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What Happened to Battlefield

Air Interdiction?

Army and Air Force Battlefield Doctrine

Development from Pre–Desert Storm to 2001

McCaffrey
COLLEGE OF AEROSPACE DOCTRINE,

RESEARCH AND EDUCATION

AIR UNIVERSITY

What Happened to Battlefield

Air Interdiction?

Army and Air Force Battlefield Doctrine

Development from Pre–Desert Storm to 2001

TERRANCE J. MCCAFFREY III

Lieutenant Colonel, USAF

CADRE Paper No. 17

Air University Press

Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama 36112-6615

September 2004
ii

Air University Library Cataloging Data

McCaffrey, Terrance J. III, 

What happened to battlefield air interdiction? : Army and Air Force battlefield doctrine development from pre–Desert Storm to 2001 / Terrance J. McCaffrey III.

p. ; cm.––(CADRE paper, 1537–3371)

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 1-58566-129-5

1. Close air support. 2. Air interdiction. 3. Military doctrine––United States.

4. Operation Desert Storm––Aerial operations, American. I. Title.

358.4/142––dc22

This CADRE Paper and others in the series are available

electronically at the Air University Research Web site

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http://aupress.maxwell.af.mil.

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CADRE Papers

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iii
Contents

Chapter Page

DISCLAIMER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ii

FOREWORD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii

ABOUT THE AUTHOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi

1 INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

2 ORIGINS OF BATTLEFIELD AIR

INTERDICTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

3 WHERE WAS BATTLEFIELD AIR INTERDICTION

IN DESERT STORM? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

4 WAS BATTLEFIELD AIR INTERDICTION A 

VICTIM OF SUCCESS? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

5 IS BATTLEFIELD AIR INTERDICTION BACK? . . 75

Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

6 CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS . . . . . . . . . 97

Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104

GLOSSARY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

ABBREVIATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111

BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115

v
Illustrations

Figure Page

1 Concepts of operations depiction . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

2 Operation Desert Storm apportionment . . . . . . . 47

3 Tactical air support missions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

4 Linear and nonlinear battlefield operations . . . . 80

vi
Foreword

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 lay

out a fair distance from the front lines. These targets were beyond the capability and immediate tactical concern of the

ground commander, beyond the area that required detailed coordination 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, AirLand 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, although 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 airground doctrine and operational practices relative to battlefield interdiction from World War I to Operation Desert Storm

vii
and suggests at one point that even the flank support for Patton 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 BAItype 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. 

What Happened to Battlefield Air Interdiction? was written as

a master’s thesis in the 2001–2 class for the Air University’s

School of Advanced Airpower Studies—renamed School of Advanced Air and Space Studies (SAASS) in September 2002—

Maxwell AFB, Alabama. Colonel McCaffrey’s very thoughtful

study was chosen as one of the best of its group. The College

of Aerospace Doctrine, Research and Education (CADRE) is

pleased to publish this SAASS research as a CADRE Paper

and thereby make it available to a wider audience within the

US Air Force and beyond.

DANIEL R. MORTENSEN

Chief of Research

Airpower Research Institute, CADRE

viii
About the Author

Lt Col Terrance J. McCaffrey (BS, United States Air Force

Academy; MA, Midwestern State University) is chief, Policy

and Strategy Branch, North American Aerospace Defense

Command, Peterson AFB, Colorado. After completing pilot

training at Williams AFB, Arizona, he went to Royal Air Force

Upper Heyford to fly the F-111E with the 79th Fighter

Squadron (FS). While there, Colonel McCaffrey deployed to

Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm to fly combat missions over Iraq with the 7440th Composite Combat Wing from

Incirlik AB, Turkey. Next he instructed in the AT-38B at Holloman AFB, New Mexico, and Sheppard AFB, Texas. In 1996

Colonel McCaffrey moved to the F-15C and the 390th FS at

Mountain Home AFB, Idaho, and led combat missions over

Iraq during Operation Southern Watch and Air Expeditionary

Force deployments V and VII. In 1999 he served as an F-15

joint bilateral air operations officer at Headquarters Fifth Air

Force, Yokota AB, Japan. He is a distinguished graduate of

Squadron Officer School and the Air Command and Staff College and a graduate of the School of Advanced Airpower Studies (renamed School of Advanced Air and Space Studies in

2002)—all based at Maxwell AFB, Alabama. He is a graduate

of the Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia, where he

won the MacArthur Foundation Award for excellence in writing. Colonel McCaffrey is married to the former Lisa K. MulHolland of Colorado Springs, Colorado. They have three children—Garrett, Trevor, and Mallory.

ix
Acknowledgments

It was Spring 1999 at the Joint Air Command and Control

Course (JAC2C) where the inspiration for this study began.

During a planning exercise, it occurred to my instructor that I

had placed no air interdiction sorties against the enemy

ground force’s rear echelon inside the land component commander’s area of operation. I quipped that if he apportioned

me some battlefield air interdiction (BAI) sorties, I would be

glad to help. That is when I learned BAI was gone. I have to

thank the Air Force for sending me to JAC2C to locate the

problem and then to the School for Advanced Airpower Studies to find the time to study it. I appreciate the staffs at the Air

University Library and the Air Force Historical Research

Agency for help uncovering a mountain of documents invaluable to this study. I also thank Dr. Harold R. Winton and Dr.

James S. Corum for their unending patience in reviewing

drafts that were much rougher than they needed to be. I am

most grateful to my wife, Lisa, and our children, Garrett,

Trevor, and Mallory, for the love and support required to complete this task—I could not have done it without you. I thank

Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior, who has continued to bless

my family and me beyond our dreams.

xi
Chapter 1

Introduction

The basic doctrine of air-ground operations is to integrate

the effort of air and ground forces, each operating under its

own command, to achieve maximum effectiveness, as

directed by the theater commander, in defeating the enemy.

—Field Manual 31-35

––Air-Ground Operations, August 1946

The term battlefield air interdiction (BAI) was born in the

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO); first published as

United States Air Force doctrine in the 1979 version of Air Force

Manual (AFMAN) 1-1, Functions and Basic Doctrine of the United

States Air Force; and eliminated as a doctrinal mission in the

1992 revision of the same manual. The 1979 version of AFMAN

1-1 stated, “That portion of the air interdiction mission which

may have a direct or near-term effect upon surface operations—

referred to by the term ‘battlefield air interdiction’—requires the

air and surface commanders to coordinate their respective operations to insure the most effective support of the combined arms

team.”1

Between 1979 and 1990, BAI developed as an important tool

in the United States Army’s (USA) emerging vision of deep battle.

BAI was important to the USA because it represented a class

of targets that lay at an intermediate distance from the front

line whose attack and neutralization were critical to mission

accomplishment in offensive and defensive operations. These

targets included enemy artillery units, second-echelon maneuver formations, command and control (C2) nodes, and logistics

support areas. They were beyond the range at which the detailed

coordination of each individual mission was required as it was

in close air support (CAS), but they were closer to friendly lines

than most classical air interdiction (AI) targets. As Army doctrine in the 1980s, which came to be known as AirLand Battle,

began to contemplate the significance of conducting “deep

battle,” these targets assumed increased significance in the

1
Army’s war-fighting construct. Moreover, because the Army’s

organic systems with which to engage these targets were only

beginning to enter development, the ground service was very

much aware of the need for close coordination with the Air

Force to attack them.

BAI was also important to the Air Force because it gave aerial

platforms access to targets inside the fire support coordination

line (FSCL) without “penny packing” airpower to lower-level

ground commanders. Such access was particularly important

with the development of new systems, such as the Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS), which quickly

translated ground targets into viable airpower aim points. The

JSTARS made access inside the FSCL for direct attack of enemy

ground forces possible without excessive use of armed reconnaissance over the active battlefield. As new Army weapons systems such as the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) and

AH-64 Apache attack helicopters created longer-range effects,

the FSCL was placed farther away from the forward line of

troops (FLOT) than it had been in the past. This created an

extended zone on the battlefield where coordination and cooperation were required. Such coordination would be the key to

operating joint capabilities effectively and synergistically in the

crucial deep area of the battlefield.

As early as 1973, USA’s Training and Doctrine Command

(TRADOC) and USAF’s Tactical Air Command (TAC) began work

to develop a shared battlefield doctrine that evolved into AirLand

Battle by 1982. Although crafted jointly by TAC and TRADOC,

AirLand Battle was US Army doctrine. But as early as 1979,

AFMAN 1-1 had delineated BAI as a separate mission inside the

broader mission of AI. The BAI mission linked the two services

together on the battlefield rather than separating them into

service-specific zones. With the next version of AFMAN 1-1 in

1984 and the release of the 1986 version of Army Field Manual

(FM) 100-5, Operations, both services had the same definition

and understanding of BAI. Both documents were in effect when

Iraqi armor poured across Kuwait’s borders in August 1990.

However, when US and coalition forces joined to expel the Iraqi

army from Kuwait six months later, BAI missions did not appear

on the air tasking order (ATO). 

2

CADRE PAPER
Following the successful war, both services’ basic doctrinal

documents underwent significant changes. In the 1992 edition

of AFMAN 1-1, the Air Force removed BAI from its doctrinal

lexicon as a distinct form of AI. The 1993 volume of Army FM

100-5 also underwent major revision, which eliminated not

only BAI but also the Army’s AirLand Battle construct. The

elimination of BAI from both services’ doctrinal constructs

requires an explanation. This study provides the explanation

by answering this question: Why did the concept of shallow

interdiction—which, during the 1980s, came to be known as

BAI—vanish from USA and USAF doctrine after Operation

Desert Storm? The issue is significant because the BAI concept met an important tactical requirement—a replacement for

which no equivalent doctrinal construct has yet emerged.

Methodology

The argument consists of two logical steps. The first demonstrates the disappearance of BAI from USAF and USA doctrinal vernaculars. A comparison is made of the presence of BAI

in pre-1990 doctrinal manuals and the absence of BAI in the

Desert Storm air campaign and in post–Desert Storm doctrinal manuals. The primary source documents are published

doctrine as well as information from the USA TRADOC and the

USAF Doctrine Center.

As the second and central step in determining why BAI disappeared, this study examines three possible explanations for this

occurrence. First, BAI disappeared because it was no longer a

useful or relevant doctrinal concept. Underlying this explanation

is the notion that objective factors such as changes in technology or new battlefield techniques rendered it irrelevant. Supporting evidence can be found in professional journals, lowerlevel doctrinal documents, and technical publications. Second,

service self-interest killed BAI, which suggested the USAF, USA,

or both services abandoned BAI for reasons of service benefit

apart from demands of the modern battlefield. Although evidence

of this will be harder to find outright, it may surface in personal

interviews with key personnel who were close to the issue at the

time, in periodical literature, and in USAF Historical Research

Agency documents. Third, examination of the doctrine-writing

3

MCCAFFREY
organizations and processes will determine if BAI was simply a

victim of bureaucratic inertia or new doctrinal style. Interviewing

doctrine writers and scrutinizing standard operating procedures,

to the extent they exist, are necessary to discover this evidence. 

Structure

This study examines experiential and doctrinal roots—

generically termed shallow interdiction or medium attack—

from early air-ground experience of World War I through its

codification into BAI in the era leading up to Operation Desert

Storm. It also examines the application or lack of application

of the BAI doctrinal concept during Desert Storm. This study

evaluates each service’s basic doctrine developed during two

periods: subsequent to Desert Storm until 1993 and 1993

until 2001. Doctrinal documents published during the first

period include AFMAN 1-1 (1992) and Army FM 100-5 (1993).

This study examines the period using four lenses: (1) the

period’s political/military climate, (2) doctrinal changes that

emerged from the USAF, (3) doctrinal changes that emerged

from the USA, and (4) doctrinal changes that might provide

evidence related to the three central explanations. This study

then evaluates the next iteration of each service’s doctrine

published during the second period using the same four

lenses: for the USAF, Air Force Doctrine Document (AFDD) 1,

Air Force Basic Doctrine, 1997, and AFDD 2-1.3, Counterland,

1999; for the USA, FM 3-0 (replaced FM 100-5), Operations

2001, and FM 6-20-10, Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures for

the Targeting Process, 1996. 

Definitions

To understand BAI, it is first important to understand the definition of several essential terms (see glossary). In joint warfare,

definitions are crucial. Furthermore, all players must understand them. Multiple interpretations can cause huge problems. 

In the “Gulf War Air Power Survey,” the authors state, “Definitions are important to commanders involved in that they can

determine which commander sets the priority for aviation. The

definitions of CAS/BAI/AI can determine who picks the targets

4

CADRE PAPER
and which weapons systems are employed. Definitions therefore

determine which tactics are used.”2

Notes

Most of the notes for this chapter and the following chapters appear in shortened form. For full details, see the appropriate entries in the bibliography.

1. Air Force Manual 1-1, Functions and Basic Doctrine, 1979, 2–13.

2. “Gulf War Air Power Survey,” draft documents and material for vol. 4,

pt. 1. 

5

MCCAFFREY
Chapter 2

Origins of Battlefield Air Interdiction

Thus the object of an army in a land campaign is to defeat

the enemy’s army; that of the air force contingent in the field

is to assist and co-operate with the army in the defeat of the

enemy’s army, and of such air forces as may be co-operating

with it. It is necessary to emphasize this rather obvious truth

in order to clear the air of a certain amount of misunderstanding that too often in the past has obscured the issue of

this subject.

—Wing Comdr J. C. Slessor

––Air Power and Armies, 1936

Early Years

Since the inception of military aviation, aircraft have supported ground operations. Airpower’s utility quickly expanded

from its early support missions of observation and artillery spotting. It did not take long for ground commanders to recognize

that the airplane could be instrumental in warfare, especially

when they found defending themselves from attack by enemy

airpower was difficult. As airpower continued to evolve under

fire, the three core missions of tactical airpower emerged. They

included air superiority—a mission needed to ensure friendly

survival and freedom of operation on the battlefield; AI—a mission to destroy enemy strongholds and lines of communication

(LOC) behind the front; and CAS—a mission to provide additional firepower to troops in contact.1 At the onset of the war,

however, no real doctrine for airpower’s use had been established.2 Airplanes were still new, and attention focused on

obtaining more of them and training Airmen to fly them. The

problem with the new air weapons was not the technology alone,

but that their infancy precluded any real testing, doctrine, or

organization.3 Airmen were still literally learning on the fly.

This is not to say that the Air Service learned nothing from its

experience in World War I. From the first time aircraft crossed the

7
lines to observe enemy forces, they began developing ways to use

their new technology to attack enemy ground forces. Reports of

sporadic air attacks made their way back to air commanders.

Soon, offensive operations behind enemy lines were more common and became organized. In the 1916 Battle of the Somme, 18

British aircraft crossed enemy lines, then successfully found and

attacked enemy trenches.4 In the late 1980s, Richard P. Hallion

contended that from these early successes the “British recognized two forms of ground attack: trench strafing, which corresponded to today’s concept of close air support, and ground strafing, which is roughly equivalent to today’s notion of battlefield air

interdiction” (emphasis in original).5

Early battlefield air support occurred in other battles as

well. In March 1918, the German offensive featured combined

arms attack including air attacks into British reserves and

supplies behind the lines. In September the British executed

air-attack missions in support of their ground maneuvers in

Palestine against Turkish forces. In September 1918, American lieutenant William “Billy” Mitchell led the largest airpower

attack to date in support of ground forces at Saint-Mihiel. In

this battle, which lasted several days, ground attack effectively

disrupted the movement of German reserves through use of

both strafing and bombing tactics.6

The application of tactical aviation to the ground war dominated airpower’s use in the war. Strategic air attack was also

attempted during World War I, but it was found mostly ineffective and considered a luxury.7 In contrast, ground commanders

quickly realized that airpower was necessary both on and near

the battlefield. World War I experience revealed that aviation

was not merely important to ground operations, it was vital.8

Despite the fact that Airmen and soldiers did not always agree

on methods, their battlefield partnership was born.

Making Air Doctrine

In January 1926, the USA Air Service codified its World War I

experience in its first doctrinal manual, War Department Training Regulation (TR) No. 440-15, Fundamental Principles for the

Employment of the Air Service.

9 Gen Mason Patrick, chief of the

Air Service, approved the document that was originally drafted in

8

CADRE PAPER
1921.10 This well-coordinated manual passed through the Army

Command and General Staff School, Army War College, and

Army General Staff G-3 before finally arriving at the War Department—a journey of almost five years. TR 440-15 indicated that

the Air Service was indeed a constituent part of the USA and outlined its role as follows: “to assist the ground forces to gain

strategic and tactical successes by destroying enemy aviation,

attacking enemy ground forces and other enemy objectives on

land or sea, and in conjunction with other agencies to protect

ground forces from hostile aerial observation and attack.”11

Although strategic bombing was the major focus of airpower

thought from the 1920s to the early 1940s, the role of tactical

airpower in support of army maneuver woven into TR 440-15

did not entirely disappear. Even Billy Mitchell argued for attack

aviation as well as strategic bombers.12 His experience at SaintMihiel influenced his effort to push for heavily armored attack

aircraft especially suited to ground support and air-attack

operations.13 The ground-attack mission drove the development

of several aircraft from 1927 to 1939, including the Curtiss A-3

in 1927 followed by the A-12 in 1934, Northrop’s A-17A in 1937,

Martin’s 167F in 1939, and the Douglas A-20 in 1939.14 As

these aircraft were developed, pursuit aircraft were also under

development. Pursuit platforms were initially thought to be

unsuitable for ground-attack operations, but this misperception

would be corrected in World War II. 

Application of the New Doctrine to War

In 1940 war was well under way in Europe. The United

States, although not yet involved, was learning from the action.

The blitzkrieg across Poland, Denmark, Norway, the Low Countries, and France displayed a newly developed synergy between

air and land forces. With the lessons emerging from European

battlefields in both strategic and tactical airpower, the USA Air

Corps reassessed its doctrine.

Air Corps FM 1-5, Employment of Aviation of the Army, published in 1940, discussed both the need for strategic “air operations beyond the sphere of action of surface forces” and tactical

“air operations in support of ground forces.”15 The ground support section gave targeting and employment-tasking authority of

9

MCCAFFREY
supporting forces to the land commander in his sphere of influence or area of operation (AO) in modern parlance. In addition to

close operations, FM 1-5 defined the support mission’s nature of

operations to include battlefield support missions. Specifically, it

included support missions as “operations during battle [that]

include air attacks against enemy formations, tanks, and mechanized forces concentrated for attack and counterattack.”16

Operations described were too far removed from the front lines

to constitute CAS. However, they were near enough to be included in the ground commander’s sphere of influence, thus

falling within the purview of what would later be called BAI.

These missions, combined with operational experience gained

by the British, were tested in a 1941 series of war games in the

United States. The Carolina and Louisiana maneuvers closely

examined air-ground operations.17 With the 1941 addition of

FM 100-5’s acknowledgment that “the hostile rear area [might]

frequently be the most favorable zone of action for combat aviation,” the games focused there.18 “During the games, fully 60

percent of AAF sorties went toward interdiction missions, 22

percent to strike at armored and mechanized forces in rear

areas, and 18 percent for ‘miscellaneous’ missions including

direct battlefield support.”19 Although tests showed some

problems in executing these missions, FM 31-35, Aviation in

Support of Ground Forces, codified the concepts in 1942. This

manual developed the definitions and processes that shaped

ground-support aviation. It was primarily concerned with

organization of the forces and how they would both coordinate

and cooperate.20 The manual was also valuable because it

established common definitions and terms to be used by both

the air and land forces. The term air support missions was

defined as “missions assigned air support aviation include

both immediate support of ground forces where contact with

the enemy is imminent or has already been established, and

the destruction or neutralization of timely but more distant

targets to prevent or impede hostile movement, intervention,

or entry into combat.”21 The latter category is very similar to

what would later be called BAI.

10

CADRE PAPER
Doctrine Emerges from War Lessons

Lessons learned from the new doctrine and the cooperation

experienced through the remainder of World War II, especially

the IX TAC/First Army and the XIX TAC/Third Army teams that

fought across western Europe, led to a redrafting of FM 31-35 at

war’s end.22 Definitions and procedures developed in the first

version four years earlier were honed into the 1946 edition, now

titled Air-Ground Operations. Today’s tactical air (TACAIR) planners would feel at home reading this document. It lays out terms

(many still in use today), missions, and coordination measures

required to operate joint forces on the battlefield. 

The 1946 version of FM 31-35 was the last field manual for air

operations written before the Air Force became a separate service, and it was a good jumping off point for future cooperation.

The purpose of the manual was to “define the principles, means,

and procedures for the successful coordination and cooperation

of the air and ground forces operating within common zones of

operation.”23 To accomplish this cooperation, the manual specified three air missions: air superiority, battlefield interdiction,

and CAS. When examining the three missions described in FM

31-35, it is important to recall that they were developed to support the Army at the tactical level. When the manual discussed

air superiority, it referred to local (rather than theater) air superiority designed to protect and facilitate ground operations and

air-support operations on the battlefield. Likewise, the interdiction mission described as the second mission element was not

detached from the battlefield. Its aim was to “isolate the battle

area by restricting movements of enemy troops and supplies

into, within, or from the selected area.”24 The area addressed is

the Army commander’s AO. This manual also described CAS (air

operations in the zone of contact) as a distinct third mission of

TACAIR forces, separate from interdiction.25

United States Air Force Is Born

With the birth of the USAF in 1947, Gen Carl A. “Tooey”

Spaatz, the service’s first chief of staff, promised Gen Dwight D.

Eisenhower that the new Air Force would continue to support

the Army through creation of a TAC.26 With the new service also

11

MCCAFFREY
came a need to build its own regulations and doctrine. One of the

first publications revised was FM 31-35, which began draft revision in 1948. The fledgling USAF rewrote FM 31-35 jointly with

the Army. An extensive draft titled “Air Support of Army Operations” was completed in March 1949 by a USA field artilleryman,

Lt Col John Hansborough, while he served as an instructor at

the Air Command and Staff School (AC&SS) at Maxwell AFB,

Alabama. The draft included definitions, organization charts,

and even pictures and drawings describing in detail the establishment of operation centers and joint operating field headquarters.27 Colonel Hansborough’s foreword stated the document had

been prepared in hope “that this study will be of assistance in

any future revision of Field Manual 31-35.”28

During his tenure at AC&SS, Colonel Hansborough also saw

the Air Force produce academic material that shared the spirit

(and several illustrations) of his work. In July 1949, the school

published AC&SS Pamphlet No. 36, Tactical Air Operations,

which had a distinctive FM 31-35 flavor. This pamphlet listed

the three tactical missions as follows: “(1) air superiority (or

counterair), (2) interdiction, and (3) close support.”29 The pamphlet described the three missions in detail. Here again, the

focus of the interdiction mission was on the battlefield; in fact,

it was referred to as “Interdiction of the Battle Area.”30 The

pamphlet states that “the ultimate objective of an air interdiction program in an area where contact between two opposing

surface forces does not exist is to immobilize the enemy and

disable his forces in such a way that he cannot effectively

close with and engage friendly surface forces. Where friendly

forces are in contact with the enemy, the objective of an interdiction program is to starve logistically the enemy forces so

that it loses its military potential and/or is forced to withdraw

to shorten supply lines.”31 This pamphlet’s definition corresponds to the modern definition of interdiction, but it seems

to stress the shallowness of depth inherent in the operation of

tactical aviation at the time. 

Along with work emerging from Air University (AU), the TAC

and Army representatives felt that a review of doctrine, tactics,

procedures, and equipment was necessary.32 General Spaatz

wanted new tests and further development of TAC’s doctrine and

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techniques by 1948.33 Given these developments and the

thought coming out of AU as well as the Army’s realization that

airpower was necessary on the battlefield, the Office, Chief, Army

Field Forces (an early predecessor to the TRADOC), and USAF’s

TAC jointly published a revision to FM 31-35, Joint Training

Directive for Air-Ground Operations, on 1 September 1950.

The revised and expanded FM 31-35 addressed the changes

required to merge the operations of the now-separate services

and focused on operations in support of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

(JCS) and ensured both services understood terminology, principles, organizations, and processes that would be required to

operate in that environment.34 The manual echoed its predecessor on the three missions of tactical airpower (air superiority,

interdiction, and CAS); but now it separated the interdiction mission into several subcategories, which specified two armed types

and three collective-reconnaissance types. The two armed missions included armed reconnaissance and bombing missions.

The term armed reconnaissance was defined as a “preplanned

fighter mission which searches a designated area and attacks all

suitable targets found beyond the bomb line.”35 The term bombing missions was defined as “missions in the interdiction of the

battle area [that] are carried out by tactical bombers and fighterbombers. They are used to cut lines of communication, such as

roads, bridges, railroads, or waterways, and to destroy concentrations of troops, supplies, and equipment” (emphasis added).36

The interdiction mission included the conduct of operations that

would both indirectly and directly assist in ground operations.

