Redressing the status of navigation service.

The article by Col. A.D. Tsyganok based on analysis of the latest war in Iraq experience and published in Military Thought drew an important conclusion about complete dependence of all weapon assets (and reconnaissance) on navigation support which, the author thinks, is a most important lesson of the Iraqi war. He writes: "There is a compelling need to justify and put into operation a new system of operational support--a navigation support system that the Russian army does not have today." (1)

I cannot go along with the latter claim because the Air Force and the Navy have long had navigation support services of combat operations. It is something else again that, unfortunately, this type of combat (operations) support is far from always credited with the enormous and ever growing role it plays in both combat activities and routine combat training of aviation. The very term "navigation support" for that matter cannot be regarded as quite apt. The reasons for underrating and belittling the importance of this type of combat support have their roots in distant past.

First navigators came along in distant past when man began to sail ships along and across the seas. Navigators were valued highly in such seafaring nations as Spain and Portugal being ranked third in importance on board ship. As for Holland, where Peter the Great was learning how to build and sail ships, it did not have as great geographic discoveries to its credit but its merchant fleet was nearly twice that of England in the 17th century. It is possible that the Dutch experience resulted in underrating the navigator's role in Russia. In fact, the Naval Regulations adopted in 1720 with Peter's direct participation ranked navigators 13th in importance. A special Admiralty Board order in 1745 prohibited members of the gentry from serving as navigators. Navigators before 1757 were noncommissioned officers and they could not receive commission. Navy navigators had ground-troops ranks and could not be put in command of ships. The 1797 Admiralty Board edict recognized the exceptional role of the navigation service. This notwithstanding, navigators continued to be regarded in Russia as second-rate naval personnel.

The Navy nowadays recognizes the importance of navigational support. Here's the position on this matter of Rear Admiral Ye.G. Babinov, former chief navigator of Russia's Navy: "Given all its achievements of previous years, the navigation service largely lost its positions in command and control of forces. The term 'navigational support' was deleted from Naval documents whereas the term 'the performance of navigational missions of sailing' introduced instead of it proved to be departmental and specialized and appeared in no general naval guideline document. In its sense it corresponds to the level of an individual ship, but it would have been appropriate to introduce a new term--'naval support'--(type of activity)--for a group of ships or a strategic force. As a type of combat and operations support, navigational support is included in drafts of new operational-level guideline documents of the RF Armed Forces." (2)

As people began to learn how to fly, the air has since become one of the spheres of warfare, the aviators borrowed from sailors the structure of navigation service, methods of navigation and many other things. As airplanes emerged, they were flown by specialists, who came to be called pilots. Mastering the fundamentally new machines they, as captains of seagoing ships, won the legitimate right to the top priority and position in this new area of human activities. But the experience of using airplanes in combat during World War I showed it was necessary to create an air navigation service. It was founded on March 24, 1916 and it approved by Order No. 370 of the commander in chief of the Air Force on August 2, 2000 as the birthday of the Russian Air Force navigation service. The Manual of Air Navigation Service (NANS) approved on April 7, 1932 by Commander of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army Air Force Ya.I. Alksnis spelled out the main tasks of the Air Navigation Service (ANS): "The ANS is to support navigation of individual aircraft and Air Force combined units under any conditions of orientation and piloting both external (weather, terrain, hours of the day) and those following from special requirements imposed on air navigation based on their combat missions (reconnaissance, bombing, photography, airlifting, ground attack, etc.)" as well as "to prepare for the command calculations and data for operation or combat in the shortest flight time, precisely on schedule, in the most concealed manner, with utmost reliability and utmost precision of actions with regard to time, location, engagement of targets, photography, reconnaissance, etc." (3) The Manual also paid a great deal of attention to air navigation service's missions under combat conditions devoting an entire special section to the subject--"The Air Navigation Service in the Main Types of Air Force Combat Activities." Interestingly, the Manual more than once stressed the special nature of the service's activities in the event "the squadron commander is an aerial observer," i.e., it was not ruled out in those years that a navigator could be assigned to the position of squadron commander.

