Roles and Missions:  Notes from a Forsaken War

For the informed airman, air power roles and missions lessons from the Vietnam conflict were learned in the skies of wars past. The overall air pattern was different in Vietnam, developing like a patchwork quilt as Washington reacted to enemy initiatives. The air war see-sawed as fighting escalated from an advisory role to covert air commando to a complex proving ground for tactics, techniques, and weapon systems.

Aged fighters and bombers returned from the graveyard, retrofitted with electronic weapons and other high-tech wizardry, to be tested in battle. A variety of hybrid gunships entered the fray. Retrofitted C–123 Ranch Hand transports sprayed the jungles with Agent Orange to kill vegetation and reveal enemy movements. Century-series fighters designed for tactical nuclear use were reconfigured for non-nuclear combat. Airmen weaned from conventional tactics in the 1950s relearned old lessons, putting guns back on their fighters. Giant B–52 bombers carpet-bombed enemy concentrations.

Limited tactical and technological gains, however, were small consolation for the grief caused by political constraints, a fact of modern war. In battle after battle, American air weapons helped defeat an outgunned but resourceful enemy, yet could not decide the final outcome.

Short of destroying warmaking centers or invading the North, unacceptable political options, the air campaign against North Vietnam offered the only hope to wrest the initiative from the enemy. The campaign was reactionary, with policymakers failing to exploit the dominant air power advantage of the United States until it was too late. Lessons from past air wars were lost on those who defined the graduated campaign as an instrument “to destroy the North Vietnamese will to make war.” Only later was the objective revised to include destruction of the enemy’s capacity to make war. The Rolling Thunder campaign degenerated into a protracted, desultory application of air power, punctuated by false starts and stops. Little wonder that in 1967 American airmen in Southeast Asia thrilled to hear of the Israeli Air Force’s decisive use of air power in their six-day war.

Restrictive rules of engagement, random targeting, and politically inspired stand-downs gave the enemy time to harden his defenses and regenerate military pressure against the South. Reminiscent of the Battle of Britain, Rolling Thunder air strikes-although performed with greater precision than ever before-hardened the enemy’s resistance. Lacking systematic strategic targeting, armed reconnaissance against military targets of opportunity took precedence, with difficult to measure results, prompting accusations of a “sortie race” between Air Force and Navy airmen.

Friendly air and ground operations in South Vietnam and Laos and Navy carriers in the Tonkin Gulf were free from the threat of enemy air action, but the protracted air war over the North was a battle for air superiority. Flying restricted profiles over an enemy land mass of 61,000 square miles, American pilots were denied the element of surprise and often found the tactical advantage rested with the North Vietnamese. Given the time and wherewithal to build elaborate surface-to-air missile and MIG fighter defenses around key target areas, North Vietnamese air forces proved a worthy foe. Tactical ruses such as the simulation of F–105 flight profiles by F–4s in Operation Bolo were no replacement for a well orchestrated campaign to win and maintain air superiority.

In their concern to protect American lives, commanders seemed to confuse the principle of mass with the massive use of firepower in Vietnam. More bomb tonnage was expended in a few weeks in 1968 at Khe Sanh, defending an outpost of questionable strategic value, than was dropped on Japan in World War II. Commanders followed the principle of mass to send strike forces, escorted by air-to-air cover and missile suppression, against heavily defended targets, including the 1972 Linebacker raids when B–52s massed against the North. General Westmoreland and other commanders praised the use of the nation’s foremost strategic weapon to deliver massive fire support but invited criticism that the Air Force destroyed more jungle foliage than legitimate targets.

The air war, right or wrong, came to be seen as a wanton abuse of American military might against a smaller nation. What began as a stand against communist aggression foundered on a sea of political and military excess. One can only speculate how the war might have progressed if fighting had remained at the counterinsurgency level. Would a classic air campaign against the North, planned and executed according to proven air power principles, have made a difference? After all, U.S. leaders had the warmaking capacity of Moscow and Peking to worry about. Destruction of North Vietnam’s forces might have prompted the enemy to move into Chinese sanctuary.

A classic bombing campaign at the outset might have helped interdiction halt the flow of reinforcements and isolate the battlefield, rather than reducing it to impeding the flow and making it costly for the enemy. Whether more aggressive action would have convinced the North Vietnamese to accede to an early political solution is another question.

The lesson appears to be that air power, while still the most flexible military force available to policymakers, must not be employed in isolation. Without an invasion of North Vietnam, it is doubtful that the United States could have entered an exploitation phase of the war. In the final analysis, however, the nation’s air leaders are the authority on air power and they must advise without axe to grind and without equivocation.

Given the redundancy of air power in Southeast Asia after 1965, it is surprising that interservice rivalry was not more rampant. Other than jurisdictional problems of command and control, Air Force, Navy, and Marine airmen generally put aside doctrinal differences and worked together to plan, schedule, and fly combat missions. Interaction with Army aviation was more complex since the Air Force had a statutory obligation to provide the Army with air support. General McConnell made clear that roles and missions issues with the Army were to be worked out in Washington. Air Force commanders in Vietnam resigned themselves to the fact that armed helicopters were an integral element of Army combat forces.

