DREWDREW
DREW
P
A
P
E
R
S
THETHE
31
The Yom Kippur War
and the Shaping of the
U
nited States Air Force
Joseph S. Doyle
Squadron Leader, Royal Air Force
AIR UNIVERSITY
SCHOOL OF ADVANCED AIR AND SPACE STUDIES
e Yom Kippur War and the
Shaping of the United States Air Force
J S. D
S L, R A F
Air University Press
Curtis E. LeMay Center for Doctrine Development and Education
Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama
Drew Paper No. 31
Air University
Steven L. Kwast, Lieutenant General, Commander and President
School of Advanced Air and Space Studies
omas D. McCarthy, Colonel, Commandant and Dean
Project Editor
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Cover Art, Book Design, and Illustrations
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Maranda Gilmore
Presented to the faculty of SAASS in June 2016
Published by Air University Press in February 2019
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e Drew Papers
e Drew Papers are award-winning master’s theses selected for
publication by the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies
(SAASS), Maxwell AFB, Alabama. This series of papers com-
memorates the distinguished career of Col Dennis “Denny” Drew,
USAF, retired. In 30 years at Air University, Colonel Drew served on
the Air Command and Sta College faculty, directed the Airpower
Research Institute, and served as dean, associated dean, and professor
of military strategy at SAASS. Colonel Drew is one of the Air Force’s
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as well as to foreign military audiences. In 1985 he received the Muir
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2003 Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands made him a Knight in the
Order of Orange-Nassau for his contributions to education in the
Royal Netherlands Air Force.
e Drew Papers are dedicated to promoting the understanding of
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v
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vi
Contents
About the Author viii
Acknowledgments ix
Abstract x
Introduction xi
1
e Yom Kippur War in Overview
1
2 e US Air Force and the Yom Kippur War:
Processes, Lessons, and Ocial Conclusions 17
3 Equipment, Training, and Tactics: Tracing
Developments rough—and To—e Yom Kippur War 38
4 e Yom Kippur War and Air Force Doctrine:
Operational Concepts and Operational Success 60
Conclusion: An American-Israeli Way of War 74
Bibliography 87
vii
Illustrations
Table
1 Israeli F-4 and A-4 losses by cause, 6–24 October 1973 22
2 Israeli F-4 sorties and attrition, 7 October 1973 23
3 Israeli A-4 sorties and attrition, 7 October 1973 23
Figure
1 Israel and the Occupied Territories, October 1973 xv
viii
About the Author
Squadron Leader Joseph S. Doyle was commissioned into the
Royal Air Force in 2000. He is a fast jet navigator with multiple
flying tours on the Tornado F3 and Tornado GR4 and has served
on operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has also completed a
headquarters staff assignment at Royal Air Force Air Command.
He holds a Bachelor of Arts in History from the University of
Birmingham and a Master of Arts in War Studies from King’s
College London.
ix
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank my thesis advisor, Dr. Tom Hughes, for his
encouragement and guidance during this project. Also Col omas
McCarthy, Commandant of the School of Advanced Air and Space
Studies, for his review of the nal dra and suggestions for improve-
ment.
I would also like to acknowledge the sta at the Air Force Historical
Research Agency, Maxwell AFB, for their help (and understanding)
with my many requests for information, and George Cully, fellow
research “traveler” for his conversation and interest.
Finally, thank you to my wife and children for their patience, love,
and support throughout this year. My burdens have been shared as
our burdens, but I am also grateful for our many wonderful family
experiences. is was truly a team eort.
x
Abstract
This study assesses the influence of the Yom Kippur War of
October 1973 on the development of the United States Air Force. e
author demonstrates how vicarious lessons based on Israeli combat
experience interacted with American lessons from Vietnam. e Air
Force participated in varied post-conict analyses and identied
lessons with relevance for equipment, training, tactics and doctrine.
Many subsequent developments can be traced back through the war,
which catalyzed existing or nascent trends. In some cases, however,
the origins of capabilities and concepts can be traced back to the
conict. Key individuals contributed to—and were in turn inuenced
by—these organizational processes. e study concludes that the
Yom Kippur War reinforced a conventional paradigm of “war as
battle” and also encouraged a long-term trend of American-Israeli
parallelism. ese developmental vectors help to explain the capa-
bilities and outlook of the Air Force today.
xi
Introduction
e fact of a war stimulates evaluation and reaction. It is a
vivid and instructive experience. is should be particularly so
for the Middle East War, considering that numerous, modern
forces were pitted against each other.
Dr. Malcolm Currie, Director Defense Research and Engineering
to House Armed Services Committee,
26 February 1974.
e Yom Kippur War of October 1973 had a fundamental inu-
ence on the United States Air Force.
1
High-intensity conventional
combat between Israeli and Arab forces was interpreted as a micro-
cosm of a future US war against the Soviet Union in Europe and this
established a developmental vector that still resonates today. In many
ways, the war represented the birth of modern conict as understood
by the US military through the 1991 Gulf War and beyond. is
mainly vicarious experience was in some ways more inuential than
—and certainly interacted—the direct experience of Vietnam, although
the latter dominates historical accounts of US military development.