In 1957 FM 31-35 was revised again. The new manual, now

titled Joint Air-Ground Operations, contained each service’s own

nomenclature: for the Army it became Continental Army Command 110-100-1, and for the Air Force it became Tactical Air

Command Manual (TACM) 55-3. Although the new manual contained few real changes, it was influenced by Air Force service

doctrine developed in 1954. Borrowing concepts from AFMAN 1-

7, Theater Air Forces in Counterair, Interdiction, and Close Air Support Operations, the interdiction mission began to take on a more

strategic flavor.37 AFMAN 1-7 stressed the theater capability of

airpower rather than the tactical level of the three traditional

TAC missions. In the new TACM 55-3, this flavor was reinforced

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by interdiction’s replacement with air interdiction whose definition was specifically divided into two categories: 

(1) In its broadest application, air interdiction is the application of air

fire power for the purpose of neutralizing, destroying, or harassing

enemy surface forces, resources, and lines of communications. Air

forces engage in interdiction activities throughout the combat zone and

into the enemy-held territory to the limit of their range. Ground targets

will be attacked in the combat zone only if specifically requested by the

surface forces, or after coordination with the surface forces commander to integrate the Air Force interdiction program with the fire

plan of the surface forces, to insure friendly troop safety.

(2) Of more immediate effect on the surface campaign is interdiction

designed to destroy, neutralize, harass, or immobilize enemy installations, facilities, and units close to or within the battle area. Requirements of tactical commanders in respect to future use of facilities

located in enemy-held territory must be considered in interdiction

operations (emphasis added).38

This bifurcated definition showed an expanded realization that

interdiction could leave the bounds of the ground commander’s

area but that it would still be important on the battlefield. Definition one was influenced by AFMAN 1-7’s theater perspective.

However, TAC could not yet let go of its battlefield roots so well

contained in the latter half of definition one and fully contained

in definition two, especially in a joint document. TACM 55-3 also

established the thought of interdiction missions flown specifically at the request of ground forces in the battle area. Additionally, it established coordination with ground forces to integrate

air-targeting requests with the ground forces’ fire support plans

outside of the strict CAS C2 requirements. 

Turbulence and Doctrine in the 1960s

In the continuing evolution of USAF thought, TAC took charge

of its own doctrine. The thought emerging from the Air Staff in

the 1960s was focused at the strategic level and on nuclear war

in particular. TACM 1-1 became basic doctrine for TACAIR forces

and shared a common theme and appearance with the old

FM 31-35. The June 1964 version of TACM 1-1 again refined the

definition of AI. Along with the evolution of AI as a deep capability, the volume held to interdiction’s ability to affect the battle

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area. Additionally, it discussed battlefield interdiction operations

in relation to the bomb line. It stated, “Although the majority of

interdiction targets fall outside the immediate battle area and,

therefore, do not require detailed joint coordination, surface

forces’ requirements for future use of certain facilities (bridges,

ports, etc.) must be considered.”39 TACM 1-1 further noted that

“attacks made inside the bomb line will only be made after coordination with the surface force commander to permit maximum

integration of the air interdiction campaign with the fire plan and

scheme of maneuver of surface forces” (emphasis added).40

These expansions of the AI definition now clearly delineated

several layers of the complete interdiction operation. First, it

recognized Air Force capability to project tactical operations well

outside of the purview of ground operations. Second, it also

recognized a need to coordinate, at least at an intermediate level,

with ground forces in the ground commander’s AO. Finally,

TACM 1-1 accepted that there would be interdiction targets

inside the bomb line that would require integration with ground

scheme of maneuver but would remain outside of the strict control requirements of CAS. The latter two depths make up interdiction in the battle area. This doctrine would be employed in

Southeast Asia (SEA).

By March 1966, Operation Rolling Thunder, a misnamed

interdiction campaign in an already long war, was affecting Air

Force doctrine—if not the Vietcong and the People’s Army of Vietnam. The type of guerrilla war waged by the Vietcong limited the

effectiveness of joint operations by USAF and USA forces. TACM

1-1, updated and revised by March 1966, lacked the joint influence theretofore commonplace in TAC doctrine. For the first time

in 40 years, TACM 1-1’s revision did not discuss interdiction in

relation to the ground commander’s needs. The new revision

removed the battlefield interdiction ideas that finally were

mature in 1964, which left only deep interdiction operations

described. The new manual provided more detail in the CAS mission area and dedicated the remainder of the document to the

system for CAS mission execution. With the exception of CAS,

USAF support of the battlefield suffered in SEA because the

battlefield was different. Although responsive to the reality of the

Vietnam War, the 1966 TACM 1-1 was a step backward in

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air-ground cooperation on a larger conventional battlefield. With

the end of the Vietnam War in 1972, both the USAF and the

Army realized that they should reevaluate their positions and

their joint doctrine. 

Rebirth of Cooperation after Vietnam

In 1973, by joint orders of Army chief of staff Gen Creighton

W. Abrams and USAF chief of staff Gen George S. Brown, the

newly created TRADOC and TAC attempted to set aside competing interests and return to consideration of battlefield

cooperation in areas beyond CAS.41 The individuals who took

the task on at the respective service commands were Gen

William E. DePuy at TRADOC and Gen Robert J. Dixon at

TAC. General Dixon summed up the mission of the union as

“devoted to identifying and reducing combat deficiencies by

examining jointly those mission areas where common equipment can be utilized or where capabilities can be complemented to enhance force effectiveness.”42 General Dixon noted

that their union would attempt to understand why the two

services were able to put away doctrinal differences and establish workable ad hoc procedures in combat but unable to do

the same in peacetime. Generals Abrams and Brown’s goal

was to keep peacetime separatism that was already creeping

in from eliminating the strong cooperation they enjoyed in

combat.43 To avoid the pitfalls that had affected previous

attempts at interservice cooperation, the two built a relationship on what Dixon called the “facts of life.” The following were

their four main facts: (1) neither air nor land could win a significant conflict alone, (2) the environment of modern war

made ad hoc teamwork development after hostilities began

improbable, (3) the services were obligated to maximize their

potential from each available resource, and (4) the cooperation

had to become institutionalized to be effective.44

Dixon and DePuy’s union was also influenced by the Soviet

Union’s threat to western Europe, which was serious enough

to induce interservice cooperation not only in the United

States but also within NATO. This incentive was also supported by the strategic imperative to delay a nuclear response

to a Soviet attack for as long as possible, which put a premium

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on conventional air-ground cooperation. These thoughts, along

with analysis of the 1973 Israeli war, were at the forefront of

General DePuy’s mind when he directed the development and

publishing of the 1976 revision of FM 100-5, Operations.

45 The

new manual advocated a tactical method called Active Defense.46

The doctrine had a simple message: that there very well may be

only one chance to win the next war and that is to win the first

battle of the next war.47 Because the Army expected to be significantly outnumbered on the future battlefield, aviation played an

important role. FM 100-5 of 1976 explicitly stated that “the Army

cannot win the land battle without the Air Force.”48 Airpower

would be necessary to win in not only the close support role but

also in integrating shallow and deep interdiction operations. 

Dixon’s and DePuy’s successors, Gen Donald A. “Donn”

Starry, USA, and Gen Wibur L. “Bill” Creech, USAF, continued

their predecessors’ good start. General Starry took command of

the TRADOC in 1977 and did not miss a beat. General Starry,

according to General Dixon, “has picked up the banner.”49

Dixon’s successor knew how to pick up the banner, too. General

Creech took over in May 1978 and began meeting regularly with

General Starry.50 By this time, General Starry was well into

changing the Army’s Active Defense doctrine into what he called

the Extended Battlefield, which would later become known as

AirLand Battle. The Air Force piece would still need work

because the battlefield support construct had faded away in the

1966 version of TACM 1-1. That work was being done concurrently overseas as NATO developed its doctrine.

Was Battlefield Air Interdiction

Born in Europe?

As the Air Force and Army continued to build cooperation in

the continental United States (CONUS), European Command

(EUCOM), and NATO nations were working together as well. As

early as 1974, “NATO created a new centralized command echelon known as Allied Air Forces Central Europe (AAFCE) and

vested it with operational command over the air forces of the

Central Region” (emphasis in original).51 With this new command came a realization that NATO’s doctrine also needed revision. NATO’s combined air-land mission was called offensive air

17

MCCAFFREY
support (OAS), and in the mid-1970s, the capability to execute

it was found lacking. The extant codification found in Allied Tactical Publication (ATP) 27 (A), Offensive Air Support Operation,

listed three components of OAS: AI, CAS, and TACAIR reconnaissance.52 In 1977, based on its experience in SEA, the USAF

argued against the definition of AI being tied directly to the support of land forces. Specifically, it objected to the provision that

the AI missions that fell under OAS had to “have a direct bearing or influence on the operation of land forces.”53 Although the

British favored the language, the US delegation objected because

the USAF (at least beginning in 1966 TACM 1-1) believed that AI

“was a mission conducted outside the domain of the ground

force commander and not appropriately an offensive air ‘support’ operation.”54

Had the USAF delegation known what the British were to propose, it might not have raised the AI issue. The British delegation “proposed a new offensive air support mission that would

ensure responsive and direct application of air support: Battlefield Air Interdiction” (emphasis in original).55 They explained that

the new mission would take place beyond CAS (approximately 25

kilometers) and would target Warsaw Pact second-echelon

forces. The USAF objected to the new mission for three reasons:

“First, it imposed air-ground coordination where none had previously existed under the prevailing AI concept. Second, it

required coordination at a level—proposed to be the army

corps—that seemed inconsistent with a theaterwide view of airpower management. Third, the USAF viewed BAI as an intrusion

on airpower prerogatives in determining the best employment of

scarce airpower resources.”56 The USAF objections seemed

somewhat out of place because the concept represented a return

to past US doctrine lost in the jungles of Vietnam. The verbiage

already reviewed from the 1964 TACM 1-1 recognized the need

for integration of targets inside the bomb line. By 1965 a permissive fire control measure, the FSCL, replaced the bomb line

that could make battlefield interdiction a more viable and relevant mission.57 The new fire support measure was exactly what

its name implied—a coordination measure. In addition, the new

BAI construct would finally allow the FSCL to be more than a

separation of land and air battle.

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The NATO delegation reached a compromise agreement that

appeared to meet the needs of the USAF and the spirit of the

original British proposal. To answer USAF’s three concerns, the

new BAI construct would remain under control of the air commanders, would be coordinated at the Army’s group level rather

than at corps level, and, because it was flown on both sides of

the FSCL, could fulfill either ground or air component commanders’ requirements.58 Thus, the mission would be responsive

to both air and ground commanders’ needs. For ground commanders, it provided the ability to nominate targets into the

enemy’s rear area without adding unnecessary levels of C2. Additionally, air commanders gained access to targets inside the

FSCL that they were uniquely able to discover and attack. They

were now also able to attack targets by merely coordinating with

surface forces to avoid fratricide and/or unintentional disruption

of the ground commanders’ scheme of maneuver.

Simultaneously with this debate in Europe, Lt Col Robert S.

Dotson, USAFR, wrote a forward-looking article for Air University

Review that also introduced the term battlefield air interdiction.

He assessed BAI practically and scientifically. Practically, he saw

a shift from classic CAS operations “to ground attack in support

of friendly forces beyond the effective range of weapons organic

to those ground forces (the so-called ‘battlefield’ interdiction mission).”59 Scientifically, he demonstrated that BAI would be superior to CAS because the new mission would be able to deliver firepower with maximum speed and mass.60 Dotson overcame CAS

limitations by allowing for greater use of area-denial weapons

and lowering coordination requirements with forward air controllers (FAC). This procedure would reduce enemy electronic

countermeasures’ effectiveness.61 Dotson acknowledged that aircrews flying BAI were at risk because of extended exposure to

enemy threats but argued that the risk could be overcome by

using fast aircraft, such as the F-16. This idea may have been

only slightly ahead of its time.

BAI came under almost immediate attack. Initial reactions

went back to the misconception that the FSCL was merely a

new name for the bomb line. This belief held that the FSCL

was the traditional dividing line between CAS and AI or even

the air and land battles.62 In other words, Airmen had come to

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MCCAFFREY
think that airpower owned the battlefield beyond tube artillery

range (the normal placement of the FSCL at the time) and

knew best how to affect the battlefield. Some thought that BAI

was giving control of AI forces to the ground commander and,

in essence, equated it to CAS.63 The argument shared much

with the one voiced by the US contingent at the NATO OAS

conference. That argument eventually led to the compromise

with the British that became BAI only a year before. Ironically,

however, BAI entered USAF basic doctrine before it officially

appeared in NATO.

BAI first appeared as doctrine in what by most standards

was a poorly written document published in 1979. AFMAN 1-1

of 1979 was a colorful publication filled with caricatures and

cartoons that looked more like a primary reader than a war

manual. Despite its appearance, it did address this cuttingedge articulation of a traditional Air Force mission. On a page

that featured an F-111 streaking from top to bottom, the definition of AI was well written and fairly comprehensive. It began

by noting that deep interdiction did not require integration

with surface maneuver due to its distance from the front lines.

It acknowledged, however, that even though not integrated, it

was part of the overall common objective of all forces, “to win

the battle.”64 The next paragraph discussed interdiction operations that were closer to the ground battle and that would

require integration. It stated, “That portion of the air interdiction mission which may have a direct or near-term effect upon

surface operations—referred to by the term ‘battlefield air

interdiction’—requires the air and surface commanders to

coordinate their respective operations to insure the most effective support to the combined arms team.”65 The 1979 manual

mentioned four basic purposes for interdiction: (1) to disrupt

enemy lines of communication, (2) to destroy enemy supplies,

(3) to attack fixed, moving, and movable point and area targets, and (4) to destroy unengaged or uncommitted enemy

attack formations before they can be brought into the battle.66

All of these categories could well apply to the battlefield. The

following year, BAI would become official NATO doctrine as

well when it appeared in ATP 27 (B), Offensive Air Support.

67

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CADRE PAPER
TAC-TRADOC Move Fast in the 1980s

After the release of AFMAN 1-1 in 1979 and ATP-27 (B) in

1980, debate concerning roles and missions, interest in doctrine, and TAC-TRADOC action all heated up. The inclusion of

BAI in both the USAF and the NATO air doctrine showed the

USA that the Air Force was serious about the threat in Europe

and was willing to join the fight. On 23 May 1981, the two services put it in writing. The USAF Air Staff and the USA signed

a memorandum on apportionment and allocation of OAS,

which promised that the USAF would provide the assets as

apportioned to fulfill OAS mission requirements.68 The agreement “adequately established for the Army the corps commander’s role in prioritizing targets for BAI. On 22 September

1981, Headquarters US Air Force declared that the agreement

was authoritative Air Force doctrine and would be incorporated into relevant Air Force doctrinal manuals.”69

By the summer of 1981, there had been enough discussion

about interdiction in the preceding years to call for an article by

Lt Col Donald J. Alberts to set the story straight. This article

refuted some of the existing misapprehensions concerning BAI

and contains the most concise understanding of the whole BAI

concept yet put on one page. First, he stated that “battlefield

interdiction was not a ‘second generic type’ of interdiction;

rather, it is a recognized category of air operation encompassed

within the generic label of offensive air support.”70 Although

somewhat lengthy, the following extract from Alberts’s article is

worthy of close examination:

As a concept, BAI was needed to correct some fundamental misperceptions held by land force personnel (and some air forces personnel) about

the nature of close air support and its purpose on the one hand and interdiction and its purpose on the other. The view that interdiction is something the Air Force does far away from the land battle and with little relevance to it is all too prevalent among US Army personnel. This view stems

largely from our experience in Vietnam, where there was some empirical

evidence to support it. We in the United States have also fallen into the

incorrect habit of terming all air support delivered on the friendly side of

the fire support coordination line (FSCL) as close air support (CAS),

restricting air interdiction to the far side of the FSCL—a position never, in

fact, accepted in Air Force doctrine. Somewhere between Korea and today

we also lost the concept of that category of direct support which was not

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MCCAFFREY
“close.” BAI helps to correct the misperception. CAS requires detailed

integration of the air strike with the fire and movement of friendly ground

forces: while BAI on the other hand does not. BAI is target-set centered.

The focus is on forces. In the European context, the only place so far

where BAI has international doctrinal legitimacy, CAS affects the ground

commander’s battle now, BAI affects it in the near term (an hour, a day?),

and air interdiction affects it at some further time. The level of battle

involved also climbs. CAS affects the battalions, brigades, and divisions;

BAI affects the divisions [and] corps Army groups; and air interdiction

[affects] the Army group and theater. In the historic perspective, BAI

equates to the use of air power to protect the left flank of Patton’s Third

Army by the Ninth Air Force after St.-Lo breakout in 1944. BAI is neither

CAS nor air interdiction as commonly perceived but shares elements of

both.71

Another Airman not afraid of involvement with the Army was

General Creech. He and General Starry, still under mandate

from their respective service chiefs of staff, began a cooperative

work that would change both services. Starry, having arrived at

his post about a year before Creech, took the helm at TAC and

was expanding the idea created by DePuy. He thought that the

Army’s extant doctrine was sound but limited. He realized a need

to add the deep battle and began work on what he called the

extended battlefield concept, which clearly required airpower to

make it work. This realization came when General Starry, commander of the Army’s V Corps, was walking the expected future

battlefields in Germany. He understood that airpower was going

to be necessary. As USA helicopters handled the first echelon,

airpower (either USA attack helicopters or USAF fixed-wing

attack aircraft) would be necessary to delay, disrupt, or destroy

the second echelon and the flow of the Soviet battle rhythm.72

According to Starry, he “solicited the advice and counsel of Gen

Bill Creech, the TAC commander at the time.”73

On 21 October 1981, both Generals Starry and Creech spoke

on the extended battlefield at the annual Association of the

United States Army (AUSA) meeting in Washington, D. C. With

the backing of the 1979 AFMAN 1-1 and the 23 May 1981 apportionment agreement, it appeared that General Creech had the

support of Headquarters USAF, which allowed him to speak

boldly about USAF support for General Starry’s concept. Following Starry’s remarks describing the extended battlefield concept,

Creech’s remarks were an uncompromising echo of support. His

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statements could not have been more strongly in favor of the

extended battlefield concept, Army/Air Force cooperation, and

his personal commitment to extend the feeling throughout the

Air Force.74 This level of support and the relationship between

Generals Creech and Starry evident at this as well as other

speaking arrangements led the USA to proceed with revision to

its doctrine that required USAF support to execute. General

Starry, the chief architect of FM 100-5’s revision in 1982, which

promulgated a doctrine known as AirLand Battle, gives credit for

its existence to General Creech. He stated, “The armed services

owe Bill Creech a great, great debt of gratitude. We would not

have AirLand Battle had it not been for him. I could not have carried that off by myself.”75

AirLand Battle to Desert Storm

Effective in 1982 with AirLand Battle’s first release, BAI

became both USA and USAF doctrine for the first time. Although

much of FM 100-5 in 1982 was crafted jointly by TAC and

TRADOC, it was not joint doctrine. Airmen were often quick to

point out that AirLand Battle was not Air Force doctrine either.

What this attitude failed to grasp is that BAI (noted by many to

be the key to winning the deep battle) was, and had been, USAF

doctrine since 1979.76 On 21 April 1983, USA chief of staff Gen

Edward “Shy” Meyer and USAF chief of staff Gen Charles A.

Gabriel signed memorandum of understanding “Joint USA/

USAF Efforts for Enhancement of the AirLand Battle Doctrine,”

which appeared to be a full Air Force endorsement of AirLand

Battle. By this time, both services had a common understanding

of BAI codified in their respective basic doctrines, in NATO doctrine, and in an interservice agreement. All of this should have

been enough to convince Airmen that BAI was here to stay; however, some Airmen disagreed. 

These Airmen attempted to hold on to the Vietnam-era principle of AI as being purely in the purview of the air commander

rather than incorporate the BAI concept into fulfilling the air

part of AirLand Battle. One of them, a joint air operations staff

officer with the Air-Land Forces Application (ALFA) Agency,

asserted that the chiefs of staff merely established training

and exercises based on the AirLand Battle with the aforemen23

MCCAFFREY
tioned 21 April 1983 agreement.77 Although this was true, that

training and exercising was exactly the thing that was supposed

to “enhance AirLand Battle doctrine,” just as the title suggested.

Another argument against air support in AirLand Battle

appeared in Air University Review in 1985. Maj Jon S. Powell’s

well-written and well-researched essay attacked AirLand Battle’s

main premises of see deep, strike deep, and battlefield interdiction (calling BAI “the key to AirLand Battle, according to virtually every writer on the subject”).78 The main argument centered on four issues: (1) the Soviet attack would not be in

multiple echelons, (2) systems needed to see deep were not yet

fielded, (3) the Soviet antiair threat would severely limit BAI’s

effectiveness, and (4) tactical airlift requirements would be

unmanageable.79 Powell’s assessments were not altogether inaccurate. Work was under way; however, through acquisition of

JSTARS, ATACMS, joint suppression of enemy air defense

(JSEAD) programs, new attack helicopters, and even the new

CAS aircraft to meet at least two of the author’s points.

These critiques of AirLand Battle and BAI preceded USAF’s

revision of AFMAN 1-1 in 1984. The new manual represented

an attempt to develop a practical doctrinal document. It advocated the simultaneous conduct of strategic and tactical operations during a campaign. It also argued the two were synergistic. Along those lines, it called for relentlessly attacking the

enemy thoroughly from the line of contact through the rear

echelons and in coordination with surface forces.80 To accomplish these conceptual ideals, the manual still held to the three

most important missions for tactical airpower—counterair, AI,

and CAS. The definition of AI included BAI as promised in the

23 May 1981 agreement on OAS allocation and apportionment: 

Air interdiction attacks against targets which are in a position to have

a near-term effect on friendly land forces are referred to as battlefield

air interdiction. The primary difference between battlefield air interdiction and the remainder of the air interdiction effort is in the level of

interest and emphasis the land commander places on the process of

identifying, selecting, and attacking certain targets. Therefore, battlefield air interdiction requires joint coordination at the component level

during planning, but once planned, battlefield air interdiction is controlled and executed by the air commander as an integral part of a total

air interdiction campaign.81

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In addition to this inclusion of BAI in USAF doctrine, two additional major contributions solidified the joint BAI commitment

in 1984: the USA-USAF Joint Force Development Process, 22

May 1984, unofficially known as the “31 Initiatives” and the

Joint USA-USAF agreement on Joint Attack of the Second

Echelon (J-SAK).

The 31 Initiatives began a long list of joint agreements and

cooperation between the Army and the Air Force from the very

top. No longer were AirLand Battle and BAI merely part of a

TAC-TRADOC sideshow, but the commitment to joint operations was now driving everything from training and exercises to

acquisition decisions. The agreement called for a growing

process of cooperation requiring annual review and exchange of

“formal priority list of sister-service programs essential to the

support of their conduct of successful airland combat operations, the purpose of which is to ensure the development of

complementary systems without duplication.”82 The attachment

to the memorandum listed the 31 initiatives for action. Initiative

21 contended battlefield air interdiction, which included three

subtasks. First, both services were committed to developing

procedures to synchronize BAI with maneuver applicable to any

theater of war. Second, the services agreed to test the procedures. Third, the Army was tasked to automate its battlefield

coordination element (BCE) and connect it to the corps and

land component commanders via a near-real-time datalink.83

Richard Davis felt that “this arrangement helped to solve the

asymmetry between the Air Force’s theaterwide view and the

Army corps’s single-sector responsibility.”84

With initiative 21, work that was begun by Generals Starry

and Creech on J-SAK was quickly agreed upon to fulfill the

procedural requirement. Lt Gen Fred Mahaffey of TRADOC

sent the following message to Headquarters TAC on 25 June

1984: “The ongoing efforts of TAC and TRADOC that are

reflected in the current J-SAK document reflect the strides

that have been made recognize the coordination of our services in the joint operation.”85 The definition used for BAI in

the J-SAK terms of reference was the same as the one written

in the 1984 AFMAN 1-1.86 In reality, J-SAK was a procedural

how-to for execution of BAI in the AirLand Battle doctrinal

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MCCAFFREY
concept. It discussed responsibilities for apportionment of AI

and BAI, targeting procedures, planning details, and organization. Having built the J-SAK procedures, they were tested,

“(particularly as they applied to synchronization of battlefield

air interdiction and ground maneuver) in exercise Blue Flag

85-3 at Hurlburt Field, Florida.”87 After evaluating the results,

TAC and TRADOC determined that the “procedures supplied

adequate interdiction and maneuver synchronization.”88

At this same time, Lt Gen Merrill A. “Tony” McPeak, while

deputy chief of staff for plans, Headquarters TAC, wrote a compelling argument in support of BAI. McPeak’s argument

focused on the definition of the FSCL and the requirement for

coordination. Given that the FSCL is not the division between

CAS and AI but only the division between unrestricted and

coordinated fires, coordination becomes the key. This coordination by no means rose to the level of becoming control that

concerned many Airmen regarding BAI. McPeak’s description

of coordination ultimately arrived at the simple truth that the

commander who requests the attack has, by default, coordinated and fulfilled the requirement.89 If a ground commander

nominated a target inside the FSCL, no further coordination is

needed to strike it in accordance with the overall interdiction

plan. If AI was not conducted inside the FSCL, McPeak argued,

it would be possible to create a doctrinal “no-mission zone.”90

He suggested that BAI was the mission that filled this zone. He

also described its practical execution through the coordinating

element that would make it work: the BCE. For the ground

commander, “all BAI targets, on either side of the FSCL, will be

‘coordinated’ in the sense that the ground commander nominates and prioritizes BAI targets and timing.”91 Likewise, “It is

the BCE that will ‘coordinate’ AI attacks inside the FSCL that

are initiatives of the air side.”92 In the end, he argued that the

elements were in place to execute BAI successfully. 