Aviation was rapidly gaining flying and combat experience that was carefully analyzed, summed up and disseminated. Let me quote from the report of Army Commander 2nd Rank Ya.V. Smushkevich he submitted to the USSR Council of People's Commissars Defense Committee on May 14, 1940 and entitled "The Condition of the Armed Air Forces of the Red Army." Analyzing the results of air combat activities, the Air Force commander acknowledged that the aviation had operated mostly under visual weather conditions and its training for Finland's difficult weather conditions proved insufficient. The lack of pilot proficiency with regard to navigation and even more so in radio navigation caused numerous instances of loss of bearings. The report also cited the unsatisfactory accuracy of bombing, especially with regard to narrow targets (bridges and stages between rail stations). Characteristically, one cause of the drawbacks cited was that navigators in the Air Force were regarded as "second-rate" personnel and navigation training was not getting sufficient attention. The report self-critically admitted that the Air Force commanders (Smushkevich, Agaltsov) had failed to promptly apply at individual units the experience gained in the wars in Spain, China and on the Khalkhin Gol and make use of it in all the theaters of military operations. (4)

The Soviet Military Encyclopedia defines a navigator as a member of the Naval and Air Force personnel with special training who supports accurate and safe directing of ships or piloted aircraft. (5) It is more appropriate to say "carries out" rather than "supports" the directing of ships and aircraft, all the more so because the definition of "navigation service" several lines further says that it is designed "for supporting the direction of ships (vessels) and aircraft" whereas the main task in the Air Force is "... to carry out accurate and safe direction of ships and vessels." The navigation service in the Air Force performs similar tasks and of special importance in its activities is to support air navigational accuracy and safety of piloted aircraft, guiding them to their targets (air-drop sites), to achieve high effectiveness of bombing, torpedo bombing, missile launching, among other tasks.

It is pertinent to ask: Why do naval navigators carry out [their missions] and why do air navigators support them? We can hardly agree that the term "navigational support" is apt also because its definition cited right there is a clear exercise in tautology. "Navigational support in aviation is a set of measures supporting the greatest accuracy, reliability and safety of aircraft ..." (emphasis is by the author). It is more logical to say that navigators carry out, whereas the navigation service supports the directing of ships and aircraft.

Combat experience conclusively shows that the content of navigational support of combat activities of aircraft has radically changed. At the dawn of aviation, navigators were only supposed to be proficient in flying aircraft. The advent of military aviation tasked them with making visual observation and photographic reconnaissance, and bird's-view adjustment of artillery fire. As aircraft weapons came along, they were supposed to fire them, release bombs and later launch missiles. Each of the tasks was regarded to be functionally independent before. As time went on, navigators came to also perform staff-related tasks. Their share was the greater the higher the staff echelon was and staffs could no longer do without navigation service and its computations and substantiated proposals, especially during air combat operations. NANS-32 in fact already said that the air navigation service was of exceptional importance in the entire Air Force system and equipment, a service on which safety of flying, precision and accuracy of combat activities depended.

Massive employment of aircraft before and especially during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 called for raising flight-planning calculations first to the tactical and later operational level (to determine the required forces and plan concentrated air strikes at assigned targets; calculations needed to determine combat dispositions of a great number of aircraft and to agree upon take-off time of groups of aircraft and the passing of designated lines, etc.).

