Creating air combat forces: past and present.

The question of what kind of air combat force the state should have for military operations in a continental theater of operations (TO) arose for the first time when aircraft began to be used on a mass scale during WWI. In 1918 alone, Germany produced 14,123 planes whereas the Western Allies turned out 74,214. (1) Those were the years of not only rapid development of aircraft but also of the views on their employment. Initially appearing as a reconnaissance asset, the plane was rapidly transformed during the war into an attack weapon. After a natural passage of time it also became a means of defense against aerial reconnaissance and air assaults (see Table below).

By the end of WWI, the Allies had the same ratio of air components: the three main components had roughly the same numerical strength. The numerical strength of aviation of the belligerents varied with their military-economic potentials to produce aircraft, air engines and aviation fuel and at the same time they as a rule produced in a month slightly more aircraft than they lost in a month. The areas of employment of an air combat force, disposition of its forces and organization of the ground for aircraft in the theater was dictated solely by the requirements of the strategic formation of troops or naval forces that included aviation forces. But already at that time, they arrived at the conclusion that an air combat force on a continental theater should include both forces designated for joint operations with troops and forces tasked with specific missions in naval operations. They at the same time were supposed to be capable of conducting air reconnaissance, strike ground and naval targets and protect friendly troops, naval forces and rear services installations against hostile reconnaissance and air strikes.

When we discuss the development of theory of an air combat force on a continental theater based on WWI experience, we should pay attention to the ideas of generals Douhet and Armango many of which were to some or other extent implemented by European states in organization development of their air forces.

Douhet's ideas (2) on the creation of an air combat force and its employment, the validity of which was confirmed in WWII and wars that followed, can be reduced to the following basic points: victory in a modern war is impossible without gaining control of the air; to gain control of the air one must have an air force that should be an independent armed service on the same footing as land and sea forces; the air arm is intended for direct operations with ground and naval forces and should be a component part of the latter forces, be funded and developed by them; the air army (Douhet's term for the air arm capable of gaining control of the air) should possess big bombing capability and forces for air combat comparable to similar forces of the potential adversary. It should be ready for action at all times for otherwise it loses 90 percent of its value.

General Armango's ideas of air forces and their role in warfare were far removed from the extremes of Douhet's theory, who believed that air supremacy and, consequently, victory in the war could be achieved through air bombing alone. Accepting Douhet's sensible ideas of organizational development of air forces, he developed a concept of employment of air forces in warfare in constant operational connection with the actions of land and sea forces. He took Douhet's gaining control of the air ideas a step further in conjunction with national air defense forces and described the role and place of air force in it.

Armango views (3) on the creation of an air combat force can be reduced to several basic points. First, an air combat force should have minimal numbers of men and equipment placed under the operational command directly to the commanders of force groupings; the main part of forces should be held in a "concentrated maneuvering attack force" directly subordinated to the air combat force commander. Second, base airfields and aviation supplies should be located at such a distance from the state border as to be safe from surprise hostile air attacks. To increase maneuverability and survivability of combined and ordinary air units diversion and maneuver airfields should be built in advance near the border, among other places. Third, combat planes, their weapons and equipment should not be inferior to those of the adversary and be able to also effectively carry out missions that are "not their own" that can prove the most important at some point. It is advisable to have alternative crews for every plane (for example, one for operations over land and another for operations over sea).

Let us see how justified were the prewar views on the creation of air combat forces for defensive operations on the continental theater using the example of the main European participants in WWII: Germany, the Soviet Union and Great Britain.

