and developing a way to manage the vision the stealth bomber on such and thoroughly indivisible, in doc- nuclear nemesis, we have become conventional missions against high- trine and in practice. so immersed in the mythology of value targets in the Soviet Union General Vandenberg was way nuclear deterrence and so accus- and eastern Europe. This could ahead of his time in championing tomed to the presence of 'strategic happen in the unlikely-but not im- such airpower in 1951. But it was not forces'-nuclear bombers, nuclear possible--event of war in Europe to be. USAF assigned its interconti- missiles, and nuclear submarines- remaining nonnuclear throughout. nental-range combat aircraft, along as to lose sight of the real military The B-2 might also be used for with the ICBMs that came along la- value of a large portion of our mili- shorter-range interdiction. Given ter, exclusively to SlOP missions. tary forces." the intensity of Warsaw Pact air de-

42 AIR FORCE Magazine / October 1989 fenses and the problems that the US cause France had denied them over- craft and guarded the carriers and is having with electronic counter- flight rights. Constrained by strin- their escorting warships against air measures, including those on its gent rules of engagement, roughly attack. B-lB bomber, the stealthy B-2 may one-third of the F-IIIFs were un- turn out to be the only "reusable" able to deliver their payloads. One Simpler with B-2s weapon system capable of deliver- F-IIIF did not come back. The Air Force claims that the B-2 ing large nonnuclear payloads Fourteen of the attack aircraft in would have made the operation a against targets deep behind enemy the operation were Navy A-6Es whole lot simpler. Not long before lines, in accordance with AirLand from the carriers America and Cor- the B-2 was rolled out on November Battle doctrine and with long-estab- al Sea. They attacked two targets at 22, 1988, General Welch declared lished Air Force doctrine in support Benghazi. that Eldorado Canyon could have of theater CINCs. Thirty-one Air Force aircraft been carried out "with three or four B-2s with no support of any kind." That would depend on where the bombers came from. Critics of Gen- eral Welch's statement claim that B-2s based in the central US-for example, at Whiteman AFB, Mo., where the first B-2 wing is indeed destined to be based-would have had to cover some 10,000 nautical miles round trip to Benghazi without overflying other countries. This, they say, would have required one in-flight refueling-and, thus, four or five tankers. This argument seems to miss the point. Even with five tankers and five B-2s, including one along for the ride as an airborne spare, the five sets of Libyan targets could have been attacked-and likely de- stroyed-with fewer than one-tenth the total number of aircraft that took to the air in Eldorado Canyon. This presumes, of course, that the B-2's stealthy characteristics are all they're cracked up to be and, thus, that the B-2s could have dispensed with covering, radar-picket, defense- suppression, and electronic-counter- measures aircraft. The Air Force is confident that its presumptions of B-2 prowess would be proved in combat. It expressed Then there is the problem, which were needed in support of the this confidence in its report on the is expected to grow, of how to retali- F-1l1Fs-twenty-eight KC-I0 and bomber last summer. ate against nations or groups that KC-135 tankers and three EF-Ill The report addressed a vital ques- foment terrorism against the US Ravens for jamming. The Navy de- tion often posed by B-2 critics- and its citizens. voted almost double that number of whether the Air Force would, or In April 1986, Air Force and aircraft to supporting roles. should, ever risk such a high-priced Navy aircraft were used for such a The Navy is said to have put more SlOP bomber on a raid against such purpose in Operation Eldorado than fifty planes into the air to sup- low-value (meaning non-SlOP) tar- Canyon against Libya. All told, port its target-attacking A-6Es. Six gets as those in Libya. about 120 aircraft took part. Only A-7Es and six F/A-18s reportedly The answer is yes. According to thirty-two of them, or about one- were used for defense suppression. the Air Force report, the B-2's fourth, carried out the actual strikes The remaining forty-five or so Navy stealth "would have made the risk against five targets in Libya. support aircraft were a handful of minuscule," would have made for Of those attack aircraft, eighteen E-2C Hawkeyes, for airborne warn- "very high secrecy and surprise," were Air Force F-IIIFs based in ing and control, and, in much great- and would have enabled "a small England. They went after three tar- er numbers, F-14s and F/A-18s. force from US soil" to destroy the gets in and around Tripoli. Several Those carrier-based fighter-inter- targets. in-flight refuelings were required to ceptors provided cover for both the In its report, USAF was also at get them to Libya and back, be- Navy and the Air Force attack air- pains to clarify the B-2's capabilities AIR FORCE Magazine / October 1989 43 in another controversial arena. It responsibility" in which US theater fighting commands and theaters. made a point of not claiming-as it CINCs have been given operational They would nonetheless be given had previously seemed to claim- control of B-52Gs, with no SlOP great latitude in making decisions that the B-2 would be surefire at strings attached, for use on non- and taking actions, just as air com- striking so-called relocatable tar- nuclear missions. ponent commanders do today. gets, such as mobile ICBMs. Using the bombers in this