TRADOC was also hard at work finishing revisions to FM

100-5. Although General Starry had left TRADOC in 1981, Gen

Glen K. Otis saw his vision published. Subsequently, Gen

William R. Richardson took the baton and saw the 1986 version of FM 100-5 completed.93 This manual was well organized,

easy to understand, and contained the Air Force definition of

26

CADRE PAPER
BAI.94 It listed combined arms and sister services to complement and reinforce as one of the 10 imperatives of AirLand

Battle. The synergy was gained as each force complemented the

other. As the enemy “evades the effects of one weapon, arm, or

service, he exposes himself to attack by another.”95 Such synergism and complementary effects were not possible until BAI missions were flown inside the FSCL. Although the basics are presented in FM 100-5, the specifics were codified in the FM 6-20

series on field artillery operations. These manuals, written in the

late 1980s, incorporated the procedures developed through

countless hours over 15 years of TAC-TRADOC cooperation.

They were the cutting edge of understanding and procedural

knowledge on how to operate BAI within AirLand Battle on the

eve of Operation Desert Storm.

Conclusion

Although the term BAI was not codified until the late 1970s,

the mission it represented had existed almost from the beginning of airpower’s use in war. The utility of airpower on the

battlefield grew in necessity from the ground-strafing missions

flown over the trenches in World War I to the present. “BAI is

air action directed against enemy forces and resources that

are in a position to directly influence and affect current land

operations. The enemy forces are not yet directly engaged but

are an eminent concern to the land force commander.”96 With

the exception of a brief period during the Vietnam War, both

Army and Air Force doctrine have recognized this important

role for airpower on the battlefield. Throughout the 1980s, the

relationship between the USAF and the USA grew and

expanded to include the highest level of each service. 

The close teamwork that General Creech was looking for in

1981, however, never fully emerged.97 For the Army, Air Force

codification of BAI was significant; to the Army, doctrine was

sacred. After its approval of BAI in Air Force doctrine in 1979 and

again in 1984, the USA trusted the USAF to honor the concept.

However, to the USAF, basic doctrine did not mean the same

thing. In the USAF, feelings about BAI ranged from support to

resistance to neglect. Many in the Air Force still believed that BAI

was a step backward, reminiscent of the misuse of airpower at

27

MCCAFFREY
Kasserine Pass. Still, doctrine and cooperation present on 2

August 1990 appeared on the surface to be better than at almost

anytime in history. The BAI concept was mature, and the Air

Force should have understood it. Both services had the training,

the doctrine, and the organization. The question was, Could the

services implement it under fire?

Notes

1. Hallion, Strike from the Sky, 9.

2. Holley, Ideas and Weapons, 39.

3. Ibid., 19. Holley contends that all three areas are necessary to get a

new weapon to become effective.

4. Ibid., 19–20.

5. Ibid., 20.

6. For more in-depth review of these operations, see Hallion, Strike from

the Sky, 19–41; Slessor, Air Power and Armies, 11–30; and Mason, Air

Power, 17–37.

7. Holley, Ideas and Weapons, 172.

8. Ibid., 157.

9. Mowbray, “Air Force Doctrine Problems 1926–Present,” n.p.

10. Futrell, Ideas, Concepts, Doctrine, vol. 1, 50. The document had been

in coordination for five years.

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid., 83.

13. Ibid.

14. Hallion, Strike from the Sky, 47–48.

15. Air Corps Field Manual 1-5, 9.

16. Ibid., 23.

17. Hallion, Strike from the Sky, 150.

18. Quote from Army Field Manual (FM) 100-5, Operations, is taken from

Greenfield, “Army Ground Forces and Air-Ground Battle Team,” 3.

19. Hallion, Strike from the Sky, 150.

20. Army FM 31-35, Aviation in Support of Ground Forces, 1. The purpose

of this manual is to prescribe organization for combat, general functions,

and employment of aviation used in tactical support of ground forces. It

refers to FM 1-5 and FM 100-5 for basic employment doctrine.

21. Ibid, 2.

22. Carter, “Air Power in the Battle of the Bulge,” 10–33. This is a good

article on air-land cooperation in battle across western Europe.

23. Army FM 31-35, Air-Ground Operations, 1.

24. Ibid., 14.

25. Ibid.

26. Russ, “Open Letter to the Field,” 1.

27. Hansborough, Air Support of Army Operations.

28

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28. Ibid., viii.

29. Air Command and Staff School Pamphlet No. 36, Tactical Air Operations (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: 1949), chap. 2, 1. Also, see the version used at

Command and General Staff College, Air Force Manual (Fort Leavenworth,

Kans., 1949).

30. Ibid., chap. 2, 2.

31. Ibid., chap. 2, 5.

32. Futrell, Ideas, Concepts, Doctrine, vol. 1, 375. For an in-depth discussion of the new Air Force and joint doctrine development, see 373–79.

33. Ibid., 376.

34. Joint Publication (JP) 31-35A, Joint Training Directive for Air-Ground

Operations, 1.

35. Ibid., 10. This mission would resurface in 1991 in Desert Storm. Gen

Charles A. “Chuck” Horner referred to the FSCL as the bomb line in an oral

history interview after the war. See Horner, oral history interview.

36. JP 31-35A, Joint Training Directive for Air-Ground Operations, 11.

37. Air Force Manual (AFMAN) 1-7, Theater Air Forces in Counter Air,

Interdiction, and Close Air Support, 11–15. Chap. 3, “Interdiction Operations,” stresses the effects of long-range interdiction.

38. Tactical Air Command Manual (TACM) 55-3, Joint Air-Ground Operation, 15.

39. TACM 1-1, Tactical Air Forces in Joint Operation, 6.

40. Ibid.

41. Dixon, “TAC-TRADOC Dialogue,” 46.

42. Ibid., 45.

43. Ibid., 45–46.

44. Ibid., 46.

45. “Historical Overview of the Army Training and Doctrine Command,”

n.p. 

46. Romjue, From Active Defense to AirLand Battle, 6.

47. Ibid.

48. FM 100-5, Operations, 1976, 8-1.

49. Dixon, “TAC-TRADOC Dialogue,” 52.

50. Winton, “An Ambivalent Partnership,” 419.

51. Stein, The Development of NATO Tactical Air Doctrine, 23. 

52. Ibid., 27.

53. Ibid.

54. Ibid.

55. Ibid., 28.

56. McCrabb, “The Evolution of NATO Air Doctrine,” 457.

57. The bomb line was established for safety reasons to prevent fratricide. Although the FSCL enjoys this benefit, the reason for the change was

not cosmetic. It was to coordinate fires on the battlefield that would affect

the ground scheme of maneuver. FM 6-20-1, Field Artillery Tactics, 23–24,

defines the FSCL as a measure to “coordinate supporting fire by forces not

under control of the appropriate land force commander which may affect tac29

MCCAFFREY
tical operations.” For a good discussion on the FSCL and its application, see

Zook, “The Fire Support Coordination Line.”

58. McCrabb, “The Evolution of NATO Air Doctrine,” 457; and Stein, The

Development of NATO Tactical Air Doctrine, 33.

59. Dotson, “Tactical Air Power and Environmental Imperatives,” 29.

Robert F. Futrell gives Dotson credit for coining the term. See Futrell, Ideas,

Concepts, Doctrine, vol. 1, 551.

60. Dotson, “Tactical Air Power and Environmental Imperatives,” 30.

61. Ibid., 30–31.

62. Airmen have believed since early airpower days, when excursions

flown beyond the front were short, that since Army weapons could not reach

deep, the deep battle was theirs. This may be true in the strategic sense but

makes little sense when applied to the ground ideal of the deep battle today

or since the FSCL was developed. See Rasmussen, “The Central European

Battlefield,” 11–13; McCrabb, “The Evolution of NATO Air Doctrine,” 457;

Futrell, Ideas, Concepts, Doctrine, vol. 2, 552; and New, “Where to Draw the

Line between Air and Land Battle,” 34–49.

63. Rasmussen, “The Central Europe Battlefield,” 12.

64. AFMAN 1-1, Functions and Basic Doctrine of the United States Air

Force, 2–13.

65. Ibid.

66. Ibid.

67. Futrell, Ideas, Concepts, Doctrine, vol. 2, 552.

68. Lt Gen Glenn K. Otis (USA), deputy chief of staff for operations and

plans and Lt Gen Jerome F. O’Malley (USAF), deputy chief of staff for plans

and operations, memorandum of understanding, subject: USA and USAF

Agreement on Apportionment and Allocation of Offensive Air Support (OAS),

23 May 1981, reprinted as document six in Romjue, Active Defense to AirLand Battle, 100–108.

69. Romjue, Active Defense to AirLand Battle, 63.

70. Alberts, “An Alternative View of Air Interdiction,” 31–44.

71. Ibid.

72. Starry, oral history interview. 

73. Ibid., 1.

74. Gen Wilbur Creech’s address to the Association of the US Army meeting, 21 October 1981, 6–11. General Creech gave similar remarks at the

ASD/Air Force Association (AFA) Engineering awards dinner at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, 22 October 1981 and at the AFA Symposium in Los Angeles, Calif., on 13 November 1981.

75. Starry, oral history interview, 42.

76. Deal, “BAI,” 52.

77. Machos, “TACAIR Support for AirLand Battle,” 16–24.

78. Powell, “AirLand Battle,” 16.

79. Ibid., 16–19.

80. AFMAN 1-1, Basic Aerospace Doctrine of the United States Air Force,

2-13 and 2-14.

30

CADRE PAPER
81. Ibid., 3-4.

82. Wickham and Gabriel, memorandum of agreement.

83. Ibid., atch. 1, 4.

84. Davis, The 31 Initiatives, 59.

85. Message, DTG 251619Z June 1984, Joint Forces Development

Group to Headquarters TAC and commander, TRADOC, 25 June 1984.

86. Wickham, Joint Service Agreement.

87. Davis, The 31 Initiatives, 76.

88. Ibid.

89. McPeak, “TACAIR Missions and the Fire Support Coordination Line,”

65–72.

90. Ibid.

91. Ibid.

92. Ibid.

93. “Historical Overview of the Army Training and Doctrine Command.” 

94. Army FM 100-5, Operations, 49.

95. Ibid., 25.

96. Deal, “BAI,” 52.

97. For a good summary of the service cooperation and tensions from Vietnam to Desert Storm, see Winton, “An Ambivalent Partnership,” 399–441.

31

MCCAFFREY
Chapter 3

Where Was Battlefield Air Interdiction

in Desert Storm?

At that time the Air Force was distancing itself from BAI

because of the control function . . . the concern over who’s

controlling and why. There’s a better way to handle airpower than to hand it over to a corps commander for targeting; we learned that in World War II.

—Maj Gen David A. Deptula

––31 January 2002

Since no significant ground combat occurred prior to the battle

for Khafji and no further ground combat occurred until G day,

the air war in southern Kuwait consisted almost entirely of

BAI.

—Maj William R. Cronin, US Marine Corps

––March 1992

The Coming Storm

By mid-1990, the USAF and the USA were closer doctrinally

than they had been since 1947. They had the shared vision of

BAI codified in both services’ doctrine, coauthored more than 14

different memoranda of understanding or agreement signed by

their chiefs of staff, completed several joint exercises, and had

developed a common perspective on the next CAS-BAI aircraft.1

The two services had come a long way since 1973 when Generals Abrams and Brown had directed them to work together. “It

takes a long time to move a bureaucracy.”2 In October 1985,

Gen John A. Wickham, chief of staff of the USA, uttered those

words as his service was working uncharacteristically closely

with the USAF. He meant them in a positive way. In the summer of 1988, Gen Robert D. Russ, commander of TAC from May

1985 through March of 1991, pledged, “supporting the Army is

a vitally important part of the Air Force mission—whether it

33
involves interdiction, close air support, or counterair. Outside of

strategic air defense, everything that tactical air does supports

AirLand Battle.”3

This relationship and doctrinal common ground did not uniformly translate into all the war-fighting commands. For example, Central Command’s (CENTCOM) exercise Internal Look

90 did not include BAI.4 Because Internal Look was a defensive

exercise that envisioned a hostile land invasion of Kuwait, the

exercise plan considered airpower in support of ground forces.

But the plan used a new mission to accomplish this support,

which was Gen Charles A. “Chuck” Horner’s concept of Push

CAS. General Horner, Central Command Air Forces (CENTAF)

commander, briefed Gen H. Norman Schwarzkopf, CENTCOM

commander, on his concept before the exercise. On a briefing

slide for the exercise, Horner wrote that airpower would “build a

hose and point it where the ground commander sees that it’s

needed.”5 Instead of that hose being filled with BAI sorties,

Horner filled it with what he called Push CAS. General Schwarzkopf approved the concept for use in the joint exercise that

included the XVIII (Airborne) Corps as the ground component.

Push CAS was designed to maintain constant tactical airpower

over the battlefield so that CAS was immediately available when

the Army needed it. When CAS was not required, the sorties were

made available to execute AI missions against enemy surface

forces on the battlefield. The Push CAS concept used in Exercise

Internal Look became CENTAF’s accepted way of operations

when the Persian Gulf War came only six months later.6 Conversely, the BAI concept, confirmed at Blue Flag Exercise

1985-3, was routinely included at Air Warrior and Red Flag exercises by the late 1980s.7 Moreover, in EUCOM exercises throughout the 1980s such as Reforger and Central Enterprise, BAI

operations were well established.8 In accordance with NATO doctrine and training as well as their own AirLand Battle doctrine,

European-based ground forces expected BAI missions to be a

part of any potential conflict.

The Gulf War began on 2 August 1990 when Iraqi tanks

ripped across the Kuwaiti border. It was clear initially that the

United States would support Kuwait.9 Saddam Hussein’s timing for his operation could not have been worse. Although

34

CADRE PAPER
Saddam had no way of knowing it, General Schwarzkopf had

recently directed development of Operational Plan (OPLAN)

1002-90, “USCENTCOM Operations to Counter an IntraRegional Threat to the Arabian Peninsula, for contingency

operations in the area. In November 1989, the CENTCOM staff

shifted the plan’s focus to Iraq as the region’s most likely

potential aggressor.10 CENTCOM completed Internal Look, the

exercise based on OPLAN 1002-90, only five days before Iraq’s

invasion of Kuwait. The proximity of the exercise and the invasion led many CENTCOM planners to routinely remark, “We

did this in Internal Look.”11 The similarities between the exercise scenario and Saddam’s invasion made comparison

inevitable. The exercise had anticipated Saddam’s move but

also expected the Iraqi army to continue south and take Saudi

oilfields with a large loss to defending forces.12

Even with the heightened US interest in the region, Saddam’s

action surprised both Kuwait and the United States. Iraqi forces

had little trouble taking Kuwait and establishing defensive positions on the Saudi Arabian border. As early as 4 August, General

Schwarzkopf and his air component commander, General

Horner, briefed initial military options to Pres. George H. W.

Bush and the National Security Council (NSC).13 All the early

options would be airpower ones.14 Desert Shield began on 6

August as President Bush ordered the first deployment into

the area.15

Developing the Plans for War

Along with the rapid deployment came rushed plans. CENTCOM went into immediate action, as did Col John A. Warden III

at his Checkmate office in the Pentagon’s basement.16 The story

of Warden’s plan, known as Instant Thunder, has been well

documented.17 At a meeting on 20 August 1990 in Riyadh, Saudi

Arabia, the work Warden and the Checkmate staff produced was

briefed to General Horner who was appointed as joint force air

and space component commander (JFACC). According to Col

Richard T. Reynolds, General Horner was not impressed with the

colonel from Washington and only partially listened to the plan.18

Nevertheless, Horner retained several of Warden’s staff to help

develop his plans, including Lt Col David A. “Dave” Deptula. This

35

MCCAFFREY
continuity with Warden’s ideas ensured some of them would be

included in the total air campaign concept once it solidified.

General Horner responded less than enthusiastically to Colonel Warden’s plan for two reasons. First, Horner felt that Warden

was uninvited and sensed the visit was Washington’s meddling

reminiscent of Vietnam.19 Second, he was already busy developing two planning options. The first was being run by the CENTAF

staff and focused on defending Saudi Arabia from another Iraqi

armored thrust. This plan included the missions of “Battlefield

Air Interdiction (BAI), Close Air Support (CAS), Air Interdiction

(AI), Offensive Counter Air (OCA), and Defensive Counter Air

(DCA). Doctrine on air-land battle provided the context for plans

devoted to offensive operations against Iraq.”20 This planning

effort also reflected the recent experience from Internal Look.

Neither Generals Horner nor Schwarzkopf—the joint force commanders (JFC)—felt that Iraqi forces could be expelled from Kuwait without hitting them directly.21 Brig Gen Buster C. Glosson

led the second in-theater planning effort. His group developed an

offensive air campaign aimed at gaining the combatant commander’s military objectives through airpower by late August.

The effort from the group, which worked in an area known as the

Black Hole, was not developed around a ground scheme of

maneuver because ground forces were not yet in-theater in force,

and no ground scheme of maneuver had yet been devised.

By 24 August, the plan that would become Desert Storm was

taking shape.22 General Schwarzkopf decided on four phases.

The first phase focused on strategic attack; it was basically Warden’s Instant Thunder after being modified by the Black Hole.

The second phase was to gain air superiority over the Kuwaiti

theater of operation (KTO). The third phase was to prepare the

battlefield for ground operations. The fourth phase was a combined air-ground operation. The initial concept displayed the

four stages as being sequential; however, the first three were

implemented simultaneously.23 Since the first three phases were

air-centric, Glosson’s planning team combined the president’s

objectives, Schwarzkopf’s phasing, Warden’s Instant Thunder

plan, and the offensive portions of the CENTAF plan into what

became the Desert Storm air campaign.

36

CADRE PAPER
The first offensive ground plan presented to the JFC was a

single-corps plan. It envisioned the XVIII (Airborne) Corps

attacking directly into the Iraqi defensive belt.24 This plan was

briefed to General Schwarzkopf in October 1990, but he was not

happy with it. Troubled by the risk and casualty estimates,

Schwarzkopf opted for a two-week air campaign to soften the

forces in front of XVIII (Airborne) Corps if this option were to be

executed.25 Still concerned over the single-corps attack,

Schwarzkopf asked for a two-corps plan by 15 October.26 This

course of action required many more forces and would take

longer to prepare, but Schwarzkopf knew if they were “going to

conduct an offensive operation it would be . . . it would require

more forces.”27 He was happy with the new idea that had XVIII

(Airborne) Corps on the far west flank, where its speed and

mobility could be used and the heavy VII Corps in position on its

right. The plan called for the two corps to attack north, then

wheel east to cut off escape routes to Iraqi forces in the KTO. This

aspect of the plan is perhaps what led Gen Colin L. Powell to

state in a press conference regarding the Iraqi army, “First we

are going to cut it off; then we’re going to kill it.”

Battlefield Air Interdiction Absent

from the Concept of Operations 

The concept of operations (CONOPS) developed to shape the

battlefield was not what the USAF had trained for, nor what

the USA expected.28 All the work done during the last 15 years

between the USAF and the USA seemed to be cast off as General

Horner published the CONOPS for C2 of TACAIR in support of

land forces. The procedures, which paralleled CENTCOM’s

recent command post exercise, did not have an obvious doctrinal basis. The CONOPS was first developed during Desert

Shield on 4 December 1990, updated in mid-January 1991

and again on 22 February 1991 to its final version just prior

to the ground war’s start. There were few changes made over

the period. The document, which could have echoed the current doctrinal framework of CAS, BAI, and AI, instead was all

new. As the draft “Gulf War Air Power Survey” noted, the

CENTAF “called missions inside the fire support coordination

37

MCCAFFREY
line CAS missions and all others outside the line, AI missions,

which deleted BAI as a type of mission.”29

The system included several concepts that were either new

or executed in the past, but few that were current USAF missions. These missions included the Push CAS concept General

Horner used in Internal Look and the Vietnam-era mission of

Killer Scouts and kill boxes. The CONOPS explained the new

systems in relation to the FSCL. Although the CONOPS alone

remains classified, the declassified procedures appeared in a

report titled Desert Storm: Fixed Wing BAI/CAS Operations and

Lessons Learned completed in January 1992 by the Institute

for Defense Analyses. Of note are the concepts of AI in the

KTO, kill-box operations, and Push CAS. AI sorties in the KTO

were designated differently than AI sorties in the rest of the

theater. Because of their proximity to friendly ground forces,

aircrews flying these missions had the added requirement to

contact the airborne battlefield command and control center

(ABCCC) or the Airborne Early Warning and Control System

(AWACS) for target and FSCL updates.30 Kill boxes were used

on either side of the FSCL but had different procedures

depending on which side they fell. Beyond the FSCL, kill-box

missions were called AI missions; and the boxes remained

open unless the ground commander specifically closed them.

On the friendly side of the FSCL, the kill box was closed unless

opened by the ground commander. Like CAS, “no weapon was

to be delivered inside the FSCL unless cleared for release by

ground or airborne FAC [Forward Air Controller].”31 Additionally, a Fast FAC or Killer Scout was required to control AI missions 30 nautical miles past the FSCL to “act as a buffer

between CAS and normal AI.”32 Added together the procedures

for AI in the KTO substituted new C2 procedures for ones that

were already established via the BAI construct, but that were

not associated with normal AI.33 Push CAS, as described earlier in the chapter, flowed continuously to support in their

assigned corps area. If not needed for CAS, these missions

flowed to a preplanned AI target across the FSCL or an open

AI kill box (fig. 1).34

These procedures and concepts were designed for the open

terrain of the KTO, a limited threat, and ground forces in a

38

CADRE PAPER
fixed defensive position on both sides of the front, which

allowed the FSCL to be stationary and close to friendly ground

forces. General Horner summed it up well. “This particular

theater, this particular enemy, this particular situation, really

emphasizes the attributes that air brings to the battle.”35 In

addition to these three attributes, which gave airpower distinct advantages, there were several other rationales for the

CONOPS design. First, no one expected Saddam to allow six

months for US and coalition forces to deploy and assemble.

That meant the air plan had to be executable without friendly

surface forces to support it. Second, the commanders had

recently completed an exercise using similar airpower options

that were fresh in their minds. XVIII (Airborne) Corps participated in the exercise and was familiar with the concepts General Horner wanted to use. Third, many Airmen in key Desert

Storm planning positions were unaware that BAI was Air

Force doctrine.36 Although they were aware of BAI as a mission, key personnel believed it was only NATO doctrine and

not applicable outside Europe. And at least one Desert Storm

key planner actively resisted BAI as a doctrinal construct

39

MCCAFFREY

AWACS PROCEDURAL

CONTROL IN KILL BOX

ABCCC UPDATES IN KILL BOX

KILLER SCOUT OR FAST FAC

LOOSE CONTROL IN KILL BOX – 30 NAUTICAL MILES

FSCL

FAC AND FAC(A) CONTROL

FLOT

Figure 1. Concepts of operations depiction. (From Thomas P. Christie et al.,

Desert Storm: Fixed Wing BAI/CAS Operations Lessons Learned [U], Institute

for Defense Analyses, Alexandria, Va., 1992, Historical Research Agency document no. NA-194. [Secret] Information extracted is unclassified.)
because he felt it gave operational-level control to tactical-level

ground commanders.37

But the absence of BAI from the air CONOPS and hence from

the ATO caused problems that grew in intensity as initiation of

the ground war approached. The friction caused by the lack of

joint planning for the air campaign was multiplied when VII

Corps arrived in-theater from Europe. Three problems emerged

because of CENTAF’s air only approach to the campaign. First,

the CONOPS designed to increase flexibility only partially met its

goal. The mixture of new procedures and missions created confusion for aircrews and soldiers alike. Second, the CONOPS and

command structure made it difficult for the ground commanders

to get their target priorities onto the ATO. Third, CENTAF used

the FSCL as a dividing line between air and land operational control instead of a coordination measure to create synergy. The

subsequent battle for control became increasingly strident as the

ground campaign approached. 

New Missions Replace BAI in the Storm

On 17 January 1991, Apache helicopters from the 101st

Airborne Division opened the air war by destroying two early

warning radar sites, which created a lane for coalition air

forces to penetrate Iraqi airspace undetected.38 This would be

one of the few times Army deep systems would cross the FSCL

until the ground war began 38 days later. The initial success

of airpower exceeded expectations in the opening hours of the

war. There were no aircraft losses on the first night; by the end

of the day, the coalition had gained air superiority over the

KTO.39 Although land operations were several weeks away,

battlefield preparation began on day one and continued during the entire war. During the first two weeks of the war, the

CONOPS for support of ground operations was not a great

source of tension because the ground forces were not ready to

attack. Although it had been more than five months after Iraqi

forces had invaded Kuwait, the US and coalition ground forces

were not yet in position; nor did they have all of their logistics

in place. Tension grew, however, as air attacks continued with

little degradation to Iraqi forces just across the border from

friendly forces.