Explanations of US Air Force history since 1973 that focus upon
Vietnam and mention the Yom Kippur War only briey—if at all—
are “normal” but they are also incomplete. is study does not seek to
refute these “normal” accounts so much as expand them.
e Yom Kippur War exerted short and long term inuence upon
the development of Air Force equipment, training, tactics and doc-
trine. Together these contributed signicantly to the nature of the
present day Air Force—its great many unparalleled strengths, but
also areas of conceptual and operational challenge. e overall eect
of the Yom Kippur War was to reinforce an emphasis upon high-
intensity regular conict, or “war as battle.” e conict validated an
organizational focus on conventional aspects of Vietnam and conrmed
the rejection of irregular warfare as a potential guide for future capability
development. e air instrument that was subsequently created has
enjoyed peerless success in conventional warfare, most clearly during
mechanized force-on-force conict in the Persian Gulf in 1991; but it
has been only ambiguously eective in extra-paradigm conicts,
such as in the Balkans in the 1990s, and during irregular campaigns
against insurgent opponents since 2003. Again, existing accounts of
INTRODUCTION
xii
this trend tend to miss or simplify the role of the Yom Kippur War in
shaping the US Air Force. is study attempts to ll in the blanks, and
tell that story.
e Yom Kippur War was not an entirely vicarious learning ex-
perience for the US military. Direct material and technical support
was delivered to Israel during Operation Nickel Grass. Moreover, the
Israelis were equipped with a great deal of modern American equip-
ment and this underwent a signicant “trial by re” against countering
Soviet systems. From the US point of view, the Yom Kippur War may
have been an Israeli war but it was fought with American “kit.” e
war therefore represented a synthesis of the idea that one learns most
from one’s own experiences, but best from those of others. e
strength and relevance of the war’s lessons may be explained by these
combined experiential modes. Moreover, the importance of individuals
within organizational processes is a recurring theme throughout this
study. Individual planners and leaders inuenced—and were in turn
inuenced by—Air Force reforms aer 1973.
In structure, this study moves from the specic to the thematic;
from the immediate contemporary inuence of the Yom Kippur War
towards an evaluation of its broader and enduring relevance. e rst
chapter provides an overview of the conict and describes the war in
the air. It then summarizes the war’s major lessons as interpreted out-
side the US military in academic and international analysis. For these
observers, the war demonstrated the lethality and high attrition rates
of modern battle; the specic challenge posed by modern Soviet air
defense systems; the subsequent need for defense suppression capa-
bilities and enhanced aircra survivability; the importance of airli;
and a general need for technical and conceptual advantages with
which to “oset” Soviet superiority in Europe.
Chapter two explores the specic processes by which the US military
establishment, and the Air Force in particular, sought insights from
the war. e Air Force participated in a number of joint fact-nding
missions and also directed its own complementary studies. American
leaders met with Israeli ocers and established relationships that
inuenced later reforms. ese learning processes involved eld
grade ocers who would later hold senior commands, including
then-Lieutenant Colonel C. A., or “Chuck”, Horner. Air Force con-
clusions paralleled external analysis, placing a clear emphasis on the
challenges posed by modern air defense systems. These findings
INTRODUCTION
xiii
inuenced policymakers who then drove change in a variety of capa-
bility areas.
Chapter three explores the impact of the Yom Kippur War on Air
Force equipment, training and tactics—the means, and elements of
the ways, of modern air warfare. e conict catalyzed a broad range
of equipment programs and initiated others. For example, defense
suppression capabilities can be traced back through the Yom Kippur
War, having clear origins in earlier conict, notably Vietnam. Here,
the war reinforced existing trends, adding clarity and urgency rather
than sudden novelty. In other areas, notably stealth technology and
the F-117 in particular, developments can be more specically traced
back to lessons drawn from October 1973. ese technological o-
sets were matched by conceptual osets in training and tactics. e
war built upon reform initiatives that had their origins in Vietnam.
Air Force ocers including Gen Robert Dixon and Maj Richard
“Moody” Suter blended the lessons of Vietnam and the Yom Kippur
War; they recongured training programs and incorporated modern
threats into complex exercises such as Red Flag. is in turn allowed
the maturation of tactics that exploited novel technologies in a mutually
reinforcing developmental process. e 1991 Gulf War demonstrated
the success of this “oset” strategy and Air Force capability reforms.
At the operational level, Chapter four analyzes the eect of the war
on doctrine and campaign execution. Here, the Air Force learned not
only vicariously, but by proxy, as the US Army drove doctrinal change.
e Yom Kippur War had a profound inuence on Army General
Don A. Starry, whose AirLand Battle doctrine inuenced air equip-
ment programs through the 1980s and also eroded strategic/tactical
distinctions within the Air Force. e war therefore inuenced air
power at the operational level through its impact on land power—a
second-order form of inuence, with the war rst “ltered” through
an external actor before driving changes in the Air Force itself. e
war did, however, inuence later doctrinal reforms that originated
within the Air Force, and here individuals were once again at the cen-
ter of organizational change. John Warden’s ideas were informed by
his studies of the Yom Kippur War while a eld grade ocer in the
Pentagon, and his later concepts were enabled by the capability devel-
opments that could be traced back through, or to, the Middle East
conict. Finally, the attitudes and understanding of leaders who
planned and executed Operation Desert Storm—including Brig
Gen Larry Henry and the now-senior Lt Gen Chuck Horner—illustrate
INTRODUCTION
xiv
the Yom Kippur War’s long-term inuence on the Air Force’s “Vietnam
Generation.”
e concluding chapter examines the Yom Kippur War’s long-
term relevance at an overarching conceptual level. e conict rein-
forced a paradigmatic American way of war, characterized by a focus
on high-end, regular warfare—a view of “war as battle.” is gave
broad, uniform direction to the developmental processes outlined in
the body of this study. e nature and timing of the Arab-Israeli
conict conrmed this existing paradigm and hastened the rejection
of uncomfortable, but potentially useful, irregular warfare lessons
from Vietnam. e Air Force that fought so successfully in the Persian
Gulf in 1991 was a product of this reinforced paradigm, but so too
was the Air Force that struggled to apply high-end forces in irregular
campaigns in Kosovo in 1999, and in Iraq and Afghanistan aer 2003.
is tension between “old war” means and “new war” problems also
highlights a longer term parallelism between American and Israeli
experience that dates back to the Yom Kippur War. e Israeli Air
Force enjoyed access to American technology, while the US Air Force
derived continuing vicarious benet from Israeli combat experience.
