The Cold War: A MILITARY History (52 page)

Having cancelled the Sergeant York, the US army turned to SHORAD (Short-Range Air Defense), based on the French Roland missile; this entered service in very limited numbers. Next came the Air-Defence/Anti-Tank
System
(ADATS), which was also cancelled. Thus by the end of the Cold War, and after some twenty years of development and very considerable expenditure, the US army still did not have an adequate short-range air-defence system.

TARGET ACQUISITION

Targets had to be identified, their nature and co-ordinates passed to the artillery command system, fire brought to bear, and the results assessed. The increasing range of artillery, however, made this a severe problem: the US M107 175 mm gun, for example, had a maximum range of 32.7 km, while the Lance artillery rocket reached out to 120 km. This meant that, whereas looking into enemy territory to a depth of 10–15 km had once been sufficient, it now became necessary to see up to 100 km or more. Also, the rapidity of movement across the modern battlefield meant that it became increasingly important to acquire targets such as concentrations of tanks in real time, if advantage was to be taken.

Front-line troops could acquire targets using optical methods, but were limited to the line of sight, which under central-European conditions could vary between 1 km and 5 km. Air reconnaissance by manned fighters was important but for many years depended upon the aircraft returning to base for films to be developed and for the prints to be passed to artillery HQs, which, however slick the processes became, involved an in-built delay. There were also other methods, such as monitoring enemy communications and using breaches of security, decryption or traffic analysis to obtain information on such factors as nodal points or artillery nets.

A solution which became increasingly widespread was the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which were directed either by an on-board computer programme (drones) or by a pilot on the ground sending directions via a radio link (remotely piloted vehicles (RPVs)). Such UAVs relied on their very small size, quiet engines and ‘stealthy’ construction to escape detection. Wide-scale use of such devices originated in the 1960s, when they were introduced into the Vietnam War and Israel. At first such devices simply brought back photographs of the targets they had been sent to look at, but later they became capable of transmitting photographs or TV pictures in real time, enabling them to be used to detect targets and also to send back spotting information, so that artillery staffs could assess the results of the fire mission and, if necessary, re-engage.

fn1
Specifications of the principal artillery pieces are given in
Appendix 26
. To the purist, there is a difference between a gun and a howitzer: the gun can be elevated between zero and 45 degrees and the latter up to about 70–80 degrees. Most self-propelled weapons (SPs) are therefore strictly speaking howitzers, but, for ease of reference, this book uses the generic term ‘SP gun’.

fn2
The experience of the Coalition air forces in the Gulf War is relevant: they found Iraqi air defences very powerful, especially at very low levels.

fn3
ZSU =
Zenitnaia Samokhodnaia Ustanovka
(self-propelled, anti-aircraft gun); ‘23’ denotes the calibre in millimetres; ‘4’ indicates the number of barrels.

PART V

AIR WARFARE

28

NATO Air Forces

WITH THE EXCEPTION
of strategic aircraft and some other elements which remained national preserves, the vast majority of NATO’s operational air assets were organized into Allied Tactical Air Forces (ATAFs). Within these air forces there was a high degree of standardization and interoperability, although there was never a truly standard aircraft used by all the air forces, even though some aircraft almost achieved that status. The F-86 Sabre was widely used in the 1950s, for example, as was the F-4 Phantom in the 1970s and the F-16 in the 1980s, but never by all, and true standardization at this level remained a dream. Standardization was, however, achieved in such important areas as fuel, refuelling (both on the ground and air-to-air) and weapons attachments, but many problems remained: there was no standard machine-gun, for example.
^fn1
Of equal, if not greater, importance was standardization in procedures, and here progress was much more marked, so that a German squadron could fly into and operate from a British base or a US squadron into an Italian base with equal ease on the operating side (although there could be some logistic difficulties).

This air-force standardization was strengthened by a process known as ‘Tactical Evaluations’ (Tacevals), in which a NATO team would arrive at an airbase and put the headquarters, squadrons, aircrews and support elements through a series of unannounced tests to ensure that they were up to the commonly agreed NATO tactical standards. This was a sternly applied and much respected system which, unfortunately, had no equivalent in the ground forces.

One of the most dramatic examples of NATO air forces’ ability to operate together was the NATO Airborne Early Warning Force (NAEWF) at Geilenkirchen. This force operated a fleet of Boeing E-3 AWACS aircraft and was totally multinational, operating entirely to NATO standards and procedures. The original charter laid down that, while the crews operating the AEW equipment and sensors in an aircraft were to be multinational, for ‘safety reasons’ the flight-deck crew (i.e. pilot, second pilot and flight engineer) all had to be from the same nation. In a telling indication of its multi-nationality, however, the NAEWF personnel themselves demanded that this rule be dropped, as being both unnecessary and divisive.

At a somewhat higher level, there was a constant struggle between land and air commanders. The land commanders wished to exert direct control over the deployment and tasking of their allocated air assets, whereas air commanders believed in what they regarded as the ‘essential unity of air power’ and required an exclusively air-force chain of command, with the land forces submitting tasking requests which would then be met, at their discretion, by the air forces, who would decide on the relative priorities.