Nazi Germany's air combat force by the start of hostilities was based on the blitzkrieg concept, for which reason it was clearly offensive in nature and mainly intended for supporting ground troops in offensive operations. The very possibility of strategic defense was ruled out. As of 22 June 1941, Germany deployed along the Soviet border 52.4 percent of its bombers, 31.8 percent of its fighter planes, 15.8 percent of its reconnaissance planes and that did not include the aircraft of Germany's allies. (4)

The blitzkrieg idea was abandoned by the end of 1941, but the problem of strategic defense along the Soviet front, which made Germany change its views on the employment of the air combat force, confronted it as late as the middle of 1943 in the wake of the Kursk Bulge defeat. Before that, Germany was stressing offensive forms of warfare and persistently building up the offensive potential of its air combat force. By 1 June 1943, this force was comprised of bombers and ground assault planes (68.4%), fighters (20.0%) and reconnaissance planes (11.6%). (5)

Military operations along the Soviet front beginning in 1943, when Germany switched to strategic defense, proved groundless the views engendered by the blitzkrieg concept. First, it was believed that strategic defense was possible without big battleworthy aviation reserves and making up for lost aircraft relying on aircraft production facilities alone. At the same time, Germany's total losses of combat planes as early as in 1942 exceeded by 12 percent their supply and by 9 percent in 1943 (the number of planes lost and newly produced evened out as late as 1944) which made it possible to have in the air combat force of the defensive period more than 60 percent or 65 percent of the initial number of planes. (6) This was insufficient for successful defense as the might of enemy air combat forces was constantly growing on the Soviet front and on the other fronts.

Second, the idea of the decisive role and sufficiency of mainly bomber planes for maintaining the air supremacy failed the practical test. When the focus of fighting for air supremacy in the West shifted to Germany's airspace, where in 1944 it committed up to 50 percent of its fighter planes, there were decisive air battles on the Soviet front resulting in major losses to Germany's Air Force, the position was impossible to rectify even by a sharp boost in the production of fighter planes in 1943 and 1944 compared to 1941 (3- and 7-fold, accordingly) and by the transfer in 1944 of a proportion of bomber pilots to the fighter aviation. Germany could not set up on the Soviet front a combat force of fighter aviation capable of holding out against the Soviet air combat force that had achieved in 1944 a 5- to 9-fold superiority in the number of fighter planes. (7) That had disastrous consequences for Germany's Air Force: it lost most of its aircraft to air warfare (the Soviet aviation flew only 1.5 percent of all sorties to bomb enemy airfields in 1944) and suffered a crushing defeat.

Third, Germany's hopes proved futile that it would be able to use the same large strategic air formations whose strike aviation consisted mainly of only medium bombers, to successfully fulfill both operational-tactical tasks together with land troops and naval forces and independently fulfill strategic tasks. Germany's air combat force turned out to have neither planes specifically intended for support of troops on the battlefield (although the output of fighters used as ground assault planes in 1944 was more than ten times greater than in 1941), nor long-range bombers capable of crippling the Soviet military-economic potential by air strikes. (8)

Fourth, owing to the fact that forces were constantly lacking for major missions in operations on the continental part of the theater, air operations over the sea were constantly planned on the "leftover" principle. Furthermore, the absence of aviation forces directly subordinated to the naval command and intended for specific missions in naval operations significantly reduced the effectiveness of over-the-sea operations by planes that were allotted by the Air Force command.

The views of the Soviet command on the creation of an air combat force also underwent significant changes during the course of war. The prewar views were based on the wrong Soviet military theory of struggle for air supremacy, especially in the initial period of war as part of the operations mounted by fronts or of army operations. (9) Struggle for air supremacy amounted to air-to-air combats above battlefields. It was also believed that aviation could achieve decisive effect operating jointly with troops on the ground in army (corps) operations. The early period of the war already revealed the fallaciousness of the view, first, on dividing an air combat force into tactical, army and frontal aviations subordinated to army corps, armies and fronts, respectively. The separated forces of the air combat force proved unable to hold out against massive operations of the enemy aviation and sustained big losses. Thus, the air forces of the Western front alone lost 1,840 aircraft during 26 first days of the war whereas the enemy lost 818. Aviation subordinated to combined arms large strategic formations was only employed according to their plans. For example, in 1941, the Western front air forces flew 97 percent of their sorties only in support of troops, to provide cover for them and do air reconnaissance. At the same time, they did not fly a single sortie to escort long-range bombers which delivered 84 percent of strikes in the combat zone at tactical and immediate operational depths. The consequences of long-range bombers' operations without fighter cover were catastrophic: 1,150 bombers were destroyed by the end of 1941 out of the 1,339 bombers that were in the aviation corps and separate long-range aviation divisions in the European USSR by the start of the war. (10)