Both air forces, however, struggled to reconcile a prevailing regular
war focus with irregular challenges. is parallelism again under-
mines a typical narrative that tends to focus solely on how the US Air
Force “xed itself ” aer Vietnam. e development of the modern
Air Force—capable without peer in a great many areas, but imperfect
—“warts and all”—cannot be understood by considering direct
American experiences in isolation. e Yom Kippur War—a brief but
spectacular conict that occurred at a critical moment in time—
contributed to developmental vectors with enduring resonance today.
INTRODUCTION
xv
Figure 1: Israel and the Occupied Territories, October 1973
Notes
1. Rabinovich, e Yom Kippur War, 46. e 1973 Arab-Israeli war is also known as
the October War, especially in Arab histories. It is most frequently referred to in the West
as the Yom Kippur War aer the Jewish holy day deliberately chosen for the Arab assault
(Rabinovich, e Yom Kippur War, 46). e Yom Kippur War is the preferred label
throughout this study.
Chapter 1
e Yom Kippur War in Overview
e Yom Kippur War was the fourth in a sequence of major Arab-
Israeli conicts that followed the formation of the state of Israel. Two
of the three preceding conicts—the War of Independence in 1948
and the Six-Day War of 1967—had resulted in clear Israeli victories.
e Six-Day War in particular had been a remarkably one-sided contest.
e Israeli Air Force had launched a preemptive attack that destroyed
its Egyptian counterpart in a single morning. Israeli combined arms
forces subsequently raced to victory on multiple fronts, taking
possession of signicant areas of Egyptian and Syrian territory—the
Sinai Desert to Israel’s south and west and the Golan Heights in the
northeast. Israeli forces also seized the Jordanian West Bank and—
most symbolically for the Jewish state—took sole possession of the
city of Jerusalem. In that war, Israel established territorial defense in
depth and won an astonishing military success.
1
e 1967 conict was followed by sporadic ghting along the Suez
Canal that culminated in the Israeli construction of the Bar-Lev
defensive line during late 1968 and early 1969.
2
e creation of the
Bar-Lev line provoked Egypt into launching sustained attacks on Israeli
positions. e resulting conict, known as the War of Attrition, lasted
from March 1969 until August 1970.
3
is period of hostilities was
characterized by artillery exchanges, commando raids and aerial battles.
To defend against the Israeli Air Force, the Egyptians employed
increasing numbers of Soviet-supplied missile systems in the Canal
Zone. is aorded the Israeli Air Force some experience against
modern air defense systems, notably the SA-2 and SA-3, but it also
resulted in a steady loss of Israeli aircra despite the provision of
American electronic countermeasure (ECM) equipment.
4
Despite
relatively heavy casualties and a growing sense of unease among
Israeli Air Force leaders concerning the threat posed by the Egyptian
SAM threat, the Israeli military emerged from the War of Attrition
with its reputation as the supreme victor of 1967 largely intact.
Unlike the conicts in 1948 and 1967, however, the war unleashed
by Egypt and Syria on 6 October 1973 would not end with an unam-
biguous Israeli victory. A combination of hubris and poor intelligence
meant that Israel was surprised by the timing and extent of the attack.
2 │The Yom Kippur War in Overview
Prior to the war, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir had viewed Arab
threats as inated. In a private lunch with the UN Secretary-General
in September 1973 she had stated, “you are always saying that the
situation in the Middle East is dangerous and explosive, but we don’t
believe you. e Arabs will get used to our existence and in a few
years they will recognize us and we shall have peace. So don’t worry.
It is a disagreeable situation, but we do not believe there is any real
danger for us.”
5
Israel’s subsequent intelligence failures were near total, and the war
was later described as having represented “something of an Israeli Pearl
Ha r b o r.”
6
Moreover, although the Israelis received last-minute warnings
of an Arab attack, political imperatives made a preemptive air attack
of the type that had proven so benecial in 1967 impossible in 1973.
US support was understood as being contingent upon Israel’s non-
aggression in any new Middle Eastern war.
7
e ill-prepared Israelis
therefore ceded the initiative to their adversaries.
Massed formations of Egyptian armor and infantry, backed by
artillery and air strikes, assaulted across the Suez Canal in the aer-
noon of 6 October. Simultaneously, Syrian forces—later supported by
Iraqi and limited Jordanian detachments—attacked Israeli positions
on the Golan Heights. e Israeli Air Force scrambled aircra to sup-
port embattled ground forces; however, Egypt and Syria had received
huge shipments of Soviet air defense equipment since the end of the
War of Attrition and dense SAM “umbrellas” shielded Arab forces
from Israeli Air Force attacks on both fronts.
8
Desperate mobilization
during the rst few days barely prevented an Israeli collapse and, by 8
October, Arab forces had made consolidated gains in both the Golan
and the Sinai.
Israeli determination and skill, Arab mistakes, and US material
support slowly turned the tide of the conict. On 13 October, US
President Richard Nixon ordered the resupply of Israel.
9
e resulting
operation, Nickel Grass, included the airli of large quantities of US
equipment and weapons and the delivery of combat aircra from
front line American units to Israeli squadrons. us supported, the
Israeli military countered eectively and took advantage of Arab op-
erational mistakes to advance beyond their original positions on both
fronts. Israeli forces were thus militarily ascendant when a ceasere
was declared on 24 October.
Israel had turned potential defeat into battleeld success; however,
the Jewish state’s nancial and human losses had been enormous. e
The Yom Kippur War in Overview│ 3
Israeli Assistant Minister of Finance estimated that the war cost $5 to
$6 billion, with defense expenditure in 1973 totaling 40 percent of
Israel’s gross national product.
10
Combat had been waged with an
intensity not witnessed since the Second World War.
11
Israel, with
more than 2,500 killed and 7,250 wounded, had lost “almost three
times as many men per capita in nineteen days as did the United
States in Vietnam in close to a decade.”
12
e war in the air had been
especially dicult. Israel viewed air power as the primary component
of national defense and, by 1973, the Air Force attracted half of all
Israeli defense spending.