B.V. Sterligov, who was assigned, on February 28, 1933, to the position of flag navigator of the Air Force and who headed this service throughout the Great Patriotic War, continued to call this work "navigation support of combat air operations." This term was included in all official manuals and navigation support is regarded to this day as a type of combat support. The high effectiveness of the navigation service during the war can be rather well seen from the following figures. Whereas early on during the Great Patriotic War only nine out of ten groups of aircraft managed to approach their targets, there were 5,080 target-approaches by groups per one failure. According to strike photography data, the percentage of bombs hitting their targets rose by an order of magnitude. (6) Noteworthy is the fact that the importance of navigation service became especially clear during the war. It is no coincidence therefore that the 1942 order of the Air Force commander once again transferred bombing to the Air Force flag navigator (from 1938, bombing training was in charge of the Air Force combat training directorate) who was taken out of control of the chief of staff to become deputy Air Force commander in chief for the navigation service. This move started the process of gradual convergence of the two earlier independent jobs--air navigation and bombing.

The problem of raising the effectiveness of combat operations and air safety will never lose its relevance for which reason the constant search for solving it is characteristic of what all Air Force services are doing, including the navigation service.

The experience of outstanding extended flights of the 1930s and combat operations of our aviation and the ever harder mission conditions put the spotlight on the training of flying personnel with a higher military education. In September 1938, the Zhukovskiy Air Force Engineering Academy formed a department of air navigators, and in March 1940, they created the Military Academy of Command and Navigation Personnel of the Red Army Air Force (today's Gagarin Air Force Academy).

The revolution in the military that took place in a brief period in history saw the emergence of jet aircraft, missile-carrying aircraft, new air force components and many new types of aircraft: helicopters, remotely piloted vehicles, space ships, cruise missiles, etc. Air operations grew much more effective with the adoption of nuclear and precision weapons, accurate aiming and navigation systems, the development of unified computer technologies for integrated performance of important missions that were regarded independent before. A characteristic example is the convergence of the objectives of navigation and target engagement achieved by a method of "blind bombing" of stationary targets when the aircraft is zeroed in on the release point by precision radio navigation (including satellite-based) systems. This has radically changed the nature of the navigation service in the Air Force whose two prime objectives are accurate navigation of aircraft along assigned paths and effective engagement of targets.

A special role in converging the tasks of navigation and the employment of weapons was played by the development by the country's scholars (Academicians L.S. Pontryagin and N.N. Krasovskiy, among others) of the fundamental theory of optimal control of the movement of objects in the mid-1950s. At its base is the most important applied task to achieve optimal convergence of two moving points. This theory made it possible to examine from unified methodological positions the tasks of navigation, the firing of weapons, bombing, zeroing aircraft and missiles in on moving and stationary targets, the landing of aircraft, orbital rendezvous and other tasks that were earlier examined with the use of different methods. It is no coincidence that it is precision navigation, especially if supported by satellite-based radio navigation systems, that has become the basis for the employment of precision weapons by practically all air groups of the United States and its allies in the recent war in Iraq. Instead of the "see-and-kill" principle, precision navigation systems have made it possible to implement, if geodetic coordinates are known, the "fire-and-forget" principle or a more effective method of engaging a target.

The more years go by, the more complex grow the tasks to be solved by navigation service specialists, the more often navigation service personnel comes to ask: why do all staffs ranging from air regiments and higher up do the fighting whereas navigators with all their personnel only do the supporting of combat operations? In fact, the lower navigation service echelons from the crew navigator to the chief navigator of an air division take direct part in combat operations, they guide aircraft to assigned targets, airdrop personnel and equipment, conduct reconnaissance and tackle other combat missions. And the upper echelon (from a large strategic formation up) substantiates computations and develops models of massive air strikes, proposes effective alternative decisions both on tactical and operational levels. Is this merely supporting or is this what fighting is essentially about, or to be more accurate, command and control of large strategic formations and combined units of the Air Force in combat operations? There is no denying, decisions of any air force commanding officer are based on the navigator's computations. Does not this smack of the spirit of the Petrine times of clearly underrating navigation services?

One would not care too much if the unfortunate terms were not matched by concrete deeds that often lead to negative consequences. Here are a few characteristic examples.