40

CADRE PAPER
AI was defined in the CONOPS as a mission that did not

require coordination with ground forces because it was flown

on the far side of the FSCL, thus outside the purview of ground

operations. The FSCL placement on the Saudi Arabian border

(known as the berm) before the ground war started made this

definition troublesome. In the KTO, AI was treated differently

through designation in the remarks section of the ATO directing pilots flying interdiction missions to contact the ABCCC or

AWACS for FSCL and target updates.40 Most AI sorties in the

KTO were flown in kill boxes. This arrangement worked initially because there was little chance of the FSCL moving

before the start of ground operations. Ground forces agreed to

keep the FSCL close to them because they knew they would

not begin operations for some time and that they had to rely

on the Air Force to shape the battlefield. General Abrams, the

VII Corps artillery commander, noted that they kept the FSCL

on the berm because the Air Force refused to fly short of it

before G-day (the beginning of the ground war).41 The Air

Force had no reason to fly short of the FSCL before G-day

because doing so would keep them in Saudi airspace. This

essentially led to no CAS requirement. As seen above in the

CONOPS, unused CAS sorties could be pushed past the FSCL

(only across the Saudi border) and used in AI missions.

According to Lt Col Robert E. Duncan, one of the officers who

built the CONOPS, these “backup targets were taken from the

land component interdiction target nomination list when possible” (emphasis added).42 This made unused CAS sorties

essentially BAI missions, although labeled AI. This arrangement allowed the JFACC to increase the number of AI sorties

without having to reduce the apparent number of CAS sorties.

As soon as the ground war began, problems arose for some

A-10 pilots who were trained in CAS and BAI but not in AI. AI

sorties normally require a high level of detailed planning

because of their depth, integrated force packaging, and the

need to acquire targets without the aid of a FAC. One A-10

unit felt that because of the need for detailed planning for AI

missions, they should not have been hastily retasked by the

ABCCC.43 Retasking caused many missed targets, and numerous aircraft returned to base without dropping their ord41

MCCAFFREY
nance.44 Similarly, an F-16 unit observed, “Location of friendly

troops was often unexpected and too close to briefed targets,

thus posing the potential threat of fratricide.”45 They also had

a problem with the kill-box system after G-day. The kill-box

system that was so successful with a static ground situation

up to G-day was incompatible with fast ground-troop movements. “Once the Army began to move, the kill boxes were

overrun rapidly, often between takeoff and TOT [time over target].”46 Additionally, it was noted that “more CAS sorties were

flown north of the FSCL than inside it.”47 This was because of

the Special Operations Forces’ conducting deep operations.

One Air Force air liaison officer (ALO) agreed. He was with the

101st Airborne Division when it was operating 80 miles north

of the FSCL and requesting CAS. He was told his CAS request

would be turned down because he was north of the FSCL, but

he could get AI if he passed the target info!48 If the FSCL was

moved farther out, in relation to the ongoing operations, this

instance may not have occurred. Obviously, definitions and

mission confusion reigned.

Consequences without Battlefield Air

Interdiction on Targeting

CONOPS’s deviation from extant doctrine led to loss of the

Army’s mechanism to influence the deep battle. Some Airmen

assumed that because phase four had not begun, the Army

was not in the fight. The Army was not under this impression.

The elimination of BAI took away the doctrinal system for the

Army to influence its deep battle in accordance with AirLand

Battle doctrine. The problem was based on the fact that both

VII Corps and XVIII (Airborne) Corps expected BAI missions to

be on the ATO. They also anticipated being able to nominate

targets for those missions. To the corps, “the process of deep

attack involves much more than just indiscriminate strikes by

tactical aircraft at any lucrative object located in front of

friendly forces.”49 In the Army’s mentality, targets should be

carefully chosen based on the ground commander’s plan of

maneuver and the disposition of enemy forces. Although the

USAF is fully capable of selecting targets and hitting them,

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they may not be the ones the ground commander needs to

shape the battlefield. According to one postwar USA analysis,

“Placing BAI under an overall category of interdiction reduced

the corps commander’s influence on the process.”50 The problem became more vivid as G-day approached.

Lt Gen Frederick M. Franks, VII Corps commander, was one

of the chief complainants. He arrived in the desert from Germany where he was very familiar with the NATO OAS mission,

which included BAI as one of the primary air missions used to

help prosecute the land war.51 OAS was exercised extensively

in the European theater by allied and US forces. General

Franks noted, “We never got an allotment. The term BAI was

not recognized by CENTCOM as a valid term in the theater.”52

The problem was not that the term was gone, but that to

Franks the concept it represented seemed to be gone, too.

Franks noted that he “was free to nominate targets, but the

correlation between those that we nominated and those that

were struck was quite poor.”53 This became more important to

General Franks as initiation of ground operations approached.

On 29 January, an event occurred that further increased his

concerns. The Iraqi 3d and 5th Mechanized Divisions

attempted an attack into the Saudi Arabian town of Khafji. In

the end, air and ground forces crushed the attack. However, it

revealed to General Franks that even after 12 days of air

attack, the Iraqi forces were still able to mount a sizable

assault, which led him to examine his situation again. Still

concerned about the effects of enemy artillery on his breeching operation, General Franks pounded his map and told his

corps targeteer, “I want you to make that unit go away!”54 The

unit he referred to could threaten his right flank during the

breeching movement and highlighted his concern about loss of

the BAI mission. It also led General Franks to call Gen Calvin

Waller, the CENTCOM deputy commander, to inform Waller

that he was not getting adequate air preparation in front of his

position. General Franks stated, “I wanted priority of air to go

after artillery in range of the breech, second to go after the

command and control of the Iraqi VII Corps . . . and then third

I wanted the air to go after the tactical reserve positioned close

to the exit of the breech.”55

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The Air Force understood it differently. According to General

Glosson, chief of CENTCOM offensive air campaign, the problem was not that the Air Force did not understand the need for

battlefield preparation, nor that they were not going to do it,

but merely timing. Glosson stated, “We believed, and I still do,

that the attacking of targets in Baghdad had as much to do

with the success or failure of that field army than attacking it

directly. . . . It’s not a matter of destroying tanks. . . . It’s a

matter of doing it at the correct time so that everything is

sequenced together.”56 For the Air Force, Glosson planned to

hit targets directly in front of VII Corps beginning about five

days before G-day.57 Added to that, the Air Force planners

believed they had already been doing more than preparing the

battlefield. Colonel Deptula reportedly said, “We are not

preparing the battlefield; we are destroying it.”58

Nevertheless, General Schwarzkopf was beginning to feel

pressure from the ground commanders for increased influence

in targeting their priorities. After a meeting on 9 February

between Secretary of Defense Richard “Dick” Cheney, General

Powell, and General Schwarzkopf about the beginning of the

ground war, Schwarzkopf instructed General Waller to review

the ground commander’s target nominations.59 This arrangement led to meetings between Waller and Horner to discuss

the problem. General Waller was confident that General

Horner understood the importance of the targets in front of

the corps. General Franks later noted, “when Cal [Waller] got

into it then the correlation between the priorities of targets

that I had requested in VII Corps and what actually [happened] got much better.”60

Fire Support Coordination Line Fiasco

The last major problem was the interpretation of the FSCL

in relation to airpower on the battlefield. The FSCL is a fire

support control measure inside the ground commander’s AO.

The ground commander uses the line to delineate unrestricted

fires from those that require coordination. Coordination is

required short of the line because weapons’ effects in that area

can influence the ground scheme of maneuver. Fires in the AO

beyond the line are unrestricted, but responsibility for control

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of the area and the mission inside it is not transferred. Many

Airmen attest that the FSCL was merely a separation line

between Army and Air Force control.61 The FSCL was not

intended to be a boundary; however, during Desert Storm, it

was treated as one. Even so, the interpretation of the FSCL as

a boundary instead of a coordination measure was not too

much of a problem before G-day. The problem emerged when—

for 38 days—a flawed doctrinal application became so common

that flexibility was not restored as ground operations began.

First, the CONOPS procedures were slow to adjust to mobile

land warfare. Second, the ground forces’ extension of the FSCL

during a lightning-fast advance was not an error but was necessary to create maneuver room. Because of the speed of the VII

Corps advance and the conservative estimates of the preplanned FSCL movements, the corps offensive had to stop frequently to advance the FSCL.62 Lt Gen Gary Luck, XVIII (Airborne) Corps commander, believed FSCL problems “hindered his

use of ATACMS, MLRS [multiple launch rocket system], and

long-range recce.”63 Finally, Air Force refusal to fly AI short of the

FSCL and Army reluctance to attack beyond it, even within the

corps AO, was imposed by the JFACC through the CENTAF

CONOPS, not doctrine.

Existing doctrinal procedures—BAI—allowed for attack on

either side of the FSCL without additional need for FACs,

merely coordination through the BCE. The requirement for

forward air control, with the exception of dedicated CAS sorties, was imposed by the JFACC. According to the CONOPS,

Killer Scout or Fast-FAC control was required in the zone

about 30 nautical miles past the FSCL, as well as FAC control

for all missions inside the FSCL.64 Although these procedures

worked well until the ground war began, the same procedures

on a mobile battlefield were insufficient. The BAI construct

would have eliminated this problem because it is not an FSCLsensitive mission. BAI is equally useful on either side of the

line. The misapplication of the FSCL and the absence of established BAI procedures, rather than the position of the FSCL

alone, limited airpower’s use. 

The FSCL interpretation played a large part in the Republican Guard forces escaping the KTO. According to General

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MCCAFFREY
Horner, the movement of the FSCL hurt the land commanders’

ability to get airpower on the battlefield. He stated that “they

set the line out there and they [corps commanders] thought if

they put it way out there they’d get more air. Actually they’d

get less air because then the air has to go someplace else

because there’s not enough forward air controllers to manage

the strikes.”65 This statement makes little sense. Because the

only missions that flew short of the FSCL were CAS, the truth

is that they would get the same because AI could not fly short

of the line.66 The Gulf War Air Power Survey (GWAPS) summary

report states that moving the FSCL out “was to hamper airpower’s ability to destroy escaping Iraqi ground forces until

the FSCL was finally pulled back.”67 GWAPS, volume 2, “Operations,” expands the story:

By moving the line forward, the airborne corps staff avoided having to

put its helicopters under Air Force control. That decision, however, had

unforeseen consequences; XVIII (Airborne) Corps had created a situation that severely limited the potential of Coalition’s available air

power. Despite the fact that no U.S. ground troops were north of the

Euphrates—nor were there plans for such a movement—navy and air

force aircraft now could only attack the causeway and highways north

of the Euphrates under direct control of forward air controllers (FAC).

But virtually all the FACs were concentrated in supporting troops in

combat farther south in Kuwait. Moreover, conditions were not favorable

to the employment of FACs even if they had been available. In the end,

the TACC [Tactical Air Control Center] appealed to Schwarzkopf to

move the FSCL back to the Euphrates so that air strikes could hit both

the causeway and the roads north of the river (emphasis added).68

Two questions leap out from this account. First, why did the

corps not use their huge allocation of CAS sorties (fig. 2) to

destroy the fleeing Iraqis inside the FSCL? One reason is the two

opposing ground forces were not in contact, so CAS was not

required. This left hundreds of CAS sorties available, but without a construct to attack inside the FSCL without FAC control,

they were not relevant to the situation. Destroying the Republican Guard was a top priority for airpower. It had been one of the

stated reasons for not using airpower earlier to hit units in

front of VII Corps and XVIII (Airborne) Corps as requested by

the corps commanders.69 Troops rarely came into contact,

which left the whole CAS allotment available. “Overall CAS

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requirements were much less than expected . . . [the] A-10s

were not fully tasked.”70 Second, adherence to Desert Storm

CONOPS, not the FSCL’s position, created the crease for the

escaping Iraqi Republican Guard. The “unforeseen consequence” mentioned in the citation above should have been

that airpower would not attack the enemy inside the FSCL.

This situation led one Air Force officer who worked in the Tactical Air Control Center (TACC) to report to the GWAPS board.

“The safest place for an Iraqi to be was just behind the

FSCL.”71 The GWAPS report went on to say regarding this comment, “It is clear that there was such an unintended zone in

which Iraqi forces benefited from the shortcomings of

Army/Air Force coordination.”72 We successfully created the

“no mission zone” General McPeak had warned about five

years earlier.73

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MCCAFFREY

Day 1 to 28 Day 29 to 37 Day 38 to 43 Strategic

Close

Air

Support as needed

Close

Air

Support as needed

Counter Air Counter Air

Counter Air

Strategic Interdiction Interdiction

Interdiction

Close Air

Support

Figure 2. Operation Desert Storm apportionment. (From Thomas P. Christie

et al., Desert Storm: Fixed-Wing BAI/CAS Operations Lessons Learned [U],

Institute for Defense Analyses, Alexandria, Va., 1992, 17. Historical Research

Agency document no. NA-194. [Secret] Information extracted is unclassified.)

Conclusion

Multiple sources indicated that BAI missions were not flown

in Operation Desert Storm. General Franks felt that CENTAF

did not execute BAI. Lt Col Edward C. Mann III said whatever
the Persian Gulf War was, “what it wasn’t, was AirLand

Battle.” He stated that rather than BAI operations that target

what the ground commanders need to shape the battlefield,

the air campaign “prepared the battlefield for any ground

scheme we chose.”74 A RAND study concluded that “the Army

fought its AirLand Battle with little need for close air support

from the other services . . . while the Air Force conducted its

preferred air interdiction campaign somewhat removed from

the ground front.”75 This is another indicator of the lack of

BAI. General Starry thought that “Horner solved the problem

in the Gulf War by shoving the fire support coordination line

up against the FLOT and insisting that everything that flew

over the FLOT be part of the air tasking order. That’s not reasonable. He had a field fix on a tough problem.”76

On the other hand, many studies and after-action reports

completed subsequent to the war state that BAI was flown

despite the ATO’s omission of it as a mission category. Although

BAI as a mission definitely did not show up on the ATO, many

missions that looked like it did. According to the Institute for

Defense Analyses, all missions in the KTO that were not controlled by any type of FAC were BAI.77 Another author noted,

“The difference between CAS and BAI was and is the doctrinal

and commonsense requirement for a forward air controller (FAC)

to clear pilots to release ordnance or fire guns in close proximity

to friendly troops or vehicles.”78 GWAPS discusses BAI’s effectiveness.79 The Royal Australian Air Force states that it flew BAI

missions.80 The United States Marine Corps (USMC) believes it

did, too.81 Even USAF B-52 crews felt tactical when they flew

BAI.82 Most importantly, TAC aircrews (BAI’s only true advocate

outside NATO) thought they did. A memorandum entitled “CAS/

BAI Lessons Learned from Desert Shield/Storm” states, “Most of

the lessons learned come from the day/night AI/BAI missions

that were flown. The overwhelming success of these missions, as

well as the few night CAS that were flown, lends to the validation

of the operational need for a CAS/BAI capability.”83 It did caution, however, “While airpower was obviously the dominant force

in this conflict, it is important to remember that the next war

may be very different. The capabilities of current fighters must

be expanded as listed above in order to succeed in the next,

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probably more difficult war (i.e., one with an enemy that

fights).”84

Although there were missions flown that resembled BAI, the

lack of its being included a formal category in either the air

concept of operations or the ATO generated a great deal of

Army–Air Force friction. This absence also indicates that doctrinal terminology can have significant tactical and operational consequences. BAI’s inclusion in the CONOPS and thus

as a mission would have eliminated many of the problems outlined in this chapter. It would have lessened the need to create new missions such as Push CAS and kill-box operations to

fill in the gaps missing in its absence. It would have lessened

Army’s concerns over targeting in the KTO. If the combatant

commander had apportioned even a small portion of AI as BAI,

the corps commanders would have understood his priorities.

BAI would also have made the FSCL fiasco a much more manageable issue. Michael R. Gordon and Gen Bernard E. Trainor

sum it up this way in their book The General’s War,

A doctrinal technicality and inertia took precedence over common

sense. The Army and the Air Force had trumpeted their ability to coordinate the “air-land” battle [sic]. In the final fourteen chaotic hours of

the war, however, the FSCL had been pushed back and forth as the two

services sought maximum flexibility for their own forces.85

With BAI, theoretically, this internal battle would not have

taken place, or its consequences would have been mitigated;

and the two divisions of Iraqi Republican Guards, perhaps,

would not have escaped.

Notes

1. Davis, The 31 Initiatives, 9. As of 1985, at least 14 assorted agreements had emerged from the 31 initiatives.

2. Gen John A. Wickham, quoted in Davis, The 31 Initiatives, 1.

3. Russ, “Battlefield of the 1990s,” 12.

4. Gen Charles Horner, interview by the author, 8 February 2002. General

Horner was aware of the battlefield air interdiction (BAI) construct having done

some work on it when he was Tactical Air Command/XP and the doctrine office

was part of his staff. He believed then that BAI was only doctrine in the North

Atlantic Treaty Organization and did not apply outside Europe. 

5. Mann, Thunder and Lightning, 28. General Horner recalled that BAI

may have been used in pre–Internal Look Central Command exercises, but

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MCCAFFREY
that General Schwarzkopf had approved Push close air support (CAS) for

use with XVIII (Airborne) Corps during Internal Look-90. General Horner

developed this concept in an attempt to ensure high levels of CAS support

without losing sorties on ground alert as a reserve force. Also see, Briefing,

subject: Operational Plan 1002 Air Operations (U), April 1990, Air Force Historical Research Agency (AFHRA) document no. NA-256, Maxwell AFB, Ala.

(Secret). Information extracted is unclassified.

6. Mann, Thunder and Lightning, 28.

7. Davis, The 31 Initiatives, 76.

8. Author flew in several Reforger/Central Enterprise exercises in the

early 1990s that included BAI missions. Also, see Keaney and Cohen, Gulf

War Air Power Survey (GWAPS), vol. 5, 157. Several Reforger/Central Enterprise after-action reports are available in the AFHRA.

9. Mann, Thunder and Lightning, 89. Pres. George H. W. Bush lost no

time in condemning the attack. On page 37, Mann indicated that six days

after the invasion of Kuwait, military planners developed four objectives

from Bush’s speeches: immediate, unconditional, and complete withdrawal

of all Iraqi forces from Kuwait; Kuwait’s legitimate government must be

restored; security and stability of the Persian Gulf must be established; and

to protect the lives of American citizens abroad. 

10. Scales, Certain Victory, 43.

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid., 44.

13. Keaney and Cohen, GWAPS, vol. 5, 33. 

14. Early airpower doctrine realized that airpower’s speed would enable

it to arrive first. As early as 1940, Air Corps Field Manual 1-5, Employment

of Aviation of the Army, recognized that airpower options would likely be the

first available. Page nine of this manual states, “Air operations will probably

precede the contact of the surface forces. The orderly mobilization and

strategic concentration of the field forces and their ability to advance from

their concentration areas may depend in large measure on the success of

these early air operations.”

15. Winnefeld, Niblack, and Johnson, A League of Airmen, 25–29. The US

Navy carrier Independence and its associated task force were near the Gulf

and ordered to reposition there. The deployment of additional forces began

the next day as sustaining forces and prepositioned war materiel began to

move forward.

16. Reynolds, Heart of the Storm, 15.

17. Ibid., chaps. 1–4; Winnefeld, Niblack, and Johnson, A League of Airmen, 68–70; Mann, Thunder and Lightning, 27–50; and Keaney and Cohen,

GWAPS, vol. 1, pt. 1 for full accounts of the planning of Instant Thunder and

its application to Desert Storm.

18. Reynolds, Heart of the Storm, 120–30. 

19. Horner, oral history interview. 

20. Keaney and Cohen, GWAPS, vol. 1, pt. 1, 170.

21. Ibid., vol. 5, 37.

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22. Keaney and Cohen, Revolution in Warfare? 229.

23. Keaney and Cohen, GWAPS, vol. 5, 35–53. The plan originally called

for between nine and 19 days before the ground offensive would start. 

24. Scales, Certain Victory, 125.

25. Ibid., 126.

26. Ibid., 128.

27. Schwarzkopf, oral history interview.

28. Keaney and Cohen, “GWAPS,” draft, vol. 4, pt. 1, chap. 3.4. AFHRA

Document TFM-72, 1. Sentence left out in published version states, “It is

obvious that the employment of aircraft and systems frequently varied from

the norm.”

29. Keaney and Cohen, “GWAPS,” draft, vol. 4, pt. 1, 217.

30. Christie et al., Desert Storm, 14–16. This procedure was common for

BAI missions but not for normal AI missions. The airborne battlefield command and control center (ABCCC) is a modified C-130 used to coordinate

with ground forces through their respective air support operations center

(USAF) or direct air support center (US Marine Corps). An Airborne Early

Warning and Control System is a large radar and communications aircraft.

31. Ibid., 15.

32. Ibid.

33. For the purposes of this paper, “normal” air interdiction was conducted outside of the Kuwaiti theater of operations (KTO).

34. Christie et al., Desert Storm.

35. Horner, oral history interview. 

36. Charles A. “Chuck” Horner, interview by the author, 8 February

2002; and David A. Deptula, interview by the author, 31 January 2002.

Generals Horner and Deptula revealed that both believed BAI was not USAF

doctrine but was a product of NATO.

37. Deptula interview. General Deptula believed that BAI gave too much

control to the corps commander, reverting to “penny packaging” airpower to

corps commander priorities at the expense of the operational level necessity

or the combatant commander’s guidance. He also stated that prior to Desert

Storm, the Air Force was trying to distance itself from BAI because of the

control function, “the concern over who’s controlling [airpower] and why.”

Maj Gen Larry Henry, one of the planners stated, “The term BAI is offensive

to us because we oppose subdividing the interdiction campaign into small

packets, which would only weaken its overall impact and make it more difficult to plan and execute from a theater perspective. That is why we always

talk ‘interdiction’—to encompass the total theater picture.” Quoted from

Robinson, “AirLand Battle Tactics,” 17.

38. Air Assault in the Gulf, 11.

39. Keaney and Cohen, GWAPS, vol. 5, 57.

40. Christie et al., Desert Storm, 15. Normal AI flown outside the KTO

was not so designated and had no similar procedure.

41. Zook, “The Fire Support Coordination Line,” 114.

42. Duncan, “Responsive Air Support.”

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MCCAFFREY
43. Secretary of Defense (SECDEF) CAS/BAI brief inputs, “A-10 Tasking

Procedures,” n.d.; and Andrews, Airpower against an Army, 43. Andrews

agrees that aircrews were not trained for the new missions designated in the

Desert Storm concepts of operations.

44. Andrews, Airpower against an Army, 43.

45. SECDEF CAS/BAI brief inputs, “F-16 Battlefield Air Interdiction

(BAI) Operations,” n.d.

46. Ibid.

47. Ibid.

48. Fawcett, “Which Way to the FEBA?” 17–18.

49. Scales, Certain Victory, 175. “Aviation had to be responsive to the priorities of the ground commanders . . . simply killing people and destroying

things is not enough” (Keaney and Cohen, GWAPS, vol. 4, pt. 1, 215). 

50. Scales, Certain Victory, 175.

51. Frederick M. Franks, interview by the author, 19 April 2002.

52. Ibid., 41–47; and Robinson, “AirLand Battle Tactics,” appendix A. 

53. Franks interview, 41.

54. Scales, Certain Victory, 191.

55. Franks, oral history interview.

56. Buster C. Glosson, oral history interview.

57. Ibid.

58. Hallion, Storm over Iraq, 209.

59. Lewis, “Desert Storm,” 6.

60. Franks, oral history interview.

61. Zook, “The Fire Support Coordination Line.”

62. Douglas Mastriano, interview by the author, 8 November 2001. Major

Mastriano was assigned to VII Corps during its offensive.

63. Byrd, memorandum for record.

64. Christie et al., Desert Storm, 16.

65. Horner oral history interview. In this interview, Horner refers to the

FSCL as the bomb line.

66. According to Christie et al., Desert Storm, the USAF flew 1,300 CAS

and 13,100 AI sorties in the KTO while the Marines flew 2,891 CAS and

4,000 AI sorties, p. 22. These numbers equated to an apportionment at

nearly 40 percent of the total air effort for the last four days of the war (see

fig. 3). Also, see Keaney and Cohen, GWAPS, vol. 2, pt. 2, 245–64. Although

data for USAF CAS is not listed, Marine air flew more than 80 percent of

their “CAS” past the FSCL during the ground offensive. Many Marines considered it BAI.

67. Keaney and Cohen, GWAPS, vol. 5, 157. 

68. Ibid., vol. 2, pt. 1, 315.

69. See Glosson’s and Horner’s oral history interviews. They stated that

Schwarzkopf directed targeting the Republican Guard as his highest priority

and to avoid targets in front of VII Corps to not highlight their position before

ground operations began.

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70. Richard B. H. Lewis, Memorandum on Close Air Support at Desert

Storm. AFHRA document no. TF6-46-488, 3 July 1991, 3; Keaney and

Cohen, GWAPS, vol. 2, pt. 2, 245; and Deptula, interview. General Deptula

stated, “We never flew CAS in Desert Storm.” Others report that almost no

troops-in-contact CAS was flown (Christie et al., Desert Storm, 61).

71. Keaney and Cohen, GWAPS, vol. 2, pt. 2, 259. The Tactical Air Control Center was the predecessor to the air operations center.