13
Despite this level of investment, however,
Israeli air power had been unable to repeat the successes of 1967. A
number of factors, both Arab and Israeli, explained this outcome.
Missiles and Bent Wings: e Air War
e Israeli Air Force found itself trapped by operational circum-
stances in October 1973 and unable to prosecute the type of cam-
paign that it had prepared for. Extant Israeli doctrine prioritized air
power missions.
14
e primary role was defense of Israeli territory.
e destruction of an enemy’s air force was then the dominant oen-
sive mission. Experience of Soviet-supplied air defenses during the
War of Attrition meant that a third priority, the destruction of the
enemy’s “antiaircra system”, had become a prerequisite for the nal
role, the provision of “ying artillery” in interdiction strikes and close
support of ground forces.
15
However, the surprise Egyptian and Syrian
attacks forced the Israeli Air Force straight into this interdiction role
before enemy defenses could be targeted. is exposed Israeli air-
crews to the full capabilities of Soviet SAM and gun systems possessed
by the Arab nations.
16
In a military brieng held in Israel on 22
October for US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, with Israeli Prime
Minister Golda Meir in attendance, Israeli Air Force Chief of Sta
Maj Gen Binyamin Peled explained, “We have found, under the situ-
ation . . . that we have had to do everything an Air Force has to do in
reverse order—which was much harder. Usually we rst do the air
defense. But we had to do ground support immediately and only then
[take on the air defenses].”
17
e rst days of the air campaign were therefore traumatic for the
Israeli Air Force. In the southern sector, the Israelis lost as many as 14
strike aircra in the rst three hours of the war alone.
18
e Israelis
4 │The Yom Kippur War in Overview
launched a preplanned operation against Egyptian air defenses on 7
October, Operation Tagar, but this was compromised by the coincident
need to attack Egyptian ground formations.
19
Moreover, only the rst
phase of Tagar, focused on the suppression of Egyptian airelds and
some AAA sites, could be completed before the air force was diverted
to support operations in the north.
20
Egyptian SAM sites were there-
fore le untouched. e operation was viewed as a failure.
21
In fact,
for many senior Israeli Air Force ocers, the incomplete execution of
Tagar was the most critical mistake of the war, denying Israel an early
victory in the Sinai.
22
Early failure was equally stark in the northern sector. One hundred
and twenty-nine sorties were own against ground targets in the rst
30 hours of ghting but Israeli ground forces were pushed back and
Israeli aircra losses were high.
23
e potency of Syrian SAM de-
fenses in these early hours of the war was evident in the fate of a close
air support mission attempted at dawn on 7 October. An entire four-
ship of A-4 Skyhawks, called in by infantry commander Lt Col Oded
Erez, was shot down by Syrian missiles. A second ight of Skyhawks
lost two of its number to further missiles as appalled Israeli ground
troops watched. Given such losses, Erez quietly “declined to call for
any more air support.”
24
e Israeli Air Force attempted to prosecute a preplanned operation
against the northern Syrian defenses later on 7 October, Operation
Dugman. As in the south, however, the operation was a failure. e
Israelis lacked updated positions for mobile SA-6 systems, and
electronic warfare helicopters had been transferred to the Egyptian
sector and could not be repositioned in time. Desperate calls for close
air support by ground forces engaged on the Golan Heights further
compromised Israeli Air Force eorts to focus on the counter-SAM
mission. As a result, the Dugman attacks against Syrian missile sites
resulted in the destruction of only a single SAM battery—and the loss
of six F-4 Phantoms, with another ten heavily damaged.
25
e failure
of Operation Dugman has been called the “most important defeat in
the history of the IAF.”
26
Israeli Air Force condence was shaken, and
the air force remained committed to close air support missions with-
out having achieved control of the air.
27
By the end of 7 October, the
Israeli Air Force had lost 14 aircra during 272 strike sorties in the
Golan, a localized attrition rate of over ve percent.
28
ese attrition rates were startling, and so too were the ground
losses suered while the air force struggled to overcome Arab air
The Yom Kippur War in Overview│ 5
defenses. On the morning of October 9, Israeli Ambassador Simcha
Dinitz relayed early losses to US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger:
Secretary Kissinger: I need an accurate account of what the military situation
is.
Ambassador Dinitz: We got a message that sums up our losses until 9 a.m. Israeli
time. In planes, 14 Phantoms, 28 Skyhawks, 3 Mirages, 4 Super Mysteres—a
total of 49 planes. Tanks—we lost something like 500 tanks.
Secretary Kissinger: 500 tanks! How many do you have?
29
e shock of these Israeli losses was evident, and the importance
of replacing air assets as a priority was also clear. Ambassador Dinitz’s
rst pleas for US aid were for replacement aircra.
30
In the south, the Israeli Air Force achieved freedom from ground
threats only when Egyptian forces attacked beyond the coverage of
their SAM “umbrella” on 14 October. e results were decisive—the
Egyptians lost 260 tanks to Israeli ground and air attack in the largest
tank battle since the Battle of Kursk in 1943.
31
is Egyptian reverse
was followed by an Israeli armored raid across the Suez Canal on 16
October during which Israeli forces destroyed a number of SAM
positions. Israeli Gen Avraham Adan, commander of the armored di-
vision that crossed the canal, summarized the eect this raid had on
the contest between Egyptian air defenses and the Israeli Air Force as
follows:
It was clear that the Tsach position [a fortied Egyptian site on the western
side of the Suez Canal] was preventing our breakthrough into open terrain. I
asked for air support but was told that the antiaircra missile batteries in the
area made this impossible. I suggested that we raid the surface-to-air missile
batteries in order to open the skies for the air force, and this idea was approved. . . .
. . . [our] tank force assaulted the site and destroyed it. . . . ose raids had a
major impact on the battleeld. . . . As a result of the raids, the Egyptians
decided to move back some other forward missile batteries, thus enabling the
air force to attack Tsach the following day and assist our advance.