Second, the view on the role and place of ground assault and reconnaissance aviation in operations and combats was mistaken. Conclusions on the urgent need for a ground assault air force were drawn right away and the production of ground assault aircraft rose sharply during the war (around 33 percent of all combat planes produced). This enabled the Soviet Air Force, from the end of 1942, to constantly have as part of its effective strength ground assault planes that constituted 30 or 32 percent of all its planes.

As for the number of reconnaissance planes, we equaled Germany in the middle of 1944. The number of reconnaissance sorties throughout the war accounted for 11.8 percent of all the sorties, whereas the number of enemy reconnaissance sorties was comparable with the number of sorties in support of the troops, or 30-35 percent. This indicates that we underestimated the importance of aerial reconnaissance during the war.

Third, we were compelled to rethink the peacetime composition of the rear service. Since it did not correspond to the wartime logistic support system and the supplies echelonment was incorrect (primarily with respect to air weapons and fuel with around 70 percent of which concentrated in depots and on airfields in direct proximity to the state border). The bulk of supplies were destroyed during the offensive and much of them were left behind and ended up in the hands of the enemy. Thus, as of 1 August 1941, aviation units of the Northwestern, Western and Southwestern fronts used for bombing as little as 18 percent of the air-bomb stockpiles. (11)

Generally, the disparity between the war needs and the organizational structure, the low war-fighting capability and operational readiness of units that were armed with obsolete equipment, the congested basing, total absence of operational concealment and deception arrangements and poor camouflaging of troops and airfields, the unsatisfactory organization and untimely warnings of hostile aircraft threat, the absence of fighter cover for bombers, the loss during the first month of the war of the main supplies predetermined the total defeat of the Soviet air combat force in the theater that lost more than 76 percent of its initial combat strength by the end of the third month of the war.

Before WWII, the Air Force of Great Britain represented a separate armed service tasked with assisting the naval forces with repulsing enemy attacks from the sea, supporting the British expeditionary forces, gaining air supremacy and weakening the enemy's military-economic potential. Sea aviation was a component service of the Navy.

The first seven months of the war, in the course of which Britain limited itself to defensive operations along nearby lifelines and repulsing airstrikes during 1940-1941, partially confirmed the correctness of its views on creating an air combat force. But the defensive operation of the Allied forces in France in 1940 showed right away that it was completely unsuited for joint operations with ground forces.

The absence of aviation intended for support of ground forces in operations on the continental theater was one of Great Britain's main errors in its efforts to create an air combat force which predetermined the defeat of the British troops in the 1940 defensive operation in France. That error was rectified as late as in the third year of the war with the creation of a tactical air force, but time was lost and Britain was unable to equip its units, which proved direct support to ground troops, with a specialized ground assault plane before the end of the war. (12)

In recent times, theories relating to the creation of air combat forces on continental theaters were based on the experience of WWII and local wars and they were further developed mainly in the military doctrines of the two rivaling military-political alliances--NATO and the Warsaw Pact. As defensive alliances, both regarded the offensive as the main type of military operations until the mid-1980s. Either alliance planned to carry out defensive missions through active offensive operations and that predetermined the directions of development and theories of creating air combat forces in theaters and of the force groupings per se.