72. Ibid.

73. McPeak, “TACAIR Missions and the Fire Support Coordination Line,”

chap. 2.

74. Mann, “Operation Desert Storm? It Wasn’t AirLand Battle,” Air Force

Times, 30 September 1991, 2.

75. Winnefeld and Johnson, Joint Air Operations, 265. This is an odd

statement since AI flown in the KTO was just across the border from friendly

troops before G-day.

76. Starry, oral history interview, 34. 

77. Christie et al., Desert Storm, 16. For this study, they did not include

Killer Scouts or Fast FACs as a FAC. Kill-box missions—even though they

checked in with an ABCCC and a Killer Scout—were BAI. To be included as

CAS, the FAC had to be linked to a “FAC node” to the corps, such as the air

support operations center.

78. C. E. Myers Jr., “Air Support for Army Maneuver Forces,” 46.

79. Keaney and Cohen, GWAPS, vol. 4, pt. 1, 215–39. Also, see draft for

this section at AFHRA document no. TFM-72. This section placed emphasis

on “close air support/battlefield air interdiction (CAS/BAI) missions; that is,

missions requested by the ground commander against enemy ground forces

that can directly affect his scheme of maneuver,” 1.

80. Waters, Gulf Lesson One, 205. “From the very first, General

Schwarzkopf insisted on combat air support missions being flown; they were

essentially BAI missions as opposing forces were not in contact on 17 January, and there was no time from day one on that the Iraqi ground forces

were not under heavy air attack” (from a transcript of a Pentagon press conference by Gen. Merrill A. McPeak, 15 March 1991).

81. “BAI was a mission seldom practiced by Marine tactical aviation and

prior to Desert Storm was most often associated with Air Force tactical doctrine” (Cronin, “C3I during the Air War in Southern Kuwait,” 35). 

82. “The B-52s’ battlefield air interdiction (BAI) targets were usually

armor or artillery units, but we often bombed supply facilities and troop concentration” (Fries, “The BUFF at War,” 8).

83. Kevin Roll, memorandum, subject: CAS/BAI Lessons Learned from

Desert Shield/Storm, 11 April 1991, 2. AFHRA document no. K417.054-

217.

84. Ibid., 3.

85. Gordon and Trainor, The Generals’ War, 412–13.

53

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Chapter 4

Was Battlefield Air Interdiction

a Victim of Success?

No attitude could be more vain or irritating in its effects than

to claim that the next great war—if and when one comes—

will be decided in the air, and the air alone.

—Wing Comdr J. C. Slessor

––Air Power and Armies, 1936

Even though the threat and Army war-fighting doctrine have

evolved over the years, our commitment to the 1946 agreement to support the Army remains chipped in granite. Balancing the three prime missions of interdiction, close air

support, and counterair under the umbrella of electronic

warfare, reconnaissance, and command and control forces

will ensure that the Air Force is ready to fly, fight, and win

alongside the Army on any battlefield.

—Gen Robert D. Russ

––Open Letter to the Field, 1988

Post–Desert Storm Environment

The mood in the services at the end of Operation Desert Storm

was one of jubilation. All four services performed credibly on the

battlefield and won a convincing victory in short order with low

casualties. Desert Storm was not the only war won by the beginning of the new decade. The Cold War victory was just as sweet.

Immediately preceding the Gulf War, President Bush declared

that the world was entering a new era—an era of peace and

prosperity. The armed forces that would face this new era had

grown up during the Cold War. The victories won by Spring 1991

demonstrated how effective they had become but did not save

them from the vulnerability they now faced. The end of the Cold

War did not usher in the expected era of peace. The new era

began with US forces deployed more than ever before in many

55
small contingency operations. Even so, unpredictable smallscale contingencies were not enough to stop the downsizing of

the Cold War defense structure. According to a report for Congress by the Congressional Research Service, “Congress will face

difficult choices about which military capabilities to retain and

which to eliminate.”1 With all these factors, it was not long before

the honeymoon of victory was over, and facing the new uncertain

environment was a reality.

With the end of the Cold War came a change in the strategic

environment, reductions in force structure, decreasing defense

budgets, and an increased potential for regional instability.2

When the Soviet Union collapsed, the US defense establishment

lost its focal point for force structure and most of its operational

plans. The loss of a specific threat and declaration of victory led

to a consistent US reaction following war: drawdown. The drawdown was felt throughout the Department of Defense (DOD) as

force reductions and budget reductions. Because of its personnel structure, the hardest hit by these policies and changes was

the Army. It was forced to restructure from a primarily European

forward-based force to an expeditionary force.

To help defray some of the potential losses due to reduction,

the first order of business for the USAF and the USA following

the Gulf War was to make the case as to why it was the decisive force. According to a RAND study, “The services’ afteraction reports read more like public relations documents than

like serious and thoughtful analysis of what happened . . .

There is a tone of advocacy and a not so subtle emphasis of

the perceived shortcomings of other services in these articles

and documents.”3 Air Force advocates were able to stand back

and let video clips of smart bombs tell most of their story. The

Air Force case was also facilitated by the fact that there was

much more of the air war to see. The air war lasted for 38

days, but ground forces were relegated during the same period

to prepare and watch before they engaged. Press coverage of

airpower in the Gulf War was extensive and almost universally

positive.4 The USAF’s new chief of staff, General McPeak,

never missed an opportunity to boost airpower’s image as one

of the service’s largest and most vocal advocates. He often

commented on airpower’s victory at influential times and

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places. His statement that “this is the first time in history that

a field army has been defeated by air power [sic]” did not fail

to catch the USA’s attention.5

The Army’s case for decisive victory was harder to sell. First,

the ground war was only 100 hours long. Second, many

believed this was so because the ground forces faced a beaten

foe due to airpower’s preparation of the battlefield. The Army

quickly made the argument that AirLand Battle was effective

and that airpower had supported ground forces in winning the

war, if only for the last four days. Maj Gen Barry McCaffrey,

24th Infantry Division commander, stated that “this war didn’t

take 100 hours to win, it took 15 years.”6 He was referring to

the changes after Vietnam that became AirLand Battle. It was

true that Iraqi forces, no matter how demoralized by 38 days

of air attack, did not retreat from Kuwait until the ground

forces displaced them. It is also true that ground forces did not

walk across the KTO unopposed. Brig Gen Robert H. Scales Jr.

noted, “Despite 41 days of almost continuous aerial bombardment, the Republican Guard remained a cohesive and viable

military force able to fight a vicious battle and survive to fight

insurgents in northern and southern Iraq.”7

In the 1993 graduation speech to the Air War College, General

McPeak relayed a common sentiment, “Defeat is a much better teacher than victory.” He also said that when you are victorious, “Change that does not suit narrow, institutional interests will always be resisted.”8 These two statements add up,

along with the impending budget battles, into realities that

would translate into the next iteration of USAF and USA doctrine. Maj Kevin Fowler stated it this way, “While each service

focused on its inherent strengths, neither the Army nor the Air

Force places sufficient emphasis on the combined employment

of forces in the deep battle.”9 “Each service insists on trumpeting its solution in a spasm of parochialism that undermines the critical need for teamwork” to effect the deep battle

area.10 The deep battle area Major Fowler is talking about was

from beyond the line of contact to short of the ground commander’s area boundary, the mission area of BAI. The Air Force’s position solidified during the Gulf War was that “control of joint

assets employed beyond the fire support coordination line,

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regardless of boundaries, is the responsibility of the joint force

air [and space] component commander.”11 The Army’s view

states, “Control of assets (fires) within the boundaries of the

ground maneuver commander is the responsibility of that

ground maneuver commander.”12

A New Air Force

The victory in Desert Storm gave the Air Force increased confidence and spurred a new vision, Global Reach–Global Power. In

a speech at Maxwell AFB, Alabama, General McPeak revealed the

vision statement, “Air Force people building the world’s most

respected air and space force—global reach and global power for

America.”13 The new vision created a different paradigm for the

Air Force. It redirected the Air Force’s focus from the Soviet

Union to the world. It also encompassed the entire Air Force,

from the shooters to the lifters. General McPeak felt the vision

was not a mission statement but was a direction for the service.

Its purpose was to “unify and inspire.”14 It was to set a tone that

our friends admire us, that our enemies should fear us, and that

no one should be eager to fight us.15

At the same time, the service also restructured itself as part

of the new vision. Also led by General McPeak, the restructuring of the USAF eliminated the TAC and Strategic Air Command (SAC) structures inherited from the Army and created

Air Combat Command (ACC). On the airlift side, Military Airlift Command (MAC) changed to Air Mobility Command (AMC).

The changes streamlined the Air Force command structure

and helped to congeal the new vision. AMC was the reach, and

ACC was the power. At a speech to activate ACC, General

McPeak said that TAC and SAC divided the Air Force into two

different and mostly redundant services for too long. ACC corrected the problem.16 To the Air Force, the reasons made

sense. To the Army, it was another step of independence.

Elimination of TAC was a neon sign that the close relationship

and agreements developed between TAC and TRADOC since

1973 were no longer in place. The elimination of the promise

for support that General Russ (the previous commander of

TAC) claimed was “chipped in granite” only four years earlier

seemed to be all but crumbled.

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Developing New United States

Air Force Doctrine

With a new vision and a new structure following a huge airpower victory, the Air Force needed new doctrine. The key

premise that led the new doctrine was a vindication of the airpower dream since the beginning of military aviation that airpower could be decisive. Before the Gulf War, “the US Air Force

chief of staff Gen Michael Dugan who, while commenting on

the planning for an air campaign against Iraq in the summer

of 1990, told the press that the Air Force alone could defeat

Saddam Hussein and that ground forces were unnecessary to

win a war.”17 As soon after the war as possible, Airmen began

to publish articles stating this new realization of the facts as

they understood them. Lt Col Price T. Bingham wrote, “Campaign success now depends on superiority in the air more

than it does on surface superiority.”18 Gen Charles D. Link

wrote, “Air power is the valuable commodity in combat”

(emphasis in the original).19 Col Dennis M. Drew, who would

be one of the new doctrine’s primary writers, said, “The Gulf

War was clear evidence to all doubters of airpower in warfare

. . . airpower now dominates land warfare.”20 These ideals,

that were becoming prevalent even before the Gulf War, translated directly into the revision of AFMAN 1-1.21

Revision of AFMAN 1-1 was under way well before the Gulf War

commenced. Although the 1984 version of AFMAN 1-1 was a

“major effort to get back out in front of events,” the overall Air

Force doctrine process was still ad hoc.22 The 1992 volume

began revision in different locations with different staffs. Air Staff

and the Center for Aerospace Doctrine, Research, and Education

(CADRE)—now College of Aerospace Doctrine, Research and

Education—were both working on separate changes. The latter

was selected to continue development of the document. Although

the draft was well along by the time Desert Storm began, the

desire to include relevant lessons from the conflict delayed its

publication. The Gulf War confirmed the doctrinal idea that airframe types no longer separated roles and missions. The four airpower roles became aerospace control, force application, force

enhancement, and force support.23 Missions under the role of

force application included strategic attack, AI, and CAS. The Gulf

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War also demonstrated to the Air Force that a separate BAI construct was not needed. Even though the airpower rhetoric

seemed strongly in favor of independent operations throughout

the theater, the reality of the doctrinal definitions was less bold.

AI was still defined as influential at the tactical, operational, and

strategic levels.24 Also included in the AI definition was a direct

tie to support and cooperation with surface forces. In discussion

of the three zones of interdiction operations, the manual stated:

Depending on a variety of factors, such as nature of enemy forces and

communications infrastructure, interdiction deep in the enemy’s rear

will have a broad operational or strategic-level effect but a delayed

effect on surface combat. Such operational and strategic-level effects

normally will be of greatest concern from the theater perspective. In

contrast, targets closer to the battle are likely to be of more immediate

concern to surface maneuver units. Interdiction close to the battle area

will produce more quickly discernible results, but only on forces in the

vicinity of the attacks (emphasis added).25

This definition, although not completely in line with the former

BAI construct from the 1984 version of AFMAN 1-1, retains

the thought of AI in the battle area and a need to coordinate

and cooperate with ground forces.

The term BAI was not completely stricken from the 1992

version of AFMAN 1-1. It appeared as a parenthetical reference

in the second volume of the two-volume AFMAN 1-1 set to

describe AI near friendly forces. Volume 2 of 1992 AFMAN 1-1

was a collection of essays that amplified the basic principles

presented in the first volume. The essay intended to amplify AI

added little to the description in volume 1. Although BAI does

not appear in the basic doctrine, volume 2 refers to AI near the

battle area as BAI. It states that “such attacks (battlefield air

interdiction) usually require more detailed coordination with

surface forces during planning than do interdiction operations

conducted deeper and over a wider area, and they may require

similar coordination in execution.”26 The apparent similarities

to previous doctrine are easy to choose, but the differences are

vivid as well. There are no references to support, and there is

no process to execute the suggested coordination that was

previously spelled out in the 1984 version of AFMAN 1-1.

There is no reference to joint doctrinal agreements such as

joint attack of the second echelon, Joint Publication (JP) 3-03,

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Doctrine for Joint Interdiction Operations; or JP 3-03.1, Joint

Doctrine for Interdiction of Follow-on Forces Attack (FOFA),

which all described BAI procedures. The main limitation with

the new doctrine is that the words were hollow. All the

processes created to carry out the concepts disappeared on

the battlefields of southern Iraq and with loss of the TAC. One

critic of the doctrine stated,

The Air Force needs to take a very close, introspective, and objective

look at itself. If the authors who had written AFMAN 1-1 read it from a

sister service perspective as part of their review process, they might

have realized how inflammatory the document actually was. No

amount of supporting volumes can justify the condescending tone of

Basic Aerospace Doctrine. Their effort to differentiate aerospace power

from surface-bound power only served to alienate the two. AFMAN 1-1

should be rewritten with all haste and new authors who carry around

lighter cultural baggage.27

Air Force writers who participated in drafting AFMAN 1-1 1992

were not happy with the document, but for different reasons.

Colonel Bingham, who wrote about the doctrine’s limitations

only months after it was published, thought the document did

not go far enough toward changing roles and perceptions of air

and land power. He suggested that both services change their

doctrine to include language that assures “aerospace forces,

rather than ground forces, [are] the primary means the US military employs to defeat an enemy army whenever conditions permit.”28 The Army’s ideas were different.

New Direction at the Training

and Doctrine Command

At the end of the Cold War in 1989, TRADOC began assessing FM 100-5 for revision. The assessment was required

because the loss of the Soviet threat had ramifications to the

Army’s force structure that could possibly change the way the

Army fought. By the summer of 1991, the Army had “been

part of victories on three separate fronts in three distinctively

different campaigns. The freedoms now enjoyed by the people

of Eastern Europe, Panama, and Kuwait are the result, in

part, of a vision.”29 That vision was AirLand Battle. At the end

of Desert Storm, it was readily apparent to almost anyone in a

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green suit that AirLand Battle worked.30 It was also clear that

the world was changing and that USA doctrine would change

with it. Part of that change began in August 1991 when

TRADOC, in collaboration with TAC, published TRADOC Pamphlet 525-5, AirLand Operations: A Concept for the Evolution of

AirLand Battle for the Strategic Army of the 1990s and Beyond.

TRADOC Pamphlet 525-5 began development in March 1991

to guide TRADOC toward the next revision for FM 100-5.31 The

purpose of 525-5 was to apply the Army’s recent experience to

adjust AirLand Battle. The focus of AirLand Operations was to

increase the strategic thought within the Army and to focus on

global power projection and joint operations.32 The pamphlet

did two important things. First, it described and depicted an

area where combined USA and USAF operations would take

place within a broader joint operations area (JOA). It acknowledged that airpower would be influential outside of the land

commander’s AO and that it continued to be important inside

of it as well. The pamphlet also argued for a part of the battlefield to be called the joint battle area.33 The joint battle area

was an attempt to codify the area on the battlefield where both

services were able to apply combat power—the deep battle

area. The pamphlet argued that Army deep strike assets such

as Apache and ATACMS should be employed to their maximum range in the joint battle area closely integrated with airpower.34 Airpower missions deemed appropriate in the area

included AI, BAI, and CAS. In this area, it was a given that

Army and Air Force systems overlapped. The authors stressed

that it was the joint battle area where “we must emphasize the

development of joint tactics, techniques, and procedures” to

ensure effective AirLand operations.35 Just as hollow words

were published in USAF doctrine, Dr. Harold R. Winton

pointed out that even though both services agreed on the need

for joint action in the joint battle area, this “does not mean

that they agree on who should control which area.”36 When the

TAC was eliminated in 1992, the 525-5 lost its supporter in

the USAF, and the TRADOC adjusted its doctrine further.

The task of revising FM 100-5, interrupted by Operation

Desert Storm and the aforementioned pamphlet 525-5,

reemerged under TRADOC’s new commander, General Franks.

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He led VII Corps in Desert Storm and chose the Army’s brightest at the School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS) to help

write the new volume of FM 100-5. One of the major writers

from SAMS was its director, Col James R. McDonough. In a

Military Review article, he outlined the new volume before it

was released. What he and General Franks intended to accomplish was to help the Army become more strategically focused,

more deployable, and more joint-combined in nature.37 Added

to these issues, the new doctrine also focused on the battlefield depth and the proposition that no service would fight a

war alone. “Especially important to the new doctrine was the

FSCL [Fire Support Coordination Line] question.”38 The debate

continued with the Air Force about FSCL placement and the

definition in relation to control of the Army’s long-range firepower.39 To the USA, the USAF’s control over the area caused

them to “react to the Air Force target-strikes, rather than to

employ those strikes in an integrated ground and air campaign,”

as the previous BAI construct had.40 Although BAI disappeared

in name from the new manual, its spirit seemed alive in the

concepts of depth and simultaneous attack across the battlefield, fire support, and in lower-level doctrinal manuals dealing

with fire support and targeting. However, depth across the

battlefield was no longer viewed only as shaping the close

battle.41 Similar to the ideals of J-SAK and FOFA, the new

FM 100-5 discussed destruction of the enemy simultaneously

throughout the depth of the battlefield. Specifically, the manual

expressed that “AI can greatly benefit ongoing Army deep operations when synchronized with Army interdiction efforts.”42

Lower-level doctrinal documents such as the 1989 version of

FM 6-20-30, Fire Support for Corps and Division Operations,

continued to reference BAI.43 This manual remains current

USA doctrine and defines BAI the same as it had been in

AFMAN 1-1 of 1984 and FM 100-5 of 1986. It also described

the tactical air missions pictorially (fig. 3). The manual described

how to coordinate BAI with the air operation center (AOC) and

the main command post through the BCE. Although the term

was gone from FM 100-5 just as on the USAF side, the words

remain viable to support cooperation between the services. 

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Influence of Joint–North Atlantic

Treaty Organization Doctrine

Although joint doctrine was beginning to emerge following

the Goldwater–Nichols Act of 1986, joint doctrine was not new

for the USA and the USAF. It had, however, lost its place in the

services. USAF and USA cooperation on joint doctrine began

before the birth of USAF but waned during the Vietnam War.

Although TRADOC and TAC rekindled a doctrinal relationship

throughout the 1980s, the services in general did not. Early

joint doctrine attempted to add usefulness but instead did

more to continue the problems by not specifying responsibili64

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AIR INTERDICTION (AI), BATTLEFIELD AIR INTERDICTION (BAI), CLOSE AIR SUPPORT (CAS) ON THE BATTLEFIELD

FORWARD EDGE

OF THE BATTLE AREA

FORWARD LINE

OF TROOPS

FIRE SUPPORT

COORDINATION LINE

(FSCL)

CAS

BAI

TACTICAL SURVEILLANCE AND RECONNAISSANCE

AI

AI BAI CAS

TARGET INDIRECT DIRECTLY AFFECTING FRIENDLIES

AREA

COORDINATION

CONTROL

BEYOND FSCL BOTH SIDES FSCL CLOSE PROXIMITY

JOINT PLANNING AND COORDINATION DETAILED INTEGRATION

NONE REQUIRED DIRECT OR INDIRECT

CHARACTERISTICS OF AI, BAI, AND CAS

x

x

Figure 3.Tactical air support missions. (Adapted from Army Field Manual

6-20-30, Fire Support for Corps and Division Operations, 1989.)
ties and acquiescing to each service’s desires. JP 3-09, Doctrine for Joint Fire Support, and JP 3-03 were drafted in the

early 1990s and discussed BAI. JP 3-09 discussed BAI in relation to CAS and also in relation to fires on the battlefield. In

this role the publication defined BAI as a type of fire support.44

This interpretation was good for the USA’s view of the battlefield but did not match the USAF’s view. JP 3-03 looked at the

issue differently. Joint doctrine for interdiction operations did

not refer to BAI specifically but discussed interdiction’s effect

at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels similar to

USAF doctrine. It discussed joint interdiction of follow-on

forces separately. The document argued that FOFA was a

“subset of joint interdiction operations specifically directed

against enemy land forces” and targeted “uncommitted enemy

echelons that can be brought to bear on friendly forces.”45 This

reference to FOFA, in essence meant BAI because NATO’s

FOFA concept included BAI and AI as “integral parts.”46

Few of these problems influenced overseas commands such

as United States Air Forces in Europe and Pacific Air Forces.

BAI was still a major mission in Korea and in NATO OAS doctrine.47 NATO doctrine discussed BAI in three main doctrinal

documents: ATP 27 (B), Offensive Air Support Operations, 1991;

ATP 33 (B), NATO Tactical Air Doctrine, 1997; and ATP 35 (B),

Land Force Tactical Doctrine, 1997. All three documents continue to describe explicitly the BAI mission and its execution.

It seems the doctrinal problems were confined somewhat to

the service staffs, doctrinal organizations, and forces stationed

in the continental United States. 

Did BAI Disappear Because

It Was No Longer Useful?

Before and during Desert Storm, CENTAF abandoned

standing doctrinal concepts for air support of ground operations in favor of several new battlefield techniques that it created.

These included Push CAS, kill-box AI, and killer scouts. Following the war, none of these new missions ended up being

codified in the 1992 revision of AFMAN 1-1. A BAI idea

remained in concept (as well BAI itself in AFMAN 1-1, vol. 2),

minus any process for its execution. The USAF had four major

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technological innovations that carried forward into the Gulf

War: stealth, precision weapons, global positioning system

(GPS) navigation, and JSTARS. All these technologies enhance

survivability and increase effects over the lethal battlefield

area. These capabilities and communications systems led

Colonel Bingham to note that US commanders had the ability

to “look deep into the enemy’s rear area to see in ‘real-time’ the

precise location of his army’s maneuver forces, despite darkness or limited visibility.”48 These capabilities add, rather than

detract, from the ability to perform the BAI mission effectively.

During the same period, the Army made strides in longrange weapons such as ATACMS, MLRS, and attack helicopters to influence the deep battle. Each of these assets gave the

corps more ability to influence its own deep battle and, combined with the fast-maneuver operations anticipated with AirLand Battle, made a strong case for moving the FSCL out farther from the FLOT. These technologies were specifically

designed for AirLand Battle and cooperative operations with

air forces. Most of the 1980s was dedicated to determining a

way to integrate and cooperate on the battlefield. The period

ended with “significant synergistic effects of modern US intelligence, communications, and weapons systems concertedly

employed by a well-trained force to produce a higher tempo,

deep and simultaneous attack capabilities, and the habit of

command and control on the move.”49 These realities and the

codification of the continued requirement to use airpower to

increase the effectiveness of Army deep operations make a

BAI-type mission more, rather than less, relevant.

When BAI was first articulated in the late 1970s, the capability to execute it was just emerging. Throughout the 1980s

and into the beginning of the 1990s, the technology and systems developed to influence the deep battle were finally reaching the field. Many of these technologies experienced battle in

Desert Storm but were not used to execute the BAI mission as

they were envisioned. JSTARS and space assets opened up the

real-time targeting window, air-delivered precision-guided

weapons, ATACMS, and MLRS; and attack helicopters added

the firepower; and the battlefield coordination detachment

(BCD) was there for coordination. By the time this round of

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doctrine was printed, the BAI construct was necessary, fully

mission ready, and viable.

Did Service Self-Interest Kill

Battlefield Air Interdiction?

For the USAF, loss of centralized control of airpower was the

most agreed-on complaint against the BAI. The Air Force position was that airpower is a theater asset that should be centrally controlled at the operational level. Without BAI and with

the FSCL at close range to friendly forces, the JFACC is able

to control a portion of the Army’s AO without coordination.

These thoughts led many Airmen to conclude that airpower

alone could win wars following Desert Storm. If this conclusion is correct, using sorties to target a ground commander’s

priorities becomes an exercise in futility. Rather than coordinate with ground commanders about how best to use airpower

throughout their AOs, Airmen often fight to gain control over

it. Following the Gulf War, TAC agreed to work with TRADOC

to develop joint doctrine based on the Army’s AirLand Operations pamphlet. Although this cooperation between the services might have solved the many problems encountered during the war, the USAF removed itself from the process shortly

after the agreement. The reason for this removal was listed in

a memorandum written by Colonel Deptula in August 1991.

