There had been general agreement among Allied airmen for many years that the most effective way of countering the Soviet air threat lay in ‘taking it out’ at its point of origin — but this, never an easy task, had become steadily more formidable as Soviet defences had advanced. The airfields would be hardened and very well defended. But major developments in fire-suppression missiles, in precision-guided stand-off munitions, and in airfield-cratering and area-denial weapons gave COMAAFCE cause for sober confidence, though he knew that losses would be high. Great improvements had been made in air-to-air capability since the late seventies. Ground-controlled long-range interceptions would still be possible and necessary, especially in the air defence of the United Kingdom and adjacent areas of sea, but the pressure of geography in Central Europe and the short warning time that this would allow, together with the confusion of electronic counter-measures that would reign in the battle zone, pointed to the need for a less rigid and more general air combat capability. COMAAFCE was well satisfied that the introduction of the F-15s and F-16s to supplement the F-4
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.