The rivals found different solutions to creating an air combat force equally suitable for defensive and offensive operations. NATO created a single combat system being a part of a coalition force grouping of troops and forces in the theater as a whole consisting in organizational terms of Allied Tactical Air Force (ATAF) commands, air force commands in separate operational sectors, national Tactical Air Force (TAF) commands with a single system of operational control and support but with separate systems of combat, logistic and special technical support. The Warsaw Treaty created a force grouping where combined and ordinary air force units of the allied states were to become, in the event of war, elements of Soviet large strategic formations and combined air force units.

NATO's ATAF and TAF commands were strictly oriented toward a joint employment with certain groupings of troops and forces (groups of armies, army corps, large naval strategic formations) and each had roughly the same number of aircraft (ATAF commands had 762-767 aircraft each and TAF commands had 144-162 each) and there was roughly the same proportion of fighters, bombers, etc., in them making it possible to conclude that those were "air force outfits" appropriate for all types of joint operations involving standard large strategic formations and combined units of land and sea forces in defensive operations on continental theaters in surprise attacks of the enemy (Warsaw Pact) employing mission-capable force groupings.

The Warsaw Pact coalition combined air force was also intended for joint employment together with coalition force groupings of land and sea forces, but the method adopted for creating the coalition force grouping gives no reason to talk about any "force outfits" (with the exception of army aircraft whose number was in proportion to the number of combined-arms large strategic formations of fronts). In addition, this method would inevitably involve the need to solve some difficult problems like the language barrier, organization of logistic and special technical support, supplies of equipment and its repair, personnel training and making up for lost personnel, and so on.

The rivals also used different methods to determine the requisite number of air force groupings, the ratio of air components and their operational disposition, but really fundamental differences existed only with regard to the ratio of air components. NATO did not follow the road of equipping units with aircraft of separate air components. It was equipping them with tactical fighters of various modifications which, when needed and with appropriate training of flight personnel, could with practically equal effectiveness perform various missions. For example, if we count aircraft on the basis of units they belong to, strike planes accounted for 65 percent; fighters, for 22 percent; reconnaissance and EW, for 13 percent, but in a massive air strike there could be 80-85 percent of strike planes and up to 70 percent of fighter planes. At the same time, slightly more than 40 percent of the Warsaw Treaty air combat force aircraft were capable of air strike missions and around 50 percent of fighter missions.

Under modern conditions and proceeding from the new contents of defense sufficiency and based on analysis of the evolution of views on air combat forces by the leading states of the world, it seems possible to formulate the following operational-strategic prerequisites for the creation of Russia's air combat forces in strategic sectors (on continental theaters).

First. Air combat forces in peacetime strategic sectors should generally have constant combat readiness personnel and equipment in numbers making it possible to repulse attacks and provide air cover for operational deployment of troops and forces in the theater.

Second. The effective combat strength of air combat forces being created in operational sectors should be based on the quotas of tasks assigned to large strategic formations of aviation in the first operations of the initial period of war.

Third. The organizational structure of forces tasked with repulsing attacks and providing air cover for operational deployment of force groupings and forces in strategic sectors should be the same in peacetime and wartime and help them fully realize their combat potentials with the start of military operations.

Fourth. Operational-level disposition of each air combat force should be in two echelons: echelon one--combined air units and units for repulsing attacks and providing air cover for operational deployment of force groupings and forces in the theater; echelon two--combined air units and units mainly tasked with missions in operations in the operational depth.

Fifth. All basing airfields (bases) of air combat force units in continental theaters and main unit-level and operational supplies of the air combat forces should be at such distances from the state border as to rule out strikes by hostile air weapons that did not penetrate the air defense casualty zone of the fronts (armies) of the first operational echelon. At the same time, all main basing airfields (bases) should have standard reinforced concrete protective shelters and airfield equipment ensuring the safety and employment of combat planes of all the types found in some or other air combat force. Airfields and stocks of supplies should be located away from areas that could be affected by probable contamination or inundation resulting from the destruction of nuclear electric power stations, big chemical works, oil and gas pipelines, dams and dikes.

