Since the earliest days of the Alliance, ideas about the use of air power had centred, non-contentiously, on the ability of air forces to bring rapid concentrations of power to bear to redress the imbalance between Allied and Warsaw Pact numbers. Over the years, ways of achieving this had changed with the shifting balance in numbers and quality and with the continually evolving political appreciations of the times. In the late fifties the strong Allied tactical air forces were cut back as the emphasis swung to massive nuclear retaliation and the ‘trip-wire’. In the late sixties, with the change to the ‘flexible response’ strategy, defence efforts were directed to the development of aircraft capable of undertaking both nuclear and conventional operations. As time went on, a numerical Warsaw Pact superiority in the air, as well as on the ground, looked as if it was to be a permanent feature in the balance of power. This placed a high premium on maintaining the Allied technological lead. It also demanded attention to methods of improving the effectiveness of the amalgam of national air forces through better standardization of their weapons and tactics and of their engineering and logistic support. These were not easy aims to achieve, for a variety of national reasons, and progress — though happily considerable by 1985 — had been slow and painful.
The NATO air forces in the Central Region were made up of two tactical air forces, 2 ATAF associated with the Northern Army Group and 4 ATAF with the Central Army Group. This structure was a hangover from the occupation of Germany after the Second World War. Its appropriateness came into question in the late sixties and early seventies. The problem was resolved in 1974, when an overall United States Air Commander (COMAAFCE) was established, with his own headquarters, to exercise central control of Allied air power at the highest level of air command in order to exploit the flexibility and concentration of the numerically inferior Allied air forces. COMAAFCE was responsible to the Commander-in-Chief, Central Region (CINCENT), and his two immediate subordinates were the commanders of 2 and 4 ATAF who retained, in peacetime at least, the same close contact with the army groups.
On the other side of the Iron Curtain we have seen how, during the 1970s, the Russians had developed a more sophisticated concept of air power. What had once been an air arm with very narrow aims, and an almost exclusively battlefield role, had evolved into an air force as the West understood the term. COMAAFCE saw the need to organize his air forces so as to counter this increased threat, while still being able to support the defensive land battle in the critical phase before full reinforcements arrived. He also saw the difficulties. Land and air commanders were agreed on the immediate, full-blooded use of air power in the first hours of an offensive. They saw it as a strategic task of the first importance to identify and slow the enemy’s main thrusts on the ground. At the same time, COMAAFCE realized better than anyone that the success or failure of this plan would depend on the security of his air bases. In particular, his mind often dwelt on the fact that the bases from which 2 ATAF operated were uncomfortably far forward.
On the other hand, he felt confident about his assessment of the enemy’s air objective. In a surge offensive with the initiative, and with an overall advantage in numbers of more than two to one, it was dangerous and misleading to think much in terms of what the enemy’s priorities might be — the Warsaw Pact would probably do everything they could do in the air, and would do it all at once. They would want to neutralize the Allied nuclear strike capability in the theatre; they would aim to ward off interference with the land battle and to establish a tolerable, and if possible favourable, air situation; they would need to protect their own air bases; and they would want to put all the weight of air power they could behind their forces on the ground. The prospect was one of air effort, at every level, of an intensity hitherto never experienced.
In the last fifteen years the development of the Soviet Air Forces had stimulated hard thinking and debate among the Allied air commanders and their staffs. This thinking had reinforced the three classic counters to the threat: offensive counter-air operations against the enemy’s bases; engagement in the air; point and area defence.
