Turning from the air versus air battle to the central purpose of NATO’s tactical air contribution — intervention in the land battle — COMAAFCE saw two essential roles. First he would have to check the surge of the enemy’s ground offensive by hammering at the ‘choke points’ through which he would have to pass, then blunt the cutting edge of those armoured thrusts that did get through to the Allied area. This role called for an all-weather capability, very high sortie rates, and rapid reaction to army requests in a fluid ground situation. Second, he would have to take the momentum out of the assault by harassing and destroying the succeeding attack waves. He was completely against the so-called ‘panacea targets’ vaguely described in terms like ‘the enemy’s transportation system’. From hard practice and experience with their aircraft and weapons, the airmen were convinced that the best way of destroying armour was by area-denial and cluster weapons dispensing large numbers of bomblets. Fortunately, after the improvement programmes of the eighties they had such munitions in abundance.
On the morning of 3 August, as he mused on the characteristics of air power and the battles his aircrew might soon be fighting, COMAAFCE came back again and again to a major area of uncertainty. Twenty years earlier, as a squadron commander in South-east Asia, he had learned about electronic warfare at first hand, and he knew the sort of influence this could exert on all aspects of air war. The Allies were confident of their technological superiority, and especially so in this direction, but their closed society had enabled the Russians to shroud their electronic warfare methods and developments in such secrecy that positive identification of the best ways of countering them might not be available until hostilities were well under way.
These reflections led to thoughts on the past difference between the US and European (primarily British) approaches to the use of tactical air power. In the seventies the US, with great resources in technology and the experience of the Vietnam War behind them, had stressed the importance of suppressing the defences and of elaborate electronic command and control and communications systems. In the European view, however, this was prodigiously expensive, over-dependent on technology, and dangerously vulnerable to counter-measures. The US had seen tactical air power as a central force for the delivery of massive firepower on clear-cut targets. European airmen, on the other hand, saw it as more important to integrate the tactical air with the land battle, and they thought flexibility would be gained not by close control of aircraft at medium altitudes but from more autonomous and self-reliant procedures with very high sortie rates at very low level.
These divergences sprang naturally from differences in experience and resources, but it had latterly been seen, as in a blinding light, that this diversity in doctrine in fact had a very positive merit in compounding the problems facing the Soviet defences. Moreover, if the Europeans were wrong, they could still ride on the coat-tails of US technology, supplementing the US aerial task forces. And the Americans, realizing that they might be over-dependent on one thesis, started to pay more attention to autonomous and low-level operations as a re-insurance without departing from the main theme for the bulk of their air force.
Finally, as he thought about the human equation, COMAAFCE felt confident that, in the high standards of their training, his air and ground crews, if put to the test, would be second to none. The stringent tactical evaluation test of the NATO air forces over many years of hard practice and training gave him every cause for confidence.
The RAF Air Marshal who commanded 2 ATAF was also reviewing the state of his command — and in the main with satisfaction. The improvements in the last few years had been impressive, and nowhere was this more evident than in the RAF elements of his command. In the late 1970s Gordon Lee wrote in the Economist (17 December 1977): ‘Man for man the RAF is the finest air force in NATO, perhaps even in the world. The finest, that is, in the sense of being the best trained and most professionally skilled.’ If members of the RAF, on reading that, had felt, with justification, some pride and even a little complacency, it was short-lived; for in the next few lines he went on to say that the same unstinting praise could not be bestowed on all its aircraft and equipment. In fact, there was nothing wrong with the RAF in those days that money could not put right. Some money had been made available, and rightly the first tranches had gone to the improvements of the UK air defence. But by 1982 substantial improvements had also been made to the RAF in Germany.
At the time much political capital was made of the intention to increase the front-line strength of RAF Germany by 30 per cent. But as an immediate measure the air staff devoted some of the resources to the improvement of current equipment. In this way they had an eye to the likely difficulties of increasing the aircrew numbers. Jaguar and Harrier aircraft were extensively modified and improved; hardened accommodation with filtered air was provided for all airfield personnel. Six regular and six auxiliary squadrons of the Royal Air Force Regiment were raised to increase the level and quality of ground defences of the main air bases and the Harrier force in the field. The air bases and their aircraft throughout 2 ATAF would be a much harder nut to crack than would have been the case five years earlier.
But Air Marshal Broadwood, AOC-in-C 2 ATAF, had one matter on his mind that caused him great anxiety. In the late seventies, for reasons that have been explained elsewhere (see Chapter 19), the aircrew strength of the RAF had fallen very low. It had not been possible to recover entirely from that situation by 1985 because of the years it takes to turn suitable young men into combat-ready pilots. As a result, the ratio of aircrew to aircraft in RAF Germany in 1985 was still the lowest for any of the national air forces in the Central Region. The essential aggressiveness and skills were there in abundance; the worry was how long they could be maintained in intensive operations with high losses and insufficient rest.
The steadily increasing tension in the Alliance, followed by general mobilization, had given sufficient time for the air forces to reach a full war posture. By midnight on 3 August, 90 per cent of the aircraft of the Allied Air Forces Central Europe (AAFCE) were clocked up on the operations centre tote boards as serviceable, armed, and protected in their concrete aircraft shelters. During the previous week the US bases in continental Europe and the UK had received a continuous stream of reinforcement aircraft flown across the Atlantic. As a USAF general, COMAAFCE was delighted that the American reinforcement of Europe via the Atlantic air bridge had gone so smoothly. All the same, he still had much to ponder. He was well satisfied with the rate of aircraft generation and reinforcement, but the numerical advantage still lay with the Warsaw Pact by something in the order of two to one; and although the Pact could not now achieve tactical surprise, it could still enjoy the great advantage of calling the first shots. Moreover, S ACEUR had ordered that 20 per cent of the nuclear-capable aircraft should be held in reserve. Clearly this had to be done, but it did not help him in the numbers game.