32
e Israeli tankers’ actions in support of the air force derived mutual
benet. e partial collapse of the Egyptian SAM “umbrella” allowed
the Israeli Air Force to provide eective close air support to Israeli
troops in the canal zone. Attrition rates fell. e Air Force lost only
four aircra during 2,261 strike sorties in the Sinai zone between the
canal crossing on 16 October and the end of the war on 24 October.
33
6 │The Yom Kippur War in Overview
Syrian air defenses were never truly degraded in the northern
zone.
34
Echoing the experience in the south, the Israeli Air Force enjoyed
freedom of action only when the ground battle moved beyond the
range of Syrian SAMs. e Israelis were here assisted by the deploy-
ment of the Syrian air defenses well to the east, and the reluctance of
Syrian commanders to redeploy SA-6 systems to support early gains.
35
Arab formations that maneuvered beyond the extent of their air
defense coverage were decimated by Israeli ground and air forces,
just as in the south.
36
However, a combination of the persistent air
defense “shield” and heavily fortied rear positions ultimately created
a stalemate in the Golan.
37
Although Israeli counterattacks pushed Syrian
and allied Arab forces back from their start positions to within 24
miles of Damascus, the front stabilized by the middle of the second
week of the war and Israeli eorts were increasingly transferred to the
Sinai.
38
Overall, Israeli Air Force support to ground forces had been com-
promised by dense Arab air defenses, especially in the early part of
the war. However, the Israeli Air Force was not totally ineective, and
it achieved signicant successes in other roles. e Israelis main-
tained clear dominance in air-to-air combat. Exact accounting of
losses on each side varies among analyses of the war, but there is
broad consensus that kill ratios favored the Israeli Air Force enor-
mously, with estimates ranging from 46:1 to as high as 67:1.
39
e
extent of Israeli defensive counter air dominance meant that the air
force succeeded in its primary mission of securing the homeland
against enemy air attack, “the skies over Israel remained ‘clean’
throughout the war: not one bomb fell on Israel and Air Force infra-
structure remained unaected.”
40
In addition, the Israeli Air Force
continued to mount oensive missions against deeper targets, in-
cluding airelds, command and control facilities, and infrastructure
targets. ese included attacks on Damascus itself, and as a result the
majority of Arab air force operations were defensive in nature aer 7
October.
41
Despite these successes, however, it was the diculties
experienced by the Israeli Air Force, and especially their struggles
against Soviet-supplied Arab air defenses, that attracted most analysis
in the war’s aermath. e Israeli Air Force lost approximately 100
aircra in less than three weeks of ghting and struggled to impose
itself on the ground battle.
42
As the war ended, it appeared that the
future of tactical air power was in doubt. It seemed that the “missile
[had] bent the aircra’s wing.”
43
Israeli and international observers set
The Yom Kippur War in Overview│ 7
to understanding what this meant for the future of air power. For a
watching US Air Force, the uncomfortable view was of Soviet missiles
bending American-supplied wings.
Post-War Analysis: Academic and International Views
In a presentation on 3 October 1973, British historian Michael
Howard spoke of the limitations of “military science,” highlighting
the diculty of testing hypotheses in peacetime and the need to rely
upon vicarious “xes” for corrections to military theory outside of
major conict.
44
Just days aer Howard’s speech, the outbreak of the
Yom Kippur War represented exactly such an opportunity to obtain a
vicarious “x.” e conict yielded a great many lessons to a great
many observers. Over time, some initial assessments were revised as
better data became available, and some early hyperbole abated; none-
theless, an enduring set of insights quickly emerged. Of these, a number
of commonly identied themes had particular relevance for air
power. ese themes would inuence the US Air Force as it pursued
its own internal eorts to understand and react to the war.
Hyperlethality and Attrition
e war demonstrated the lethality of modern battle, with levels of
destruction that shocked participants and observers. For example,
days of intense ghting in the Canal Zone concluded with the fall of
Egyptian positions to Israeli troops on 18 October, “In the aernoon
the minister of defense [Moshe Dayan] arrived on the battleeld with
[General] Sharon. As he looked down and saw the scene of destruc-
tion . . . he was visibly shaken. [Israeli Colonel] Amnon said to him,
‘Look at this valley of death.’ Dayan murmured in astonishment,
‘What you people have done here!’ ”
45
Anti-tank weapons such as the Soviet-manufactured Sagger and
RPG-7 took a signicant toll on Israeli armor during the rst few
days of ghting.
46
Tank guns themselves had increased in range and
accuracy, and the combined result of tank/anti-tank lethality was that
entire “battalions were consumed on the battlefield in hours.”
47
In
addition, the impact of air-launched weapons—especially cluster
munitions and the limited Israeli use of guided bombs and Maverick
missiles—further contributed to a “hyperlethal” combat environment.
48
8 │The Yom Kippur War in Overview
e consumption of equipment, material and manpower during the
war was analyzed with barely-concealed incredulity by Martin van
Creveld, “the total count of tanks lost must have approached 3,000 . . .
in a conict that did not last for quite three weeks. e gure is not
only much larger than any that ever emerged from a comparable
period of time in history; it represents fully one-third of all the tanks
that the members of NATO—France included—can muster.”
49
Some observers later downplayed the broader relevance of weapons
such as the guided Sagger, pointing to desperate early Israeli tactics
that maximized the eectiveness of Arab weapons.
50
However, the
enormous attrition of armored vehicles on both sides told a compel-
ling story in the immediate aermath of the war. Here, quantity had
a narrative quality of its own. e apparent eectiveness of surface-
to-air and air-to-air combat systems suggested an equally lethal air
environment. e grim reality of these multi-domain killing elds, in
which guided weapons oered extremely high probabilities of kill,
was summarized by US Army General William DePuy in 1974,
“What can be seen, can be hit. What can be hit can be killed.”
51
is hyperlethality suggested a growing primacy of defense over
oence; however, this did not comfort analysts considering future
NATO combat against the Warsaw Pact.