In some ways the air-command structure was very flexible. A NATO air commander covered every area in the Central Region, and any air assets deployed to that area came under his command. Additional squadrons could therefore be flown in as required, without the need to deploy additional large headquarters, as was the case for ground forces.

CENTRAL REGION ORGANIZATION

When NATO was first established there were two headquarters within the Central Region: AFCENT and an air headquarters, designated AIRCENT. The latter was, however, disbanded when NATO headquarters was compelled to leave France in 1967, and when HQ AFCENT reopened at Brunssum in the Netherlands it subsumed both land and air functions, although it incorporated an air cell to provide co-ordination between the two Central Region tactical air forces. For the air forces this was a retrograde step, since, in their view, it removed the focal point for air matters and, despite the existence of the air cell, allowed disparities in doctrine and procedures to arise between the two ATAFs.

These air-force reservations, coupled with the introduction of the strategy of flexible response, led to one of NATO’s many reviews, which resulted in the establishment of a new body – Headquarters Allied Air Forces Central Europe (HQ AAFCE). When the Military Committee agreed to this in mid-1973, it stipulated that AAFCE was to be an international headquarters commanded by a USAF officer, who would be responsible to CINCENT, and that it would be collocated with HQAFCENT in both peace and war.
It
was also agreed that the two ATAF commanders would be collocated with their respective army groups in both peace and war, but would be operationally responsible to Commander AAFCE.

HQ AAFCE was formally established in June 1974, but in an ‘interim’ headquarters at Ramstein in southern Germany, and not, as ordained by the Military Committee, with HQ AFCENT at Brunssum. One of the early improvements was the establishment of the Central Region Air Operations Centre (CRAOC) alongside AAFCE, with Allied Air Tactical Operations Centres (ATOCs) interposed in the air command chain between ATAFs and the airbases. Thus AAFCE and the ATAFs were responsible for overall planning and co-ordination, while the CRAOC and ATOCs were responsible for tactical planning and the execution of the resulting plans by bases, wings and squadrons.

The air situation over the Central Region involved six elements:

THE AIR FORCES

Belgium

The Belgian air force was totally committed to 2ATAF, to which it contributed fighters and ground-attack aircraft. Belgium was one of the NATO partners involved in the purchase of the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter, and was then one of the few NATO air forces to purchase French aircraft, acquiring 106 Dassault Mirage 5s in the late 1960s. Subsequently, it was one of the major partners in the F-16 programme. In the 1980s it fielded some 144 combat aircraft, a mixture of F-16 Fighting Falcons and Mirages.

Canada

In addition to its land contribution to the Central Region, Canada also provided an air group, which consisted of three fighter squadrons. In the 1960s the aircraft were CF-104 Starfighters (the Canadian version of the USAF’s F-104 Starfighters); these were later replaced by the CF-116 (the Canadian-produced version of the F-5 Freedom Fighter) and finally by the CF-18 (the Canadian-produced F-18 Hornet).

Denmark

In war, virtually all Danish air assets would have been assigned to COMAIRBALTAP. In the 1980s the Danish air force comprised four squadrons of F-16 Fighting Falcons (sixty aircraft) for air defence and ground attack. There were also two squadrons of the Swedish F35 Draken (thirty-four aircraft – the survivors of forty-six purchased in 1968–9), which were used for reconnaissance and ground attack. There were also small transport and air–sea rescue elements.

West Germany

Front-line equipment of the
Luftwaffe
went through four major stages. The first three generations were US aircraft – F-86 Sabres in the 1950s and 1960s, F-104 Starfighters in the 1960s and 1970s, and F-4 Phantoms in the
1970s
– but these were followed by the Anglo-German-Italian Tornado in the 1980s. Front-line strength amounted to some 630 fixed-wing aircraft, which were split between 4ATAF in southern Germany, 2ATAF in northern Germany and COMAIRBALTAP in Schleswig-Holstein. One of the
Luftwaffe
’s main concerns was that its bases could be vulnerable to pre-emptive strikes by the Warsaw Pact, and its airfields were therefore sited as far to the west as was practicable.

The transport force was centred on some ninety C-160 Transall aircraft, which were built in a collaborative programme with France. Because the weather over West Germany was frequently poor and the skies were crowded with military and civil flights, all except the most basic flying training was conducted in the United States.

Luxembourg

The small Grand Duchy had no air force of its own, but was selected as the official country of registration for NAEWF. The aircraft were eighteen Boeing E-3A Sentries and three second-hand Boeing 707s used for crew training and transports, which were purchased between 1983 and 1985. Even though the aircraft were registered in Luxembourg, they were actually based in West Germany, at Geilenkirchen, and they also used forward operating bases in Greece, Italy, Norway and Turkey.

The Netherlands

Like those of Belgium, all Dutch operational aircraft, which in the late 1980s amounted to some 225 aircraft, were committed to 2ATAF. In the 1960s the Dutch acquired a large number of F-104 Starfighters, which were replaced in the 1980s by 213 F-16s. There was also a small transport force. All Dutch airbases were on national territory.

The UK