He stated, “If we allow AirLand Operations to be the sole or

even primary driver . . . we will lose, rather than reinforce the

significant capabilities of TACAIR forces applied strategically,

independent of land forces.”50 He also stated that the informal

efforts to create joint doctrine for the services based on mutual

agreement should be stopped “to preclude any preemption by

the Army of Air Force doctrine.”51 This fear of loss of control of

all airpower if joint agreement were reached about use of air to

support ground forces on the battlefield placed a significant

restraint on Army–Air Force cooperation. 

In ground warfare, deep battle had become the key to influencing the close battle. The key to the deep battle had become

BAI.52 The close fight was where decisive ground combat took

place. New technology gave the Army control over some effects

in the deep battle area (ATACMS, MLRS, attack helicopters)

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that were only accessible by airpower in the past. The Army

did not want to lose control of its AO as it had in Desert Storm.

The USAF had already formally abandoned AirLand Battle

doctrine, BAI, and the new TRADOC AirLand Operations constructs.53 It seemed to the Army that they were always the

“last priority on the Air Force priority list in terms of missions

for the Air Force.”54 With this thought process, USA systems

focused on shaping the deep battle themselves rather than

relying on Air Force forces to coordinate with them.

After the Gulf War, both the USAF and the USA attempted

to exert as much influence as possible for the declining budgets

through expressing their independent superiority as much as

possible. The Air Force chose the route comfortable for it,

touted its ability to be independent, and distanced itself from

influence toward a supporting role. The Army recognized this

and knew it would be necessary to work toward self-reliance

inside its AO. If the two services were each attempting to gain

control and influence over the same terrain on the battlefield,

a process that required coordination and cooperation such as

BAI was definitively incompatible with their goals.

Was Battlefield Air Interdiction a Victim

of the Doctrinal Process?

The USAF had no real doctrinal process.55 The continuity

built with TAC and Army doctrine from 1947 through 1964 was

built on trust, understanding, and joint processes between the

two services. When the USAF began to splinter doctrine writing

between the TAC and the air staff, it became factional. The

group that wrote 1992’s AFMAN 1-1 was at CADRE. One of the

chief authors did not believe they removed BAI from Air Force

doctrine because he believed BAI was only NATO doctrine.56

This common misperception is problematic because it is a

symptom of a larger doctrinal process problem. That problem is

that Airmen—including Airmen who write doctrine—do not read

doctrine. Notwithstanding the academic effort to write a comprehensive doctrinal document that occurred for several years

at CADRE, the lack of an established doctrine process led to a

completely new manual that shared little continuity with its

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predecessor and may have eliminated BAI at least partially

through oversight. 

Subsequent to TRADOC’s creation in 1973, the USA doctrine

process remained consistent. The SAMS, under TRADOC’s

employ, directed the process that contributed to the 1993 FM

100-5. Many thought the 1993 FM 100-5 was a departure from

traditional Army doctrine in that it became overly forward looking instead of functional.57 Rather than a document that

explained how to fight, the new FM 100-5 told the Army who they

were in a new environment, how to survive there, and how to

obtain “victory through planning.”58 Because AirLand Battle was

proven in battle, many thought it should have been revised and

not eliminated. Had the Army continued to pursue joint operations on the battlefield rather than acquiescing to the Air Force

abandonment, the outcome for BAI might have been different.

In the aftermath of the Gulf War, both the USAF and the USA

executed major doctrinal revisions to their basic manuals. The

USAF’s lack of a coherent doctrinal process made this project

daunting. Apart from any other fault the USAF doctrine process

may suffer from, the primary failure is that the doctrine process

has yet to include a way to get Airmen to read the products.

Without reading the manuals, any understanding of Air Force

doctrine or the process that creates it is in serious question.

Interestingly, the USA’s seasoned doctrinal process worked well

and still ended up producing what was not a universally

accepted document. The process could not quickly overturn the

popularity of AirLand Battle. On one side BAI may have slipped

through the cracks in the process, but on the other it was too

close to AirLand Battle.

Conclusion

Evidence in this chapter clearly demonstrates that service

self-interest claims the lion’s share of the accountability for

BAI’s disappearance. USAF wanted to win a future war alone.

The only way to do that was to own the entire battlefield, even

the area inside the USA’s AO. The USAF is not, however, the

only one to blame. The USA had acknowledged that it needed

airpower’s support to survive and win on a modern battlefield.

During the Gulf War, however, the Army allowed the Air Force

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to incorrectly interpret doctrine inside its AO. With the

acknowledgement of a need for support and the apparent

reluctance from the Air Force to ensure the support would be

forthcoming, the Army decided to emphasize reliance on its

systems and processes. The Army also wanted to retain control over battlefield effects delivered by airpower in its AO, at

least inside the FSCL. The two views clashed in the area of the

battlefield that previously included BAI and its coordination

mechanism. The inability to develop an effective coordination

or synchronization process has done more to alienate the two

services than anything else.

Some of the explanation for BAI’s demise can be linked to the

doctrine processes themselves. Neither service executed its doctrine fully to its satisfaction during the Gulf War. Following the

war, both services went to their academic centers for guidance

and radically changed their doctrine. Although the USAF doctrine process was broken, it reflected the mood of the service at

the time and accurately portrayed it. The USA’s change was less

popular and arguably less effective at maintaining the environment of joint cooperation needed to be viable for future operations. Joint doctrine did little to resolve the issue. It was often

confusing, contradictory, or subject to compromised interpretations. It seems that Goldwater-Nichols did not go far enough

with respect to joint doctrine. The JCS chairman failed to make

decisions for joint planning and exercises that would end the services’ differences. But the explanation that argues BAI was no

longer a relevant mission carries no weight during this period.

Technology was changing, but the changes should have

increased, not decreased, BAI’s relevance. Communications,

surveillance, GPS, and weapons range and accuracy all spell bad

news for the enemy and good news for coordination if the services’ will to cooperate had been present to go along with it. By

1993 BAI was dead in name and in each service’s basic doctrine.

Shallow interdiction thought, however, continued in both services. Both services understood that it was important, had the

weapons systems to conduct it, had the combat support systems

to control it, and had liaisons to effectively synchronize it. They

did not, however, possess a joint doctrinal construct, such as

BAI, to execute the concepts nor the cooperation together on the

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battlefield. Without such a construct, each service’s recognition

that coordinated ground maneuver and AI created a dilemma for

the enemy would be in jeopardy.59 Without the coordination

process, ad hoc cooperation would be required during battle to

succeed. This type of ad hoc arrangement was part of the charter Generals DePuy and Dixon had set out to eliminate in 1973.60

Twenty years later, the services appeared to have almost completely returned to square one.

Notes

1. O’Rourke, Persian Gulf War, 15.

2. Kresge and De Sosa, “AirLand Operations,” 3.

3. Winnefeld and Johnson, Joint Air Operations, 169.

4. There were exceptions to the positive reporting, such as the Al Firdos

bunker incident where civilians were killed in an apparent bomb shelter and

the media coverage of the bombing of a “baby milk” factory, but most coverage was positive.

5. Lambeth, The Transformation of American Air Power, 4.

6. Scales, Certain Victory, 35.

7. Ibid., 358.

8. McPeak, Selected Works, 223.

9. Fowler, “Avoiding the Seam,” 4.

10. Ibid.

11. Army–Air Force Operational Issues, 25 April 1996, 7, quoted in Hall,

“Integrating Joint Operations Beyond the FSCL,” 1.

12. Ibid.

13. McPeak, Selected Works, 154.

14. Ibid.

15. Ibid.

16. Ibid., 145.

17. Corum, The Luftwaffe, 6–7.

18. Bingham, “Air Power in Desert Storm and the Need for Doctrinal

Change,” 33. In personal contact with the author on 20 February 2002, Lt

Col Price T. Bingham, USAF, retired, stated that “since the writing of these

papers my thinking has evolved significantly because of the immense transformational potential of Joint STARS . . . I admit to being frustrated by the

lack of interest many airmen have in fighting fielded forces as compared to

strategic and counterair operations. Contributing to the problem is a widespread lack of knowledge of land forces and an appreciation of how new

capabilities (especially wide-area, persistent ground moving target indicator

surveillance, and targeting) make it possible to fight land forces differently.”

Notes are in possession of author.

19. Link, “The Role of the US Air Force in the Employment of Air Power,”

in The Future of Air Power in the Aftermath of the Gulf War, 86.

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20. Dennis Drew quoted in “Catching up with Doctrine,” Jane’s Defence

Weekly, 29 June 1991, 1174.

21. See Dennis Drew, “Joint Operations,” 13. He states the difference

between soldiers’ and Airmen’s views are on airpower priorities. Drew states,

“these sorts of irreconcilable differences were at the heart of the argument

for an independent Air Force” and remains today. Barry D. Watts states that

by 1984, TAC “recommend that BAI be subsumed into air interdiction. TAC’s

view was that BAI and AI are so functionally similar that they would be best

directed and controlled as a single ‘mission area.’ ” Added to this, he noted

“working definitions of BAI adequate for practical purposes are less troublesome.” In other words, TAC liked the concept, but did not want it to lose control. See Watts and Hale, “Doctrine,” 4–15. 

22. Mowbray. “Air Force Doctrine Problems,” 21–41; and Drew, “Inventing a Doctrine Process,” 42. On this page of his article, Drew states that “the

truth of the matter is that the US Air Force does not have any sort of systematic process for developing its doctrine.” 

23. Air Force Manual (AFMAN) 1-1, Basic Aerospace Doctrine of the

United States Air Force, vol. 1, 7; Bingham, “Air Force Manual 1-1,” 12–20;

and Winton, “Reflections on the Air Force’s New Manual,” 20–31. These are

good reviews of the manual.

24. AFMAN 1-1, Basic Aerospace Doctrine of the United States Air Force,

vol. 1, 12.

25. Ibid.

26. Ibid., vol. 2, 165.

27. Barr, “US Military Doctrine,” 24.

28. Bingham, “Air Interdictions and the Need for Doctrinal Change,” 29.

29. Franks, “Continuity and Change,” 1.

30. Ibid.; Scales, Certain Victory, 15; Creech, oral history interview,

220–22; and Romjue, American Army Doctrine for the Post–Cold War, 33–38

and 65.

31. McDonough, “Building the New FM 100-5,” 5.

32. Romjue, American Army Doctrine for the Post–Cold War, 26–27.

33. Kresge and De Sosa, “AirLand Operations,” 5.

34. Ibid.

35. Ibid.

36. Winton, “Reflections on the Air Force’s New Manual,” 30.

37. McDonough, “Building the New FM 100-5,” 6–9.

38. Romjue, American Army Doctrine for the Post–Cold War, 54.

39. Ibid., 54–55.

40. Ibid., 82.

41. Ibid., 89.

42. Army Field Manual (FM) 100-5, Operations, 1993, 2–19.

43. Army FM 6-20-30, Fire Support for Corps and Division Operations, 3-3.

44. Robinson, “AirLand Battle Tactics,” 15; and Joint Publication (JP) 3-

09, Doctrine for Joint Fire Support, 1991, 3.

45. JP 3-03, Doctrine for Joint Interdiction Operations, IV-1.

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46. Feege, “NATO,” 41–70; Andrews, Airpower against an Army, 16–17;

and Leurs, “Joint Doctrine,” 111–13.

47. Robinson, “AirLand Battle Tactics,” 17.

48. Bingham, “Air Interdiction,” 28.

49. Romjue, American Army Doctrine for the Post–Cold War, 67.

50. Deptula, memorandum for record, 2.

51. Ibid.

52. Deal, “BAI,” 51.

53. Romjue, American Army Doctrine for the Post–Cold War, 94.

54. Starry, oral history interview, 23. 

55. Drew, “Inventing a Doctrine Process,” 42.

56. Dennis Drew, interview by the author, 23 October 2001.

57. Kagan, “Army Doctrine and Modern War,” 134.

58. Ibid.

59. See AFMAN 1-1, Basic Aerospace Doctrine of the United States Air

Force, 1992, vol. 1, 12; and Army FM 100-5, Operations, 1993, 2-18 and 2-

19. Both sources agree that air interdiction and ground maneuver combined

create dilemma for the enemy, but neither describes how the professed synchronization will occur.

60. Dixon, “TAC-TRADOC Dialogue,” 46. Recall the “facts of life” from

chap. 2. First, neither air or land could win a significant conflict alone; second, the environment of modern war made ad hoc teamwork development

after hostilities began improbable; third, the services were obligated to maximize their potential from each available resource; and last, the cooperation

had to become institutionalized to be effective.

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Chapter 5

Is Battlefield Air Interdiction Back?

Utility of BAI as a doctrinal concept in the former definition

is not a step ahead but a step backwards, and that’s why

you don’t see anybody paying any attention to it.

—Maj Gen David A. Deptula

––31 January 2002

The 1999 Air Force counterland doctrine revived the concept of

battlefield air interdiction, by differentiating interdiction in support of a ground commander from the JFC theaterwide interdiction effort. Air Force counterland doctrine credits air interdiction with flexibility to operate either in support of surface

forces or as the main effort against enemy ground forces.

—United States Army CGSC Course Book, C300-3

––August 2000

Stuck in the Post–Cold War Paradigm?

Uncertainty seemed to be the dominant feeling in the mid1990s. After several years of trying to discover a new paradigm, most still referred to the mid-1990s as a post–Cold War

era. Such reference was caused by the gradual shifting of

power in the wake of the former Soviet Union’s collapse. The

world was still changing. The United States was adjusting to a

new reality. As a result, many small-scale contingencies

emerged in the 1990s including operations in Somalia, Bosnia, and Kosovo. Even though the United States was fairly well

prepared for these contingencies, it did not expect any of

them. Each had differing levels of effort and force composition.

US forces were still deployed in southwest Asia, which

increased operations tempo to high levels. Grant Hammond,

chair of National Security Strategy at the Air War College

quipped, “If the cold war is over and the military, business,

and Congress are all involved in downsizing, reengineering,

75
reorganizing, and reinventing themselves—to varying degrees—

why are we so confident (versus ‘comfortable’) with a national

security apparatus inherited from the cold war?”1

To become free of the Cold War paradigm, Congress ordered

creation of a commission on roles and missions and continued

the funding and force reductions designed to shrink overhead

and redundancy within the DOD. A 1993 report released by the

Henry L. Stimson Center in preparation for the commission on

service roles and missions made several controversial recommendations to that effect. First, the study suggested that the

Army shift to light divisions, provide its own rotary-wing CAS,

and deploy heavy armor forward or on ships prepositioned

closely to potential contingency areas.2 The study’s far-reaching

suggestions for the Air Force included an increase in BAI missions and expansion of the service’s lift capability, while at the

same time reducing CAS to a secondary mission and limiting

strategic attack and nuclear roles.3 General McPeak had some

different ideas on the subject. He suggested that the Army abandon any long-range attack systems such as the ATACMS, the

Marines abandon F-18s, and the Air Force abandon the CAS

mission.4 General McPeak felt these overlapping capabilities

were unnecessary. By 1994 the general had changed his tone

concerning interservice cooperation professed in his 1985 article

“TACAIR Missions and the Fire Support Coordination Line” in

preference for jointness through division of the battlefield and

responsibility.5 The two services struggled with these issues as

they pursued new visions.

In this same era, the USAF was changing its vision from

Global Reach–Global Power to Global Engagement. Global

Engagement’s major difference was that it used a new force

structure to implement it, the Expeditionary Air Force (EAF). Maj

Gen Donald G. Cook, the director of EAF implementation, noted

“together, Global Engagement Operations and the Expeditionary

Air Force support the national military strategy across the full

spectrum of military operations.”6 The EAF concept evolved

under the Global Engagement vision in an attempt to break the

Cold War mold. The USAF would return most of its forces to the

CONUS and divide them into 10 rapidly deployable composite

fighting wings. According to ACC, under this concept “the Air

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Force is capable of providing rapidly responsive, tailored-to-need

aerospace force capability, prepared and ready to conduct military operations across the full spectrum of conflict.”7 The spectrum included the range of air missions and strike capability

from battlefield air operations through strategic attack.

The Army was also changing, and under the leadership of

Dennis J. Reimer, then its chief of staff, the Army released a

new vision statement, “Army Vision 2000.” According to General Reimer, the new vision “captures the essence of the need

for balance between dominant maneuver and precision

strike.”8 These two aspects of the joint vision needed special

emphasis in the Army’s new vision because they were the two

areas the Army felt most lacking. The vision was also intended

to ensure the Army had solid footing in future joint operations.

According to an Army press release, the new vision “represented a conceptual template of how the Army will channel the

vitality and innovation of its soldiers and leverage the technological opportunities to achieve new levels of effectiveness as

the land component member of the joint war fighting team.”9

The concept of jointness, combined with ground dominant

maneuver and precision strike, would bring the Army and Air

Force back into debate over the deep battlefield operations

unresolved in previous doctrinal publications.

Developing New USAF Doctrine

Shortly after completion of the 1992 AFMAN 1-1, the Air

Force established its doctrine center at Langley AFB, Virginia,

in the summer of 1993. The change was part of the entire

USAF restructuring effort and represented an attempt to

attain service-wide focus on doctrinal thought. The first order

of business for the Air Force Doctrine Center (AFDC) was to

evaluate all current USAF and joint doctrine for possible revision; it began with the basics in AFMAN 1-1. Based on a belief

that the Air Force had found the two-volume version of basic

doctrine overly academic, the AFDC abandoned the CADREbased effort to tell readers the why behind the what of its core

war-fighting philosophy. Published in 1997, the Air Force’s

new doctrine, AFDD 1, was now titled Air Force Basic Doctrine.

The first two chapters presented Airmen’s perspectives and

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beliefs about doctrine, strategy, and war. Chapter 3 described

the ever-increasing number of roles and mission airpower

could accomplish. It listed and discussed 17 different “air and

space power functions.”10

The new functions were, in some cases, broad categories

that replaced the roles established in the 1992 AFMAN 1-1,

while in other cases these categories included specific missions

or even support operations such as weather, navigation, and

intelligence. Several other new functions took a “countermedium” flavor borrowed from the classic counterair mission

such as counterland, counterspace, countersea, and counterinformation. They also borrowed definitions written to echo air

superiority applied to each individual medium. Accordingly,

the definition of counterland operations read, “Operations conducted to attain and maintain a desired degree of superiority

over surface operations by destruction or neutralization of

enemy surface forces.”11 The counterland function included AI

and CAS from the force-application role established in the

1992 version of AFMAN 1-1 but excluded strategic attack as a

separate airpower function. Although much of the AI definition

remained unchanged, the publication added to it. It also discussed the role of the JFACC as the “supported commander

for air interdiction,” and argued that Airmen were best suited

to control the overall interdiction effort for the JFC.12 This action

led to the realization that “surface-force operations can support

interdiction operations.”13 In terms of joint operations, the doctrine observed that “commanders need to cooperate to identify

the crucial targets; decide when, where, and how to attack them;

and determine how surface operations and interdiction can best

complement each other to achieve the JFC’s objective.”14

If this were the only word on AI from the Air Force, it would

have been woefully inadequate, and the new doctrine center

would all have been for naught. This, of course, was not the

case. After completion of AFDD 1, the new doctrine center

began revision of the first operational-level doctrine documents since the publication of AFMAN 2-1 in 1969. This effort

included AFDD 2-1.3, Counterland, which focused specifically

on AI and CAS in one 98-page manual published in 1999.

Added to the classic view of AI affecting all three levels of war,

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USAF expanded the definition of AI to include operations

where no ground forces were present. As a departure from the

classic definition in which AI’s focus on effects in relation to

surface forces, the Air Force maintained, “AI has the flexibility

to operate either in support of surface operations or as the

main effort against the enemy ground force. In some cases AI

can provide the sole effort against the enemy ground forces,

for example, when a joint operation has no friendly land component involved in combat operations.”15 The document spent

a considerable amount of time establishing the position that

the JFACC should be the single commander in control of theater

interdiction operations. This point of view also seemed to assume

that the JFACC would almost always be an Air Force officer. “The

JFACC, who is normally also the COMAFFOR [commander, Air

Force Forces], is the supported commander for the JFC’s overall AI effort and a supporting commander when providing CAS

or supporting AI to the ground component.”16 The last part of

this statement is the most interesting to this CADRE Paper

and most often not quoted by Airmen. This statement separated AI in support of the ground component in his or her AO

from AI flown throughout the entire JOA.

Chapter 2 of AFDD 2-1.3, which is devoted solely to AI,

expanded the idea of AI as both a supporting and supported

air operation. It divided AI into subcategories including preplanned and several flexible types such as armed reconnaissance, kill-box AI or on-call AI. The doctrine argued that preplanned AI is the “normal method of operation” for AI.17 These

missions generally include AI operations outside the battlefield

flown against known targets where detailed intelligence, preparation, and force packaging can be accomplished before execution. Flexible AI reflected the concept of armed reconnaissance from previous doctrine and finally codified kill-box

operations utilized in Vietnam and Desert Storm. These flexible

missions are intended to support ground forces, in either a

linear or nonlinear battlefield (fig. 4). Backing the statement

made in the opening chapter of AFDD 2-1.3, chapter 2 also

helps bring back the coordination aspect for AI in support of

ground operations lost since BAI’s demise. “When flexible AI is

flown in direct support of the ground component, the target

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priorities should reflect those established by the ground component and communicated via the battlefield coordination

detachment (BCD) or the theater air-ground system (TAGS).”18

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Limit of Close Proximity

Al Targets

CAS Targets

Kill Boxes FSCL

FLOT

Surface Area of Operations

Forward Boundary

CAS Target

Joint Operations Area

Figure 4. Linear and nonlinear battlefield operations. (From AFDD 2-1.3,

Counterland Air Force Doctrine, 27 August 1999, 60.)

Three additional BAI-type processes reemerge in AFDD 2-1.3.

First, AI flown inside the FSCL is readdressed. When using

flexible AI operations incorporated with JSTARS, airpower can

arrive over the battlefield in a matter of minutes. The effects

gained by this new technology and communication capability

allow for real-time targeting. According to AFDD 2-1.3, “Realtime targeting of AI missions, especially those flown inside the
FSCL, provides a more responsive use of counterland attack

when supporting the ground component and allows airborne

assets to quickly exploit enemy vulnerability that may be of

limited duration.”19 Second, AFDD 2-1.3 indicated that AI will

be much more effective if it is synchronized with surface

maneuver. It reinforced the notion that surface maneuver will

cause the enemy to move and thus make him more vulnerable

to AI by direct attack or through higher use of supplies. It also

acknowledged that AI will leave the enemy “more susceptible to

defeat by friendly surface forces.”20 AFDD 2-1.3 noted that “AI

on the battlefield works best through the use of mission-type

orders.”21 As was the case with the original BAI construct, the

Air Force preferred to operate under the assumption that supported commanders tell the JFACC what outcome they desire,

not how to achieve the result. Similar to BAI, flexible AI does not

involve penny packeting airpower to the ground component but

retaining it under the control of the JFACC while achieving the

needed effect for the ground component. 

New Direction at the Training

and Doctrine Command

On the heels of the new post–Cold War doctrine in 1993,

TRADOC began its standard practice of peering ahead to the

Army’s next doctrine through work on a new TRADOC Pamphlet 525-5, now titled Force XXI. The pamphlet was designed

to begin where FM 100-5 of 1993 left off by glancing into the

future to position the Army for the year 2010. According to the

TRADOC’s official history, “Force XXI operations called for an

Army of globally deployable forces unmatched in modern

equipment, training, and doctrine that could succeed in the

widest variety of major and minor security challenges.”22 To

accomplish this goal, the study expanded two interlinked concepts: the extended battlefield and the concept of depth and

simultaneous attack. 

Neither concept was truly new. General Starry had addressed

the extended battlefield concept in the early 1980s.23 Each, however, needed to be reevaluated in light of the 1993 doctrine. The

extended battlefield concept envisioned a battlefield that was

expanded in depth, width, and height based on the capabilities

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of modern weapons. The envisioned battle would be fought by

fewer soldiers using more deep-strike means to engage the

enemy before decisive close operations were necessary.24 The

depth and simultaneous nature of attacks were necessary to

control the extended battlefield by enabling the corps or division

commander “to directly influence the enemy throughout the

battlespace to stun, then rapidly defeat the enemy.”25 The deepattack assets were to be a mix of ground-maneuver assets, airmaneuver assets, field artillery, and electronic warfare units

combined and coordinated to synchronize fires.26 In 1994 the

use of Air Force assets was assumed to be limited to Push-CAS

sorties apportioned to the corps commanders because no BAI

sorties were forthcoming, and flexible AI was not yet codified.27

To help facilitate the extended battlefield concept, the Army

decided to work alone rather than rely on the Air Force for

deep operations support. New concepts were conceived including the joint fires support coordinator (JFSC) and the deep

operations control cell (DOCC) in an attempt to control the

deep battle area inside the Army’s AO. The JFSC position was

envisioned to synchronize all fires in the land AO short of the

FSCL. This single position, usually the corps artillery officer,

was not a satisfactory solution to the deep battle problem.

