There is an old Roman saying: ‘Si vis pacem, para bellum’: if you want peace prepare for war.
It could be reworked, on lines more appropriate to the late twentieth century, to read: ‘If you want nuclear peace prepare for non-nuclear war: but be ready to pay the price.’
Chapter 6: The Air Dimension
The flexibility of air power is so far undisputed that people have tended rather to tire of the phrase. There is no escaping the fact, however, that it takes years for air forces to adapt to new fundamental concepts of operation. It takes at least ten years to develop a major air weapons system and air crew need four to five years after recruitment to become operationally effective in the more demanding roles. So it was not surprising that in the late 1970s, little more than a decade after the switch from a NATO strategy of massive retaliation to one of flexible response, the Allied air forces were still heavily involved with the technical and training tasks of developing a tactical capability to match possible battle scenarios of a war in central Europe under new politico-strategic terms of reference. Nor was it surprising that the reorganisation of the Soviet Air Force (SAF) on more flexible lines (described later in this chapter) was only beginning to come to fruition in the early 1980s.
In the United States Air Force (USAF) and the British Royal Air Force (RAF) the lion’s share of the air appropriations had throughout the 1970s been going to tactical forces. For the USAF this meant emphasis on contemporary fighters — the F-15 Eagle and Strike Eagle and F-16 Fighting Falcon — and A-10 Thunderbolt tank-busters. For the RAF it meant, among other things, Anglo-French Jaguars, the astonishingly versatile vertical/short take-off and landing (V/STOL) Harriers, F-4 Phantom fighters bought from the United States in the late 1960s and Buccaneers of a type that was a capable variant of an earlier naval aircraft. Most of these aircraft had been around for some years. By 1985 the RAF had had nearly fifteen years of experience in operating the V/STOL Harriers, for example, from dispersed sites around their base at Gutersloh well forward on the north German plain.
That dispersal was to serve them well when Gutersloh was attacked by Soviet Fencers on the morning of 5 August and not a single Harrier was on the airfield — although some RAF Puma helicopters and a charter aircraft evacuating civilian baggage were caught with heavy casualties. The Harrier pilots knew the area backwards and their association with I British Corps in the Northern Army Group (NORTHAG) was especially close. It was out of that association, and years of exercise together, that the British doctrine of counter-armour operations from the air had grown. The principle was to exploit the speed of the fixed wing aircraft to turn the flank of the enemy’s armoured echelons and then fly up or down to attack them some 10 to 20 kilometres in the rear, at the critical point where the armour would be fanning out from its line of march on to the battlefield. These tactics, which depended, like so much else, on air reconnaissance and rapid response, were to be vindicated in the war, and the air losses, though high, were sustainable for at least a while. This did not, in the event, take the immediate pressure off the troops at the forward edge of the battle area (the FEBA) when they were being forced back by the momentum and fire power of the enemy’s tanks. The effect would be felt later. In slowing momentum at the FEBA the army was to rely primarily on the long-range fire power of well-sited tanks and anti-tank guided weapons (ATGW), as well as ATGW helicopters hovering in ambush over dead ground or concealed in woodland. The Harriers and Jaguars would of course intervene directly at the FEBA when the clamour for help became especially loud and insistent. When they did so their losses would usually be high and the trade-off between tanks and aircraft could only be justified at times of the direst need.
The Anglo/German/Italian multi-role combat aircraft (MRCA) brought into service as the Tornado in its specialized long-range interceptor role in the UK, and its interdiction and counter-air role for the European continent, was a very recent and promising arrival. The German Air Force (GAF) was tied by political and geographical logic to the defence of its own air space, direct support of the land forces of CENTAG (Central Army Group) and NORTHAG, and interdiction and counter-air operations over enemy territory. By 1984 the GAF had received most of its Tornados and its air defence force was made up of F-4 Phantoms and a residue of F-104 Starfighters left over from the 1960s.
Each of the Allied air forces was backed up in some degree by air transport and helicopters. The helicopter was an unknown factor in operations on the scale and at the intensity that were to be experienced in the Third World War. In the event it played a versatile and often indispensable part in many roles, and notably so with the Warsaw Pact forces. But as had always been expected, losses were high and it remains an open question as to how long the helicopters could have remained on the battlefield in a longer war. The United States Army and Air Force, with Vietnam experience behind them, were to use large numbers in the gunship and logistic roles, with great skill and often with decisive local effect. In the first days of the war German and British helicopters were virtually to save the re-supply situation in NORTHAG’s rear area. The threat to soft-skinned vehicles from SAF armed reconnaissance aircraft had been seriously underestimated and the roads were blocked with wrecked trucks as well as civilian refugees. To compound the chaos and confusion the FEBA was falling steadily back to the west and it was chiefly through a non-stop shuttle of medium-lift helicopters that the ammunition and fuel would reach the front.
In a more offensive mode RAF Puma helicopters were to be used to move army anti-tank teams and their Milan weapons across the axes of the enemy’s advance to new positions as his thrust lines swung. When they achieved surprise and found good firing positions this proved an excellent way of keeping the anti-tank weapons in action against the enemy. The British Army’s Lynxes were effectively used in a similar way. But the British had always been hesitant about helicopters, partly because of their vulnerability, and partly because of their cost. By 1985 the British Army and the RAF had still to agree upon whether the helicopter should be regarded as an air or ground system. In consequence the capabilities of this remarkable, but admittedly vulnerable, machine were not always fully exploited in the battle in the north.
This was not true of the Soviet forces, which had always loved helicopters and built models for every kind of task and weapon. They were to use them as self-propelled guns flying above and ahead of their leading armour, as anti-tank platforms and as electronic counter-measure (ECM) stations. They even armed some with air-to-air weapons. Not surprisingly they fell easily and in large numbers to the US Patriot missiles (which were coming into service but were not yet plentiful) and the British Rapier and French Rolands and Sicas deployed by the NATO armies. Nevertheless, Allied ground force commanders at all levels would have cause to reflect that the need to strengthen their defences against marauding helicopters had not been fully appreciated.