fash- What counts, says Colonel War- Even so, the report noted that the ion, says CINCSAC, "gives us an den, is the effect that such com- B-2 would be the only SlOP weapon extra long arm to reach far behind manders and their units will be able anywhere near capable of carrying enemy lines with awesome conven- to achieve with their organic air- out that mission and that it would tional capabilit y." He also notes power resources, and "it ought to be continue to get better at doing so. that the B-52 is no slouch at sea immaterial whether those resources The report made a case for duty. It can attack enemy ships with are bombers, fighters, space sys- manned bombers in general. It pre- Harpoon missiles and can also de- tems, cruise missiles, or whatever." dicted that they will carry forty per- liver mines to close harbors, choke Air Force planners see the ability cent of all US nuclear weapons by sea lanes, and thwart or destroy to attack strategic or tactical targets the year 2000, given the makeup of submarines. from afar with airpower that makes the US deterrent force to be ex- Perhaps most important, "We can no strategic or tactical distinctions pected as a result of Strategic Arms do these things from bases in the as the core-indeed, as the sine qua Limitation Talks. Furthermore, it United States," General Chain de- non-of US military strength in said, penetrating bombers, as dis- clares. years to come. They tip their caps to tinct from standoff cruise-missile Indeed, range is now, more than the Navy's carrier-based airpower bombers, will carry one-fourth of ever, the name of the game. Says and applaud its recent successes un- the total number of US nuclear Colonel Warden: "As we think der fire. But there is widespread weapons by then. about what our doctrine and our op- concern, not just in Air Force cir- This puts the burden squarely on erational principles should be, one cles, about the future vulnerability the B-2. It is expected to be the only thing that we're emphasizing more of aircraft carriers and associated bomber capable of getting through and more and more is the fact that warships to ever-quieter attack sub- Soviet defenses by the year 2000. we have simply got to have range, marines and to increasingly potent By then, in its SlOP role, the B-1B range, range." and abundant antiship missiles will have been turned into a cruise Penetrating bombers and others around the world. missile carrier-period-just like armed with cruise missiles figure Land forces, too, may be in for a the B-52H before it. heavily in USAF's contemplations bit of a comedown in the strategic on how to get that range. So do other scheme of things. Those forces will Shows of Strength kinds of flying machines. All are always be important to the projec- The Air Force also contends that being considered in terms of how tion of US military power, because the B-2 could be used for deterrence they could be made to work to- only they can take and hold territo- in an impressive manner without ac- gether as an organic whole. ry. But some strategists believe that tually bombing anything or resort- Says Colonel Warden: "Range there may be less reason to capture ing to overkill. For example, one can come from the national aero- real estate in the kinds of combat B-2 could slip in and drop bags of space plane. It can also come from seen ahead. flour on a chemical weapons plant organizations of what we now call The thinking in Air Force plan- or a nuclear weapons plant to show tactical fighters that have the ability ning circles, for example, is that the how easy it would be to come back to move around the planet and oper- US will resort more and more to with real bombs to blow it to ate out of relatively austere fields- airpower to quell conflicts before smithereens. not necessarily from established air they get to the point where large Gen. John T. Chain, Jr., Com- bases or strips-with a minimum of land armies must be employed. mander in Chief of Strategic Air mobility baggage accompanying Colonel Warden, for example, Command, makes a big point of the them. sees the increasing likelihood of growing importance of such shows "Those fighters could conceiv- Libya-type "operations in which of strength. He claims that "long- ably conduct operations three, four, airpower would be used to hit hard" range bomber striking power-the and five hundred miles from where and "make them [enemies] stop ability to reach anywhere in a few they've landed." what they're doing." hours-is integral to future securi- Adds Colonel Turner: "To our ty." He also emphasizes that the Command Changes way of thinking, the US Air Force stealthy B-2 "can respond with a full Moreover, the fighters might be- will have the greatest capability to spectrum of retaliatory capability" long to units that also embody conduct those kinds of operations, in "dealing with terrorist acts or CONUS-based long-range bomb- given our ability to move airpower global conflict." ers, cruise missiles, and space- around the earth and to strike as As CINCSAC, General Chain planes under the operational con- hard as necessary in virtually every has done a great deal to promote the trol of the unit commanders, possi- circumstance. strategic bomber-both inside and bly brigadier generals or colonels. "We see developing-perhaps outside the Air Force-as a non- Those commanders would be ulti- very quickly-a new reliance on the nuclear powerhouse. He developed mately accountable to four-star gen- Air Force as the most important a concept called "strategic area of erals or flag officers in charge of war- contributor to national defense." • 44 AIR FORCE Magazine / October 1989