52
Hypothetical plans for war
in Europe relied heavily on armor and aircraft that now looked
extremely vulnerable to enemy weapons, even if the same vulnerabil-
ities could be transposed onto Soviet forces. Moreover, the product of
the hyperlethality experienced in October 1973 had been extremely
high rates of attrition and materiel consumption. NATO forces would
need to replace battle losses on an unanticipated scale. Attrition and
consumption rates were therefore linked areas of serious concern.
Martin van Creveld noted:
While details about the rates of consumption and attrition of other items are
hard to come by, it is a fact of the greatest signicance that both sides . . . found
themselves beginning to run out of ammunition aer a single week of mur-
derous but indecisive ghting. . . . [is war has] put a big question mark over
[NATO’s] ability to wage anything but the shortest of conventional wars.
Certainly, rates of attrition cannot be expected to be any less high in a war in
Europe; and it would be a tragedy not merely for the West but for mankind if
NATO, aer holding its own tactically, were to be faced with the choice of either
surrendering or initiating a nuclear exchange because of insucient reserves.
53
ese concerns were echoed in the annual summary for 1973
produced by the International Institute for Strategic Studies: “attrition
The Yom Kippur War in Overview│ 9
rates were very high indeed—almost certainly higher than those cur-
rently used for war planning in Europe—and NATO stas will need
to look again at their stock levels and resupply capacity to see if they
are now adequate.”
54
A particular concern was the attrition suered by the Israeli Air
Force during the opening days of the war. e qualitative advantage
of the Israeli Air Force had been nullied by both the quality and the
quantity of Arab air defenses. e ability of modern ground-based air
defenses to contest control of the air was therefore another key issue
exposed by the war.
Control of the Air and the SAM reat
In a speech to the Squadron Ocer School at Maxwell AFB on 28
November 1973, titled Some Observations on the Latest Arab-Israeli
War, retired US Air Force Lieutenant General Ira C. Eaker noted that
Arab forces had been equipped with the “latest Russian weapons, of
the same quality with which Russian front line divisions are equipped . . .
including SAMs of the latest type, mobile [SA-6 systems].”
55
e resulting
confrontation between these missiles and American-built aircra—
“tested” by client forces in a manner that Eaker compared to the use
of German and Soviet equipment during the Spanish Civil War—had
shown once again the criticality of air superiority in warfare.
56
e
Israeli Air Force had struggled to impose itself over ground battles
fought in SAM-defended zones and Israeli armor and infantry losses
had been high as a result. e continued relevance of air superiority
had been evident in the setbacks suered by Israeli forces that lacked
control of the air.
For some, this inability of the Israeli Air Force to establish control
of the air was interpreted with a fatalism that questioned the future
battleeld utility of aircra on a fundamental level. Chaim Herzog, a
career soldier and later president of Israel, typied this view in his
postwar analysis: “e role of the plane in war has changed. . . . To a
degree air power will not be as inuential as it has been and will aect
the battleeld less than it did.”
57
Herzog’s expanded analysis focused
specically on the close air support mission, “e proliferation of
light, portable missiles in the front line means that close support will
be the exception to the rule in future, with the air force being obliged
10 │The Yom Kippur War in Overview
to concentrate on isolating the eld of battle, maintaining supremacy
in the air and destroying the forces in and near the eld of battle.”
58
In some respects, Herzog’s comments can be read as a fairly accurate
description of later air campaigns, including Desert Storm. More-
over, contested close air support remains a dicult task for modern
air forces. However, Herzog’s conclusions assumed that the missile
threat over the battleeld could not be defeated. e “missing piece of
the puzzle” was the possibility that air power could suppress enemy
defenses and thereby obtain sucient control of the air to prosecute
other missions, including close air support. e Israelis had already
recognized the requirement for defense suppression during the War
of Attrition, although capabilities had remained limited and circum-
stances had prevented the execution of suppression missions at the
start of the war. Even then, Israeli air and ground forces had eec-
tively suppressed the SAM threat in the Egyptian zone during the war
—a development recorded by Herzog but without apparent recogni-
tion of its significance.
59
In addition, Herzog did not allow for
improvements in aircra survivability, such as the employment of
eective countermeasures including jamming, cha and ares. Herzog’s
analysis, and others like it, betrayed a focus on the rst days of the
conict and overlooked later Israeli successes.
e true lessons with onward relevance for control of the air—that
ground based air defenses would have to be suppressed or de-
stroyed, and aircra vulnerability would have to be reduced—were
evident in other post-war analyses that transposed the Israeli experience
onto potential European conflict. For example, the International
Institute for Strategic Studies noted that:
e Middle East war showed how eective an air-defense umbrella over
ground troops can be, so the heavy Soviet air defenses in Europe clearly have
to be reckoned with. . . . ere is now likely to be great emphasis placed in the
West on the development and deployment of . . . missiles to suppress air
defenses. Weapons which, because of their accuracy, increase the probability
of a single-shot kill, thus reducing munitions expenditure and aircra sortie
rates (and hence vulnerability) will attract increased attention as a result of
this war.
60
e Israeli Air Force demonstrated improved capabilities in a well-
executed operation against Syrian SAM systems in the Bekaa Valley
in 1982, obtaining near-total control of the air in a one-sided victory
that paralleled the experience of 1967 far more closely than that of
October 1973. A watching US Air Force noted these varied Israeli
The Yom Kippur War in Overview│ 11
experiences as it improved its own capabilities through the 1970s and
1980s.
Airli
e Yom Kippur War was not a purely vicarious experience for the
US, or the US Air Force. Rather, it was a hybrid experience, with
some direct American participation. Specically, the airli-centric
Operation Nickel Grass tested US logistics and power projection
capabilities. e logical outcome of lethality and attrition was a critical
requirement for resupply. Both the US and the Soviet Union supported
their client states with large transfers of materiel during the war.