Another attempt that showed more merit was the DOCC. The

concept was based on the fact that “commanders must consider, plan, and execute deep operations through leveraging all

organic, joint, and coalition assets while simultaneously fighting close.”28 The DOCC was not the fire support element in

that it was not tied to fires but to operations. This cell could

be and has been described as a small AOC focused exclusively

on the land component’s deep battle area.29 The key functions

of the cell were to coordinate the use of corps assets to include

long-range strike units, special operations forces (SOF), USAF,

US Navy, and other attached available assets; to coordinate

and publish the deep operations annex of the division operations order; to monitor deep operations in progress; and to

maintain communications with all elements involved in the

operation.30 This new system created another way to integrate

the services in the land component’s AO.

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With the ideals contained in TRADOC Pamphlet 525-5 and

the operational concepts expanded in the mid-1990s under consideration, work began on a revision of FM 100-5 targeted for

release in the summer of 1998.31 However, several factors

emerged that would ultimately delay its release. The Army After

Next program, which developed a 15- to 30-year future focus,

was one of them. The other factor was the vision for the future

of the Army of Gen Eric Shinseki, then new Army chief of staff.

His vision was based on a lethargic deployment of heavy forces

to Albania during the NATO war with Serbia. After eight years

and several delays, the Army produced FM 3-0, Operations

(2001)—a revision to FM 100-5—to align the numbering system

with the joint system. Several key doctrinal positions were

established. The Army declared, “Air Force air platform support

is invaluable in creating the conditions for success before and

during land operations. Support of the land force commander’s

concept for ground operations is an essential and integral part

of each phase of the operation.”32 It also conceded that the

“Army forces may be the supporting force during certain phases

of the campaign and become the supported force in other

phases.”33 Together, these two statements acknowledged that

the Army understood and accepted the role of airpower as an

equal in the campaign. The Army members also understood

that they were still in control within their AO evident by the

statement in the manual. “Inside JFC-assigned AOs, the land

and naval force commanders are the supported commanders

and synchronize maneuver, fires, and interdiction.”34

Finally, the Army appeared to be under the impression that a

modified form of BAI is back in the Air Force lexicon. The Army’s

Command and General Staff College (CGSC) was teaching that

BAI is not dead, merely renamed flexible AI. In the course book

for a lesson on Air Force doctrine, the writer discussed the history of AI and BAI through Desert Storm and specifically in relation to counterland doctrine in 1999. The Army’s understanding of USAF doctrine in AFDD 2-1.3 had a definite subset of AI

in support of ground forces and believed the Air Force intended

to give air support sorties as a dedicated apportionment category.35 The paper described the flexibility of AI in USAF doctrine

but with an Army doctrinal slant. The next several generations

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of Army officers who complete CGSC will believe, as did the generation who grew up in the 1980s, that the Air Force’s subset

of AI is different and is intended to support their tactical and

operational requirements. 

Influence of Joint–North Atlantic

Treaty Organization Doctrine

Joint doctrine written in 1995 perpetuated interservice rivalry.

The 1995 version of JP 3-0, Doctrine for Joint Operations, established supported and supporting roles over the same real estate.

The doctrine confirmed, “The JFACC is the supported commander for the Joint Force Commander’s (JFC) overall air interdiction effort.”36 This passage seemingly made the JFACC the

supported commander for AI everywhere in the JOA. However,

several pages later the manual noted that “land and naval operational force commanders are designated the supported commanders and are responsible for the synchronization of maneuver, fires, and interdiction” within their AOs, which makes both

the JFACC and the land-naval component commanders the supported commanders for interdiction if their AO lies within the

JOA.37 This apparent confusion in joint doctrine became the

problem for JFCs to sort out. Confusion of this type was introduced into the joint doctrine through the inadequacy of the joint

doctrine development process. According to a Joint Force Quarterly article, Goldwater-Nichols gave the chairman of the joint

chiefs the responsibility of joint doctrine, but it gave him no

process, personnel, or funding to do the job.38 Subsequently, one

officer at the Joint Warfighting Center (JWFC)—the organization

that supervised the writing of joint doctrine—stated, “Services

write most of it [joint doctrine] and sometimes I think they are

the greatest impediment to a genuine joint doctrine development

process.”39 Part of the reason is that “service parochialism is

often too powerful, and the service agencies charged with preparing joint doctrine may lack joint experience.”40 These parochial

feelings are not difficult to discover because individual services

are the lead agent for individual JPs and try to influence the joint

doctrine to their own way of business through the process. 

As the joint doctrine process continues to mature, some of

these inconsistencies will be resolved through subsequent

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service doctrine or through revisions such as JP 3-0’s revision in 2001. An example that attempted to clarify supportsupporting relationships throughout the JOA was the statement that “the JFACC is the supported commander for the

JFC’s overall air interdiction effort, while land and naval

component commanders are supporting commanders for

interdiction in their AOs.”41 The difference between this passage and the one presented from the 1995 version of JP 3-0

may seem minor, but it resolved some confusion by clearly

dividing command relationships inside the JOA on the same

page. Although this clarification may be useful, it does not

automatically create the synergy needed on the battlefield.

With language that appeared very similar to definitions of

BAI, the 2001 version of JP 3-0 also stated, “Interdiction

target priorities within the land or naval force boundaries

are considered along with the theater and/or JOA-wide

interdiction priorities by JFCs and reflected in the apportionment decision. The JFACC will use these priorities to

plan and execute the theater and/or JOA-wide air interdiction effort.”42 The joint doctrine was clear in describing command relationships and provided apportionment guidance,

but it fell short of addressing a method for coordination that

BAI had articulated. 

Though coordination struggles continued between USAF and

USA, BAI remained active in Europe for several more years. But

in September 1996 after returning from a NATO doctrine meeting, the commander of the USAF Doctrine Center, Col Robert D.

Coffman, incorrectly declared BAI dead in Europe as well.

Colonel Coffman stated in a 26 September 1996 memorandum

that “OAS is dead and so is BAI. They [German and British air

forces] are going to use the US approach with only AI and CAS.

Plus, they are going to use mostly US terms concerning supported commanders, AOs, and the like.”43 The subject of his

memorandum was a revision of ATP 27 (B). But German and

British air forces never received the death certificate. Although

Colonel Coffman was correct about OAS, revision of another

NATO publication—ATP 33 (B) NATO Tactical Air Doctrine—in

1997 failed to dispense with BAI. It included a detailed discussion of BAI, contained a chapter titled “Air Operations against

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Enemy Surface Assets,” which included discussions of AI, air

reconnaissance, BAI, and CAS.44 Within the chapter, BAI is both

defined and justified.45 In addition to this guidance specifically

targeted for air operations, NATO land doctrine included a corresponding treatment of BAI in ATP 35 (B).46 Together, these two

manuals remain current NATO written doctrine and practice of

many air forces in NATO, including USAFE.47

Is There a Doctrinal Need

for a BAI-Type Mission?

Many nations’ air services continue to use the BAI construct

and claim to have flown BAI missions in Bosnia, Kosovo, and

Afghanistan. As late as November 2001, a US naval aviator

engaged against Taliban forces in Afghanistan stated, “Our

airplanes that are out there provided air support and battlefield air interdiction against those forces.”48 Why did this naval

Airman think it was necessary to use a defunct term? One

answer is that it makes sense. Many still feel today that there

is a doctrinal gap on the battlefield between CAS and AI. As

has been noted in the AFDD 2-1.3 doctrinal references above,

AI in the land component AO or in direct support to the land

operation is different. In an interview General Deptula stated,

“I believe that there is a doctrinal void that needs to be filled

and my proposition for filling it is battlefield air operations.”49

However, attempting to fill the void left by BAI without a similar

construct has resulted in broadening the use of the term AI and

in misapplying the definition of CAS. This problem was observed

in after-action reports from Operation Desert Storm in 1991 as

Headquarters TAC noted that there was “considerable discussion and debate on the usage of CAS to describe sorties not doctrinally used as CAS” during the war.50 The same issue was presented in Afghanistan 11 years later when General Deptula

returned from Operation Enduring Freedom and said, “I think

we’re doing battlefield air operations, we’re just calling it something else . . . right now we’re calling it CAS, and it’s not CAS.”51

Although the Army’s new doctrine included unqualified statements about the need for airpower to support ground operations,

it was not in conflict with a BAI-type construct. A BAI construct

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CADRE PAPER
neous attack the Army now envisions. By 1996 the service had

established the DOCC that worked with the corps command post

and the BCD to synchronize deep operations and included air

and land operations out to the corps’s far boundary. The Army

Field Artillery Tactical Data System (AFATDS) was developed to

have capabilities “including automation of processes related to

requesting and executing close air support (CAS) and battlefield

air interdiction (BAI) missions.”52 The system eased coordination

requirements because it was designed to be compatible with

USAF systems directly in the AOC.53 The bottom line was that

the need for the mission was expressed in doctrine, and the technology to control it continued to improve. The Army also began

to believe that air missions in direct support to the land component had returned after the 1999 release of AFDD 2-1.3. The one

missing element was joint training and agreement to test the

processes or allow them to operate.54 The reason for this is that

the services have still not resolved the underlying issues over

who was ultimately in charge.

There is ample support for a continued need for a BAI-type

construct to reemerge in joint doctrine. The USAF recognizes

that AI inside the land AO is different and requires a different

level of oversight. Top USAF officials recognize that the void is

causing a misuse of the terms AI and CAS during operations,

especially current operations in Afghanistan. The US Army has

revised thought on the deep battle and has developed both

doctrinal and organizational changes that would support and

benefit a shallow interdiction or medium-attack coordination

construct. A BAI-type construct would solve nagging problems

for both services.

Has Service Self-Interest Kept a BAI-Type

Mission from Resurfacing?

To ensure that it could maintain control over battlefield

interdiction assets, the Air Force made BAI a dirty word in the

mid-1990s. According to General Deptula, BAI “became a dirty

word because there’s a better way to use airpower than relegate it to a tactical arm of a tactical surface unit, and we

wanted to elevate that to the operational level.”55 General

Horner acknowledged that the term was fine if it made the

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ground commander feel good, but that the term itself did not

really mean anything.56 The USAF felt so strongly about distancing itself from the term BAI that it was stricken from all of

its doctrinal publications after 1992 and removed from joint

doctrine published after that. The USAF Doctrine Center even

pushed somewhat unsuccessfully to remove BAI from NATO

doctrine and unilaterally declared the term dead in 1996.

Regardless of the term used, the concept of shallow interdiction or interdiction missions flown in the land AO on either

side of the FSCL remain useful. 

The Army has generally accepted the fact that BAI proper is

gone. With the recognition that the Air Force may not directly

support it, the Army has worked hard to ensure it can shape

the battlefield on its own. It has gone about this by influencing joint doctrine, readdressing its own, and working on organizations and weapons technology that can function throughout its AO. Although FM 3-0 advocated jointness on the future

battlefield, it also abandoned doctrinal language that counted

on the Air Force to deliver on every Army request. The new Army

is transforming into a lighter force for mobility and relevance.

This lighter force will be more agile but will most likely require

more support from airpower throughout the battlefield in

depth and simultaneity. Organizations such as the DOCC will

help the Army maintain control over shaping its deep battle

and over operations within its AO, without such total reliance

on the Air Force on the far side of the FSCL. 

The motivation that led to the vilification of BAI and attempted

to keep it out of circulation has failed to keep good doctrinal

thought from reemerging. AFDD 2-1.3, without using the term or

creating the coordination mechanism, described a concept of AI

on the battlefield that shares many aspects with the BAI process.

The result of making BAI a dirty word, however, led the USA onto

a path to support itself. Added to the process of Army transformation that will likely see a future need for larger amounts of air

support, it seems that each service’s attempt at self-interest

might inadvertently bring them to the edge of cooperation

through necessity. 

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Has the Doctrinal Process Had an Effect?

The USAF doctrine process improved significantly after the

early 1990s. Subsequent to 1993, there was a focal point for the

production of doctrine at the doctrine center, even if USAF culture has yet to influence Airmen to read it.57 Even though the

creation of the center was long overdue, some were less than

impressed with the way it developed. Col Dennis M. Drew, USAF,

retired, a primary author of the 1992 USAF basic doctrine, criticized the new center’s bureaucratic nature and lack of intellectual process. He noted that the bureaucracy was interested in

production and not in the product. In an Airpower Journal

article, he argued that USAF basic doctrine suffered from three

major problems: first, it ignored insurgency warfare even though

the concept was historically common; second, it lacked serious

research and analysis; and third, it was merely a collection of

assertions with no justification.58 Drew argued the primary

offense was the service’s lack of proclivity toward analyzing history or theory.59 He was also critical of the USAF’s tendency to

write doctrine “with an eye toward interservice battles within the

Pentagon.”60 Another doctrine writer, Mr. Gene Myers at AFDC,

agreed that there were still problems with the USAF doctrine

process. What he did not agree with, however, was that the problems could be fixed through the simple process suggested by

Colonel Drew nor the move to Maxwell AFB that took place in

1997.61 Following the move to Maxwell, the center was very

productive, although the process that is in place now has little to

do with the location and more to do with the leadership and

attention it has received. Regardless of the added attention, it

may be noted that the USAF has yet to solve the doctrinal illiteracy of its officers outside of the academic circle at Maxwell AFB

and that, with rare exceptions, USAF doctrine continues to be

written with an eye toward winning the interservice battles

rather than on how to be the best at joint warfighting.

TRADOC remained in the driver’s seat while creating doctrine

and training programs for the Army during this period. The organization was also well respected for its capability and professionalism. Deptula (then lieutenant colonel) praised TRADOC,

“The Army is to be admired for its entire doctrine development

process.”62 At the same time, he warned his service of the

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dangers of getting too close to them. Mr. Myers, USAF doctrine

writer, also admired TRADOC as an organization that “has functioned superbly,” and warned his service about the entity he

called the “Great Green Doctrine Machine.”63 These warnings

were focused on the fact that these Airmen feared Army doctrine

attaining unwarranted influence over the joint-doctrine process.

The joint doctrine published in the mid-1990s, however, was

often confusing because service self-interest did not allow a truly

joint solution. TRADOC was acting with caution. It was prepared

to publish a revision to the 1993 FM 100-5 by 1998 but held off

because of the transformation the service was contemplating

and the lessons coming out of the Balkans. If anything, it seems

TRADOC was very careful to make its statements clear and

unambiguous. A perfect example of this is the new discussion of

the FSCL in FM 3-0: 

The FSCL is not a boundary. The establishing commander synchronizes operations on either side of the FSCL out to the limits of the land

AO. The establishment of an FSCL does not create a “free-fire area”

beyond the FSCL. When targets are attacked beyond an FSCL, the

attacks must not produce adverse effects forward, on, or to the rear of

the line. Attacks beyond the FSCL must be consistent with the establishing commander’s priorities, timing, and desired effects. They are

deconflicted with the supported headquarters whenever possible.64

Anyone who reads this discussion of the FSCL or the remainder

of FM 3-0 will find it difficult to be confused. The writers of this

doctrine had clarity in mind, and they hit the nail on the head.

During this period, both services’ doctrine-development

process matured and continued to work hard. The fledgling

USAF Doctrine Center still must grow before its processes will

make up for its lack of doctrine-writing history. Too much of

the process is still concerned with the Air Force tradition of

using doctrine as a platform instead of what Dr. I. B. Holley

calls “points of departure for thoughtful decision makers.”65 It

is likely that these problems will persist until doctrinal education becomes part of the process for the service. TRADOC’s

process has developed useful constructs and organizations

with clarity and thought. However, the reluctance to engage in

doctrinal areas that may require USAF support has kept a

BAI-type construct out of reach for either service, whether it

would fill the acknowledged doctrinal gap for both services. As

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a result USAF and USA doctrine are now more self-promoting

than ever before. At the same time, they have the potential to

be more mutually supportive now than anytime since 1986.

Conclusion

As was the case in the first period of development after the

Gulf War, two explanations are credible, while one has almost

no explanatory power for the continued exclusion of a BAItype construct. Once again, service self-interest leads by a

wide margin. A quick literature review of the period illuminates the point. A quick search can find at least 13 separate

articles written on interservice rivalry and parochialism from

1993 to present.66 Almost every edition of Joint Force Quarterly

since the journal’s inception addressed the issue in its “Out of

Joint” section. The evidence for the conclusions over this

period is, however, a bit more complex and wrapped in frustration and rhetoric. Ironically, the parochialism and selfinterest are less telling in each service’s doctrine now than

they were only five to seven years before.

Even though each service’s doctrine expanded considerably,

the doctrine processes are again worthy of second place. This

time, however, the reason is less what each process produces

but more of what they do not produce. Although the services

have not agreed on every controversial issue, they have each

written service and joint doctrines that are not antagonistic.

But their efforts fail to expound that there is a process that

must be described to turn all the complementary language

into executable synergy on the battlefield. Although the linkage of single-service doctrine to another service doctrine is not

required, if the linkage is never fully developed, the concept it

represents falls short. In other words, both the Army and the

Air Force not only realize that each is important, but that they

need each other. As General Fogleman noted, “We must build

trust and training based on doctrine.”67 For this to happen,

the doctrine needs to take the last step, whether at the service

or joint level and connect the two complementary ideas via a

process that creates synergy.

Both services have come to realize that AI on the battlefield

is required. Both discuss joint operations and synergy on the

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battlefield. Both understand the support and supporting

command relationships. The Air Force learned in Kosovo that

its idea of AI detached from support to any ground force was

difficult to achieve. The absence of ground forces translates

into no one to help contain or locate the suspected enemy.

The absence of ground forces eliminates the “dilemma for the

enemy commander as he reacts to the resulting combined

and complementary effects.”68 According to the commander of

Allied Air Forces Southern Europe, “We lacked a ground element to fix the enemy, to make him predictable, and to give

us information on where the enemy might be.”69 This same

issue is taking place in Afghanistan. Surface forces were

required to coordinate and support the air, while the air

simultaneously supported the coalition ground scheme of

maneuver. The problem remains because neither has an

agreed-on construct describing how to bring the complementary doctrines together. This is not a failure of the doctrine

itself but of the lack of interservice agreement and training on

how to best create the synergy both service doctrines profess.

Finally, since 1993, many of the necessary elements of a BAItype process have fallen into place. The Air Force once again

understands that AI in the land commander’s AO is different and

that it can be effective on either side of the FSCL. The current

nomenclature for this type of AI operation is flexible AI. The

USAF does not fully understand how it is going to integrate this

into the overall theater AI plan. In contrast the Army understands that airpower is required for it to execute its desired land

operations and that to stop the enemy during the deep battle is

preferable to waiting for close decisive operations. It built a C2

center, the DOCC, to synchronize the deep battle area in its AO

in a similar manner to the Air Force’s control throughout the

theater from its AOC. Both services recognize that interdiction

and maneuver cause the other to be more effective, which creates a dilemma for the enemy. Joint doctrine changed to clarify,

rather than muddy, the picture as well. It now specifies command relationships more clearly and is finally in line with each

of the service’s doctrines. It took a stand on the proper definition

of the FSCL, which should eliminate confusion (see glossary).

Finally, the two services must come together and agree on the

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details of integration and coordination that must be established

and to test the concept through joint exercising as suggested by

Gen Ronald A. Fogleman, former chief of staff. Operations may

then become truly joint.

Notes

1. Hammond, quoted in Szafranski, “Interservice Rivalry in Action,” 51.

2. Blechman et al., Key West Revisited, iv.

3. Ibid., v and 26–27.

4. McPeak, Selected Works, 327–33.

5. Ibid., 321.

6. Cook, “Global Engagement with an Expeditionary Aerospace Force.” 

7. Holt, “The Expeditionary Story.” 

8. Army releases, “Army Vision 2000.”

9. Ibid.

10. Air Force Doctrine Document (AFDD) 1, Air Force Basic Doctrine, 45.

The functions included counterair, counterspace, counterland, countersea,

strategic attack, counterinformation, command and control, airlift, air refueling, space lift, special operations employment, intelligence, surveillance,

reconnaissance, combat search and rescue, navigation and positioning, and

weather service.

11. Ibid., 48. On p. 46 the term counterair is defined as “operations conducted to attain and maintain a desired degree of air superiority by destruction or neutralization of enemy air forces.”

12. Ibid., 49.

13. Ibid.

14. Ibid.

15. AFDD 2-1.3, Counterland Air Force Doctrine, 3. The term AI is defined

on p. 91 as “air operations conducted to delay, divert, disrupt, or destroy the

enemy’s military potential before it can be brought to bear effectively against

friendly forces at such distance from friendly forces that detailed integration

of each air mission with the fire and movement of friendly forces is not

required.”

16. Ibid., 2.

17. Ibid., 26.

18. Ibid., 27.

19. Ibid.

20. Ibid., 28.

21. Ibid., 29.

22. “Historical Overview of the Army Training and Doctrine Command.”

23. See Starry, oral history interview, 5. 

24. TRADOC Pamphlet 525-5, “Force XXI Operations.” 

25. Ibid.

26. Emerson and Edwards, “Deep Operations.”

27. Ibid.

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28. Pena et al., “New Doctrine on Deep Battle Coordination.” The deep

operations control cell (DOCC) is not addressed in Army Field Manual (FM)

3-0, Operations. See FM 100-5, Operations, 1993, appendix B, Aviation

Command and Control, for a discussion on the DOCC in US Army doctrine.

29. David A. Deptula, interview by the author, 31 January 2002. General

Deptula mentioned that these cells duplicated the air operations center on

a small scale.

30. Pena et al., “New Doctrine on Deep Battle Coordination.” 

31. “Historical Overview of the Army Training and Doctrine Command.”

32. Army FM 3-0, Operations, 2-7.

33. Ibid.

34. Ibid.

35. Evans, “Flexible Air Interdiction,” 4–50.

36. Joint Publication (JP) 3-0, Doctrine for Joint Operations, 1 February

1995, IV-11.

37. Ibid., IV-15.

38. Adolph, Stilles, and Hitt, “Why Goldwater-Nichols Didn’t Go Far

Enough,” 48.

39. Ibid., 49.

40. Ibid.

41. JP 3-0, Doctrine for Joint Operations, 10 September 2001, IV-113; JP

3-03, Doctrine for Joint Interdiction Operations, April 1997, vii–ix; and JP 3-

09, Doctrine for Joint Fire Support, vi. These sections corroborate JP 3-0, Doctrine for Joint Operations, 10 September 2001, on commander relationships

throughout the joint operations area.

42. JP 3-0, Doctrine for Joint Operations, 10 September 2001, IV-16.

43. Coffman memorandum.

44. NATO Allied Tactical Publication (ATP) 33 (B), NATO Tactical Air Doctrine, chap. 5.

45. Ibid., 5-4.

46. NATO ATP 35 (B), Land Force Tactical Doctrine, n. p.

47. See Fourth Air Support Operations Group (4ASOG, USAFE) Instruction 13-103, 7 March 2000, 8. It states, “Normally expect non-dedicated

offensive air support units to be tasked with at least one BAI [battlefield air

interdiction] target prior to FAC training.” For discussions of BAI operations

over Bosnia and Kosovo, see Stijger, “Peace in the Atlantic”; for Dutch BAI

operations in Bosnia, see “Proposal for a Peace Force,” a draft concept for

Bosnian peace proposed by the Institute for Public Policy, George Mason

University, 15 July 1997, which suggested a BAI mission for peace support;

and for Canadian BAI operations in Kosovo, see Houle, “Media Daily Brief”;

and Bahow et al., “Mission Ready,” 55–56. 

48. O’Hanlon, “Opposition Takes Key Taliban City,” 2A.

49. Deptula, interview. Deptula’s concept of battlefield air operations is

not synonymous with the former BAI. The main difference is that it is not

intended to be exclusively a ground support mission, rather, it is merely air

operations on the battlefield.

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50. Butch Byrd, memorandum for record.

51. Deptula, interview. Deptula explained that his concept of battlefield

air operations was not air interdiction (AI). He explained that in Afghanistan

troops are not in contact, so the mission is not close air support. The enemy

is also not going anywhere, so the mission is not AI. “What we’re doing is

using offensive forces to destroy a fielded military force that’s not engaged

or about to be engaged.”

52. Boutelle and Filak, “AFATDS,” 21.

53. Ibid.

54. See Hollis, “Making the Most of Air Power,” 5. General Fogleman

states that “if we understand what we each do and we’ve built a general trust

among our people at all levels, then we can overcome almost any obstacle.

That’s why it is so important we train together as often as possible. It’s also

important we train in accordance with doctrine so we’ll all be on the same

sheet of music when it really counts—what we do is too important not to be.

We must not tolerate units conducting joint training with separate agendas;

we have joint laboratories and agencies to test new ideas and concepts” (Hollis,

“Making the Most of Air Power, 5). 

55. Deptula, interview.

56. Horner, oral history interview. This same sentiment, however, did not

seem so apparent during Desert Storm where BAI remained off the ATO even

after the complaints of VII Corps.

57. See Drew, “Inventing a Doctrine Process,” 43; and Gene Myers, memorandum for record. Drew and Myers believe USAF officers do not read nor

understand their doctrine. Myers noted that in his 26 years of experience

that everyone ignored USAF doctrine except those in the doctrine community.

58. Drew, “Inventing a Doctrine Process,” 43. Drew does not include the

1992 AFMAN 1-1 in the third category because it came with a second volume of essays that explained the rationale for the doctrinal statements presented in volume one. He also noted (see p. 46) that the 1992 doctrine was

the first written to educate the force, rather than fight interservice battles at

the Pentagon. Doctrine written to fight interservice battles, this author suspects, is largely the reason few “warriors” read or understood basic USAF

doctrine. Also Gene Myers, memorandum for record. See his discussion of

USAF leadership indigence for doctrine, the problems with academia in doctrine, and his argument against moving the Air Force Doctrine Center to

Maxwell AFB.