The navigation department at the Gagarin Air Force Academy was eliminated in November 1994 and navigators are now trained at the air combat operations support department. Is this a coincidence that the first edition of the Soviet Military Encyclopedia has the words "observer pilot" and "navigator" (there is no mention though of "test navigator" although this position does exist whereas the encyclopedia does mention the position of "test pilot") and that the encyclopedia Aviatsiya [Aviation] published in 1994 makes no mention of any navigation position? Even the entry dealing with aircrews says that an aircrew is comprised of its "commander, among others."

The new Military Encyclopedia says that "operating within the Air Force structure are an aviation weather service; air photography service; aviation engineer service; airfield engineer service; search, salvage and rescue service; air safety service, etc." (7) The navigation service that has to do with most important weapon employment tasks and largely determines the effectiveness of air combat operations and safety is relegated to the "etc" rank. I believe it is time to fundamentally review the raised questions. The experience of local conflicts and especially of the recent war in Iraq make this even more compelling. What happened there after all?

As the article by Maj. Gen. V.A. Menshikov (Res.) said quite rightly, there has emerged a "concept of joint and time-space coordinated employment of air reconnaissance and engagement systems and space reconnaissance systems (and navigation.--G.M.), the two integrated in a unified system." The author is also fundamentally right that "precise land navigation in any weather by day or night will be as commonplace as the exact time. The traditional paper maps will become a thing of the past too. These are going to be replaced by highly precise digital maps reflecting real combat situation and one's own location, which will be sent directly to individual field terminals." (8) We cannot but note that all these qualitatively new types of information technology are naturally in keeping with traditional duties of navigation service that has always been in charge of correct time service, mapping and, with the advent of accurate radio navigation, bombing and landing systems, it is now also in charge of topographic and geodetic support of air combat operations. All this undoubtedly informs the navigator's duty with a qualitatively new content opening up in the era of a scientific and technological revolution a new stage in the development of military-technical systems of navigation, reconnaissance and effective engagement that proving hitherto unheard of potentials of effectively solving many aviation tasks.

We should not therefore introduce a new, supposedly missing, type of combat support but, based on combat experience of especially the latest war in Iraq, recognize the sharply grown importance of navigation service. This conclusion is suggested, albeit not quite distinctly, in most of the views voiced by the speakers during the meeting of the Academy of Military Sciences academic council held at the RF MoD Institute of Military History June 6, 2003 and published in Military Thought (Nos. 3-4, 2003).

World War I called for the creation of military aviation whereas the massive employment of the latter in the Great Patriotic War elevated aviation's role to the operational level making chief navigators assistants to commanders (commanding generals) for navigation service. The new revolution in the military has heralded a third stage in the development of navigation service which strongly urges the enhancing of its status to match the importance of tasks it performs. This will, undoubtedly, promote, under modern conditions, effective solutions to problems of air safety, navigation, reconnaissance with correct localization of targets and their sure destruction. We should hardly need to wait for more dramatic wars to appraise under combat environment the real significance of navigation service and its role in achieving the objectives of modern operations and combat activities.

NOTES:

1. Military Thought, No. 3, 2003, p. 182.

2. Nezavisimoye voennoye obozreniye, No. 2, 2003.

3. Nastavleniye po aeronavigatsionnoy sluzhbe VVS RKKA (NANS-32), Redaktsionno-izdatelskiy sektor UVVS RKKA, Moscow, 1932.

4. See: Vestnik vozdushnogo flota, No. 3, May-June 2003.

5. Sovetskaia voennaia entsiklopedia, Vol. 8, Voenizdat Publishers, Moscow, 1980.

6. Sbornik materialov shturmanskoy sluzhby VVS Krasnoy Armii No. 8 (materialy sbora glavnykh shturmanov 1944 goda), Voenizdat Publishers, Moscow, 1945.

7. Voennaia entsiklopedia, Vol. 2, Voenizdat Publishers, Moscow, 1994.

8. Military Thought, No. 3, 2003, p. 159.

Maj. Gen. Aviation G.F. MOLOKANOV (Ret.)

Doctor of Technical Sciences