61
With combat consuming so much materiel so quickly, the speed
and reach provided by air resupply capabilities were vital. Martin van
Creveld noted “the importance of strategic mobility is denitely one
of the principal lessons to emerge from the Yom Kippur War.”
62
US
Military Airli Command transported over 22,000 tons of weapons
and equipment during Nickel Grass, while the US Air Force and Navy
also delivered replacement F-4 and A-4 aircra.
63
is resupply had
indirect and direct inuences on the prosecution of the war. Israeli
condence was evidently boosted even before the rst supplies were
received, and ammunition was distributed as soon as it could be
unloaded.
64
Airli had allowed the Israelis to continue operations
despite the lethality and attrition rates of modern combat.
Airli capabilities were also relevant beyond their immediate impact
on the battleeld. e war had represented a superpower confrontation
by proxy, and air resupply had supported client states on both sides.
e USSR had begun its own resupply airli as early as October 10
and had transferred an estimated 15,000 tons of equipment to its
Arab clients.
65
Airli capabilities had thus been an important element
in achieving national strategic aims within an indirectly contested
region. In this sense, Operation Nickel Grass had rearmed the strategic
utility of airli as shown in earlier operations, such as the support of
China in the Second World War, and the Berlin Airli of 1948. It was
clear that airli capabilities were vital both as a response to the lethality/
attrition challenges of modern battle, and as a tool of strategic inuence.
12 │The Yom Kippur War in Overview
Towards an Oset Strategy
e nal overarching lesson was the requirement for qualitative
advantages to overcome the challenges of the modern battleeld.
66
Technology oered the potential to inict maximum lethality on an
adversary while minimizing the rates of attrition sustained. Con-
versely, technological inferiority would incur signicant costs, and
perhaps even impose defeat. Giora Ram, an Israeli Skyhawk squad-
ron commander in October 1973, observed: “[e outbreak of the
war] witnessed one of the watersheds in the history of the air force:
technological inferiority. Technological superiority had been one of
the cornerstones of the Israeli Air Force, and in 1973 the air force had
to make a great eort to close the technological gap created by a new
type of [threat] . . . We [had] entered the war at a technological disad-
v a nt a g e .”
67
A variety of technological “xes” or osets, were identied as po-
tential solutions to the lethality/attrition challenge. One example was
the use of unmanned air vehicles during the war, which had suggested
future utility in suppressing air defenses and reconnaissance.
68
Im-
proved precision guided munitions with increased stand o capabilities
promised to maximize own lethality while minimizing exposure to
defenses. Passive defenses—for example, armor for tanks, and jam-
ming and countermeasures for aircra—represented another area of
technical innovation that might permit operation on the lethal modern
battleeld. Finally, increased levels of situational awareness, along
with improved command, control and communications capabilities,
would reveal the location of targets and threats and enhance the
coordination of own forces.
While technological osets attracted a leading emphasis, observers
also noted the competence of Israeli forces. Arab combat performance
had improved considerably since the Six-Day War, but the Israeli
Defense Force had once more shown superior professionalism and
ghting ability.
69
In addition, the Israeli Air Force had once again
show itself near-unassailable in air-to-air combat, and had adjusted
to the SAM threat by modifying tactics during the war: “What the
captains, majors and ight leaders basically did was to design an
entirely new [air-to-ground] ghting doctrine . . . on the basis of the
new reality that we had to nd a solution for.”
70
Training and leader-
ship underpinned such exibility. US Army General Don Starry,
whose inuence on US Air Force doctrine is explored in Chapter
The Yom Kippur War in Overview│ 13
Four, noted that “battles are yet won by the courage of soldiers, the
character of leaders, and the combat excellence of well-trained
units.”
71
e professionalism of Israeli air and ground forces was a
lesson widely observed—and one with obvious relevance for the
post-Vietnam Air Force.
e Yom Kippur War therefore yielded a number of important
lessons for postwar observers. e war revealed the unprecedented
lethality of the modern battleeld and the associated requirement for
vast quantities of materiel in future conict. Some observers ques-
tioned the viability of tactical air power in the immediate aermath
of the war; however, a more pragmatic view was that Western air
forces would need to develop means and ways of suppressing SAM
defenses and ensuring aircra survivability. Strategic airli capabili-
ties would also be vital to the prosecution of future military opera-
tions. Finally, observers noted an overarching requirement to pursue
qualitative “oset” advantages, improving technical capabilities while
replicating Israeli training processes and professional competence.
ese lessons, presented in academic journals and international
commentary, foreshadowed the ways in which the US would equip,
prepare and indoctrinate its military forces aer the disappointments
of Vietnam. ey also paralleled the conclusions reached by the US
Air Force as it conducted its own analysis of the Yom Kippur War.
14 │The Yom Kippur War in Overview
Notes
1. Simon Dunstan, The Yom Kippur War: The Arab-Israeli War of 1973
(Oxford: Osprey, 2007), 7.
2. Chaim Herzog, e War of Atonement: e Inside Story of the Yom Kippur
War (London: Greenhill Books, 2003), 5–7.
3. Abraham Rabinovich, e Yom Kippur War: e Epic Encounter at Trans-
formed the Middle East (New York: Schocken Books, 2004), 7.
4. Herzog, War of Atonement, 8, 252–4; Shmuel Gordon, “e Air Force and
the Yom Kippur War: New Lessons,” in Revisiting the Yom Kippur War, ed. P. R.
Kumaraswamy (London: Frank Cass, 2000), 222; Dunstan, e Yom Kippur War,
12–13.
5. David R. Morse, Kissinger and the Yom Kippur War (Jeerson, NC: McFarland,
2015), 53–54.
6. Herzog, War of Atonement, xiii.
7. Emanuel Sakal, Soldier in the Sinai: A General's Account of the Yom Kippur
War (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2014), 425–26.
8. Dunstan, e Yom Kippur War, 8, 21; Herzog, War of Atonement, 31, 254;
Rabinovich, e Yom Kippur War, 26, 47.
