What Happened to Battlefield Air Interdiction? Army and Air Force Battlefield Doctrine Development from Pre-Desert Storm to 2001: CADRE Paper No. 17 (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781479196845)

The ground and air forces have strong interlocking connections in the battlefield operations known as close air support (CAS). In the 1970s the Army and Air Force began to develop a shared battlefield doctrine known as battlefield air interdiction (BAI) that was concerned with a class of targets that layout a fair distance from the front lines. These targets were be-yond the capability and immediate tactical concern of the ground commander, beyond the area that required detailed co-ordination of each individual CAS mission, but were close enough to have a near-term effect upon surface operation and required a general coordination of both air and ground operations. These became known as "intermediate" targets, and often considered "shallow interdiction" targets closer to the front lines than the traditional "interdiction" targets commonly tasked by and under the control of the air forces. The Air Force and Army worked hand in glove through the seventies to refine and publish battlefield doctrine, best recognized under its Army label, Air Land Battle. Through the eighties Gen Wilbur L. "Bill" Creech, Tactical Air Command commander, Gen. Donald Starry, chief of Army Training and Doctrine Command, and other service leaders worked on a series of historical compromises pertaining to all aspects of the Army-Air Force operations. Not more than 10 years later, on the battlefields of Desert Storm, the Air Force excluded BAI from its tasking orders, al-though some claimed interdiction missions of this nature were carried out under different names. Indeed, the term BAI was removed from doctrinal manuals written after 1990. Was it considered irrelevant or useful doctrine? Did the heightened self-interest of the services explain its removal? Or was the removal a victim of bureaucratic inertia or unique doctrinal presentations? Lt Col Terrance J. McCaffrey III answers these questions in What Happened to BAI? Army and Air Force Battlefield Doctrine Development from Pre-Desert Storm to 2001.He traces air-ground doctrine and operational practices relative to battle-field interdiction from World War I to Operation Desert Storm and suggests at one point that even the flank support for Pat-ton was, in effect, BAI. The author carries the discussion through the decade after Desert Storm and shows how the issue is too important to be dropped by either service, even as technology provides new weapons for both services. Colonel McCaffrey concludes that there is still need for a BAI-type mission. Both services are searching for an answer to the doctrinal void. Development is being impeded by a lively trend to speak in the self-interest of one's service. This study illuminates the process that will lead to renew BAI even as the struggle for service missions continue to cause self-interested debate.

Author: Air University Press,III Lieutenant Colonel Usaf McCaffrey
ISBN-10: 1479196843
ISBN-13: 9781479196845
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Language: English
Published: 08/25/2012
Pages: 140
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.52lbs
Size: 9.61h x 6.69w x 0.30d