Air-Land Battle Concept

Darmowy! · 0 · 15.11.2019

Saber Junction 15 milex (photo: Henry Chan, 16th Sustainment Brigade Public Affairs, 21st Theater Sustainment Command, army.mil)

The reason for working on the concept was the desire to prevent the Soviet Union from gaining an advantage due to its numerical dominance by launching successive waves of attack (second and third echelons) including rear reserves. This required a simultaneous strike on the Soviets consecutive echelons far into the enemy’s operational theater. For this, close operational and tactical cooperation of the Air Force and the Army (land forces) was badly needed. As a result, Air-Land Battle Concept became the combined doctrine of the armed forces for the European War Theater, used in training and operational-tactical exercises and later proved so victorious in the deserts of Mesopotamia in the 1991.

It is worth remembering that in the mid-1970s the Soviets, which were at the peak of their power, were thought to gain a conventional military advantage in Europe. The US armed forces were still struggling with the trauma of Vietnam, and after making the military service voluntary, they were suffering from problems trying to fill staff vacancies and get proper level of readiness (‘hollow army’).

The situation on the so-called Central Front in Europe looked as follows:

NATO armies were weaker in numbers;
the qualitative advantage of equipment and training was in doubt;
new technologies (as demonstrated by the Yom Kippur war in 1973) rendered conventional wisdoms on the warfare obsolete or at least severely tested.
huge armies of the second echelon of the Warsaw Pact were expected to follow on to penetrate and roll down the front and rear areas pouring into the gap created by the strike first echelon forces,
political conditions and geography did not allow for designing NATO defense in depth (“trading space for time”).

All in all, the AirLand Battle Concept was developed as a remedy by creating an “extended battlefield” at least 150 km deep into the enemy’s depth through the dominance of reconnaissance systems and strike systems. Destroying the enemy at depth would translate into a delay in his action, create imbalances in the enemy planning and execution, rid of operational initiative and instead restore the operational initiative to NATO forces. That was the essence of the AirLand Battle concept. This concept was also the operational basis for acquiring new strike capabilities and military technologies: precision missiles and bombs, strike helicopters, reconnaissance systems that are used to this day in the US armed forces and have been the icons of modernity throughout 90s and 2000s. It is as a result of this concept that the image of invincibility of the US military forces, their technological and organizational advantage, has become so crystalized in our minds.

Dragoon Ride milex, 2015 (photo: Wikipedia)

The First Gulf War was a perfect training ground for the Concept, and the effectiveness of the US Armed Forces based on this concept laid the foundation for a new chapter in world history – the era of US primacy and a unipolar moment.

It has been a long time since then, and we have now entered into an era of network-centric and a dispersed battlefield within the framework of the RMA aka Revolution in Military Affairs, but still in our mental maps, the US ground forces supported by tactical aviation acting like field artillery under the Air-Land Battle concept are the guiding principle by which the world estimates the US capabilities to help Poland in the event of war on the NATO Eastern Flank.

Autor

Jacek Bartosiak

CEO and Founder of Strategy&Future, author of bestselling books.

Jacek Bartosiak