Leave The Flying To Us
By Merrill A. McPeak
Amazing last paragraph, UW.
"The United States relies on the Air Force, and the Air Force has never been the decisive factor in the history of war."
-- Saddam Hussein
For all but the resolutely sightless, it is now obvious that air combat determines the outcome in modern war. In the early hours of March 20, the salvo aimed at Saddam Hussein himself was preceded by nearly a month of air attacks in and around Baghdad -- to say nothing of a decade or so of bombing in connection with enforcing the no-fly zones. So it's incorrect to say that, unlike Desert Storm 12 years before, there was no independent air campaign in advance of the jump off of our ground forces from Kuwait. Because of this aerial preparation, Iraq's air defenses stayed mostly silent and our aircraft were able to begin reducing opposing ground forces immediately. Army and Marine Corps formations, judged by "experts" to be much too small for the job, captured Baghdad in just 22 days, and with comparatively light casualties. Not only did coalition air power systematically disorganize Iraq's ground forces, it did so at small cost. It was more dangerous to be an embedded reporter than to fly combat sorties.
Nevertheless, the coming flood of "lessons learned" will focus on a stale issue: Can advanced (principally aerospace) technology substitute for large, heavy ground combat forces? That matter is settled. Because air warfare is so plainly the centerpiece of modern combat, it would be far more productive to figure out how to fight it better. This is not only more relevant but also trickier, because success is so poor a teacher. For instance, munitions delivery has become almost too accurate: We sometimes used bombs that were defused because we were more worried about collateral damage than about taking out the target. This is the sort of head-swelling achievement that can make us immune to asking the tough questions.
The air war did feature lackluster performance involving two pieces of equipment: the Apache helicopter gunship and the Patriot air defense missile. The Apache gives the ground commander his own close air support capability. It's a fine aircraft and can be useful as part of a combined arms team -- that is, when supported organically by Army artillery or from outside the Army by fast jets. The problem: The Army, ignoring recent scar-tissue building experiences in Kosovo and Afghanistan, insists the Apache can be used for unsupported deep attack. The issue here is control; the Army refuses to agree that a joint commander -- probably an Air Force officer -- should coordinate air tasking, which would ensure the needed support.
On March 24 a battalion of 32 Apaches went deep -- and naked -- against the already much weakened Medina Division of the Republican Guard. Every aircraft suffered battle damage; one was downed, and the others were badly shot up. Interestingly, the fact that 31 came home is being touted as evidence of helicopter survivability.
After World War II, the assignment of roles and missions made the Army the only service that could not fly fixed-wing combat aircraft. If it wanted to get into the air fight, the Army was stuck with the helicopter. It has been making lemonade ever since.
Aircrews have no choice but to love the machine they fly. But make no mistake: Helicopters obey physical laws. They are unlikely to achieve operationally useful amounts of speed or stealth, the best defenses against aimed ground fire. As a practical matter, the Army should restrict the Apache to close air support -- or, if it must go deep, hand it over for joint tasking.
The Patriot air defense missile seems to be performing well after modifications that corrected earlier deficiencies. Too bad, as both the aircraft it shot down this time were friendly. We will eventually learn the technical reason for this, probably a software glitch. But it's hard to figure out why Patriot crews should be so quick on the draw. First, the Iraqi air force was simply not present for duty. More important, air defense is a "system of systems," with friendly fighter aircraft also responsible for preventing air attack. For 50 years -- indeed, since the establishment of a separate Air Force -- the battle for control of the air has been fought well away from our ground forces -- over the Yalu, over Hanoi, over Baghdad. No U.S. soldier has been attacked by an enemy aircraft since the early 1950s, a period that encompasses fully half the history of powered flight.
As with close air support, air defense is complicated and likely to disappoint, because unreliability is so often an aspect of complexity. To make the best of a bad situation, most countries put fighter aircraft and theater missile defenses in the same service, bringing to air defense the best integration tools available: a common culture and a single-service chain of command. The United States, alone among countries that know what they're doing, separates the fighters and missiles, creating a seam that has to be stitched up in the press of combat.
Both the Apache and the Patriot are great weapons systems, their recent failures not primarily technical but organizational -- and, more deeply, cultural. A decade ago, while serving as Air Force chief of staff, I went quietly to my Army counterpart, Gordy Sullivan, and proposed that we make a trade: swap the Air Force's primary close air support aircraft, the A-10, for the Army's theater air defense missile, the Patriot. Had he agreed, Sullivan and I would have faced bitter opposition from within our own services and probably could not have pulled it off. But I thought it worth a try, because the result would have been much-improved integration of these two critical mission areas -- close air support and theater air defense. In any case, Sullivan gave me the cold shoulder, claiming the Army could not afford to operate the A-10. Of course, the real problem was not cost but an inability to imagine how our combat effectiveness might be dramatically improved by bold, non-incremental change.
Memo to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: Good luck with "transformation."
The writer, a retired general, was Air Force chief of staff from 1990 to 1994.
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