59. Drew, “Inventing a Doctrine Process,” 46.

60. Ibid.

61. Myers, memorandum for record, 1.

62. Deptula, memorandum for record, 2.

63. Myers, memorandum for record, 3.

64. Army FM 3-0, 2-21.

65. Holley, “Fifty Questions for Doctrine Writers.”

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66. See especially Trainor, “Jointness, Service Culture, and the Gulf

War,” 71–74; Szafranski, “Interservice Rivalry in Action,” 48–58; Gene

Myers, “A Commentary,” 60–64; Snider, “The US Military in Transition to

Jointness,” 16–27; Wells, “Deep Operations, Command and Control, and

Doctrine,” 101–5; Grant, “Closing the Doctrine Gap”; Ankersen, “A Little Bit

Joint,” 116–21; and Fautua, “The Paradox of Joint Culture,” 81–86; and

Grant, “Deep Strife.” 

67. Hollis, “Making the Most of Airpower,” 5.

68. AFDD 2-1.3, Counterland Air Force Doctrine, 28.

69. Herrly, “The Plight of Joint Doctrine after Kosovo,” 102.

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Chapter 6

Conclusions and Implications

I am tempted indeed to declare dogmatically that whatever

doctrine the Armed Forces are working on now, they have

got it wrong. I am also tempted to declare that it does not

matter that they have got it wrong. What does matter is their

capacity to get it right quickly when the moment arrives.

—Sir Michael Howard, 1973

One of the distressing traits of airpower theorists is their tendency to claim too much for their chosen weapon. Airpower

does not have to win wars alone in order to be decisive, any

more than does an army. True unification—what today we

would call “jointness”—recognizes that all weapons and services have unique strengths and weaknesses. Wise commanders choose those weapons and capabilities that will

most effectively accomplish their objective.

—Col Phillip S. Meilinger, 1997

This CADRE Paper embarked on a journey to determine why

battlefield air interdiction disappeared from the military lexicon following the Persian Gulf War. To accomplish this task,

the study demonstrated that BAI was present in both USA and

USAF doctrine before the war and that it was removed after

the war. The burden was to investigate three possible explanations for this occurrence. First, it considered whether BAI

was eliminated because it no longer served a useful purpose.

Second, the study contemplated whether service self-interest

was instrumental in removing BAI from the doctrine. Third,

the study examined each service’s doctrine process to determine if the processes were contributing factors. Hallion noted

similar areas of interest in the conclusion to his 1989 book,

Strike from the Sky. Of his 13 points developed from more than

seven decades of airpower on the battlefield, three are directly

applicable here: (1) Armies and air forces traditionally bicker

over the nature and control of CAS or BAI operations (self97
interest); (2) We have always done what we are now delineating as CAS or BAI operations (relevance); and (3) Air interdiction works best only when it is synchronized with ground

maneuver warfare (doctrinal imperative).1

The principal conclusion is that BAI was eliminated and

failed to reemerge as a doctrinal mission because of service

self-interest and bickering over issues of control. Evidence

supporting this explanation appeared in nearly every interview

the author conducted and in dozens of articles on the subject.

Both services believed they knew the best way to accomplish

the mission on the battlefield. The USAF believed that because

it has the C2 and the majority of firepower in the deep battle

area, it should not give control of its assets to another service.

This is especially true because airpower is a limited resource

and Airmen want to ensure there are enough aircraft for missions they believe are more important than supporting land

operations. The USA may understand this position but insists

that airpower is also essential to effective ground combat operations. It believes that it should be able to influence operations

inside its AO. It allows air forces to operate without any coordination on the far side of the FSCL but is unwilling to abdicate responsibility for its JFC-appointed missions inside its

boundaries. The reality is that each service’s solution is so

similar, the two cannot see past the periphery. The two services’ arguments are almost completely at the margins.

Each service’s doctrine process ranked second. The importance is because doctrine is the official platform each service

uses to voice its beliefs. Most interesting in relation to this

study is that service doctrines were often complementary;

however, they were often in contradiction or, at least at odds,

to the prevailing rhetoric. In the doctrine process category, the

USA did very well. The TRADOC leads the Army through

establishing a “buy-in” for doctrinal concepts before publication and then establishing training to instill new doctrinal

processes and ideas into the service. The success of this system has also made it difficult to return to a construct that

would necessitate the USAF as a major contributor. Under AirLand Battle and BAI, the USA was expecting and counting on

USAF support. Elimination of BAI and AirLand Battle has

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caused the Army to pursue its own deep battle systems and

processes. Although a BAI-type mission could complement

these processes, TRADOC’s advocacy of a BAI-type mission in

official doctrine has waned. Regardless, the Army has continued

to do well at learning and understanding USAF doctrine and

has even reached the conclusion that the Air Force may be

reinitiating BAI through flexible AI (a position not held by the

USAF). This Army tendency to expect the USAF to operate in

accordance with its doctrine will again lead to disenchantment

and distrust if the Air Force fails to follow it. The Air Force, on

the other hand, did a dismal job in the doctrinal arena. Its

problem was almost exclusively an issue of disjointed organizations and doctrinal ignorance. These key problems are at

least partially to blame for BAI’s demise. Part of a doctrine

process must be not only a way to print and disseminate doctrine but also to get at least senior service members to read it.

Few, if any, senior Air Force officers in the AOC during Operation Desert Storm were aware that BAI was not only NATO but

also USAF doctrine. If Gen Curtis E. LeMay were correct when

he said, “At the very heart of war lies doctrine,” it would seem

that Desert Storm was a doctrinal cardiac arrest.2 Ever since

BAI’s exclusion as a doctrinal mission—even amidst the rhetoric

that made BAI a dirty word—USAF commanders have been in

search of a mission that fits the mold of what was BAI. However, they seek a mission that is not CAS because detailed

integration is not required but not exactly AI either because

coordination is required with ground forces inside their AO.

Added to that, what appears to be at least a close cousin to

BAI—flexible AI—has not been recognized as such, except by

the Army. The real failure of the doctrine process is that it has

been unable to join two very complementary doctrines. What

is missing is a joint collaboration that develops the process of

synchronizing the two services’ complementary ideas. The BAI

was that process; a new one is warranted.

Relevance of the mission itself conceded no real explanatory

value as to the continued reluctance toward a joint shallowinterdiction construct. Ever since the Gulf War failed to use

BAI as a mission type, problems have emerged. The broadening

of AI and CAS definitions in an attempt to cover the mission

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gap on the battlefield has rendered both terms less useful. The

search for a construct to fill the doctrinal void has been long

and unprofitable. Both services know that surface maneuver

and AI create synergy, but neither is willing to give a little in control to gain a lot in effectiveness against the enemy. In Kosovo,

although airpower was ultimately successful without introducing ground forces, the job was much more difficult in their

absence. The current conflict in Afghanistan would look much

different if there were no ground forces to help fix and target

enemy forces for air attack. Still, what has been missing since

the Gulf War is the synergism of airpower and ground power

that together causes the most difficult dilemma for the enemy.

The mission is relevant, and all the technological advances

developed since the Gulf War have made it not only more relevant, but more manageable.

Implications

The implications of not having a BAI-type construct are

interservice disagreement on the battlefield leading to ad hoc

arrangements when soldiers, Airmen, sailors, and marines are

in harm’s way. One marine who advocated BAI’s return and

inclusion in joint doctrine in 1994 stated: “When BAI targets

must always compete with theater targets for attention, BAI

will usually come up short. This will likely remain true until

such a time as the ground war goes to hell in a handbasket, or

the importance of mission success in that AOs take on theaterlevel significance.”3 Another implication of failure to create a

viable shallow-interdiction or medium-attack construct is the

distinct possibility of losing the enemy in a seam on the battlefield, similar to what happened during Operation Desert

Storm, by creating a “no mission zone” such as General

McPeak warned of in 1985.4

However, the question remains, how can we fix it? Two

things are necessary. First, joint doctrine must address the

issue and develop a process that synchronizes rather than

merely advocates joint operations on the battlefield. Second,

that joint development must be tested and exercised in realistic joint command post and field training exercises to determine the best way to accomplish the mission. A return to the

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attitude prevalent in the mid-1980s where TRADOC and TAC

commanders worked to solve issues without concern over which

service got the credit is a vital ingredient. On 3 April 1958,

President Eisenhower in a special message to the Congress on

Reorganization of the Defense Establishment stated, “Separate

ground, sea, and air warfare is gone forever. If ever again we

should be involved in war, we will fight in all elements, with all

services, as one single, concentrated effort. Peacetime preparatory and organizational activity must conform to this fact.”5 It is

time to understand this viewpoint, along with Goldwater–Nichols

Act of 1986, and work toward a common solution, not four different ones.

One of the main complaints about the TAC-TRADOC relationship that led to AirLand Battle and BAI was that TAC did not

speak for the entire Air Force. During the 1980s, no one did.

Beginning in 1993, however, the AFDC is now the agency that

should join with TRADOC to work out the details required for

battlefield operations. In the spirit of the 31 initiatives of 1984,

the services must together commit to solving the problem. General McPeak’s comments in 1985 could well apply today: 

Today our basic concept features an AirLand battlefield of considerable

depth, where operational success is achieved by employing wellcoordinated ground and air forces. The BCE plays an important role in

ensuring that we attack the target set jointly, with jointly agreed objectives and timing. Air Force missions and associated control measures,

including the FSCL, need not change. They are flexible enough to

accommodate the new approach. But with the introduction of coordinated BAI, we have every reason to expect that our chances of achieving good results in joint operations will be considerably brighter.6

Current doctrine is sufficiently flexible to accommodate another

new approach. The process that institutes the coordination will

be the new approach that is essential. Whatever approach is

developed must be refined until it works.

The process of refining the new approach requires joint testing

and exercises to ensure they can accomplish the desired effect.

Here, the desired effect is to arrive as closely as possible to the

proverbial seamless operation so often touted in the literature.

The only way to create a seamless operation is to eliminate the

seams through coordination and synergy across the battlefield.

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Donald Rumsfeld, secretary of defense, discussed seamlessness

in 2002:

The ability of forces to communicate and operate seamlessly on the

battlefield will be critical to success. In Afghanistan, we saw “composite”

teams of US Special Forces on the ground working with Navy, Air

Force, and Marine pilots in the sky to identify targets, communicate

targeting information, and coordinate the timing of air strikes—with

devastating consequences for the enemy. The lesson of this war is that

effectiveness in combat will depend heavily on “jointness”—how well

the different branches of our military can communicate and coordinate

their efforts on the battlefield. And achieving jointness in wartime

requires building it in peacetime. We must train like we fight—and

fight like we train.7

The need remains for a continued effort in this area. The USAF

chief of staff, Gen John P. Jumper, made similar remarks during

a closing briefing to a recent joint exercise. He remarked that the

services “need to keep service parochialism out of JTF [Joint

Task Force] training.” He also said, “We need to stop worrying

about doing it by ourselves and take advantage of each other’s

strengths.”8

The essential element of these joint operations and synergy is

trust. Trust is nearly the opposite of selfishness or control. If one

is in control, he need not trust in another—only himself. In the

military, trust is reinforced either through personal relationships

or in their absence, training, and doctrine. Keeping one’s word

reinforces it. General Horner discussed trust during the Persian

Gulf War as a one-way street when he said, “It’s up to the airman

to think about using air power properly—not the ground guy. It’s

up to the ground guy to worry about the ground guys, and we

have to educate our forces [and] train together. What is missing

often is trust.”9 The issue here, however, is really not about trust,

because only one side of this air-ground team must trust the

other. The Army has acknowledged since at least 1976 that it

could not “win the land battle without the Air Force.”10 This

statement requires the Army to trust that airpower will always be

there to support it. Doctrine that insists that ground force support the JFACC are not normally about necessity, but about control. Trust is based on training and knowledge of doctrine and

capabilities, just as General Horner suggested, but when doctrine is not followed, or worse yet, not even known, trust is in

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jeopardy. The trust and mutual cooperation that permeated the

relationship between TAC and TRADOC was dramatically

severed during Desert Storm and remains fragile today. An

exposition of flexible AI—used to educate the CGSC students on

airpower—discussed the relationship that must be cultivated

between air and ground commanders:

Flexibility is the key to airpower. However, flexibility is often at odds

with control. Effective command and control are the keys to unlocking

the tremendous capabilities of air interdiction, flexibly applied to a

dynamic battlefield. Command and control relationships based on

mutual understanding and trust, are essential. Three qualities must be

constantly nurtured—coordination, cooperation, and communication.

. . . Mutual understanding begins with knowledge of joint force capabilities

and doctrine (emphasis added).11

What is the best solution to fill the doctrinal void in the shallow interdiction area? This is the most difficult question of all

and not the burden of this study. The solution to the question,

however, can only be found by the services joining in a spirit of

cooperation to reach it. If they lay aside self-interest and control

issues, examine the capabilities, doctrine, and relationships that

exist together, the answer will most probably be better than any

that could possibly be suggested here. What is needed to reach

that goal is the spirit exuded by Generals Starry and Creech as

they sought cooperation when it was neither yet congressionally

mandated nor popular within their cultures or services. General

Starry recollected that neither he nor General Creech cared

about “who owned anything.” He continued, “He [Creech] and I

never had an argument about jurisdiction. The staffs did

because the staff weenies are looking ahead and saying, well, the

Army is trying to do this and the Army is trying to do that. I think

General Creech and I looked at it as if there is something in it for

both of us.”12 This attitude from the top should have been contagious, but it was not. The staffs, infected by the need to defend

programs and service interests, did not ultimately decide in favor

of what was best for the DOD but what was best for them. 

A mutual doctrinal relationship that seeks to solve the shallow

interdiction problem will likely not be sufficient to reach a full

solution. Modification of doctrinal processes will be required.

Currently, the USAF doctrine process continues to be plagued

by a less-than-foolproof system to write, disseminate, and

103

MCCAFFREY
incorporate its doctrine into an Air Force culture. In 1997 Dr.

Holley acknowledged that during a professional lifetime of trying

to influence the USAF doctrine process, he was mostly unsuccessful.13 If a man of his talent and intellect was unable to

influence the system over a lifetime, the bureaucracy may be forever entrenched. The problem with the Army’s process is that

although it is adaptable, the nature of change is slow. The

TRADOC of the 1980s took more than 15 years to create a

cooperative doctrine, and the Army has transformed into a different service over the last 11 years. A quick return to the era of

trust TRADOC enjoyed before the Gulf War will not only be hard

to regain, it will also take a lot of time, especially if the Air Force

continues rhetoric of self-interest in joint circles. 

The bottom line is that “what is needed are ground and

naval officers who see that there is a role for an air campaign,

and air and naval officers understand that at some point support of ground forces becomes their primary mission.”14 The

need, finally, is to address the failures of Desert Storm, which

were caused by service practices and misapplication of doctrine that impeded “effective coordination and cooperation

between the Air Force and the Army.”15 The way forward is to

correct the issues that “were addressed on an ad hoc basis

during the Gulf War.”16 According to a RAND study, “Workable

solutions with minimal operational cost [were] found because

there existed the time and will to do so. Plentiful air and

ground resources permitted commanders the luxury of ducking the issue or compromising on particular points.”17 These

luxuries are not likely to present themselves again. Since the

attack on America on 9/11, the United States is and may be

involved in more contingency operations throughout the globe.

The time to develop the procedures for cooperation and coordination are dangerously at hand. The time to establish either

BAI or a similar process is now. The current doctrine is ripe,

and conflict is continual. The time to be joint is now.

Notes

1. Hallion, Strike from the Sky, 263–65. Also, see Hallion, “Battlefield Air

Support,” 8–28. These three points line up with the three explanations

closely: relates to service self-interest; relates to continued relevance of the

104

CADRE PAPER
mission; and relates to the process of synchronization that must be included

in doctrine to succeed.

2. Gen Curtis LeMay’s statement as cited in Air Force Manual (AFMAN) 1-

1, Basic Aerospace Doctrine of the United States Air Force,1984, i. This 1984

manual has a very good review of USAF doctrinal history as an appendix.

3. Whitlow, “JFACC,” 68. This is an excellent post-BAI argument for the

return and codification in joint doctrine of the BAI mission.

4. See McPeak, “TACAIR Missions and the Fire Support Coordination

Line,” 65–72.

5. Quoted in Army Field Manual (FM) 3-0, Operations, 2-1.

6. McPeak, “TACAIR Missions.”

7. Rumsfeld, “Secretary Rumsfeld Speaks on ‘21st Century Transformation’ of the U.S. Armed Forces.” 

8. Gen John P. Jumper, remarks given to outbrief the Futures Exercise,

14 December 2001. Author was present; remarks in his personal notes. 

9. Horner, oral history interview.

10. Army FM 100-5, Operations, 1976, 8-1.

11. Evans, “Flexible Air Interdiction,” 4–70.

12. Starry, oral history interview, 9.

13. Holley, “Fifty Questions for Doctrine Writers.” 

14. Winnefeld and Johnson, Joint Air Operations, 137.

15. Ibid.

16. Ibid.

17. Ibid.

105

MCCAFFREY
Glossary

air interdiction (AI): AI is the wider category, of which BAI was

a component part. “Air operations conducted to destroy,

neutralize, or delay the enemy’s military potential before it

can be brought to bear effectively against friendly forces at

such distance from friendly forces that detailed integration

of each air mission with the fire and movement of friendly

forces is not required.” (Joint Publication [JP] 1-02, Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, April 2001, 16.)

area of operations (AO): “An operational area defined by the

joint force commander for land and naval forces. AOs do

not typically encompass the entire operational area of the

joint force commander, but should be large enough for

component commanders to accomplish their missions

and protect their forces.” (JP 1-02, 34)

area of responsibility: “(1) The geographical area associated

with a combatant command within which a combatant

commander has authority to plan and conduct operations. (2) In naval usage, a predefined area of enemy terrain for which supporting ships are responsible for covering by fire on known targets or targets of opportunity and

by observation.” (JP 1-02, 34)

battlefield air interdiction (BAI): BAI was last doctrinally

defined in Air Force Manual (AFMAN) 1-1. “Air interdiction attacks against targets which are in a position to

have a near term effect on friendly land forces are referred

to as BAI. The primary difference between BAI and the remainder of the AI effort is in the level of interest and emphasis the land commander places on the process of identifying, selecting, and attacking certain targets. Therefore,

battlefield air interdiction requires joint coordination at

the component level during planning, but once planned,

BAI is controlled and executed by the air commander as

an integral part of a total air interdiction campaign.”

(AFMAN 1-1, Basic Aerospace Doctrine of the United States

Air Force, 1984). The acronym BAI is spelled out in JP 1-

02, A-12, although the term is not defined.

107
boundary: “A line that delineates surface areas for the purpose of facilitating coordination and deconfliction of operations between adjacent units, formations, or areas.” (JP

1-02, 56)

close air support: “Air action by fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft

against hostile targets which are in close proximity to

friendly forces and which require detailed integration of

each air mission with the fire and movement of those

forces.” (JP 1-02, 71)

fire support coordination line (FSCL): The definition of the

FSCL changed in 2001 in an attempt to eliminate confusion. Additionally, level of control based on the FSCL also

changed. The 1997 definition of the FSCL applied to coordination of fires not under the control of the establishing

commander, but that may affect his operations. Due to

issues of misuse of the FSCL, it now states that short of

the FSCL “all air-to-ground and surface-to-surface attack

operations are controlled by the appropriate land or amphibious force commander” (see below). 

FSCL circa 1965–2001: “A line established by the appropriate land or amphibious force commander to ensure coordination of fire not under the commander’s control but

which may affect current tactical operations. The fire support coordination line is used to coordinate fires of air,

ground, or sea weapons systems using any type of ammunition against surface targets. The fire support coordination line should follow well-defined terrain features. The

establishment of the fire support coordination line must

be coordinated with the appropriate tactical air commander and other supporting elements. Supporting elements may attack targets forward of the fire support coordination line without prior coordination with the land or

amphibious force commander provided the attack will not

produce adverse surface effects on or to the rear of the

line. Attacks against surface targets behind this line must

be coordinated with the appropriate land or amphibious

force commander. (JP 3-03, Doctrine for Joint Interdiction

Operations, 1997, GL-4)

108
FSCL circa 2001: “A fire support coordinating measure that

is established and adjusted by appropriate land or amphibious force commanders within their boundaries in

consultation with superior, subordinate, supporting, and

affected commanders. Fire support coordination lines facilitate the expeditious attack of surface targets of opportunity beyond the coordinating measure. An FSCL does

not divide an area of operations by defining a boundary between close and deep operations or a zone for close air support. The FSCL applies to all fires of air-, land-, and seabased weapon systems using any type of ammunition.

Forces attacking targets beyond an FSCL must inform all

affected commanders in sufficient time to allow necessary

reaction to avoid fratricide. Supporting elements attacking targets beyond the FSCL must ensure that the attack

will not produce adverse effects on, or to the rear of, the

line. Short of an FSCL, all air-to-ground and surface-tosurface attack operations are controlled by the appropriate land or amphibious force commander. The FSCL

should follow well-defined terrain features. Coordination

of attacks beyond the FSCL is especially critical to commanders of air, land, and special operations forces. In exceptional circumstances, the inability to conduct this coordination will not preclude the attack of targets beyond the

FSCL. However, failure to do so may increase the risk of

fratricide and could waste limited resources.” (JP 1-02, 160,

emphasis added)

supported commander: “The commander having primary responsibility for all aspects of a task assigned by the Joint

Strategic Capabilities Plan or other joint operation planning authority. In the context of joint operation planning,

this term refers to the commander who prepares operation

plans or operation orders in response to requirements of the

chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.” (JP 1-02, 411)

supporting commander: “A commander who provides augmentation forces or other support to a supported commander or who develops a supporting plan. Includes the

designated combatant commands and Defense agencies

109
as appropriate. See also supported commander.” (JP 1-02,

412)

synchronization: “(1) The arrangement of military actions in

time, space, and purpose to produce maximum relative

combat power at a decisive place and time. (2) In the intelligence context, application of intelligence sources and

methods in concert with the operational plan.” (JP 1-02,

415)

110
Abbreviations

AAF Army Air Force

AAFCE Allied Air Forces Central Europe

ABCCC airborne battlefield command and control center

ACC Air Combat Command

AC&SS Air Command and Staff School

AFATDS Army Field Artillery Tactical Data System

AFDC Air Force Doctrine Center

AFDD Air Force Doctrine Document

AFHRA Air Force Historical Research Agency

AFMAN Air Force Manual

AI air interdiction

ALFA Air-Land Forces Application

ALO air liaison officer

AMC Air Mobility Command

AO area of operations

AOC air operations center

AOR area of responsibility

ATACMS Army Tactical Missile System

ATO air tasking order

ATP Allied Tactical Publication

AU Air University

AUSA Association of the United States Army

AWACS Airborne Early Warning and Control System

BAI battlefield air interdiction

BCD battlefield coordination detachment

BCE battlefield coordination element

C2 command and control

CADRE Center for Aerospace Doctrine, Research, and

Education (now College of Aerospace Doctrine,

Research and Education)

CAS close air support

CENTAF Central Command Air Forces

CENTCOM Central Command

CGSC Command and General Staff College

CINC commander in chief (now combatant commander)

CONOPS concept of operations

111
CONUS continental United States

DCA defensive counterair

DOCC deep operations control cell

DOD Department of Defense

EAF Expeditionary Air Force

EUCOM European Command

FAC forward air controller

FLOT forward line of troops

FM Army Field Manual

FOFA follow-on forces attack

FSCL fire support coordination line

GPO Government Printing Office

GPS Global Positioning System

“GWAPS” “Gulf War Air Power Survey,” draft

GWAPS Gulf War Air Power Survey

JCS Joint Chiefs of Staff 

JFACC joint force air and space component commander

JFC joint force commander

JFSC joint fires support coordinator

JOA joint operations area

JP joint publication

J-SAK joint attack of the second echelon

JSEAD joint suppression of enemy air defense

JSTARS Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System

JTF Joint Task Force

JWFC Joint Warfighting Center

KTO Kuwaiti theater of operation 

LOC lines of communication

MAC Military Airlift Command

MLRS multiple launch rocket system

NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization

NSC National Security Council

OAS offensive air support

OCA offensive counterair

OPLAN operational plan

recce reconnaissance

SAC Strategic Air Command

SAMS School of Advanced Military Studies

SEA Southeast Asia

112
SECDEF secretary of defense

SOF Special Operations Forces

TAC Tactical Air Command

TACAIR tactical air

TACC Tactical Air Control Center

TACM Tactical Air Command Manual

TAGS theater air-ground system 

TOT timeover target

TR training regulation

TRADOC Training and Doctrine Command

USA United States Army

USAF United States Air Force

USAFE United States Air Forces in Europe

USAFR United States Air Force Reserve

USMC United States Marine Corps

113
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What Happened to Battlefield Air Interdiction?

Army and Air Force Battlefield Doctrine Development

from Pre–Desert Storm to 2001

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