Sixth. Operational areas of airfield basing must be prepared in peacetime and be provided with the necessary supplies and be capable of accommodating planes of all the types found in some or other air combat force in the continental theater for basing large strategic air formations and units of forces intended for repulsing attacks and providing cover against airstrikes during periods of threat in operational sectors. These airfields can be used by civil aviation in peacetime.

Seventh. The air combat force should have a single (together with the force grouping of missile air defense troops) system of operational control. All airfields basing units of the air combat force should be protected, in addition to the cover provided under the general air defense system, by their own robotic EW assets and antiaircraft missile (artillery) systems and have modern weapon assets to repulse attacks of special operations forces.

Eighth. The air combat force should be equipped with multipurpose aircraft (heavy, medium and light) that can be effectively used with bombsight and navigation systems and special equipment as: reconnaissance planes (at least 15 percent), strike planes (80 percent to 85 percent) and fighters (at least 50 percent of their total number in the air combat force).

The standard of training of aircrews in combat operations and their number should guarantee the fulfillment of combat missions in all weather conditions in daytime and at night.

Ninth. Operational deployment of the air combat force in the continental theater should proceed in conjunction with existing combat-ready aviation reserves in the internal military districts, systems that train aviation reserves and personnel, the nation's capabilities to transport reserves and provide them with supplies. Historical experience shows that it is necessary to have a combat ready aviation reserve of at least 50 percent the size of the peacetime air combat force to deploy an air combat force on a continental theater.

These authors do not claim that theirs is the only correct viewpoint. At the same time we think the current state of Russia's peacetime air combat forces against the backdrop of emerging trends in the military-political situation in the world and predicted military threats is a good reason for pondering the possibility of creating at least one air combat force that would be adequate for solving the required scope of appropriate tasks in a local or regional war.

NOTES:

1. E.F. Burche et. al., Vozdushnye vooruzheniya Germanii, Gosvoenizdat Publishers, Moscow, 1935, p. 39.

2. G. Douhet, Gospodstvo v vozdukhe, Gosvoenizdat Publishers, Moscow, 1926, p. 76.

3. Armango, Vozdushnaya armiya i protivovozdushnaya oborona strany, Gosvoenizdat Publishers, Moscow, 1935, p. 104.

4. Sovetskaya aviatsiya v Velikoy Otechestvennoy voyne 1941-1945 gg. V tsifrakh, GSh VVS, Moscow, 1962, p. 11.

5. Ibidem.

6. Mirovaya voyna 1939-1945 gg.: Sbornik statei, Transl. from German, Inostrannaya literatura, Moscow, 1957, pp. 514, 516-518.

7. Sovetskaya aviatsiya v Velikoy Otechestvennoy voyne 1941-1945 gg. V tsifrakh, pp. 7, 11.

8. Mirovaya voyna 1939-1945 gg., p. 514.

9. 1941 god--opyt planirovaniya i primeneniya Voenno-vozdushnykh sil, uroki i vyvody, TsOTI VVS, Moscow, pp. 7-9.

10. Sovetskaya aviatsiya v Velikoy Otechestvennoy voyne 1941-1945 gg. V tsifrakh, pp. 17, 241.

11. 1941 god--opyt planirovaniya i primeneniya Voenno-vozdushnykh sil, uroki i vyvody, p. 82.

12. D. Richards, H. Sonders, Voenno-vozdushnye sily Velikobritanii vo 2-y Mirovoy voyne 1939-1945 gg., Voenizdat Publishers, Moscow, 1963, pp. 51, 60-73, 87-156.

Lt. Gen. Yu.N. PLUZHNIKOV

Maj. Gen. A.G. TSYMBALOV (Res.)

Candidate of Military Sciences

Composition of German Aviation in WWI

(in percentage points)

                                      Years
Air component              1914  1915  1916  1917-1918

Reconnaissance (spotting)   96    81    60    32
Bombing, assault            --    10    22    28
Fighter                     --     4    10    30
Naval                        4     5     8    10
Total                      100   100   100   100