In 1966, the Army and Air Force chiefs of staff agreed to give the Army an exclusive claim to the helicopters it needed for intra-theater movement, fire support, and resupply. In return, the Army transferred its CV–2 and CV–7 transports to the Air Force and agreed to relinquish claims on future fixed-wing aircraft for tactical airlift. The Air Force reassured the Army that it would limit its use of helicopters to integral missions such as air rescue and administrative support and agreed not to expand their use to fire or logistics support for the ground battle. The two services agreed to jointly develop an Air Force tactical support aircraft acceptable to the Army. The Air Force developed and procured the A–10 Thunderbolt, which entered the inventory in 1976 as the first jet attack plane designed exclusively for close air support.

The 1966 agreement did not satisfy all Army and Air Force officers. In 1970, Seventh Air Force Commander Gen. George Brown said that he thought the agreement should be “torn up and abrogated.” Although it presumably “got the heavy, fixed wing aircraft out of the Army,” Brown noted that some still remained in the Army’s inventory. More importantly, the agreement allowed the Army to develop attack helicopters-an experiment that many airmen frowned upon as an inferior and duplicative form of tactical aviation. At the time of the agreement, the Army planned to equip its units with AH–10 Cobra attack helicopters for the gunship role. Among its many uses, the Cobra protected maneuver units and suppressed enemy fire in Vietnam. Army plans to develop and procure the AH–56 Cheyenne composite aircraft to attack tanks and fortified ground targets was a greater concern to the Air Force, leading General McConnell to agree to a specialized Air Force close air support aircraft, the A–10.

Some Army commanders viewed Air Force development of the Thunderbolt as a threat to its plans to procure the Cheyenne and provide air support in the immediate battle area. General Westmoreland, who became Army Chief of Staff after leaving Vietnam in 1968, opposed A–10 development, claiming that the Army did not need a specialized Air Force close air support aircraft. He and Gen. John D. Ryan, who replaced McConnell as Chief of Staff of the Air Force, exchanged memoranda in 1970 which reversed the arguments used before the Vietnam War. In a statement that could have been lifted from Air Force tactical manuals, General Westmoreland extolled the multi-mission capabilities of Air Force weapons systems and placed close air support lower on the priority list.

This odd reversal demonstrated the complexities of the joint issue, as well as the extremes both services were willing to go to protect their special interests. It added to the perception that the services were less than forthright in confronting this sensitive problem. Long before the American withdrawal from Vietnam, the Army came to view the attack helicopter as indispensable, a vital extension of their organic firepower. There still was no clear demarcation between Army and Air Force aviation responsibilities. The Army coined the term “direct aerial fire support” to distinguish its gunship operations from Air Force close air support and for the time being, wanted the benefits of both.

Escalation of the war increased Army dependence on firepower provided by the Air Force’s system of centralized control and decentralized execution, even though Army gunships continued to operate independently. Senior Army commanders criticized the Air Force system before the force buildup, but those who later served in Vietnam praised the single manager concept for providing flexible air support in a shifting combat environment. There were the inevitable complaints about response times and ordnance loads, but ground forces were never without the air power edge when engaging the enemy. The lack of clear battle lines made short rounds more prevalent in the earlier part of the war, but these misfortunes were the exception, not the rule. General Westmoreland recognized the need to integrate tactical air operations when he placed Marine air units under General Momyer’s centralized direction during the siege at Khe Sanh. Although Momyer and his successors were never given command of B–52’s, SAC commanders developed procedures to integrate their strike operations with tactical units and make them more responsive to the ground situation.

“The centralized control of the application of air power is an important feature and a critical one for efficient use of air power,” General Abrams said during his tour as MACV commander. “The air is really a powerful weapon,” he said, “but to use this power effectively, you need both integrated all-source intelligence and an integrated all-resource reaction.” Abrams explained that integration of the total air effort was essential, with interdiction and close air support to obtain the best results. Comparing the Air Force system to a “faucet of tremendous firepower,” Abrams described his use of air power as MACV commander:

Fortunately, we’ve had centralized management of the air effort and this has been important to me personally. While air is powerful, it is also flexible. From this level, air power can be moved with ease. For example, our arena includes Barrell Roll [northern Laos], Steel Tiger [Laotian panhandle], and South Vietnam. Where the enemy puts the heat on, whether it is the Plain of Jars [Laos] or Duc Lap [South Vietnam], it is only a matter of hours until tremendous shifts of power can be made. We realize it’s not all that effortless on the part of the Air Force. You have to arrange for tankers and that sort of thing, but the whole system is geared to do precisely that, with no long warning to the enemy. It’s done right away.

In a war abandoned by the United States, particularly one in which secondary explosions were as common as body counts in reporting the results of air strikes, the views of Vietnam ground commanders are perhaps as good as any to judge air support. Vietnam, after all, was essentially a ground war. The advantage in firepower and flexibility provided by air power was unfortunately not decisive in the war’s outcome. Before drawing conclusions about what Army commanders wanted from the Air Force, one should ponder what one architect of U.S. involvement in the war said on this subject. In contrast to Westmoreland’s and Abram’s views, Gen. Maxwell Taylor thought it was a mixed blessing:

…I would say certainly the net effect has been good from the military point of view, and I think from the political point of view inside of Vietnam, but another thing, like artillery support, of course, it could be ruinous to the infantry. Too good artillery and too good air support can ruin the infantry, because they sit down and wait for it. They get in their foxholes, and call for air support. And we have taught that habit to the Vietnamese.

LINK