9. Morse, Kissinger and the Yom Kippur War, 95.
10. House Armed Services Committee, to Secretary of the Air Force, memo-
randum, 29 November 1973, 8. Document is now declassied.
11. Martin Van Creveld, Military Lessons of the Yom Kippur War: Historical
Perspectives (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1975), ix, 14–15, 47–48; Benjamin S. Lambeth,
e Transformation of American Air Power (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
2000), 56.
12. Rabinovich, e Yom Kippur War, 497– 98.
13. Sakal, Soldier in the Sinai, 69; Dunstan, e Yom Kippur War, 128.
14. Herzog, War of Atonement, 255.
15. Stuart A. Cohen, “Operational Limitations of Reserve Forces: e Lessons
of the 1973 War,” in Revisiting the Yom Kippur War, ed. P. R. Kumaraswamy (London:
Frank Cass, 2000), 86, 88–89.
16. Herzog, War of Atonement, 256.
17. Henry A., Kissinger, Secretary of State, memorandum of conversation, 22
October 1973. Document is now declassied.
18. Joint Chiefs of Sta, United States Military Equipment Validation Team
(USMEVTI), Trip Report to Israeli Defense Forces 28 October – 8 November 1973,
1973, 2. Document is now declassied.
19. Shmuel Gordon, “Air Superiority in the Israel-Arab Wars,” in A History of
Air Warfare, ed. John Andreas Olsen (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2010),
144–45.
20. Rabinovich, e Yom Kippur War, 176–78.
21. Gordon, “Air Superiority in the Israel-Arab Wars,” 144–45.
22. Rabinovich, e Yom Kippur War, 179.
23. Gordon, “Air Superiority in the Israel-Arab Wars,” 148.
24. Dunstan, e Yom Kippur War, 160.
The Yom Kippur War in Overview│ 15
25. Operation Dugman described in Gordon, “Air Superiority in the Israel-
Arab Wars,” 146, 148. Also Rabinovich, e Yom Kippur War, 178–79.
26. Gordon, “Air Force and Yom Kippur War,” 225.
27. Gordon, “Air Force and Yom Kippur War,” 224.
28. USMEVTI, Trip Report, 4.
29. Henry A. Kissinger, Secretary of State, memorandum of conversation, 9
October 1973. Document is now declassied.
30. Morse, Kissinger and the Yom Kippur War, 79.
31. Dunstan, e Yom Kippur War, 22.
32. Avraham Adan, On the Banks of the Suez: An Israeli General's Personal
Account of the Yom Kippur War (San Rafael, CA: Presidio Press, 1980), 319–20.
33. USMEVTI Trip Report, 5.
34. USMEVTI Trip Report, 6: Anthony H. Cordesman and Abraham R. Wagner,
e Lessons of Modern War Volume 1: e Arab-Israeli Conicts, 1973-1989 (Boulder,
CO: Westview Press, 1990), 83.
35. Dunstan, e Yom Kippur War, 201.
36. International Institute for Strategic Studies, “e Middle East War,” Strategic
Survey 74 (April 1974): 18.
37. Lawrence Whetten and Michael Johnson, “Military Lessons of the Yom
Kippur War,” e World Today 30, no. 3 (March 1974): 108.
38. International Institute for Strategic Studies, “e Middle East War,” 18.
39. Rabinovich, e Yom Kippur War, 497. Herzog, War of Atonement, 259.
40. Herzog, War of Atonement, 260.
41. Gordon, “Air Force and Yom Kippur War,” 228–29. Raids on Damascus are
examined in Rabinovich, e Yom Kippur War, 253–68.
42. Herzog, War of Atonement, 260; Rabinovich, e Yom Kippur War, 497;
Cordesman and Wagner, Lessons of Modern War, 18.
43. Gordon, “Air Force and Yom Kippur War,” 222.
44. Michael Howard, “Military Science in an Age of Peace,” e RUSI Journal
119, no. 1 (1974): 3–4.
45. Herzog, War of Atonement, 230.
46. Rabinovich, e Yom Kippur War, 29: Cordesman and Wagner, Lessons of
Modern War, 57–60, 64–65.
47. Rabinovich, e Yom Kippur War, 508.
48. Ordnance expenditure statistics: USMEVTI Trip Report: Tab A, “Air Force
Team Report,” Appendix 2.
49. Van Creveld, Military Lessons, 47–48.
50. Herzog, War of Atonement, 272: Cordesman and Wagner, Lessons of Modern
War, 60, 64.
51. Paul G. Kaminski, “Low Observables: e Air Force and Stealth,” in Tech-
nology and the Air Force: A Retrospective Assessment, ed. Jacob Neufeld, George M.
Watson, Jr., and David Chenoweth (Washington DC: Air Force History and
Museums Program, 1997), 65.
52. International Institute for Strategic Studies, “e Middle East War,” 55
53. Van Creveld, Military Lessons, 47–48.
54. International Institute for Strategic Studies, “e Middle East War,” 52.
16 │The Yom Kippur War in Overview
55. Lt Gen (Ret) Ira C. Eaker, “Some Observations on the Latest Arab-Israeli
War,” address, Squadron Ocer School, Maxwell AFB, AL, 28 November 1973.
56. Lt Gen (Ret) Ira C. Eaker, “Some Observations.”
57. Herzog, War of Atonement, 261.
58. Herzog, War of Atonement, 261.
59. Herzog, War of Atonement, 232.
60. International Institute for Strategic Studies, “e Middle East War,” 55.
61. International Institute for Strategic Studies, “e Middle East War,” 52.
62. Van Creveld, Military Lessons, 43.
63. International Institute for Strategic Studies, “e Middle East War,” 27.
64. David Rodman, “e Impact of American Arms Transfers to Israel during
the 1973 Yom Kippur War,” Israel Journal of Foreign Aairs 7, no. 3 (2013): 111.
65. International Institute for Strategic Studies, “e Middle East War,” 27;
Cordesman and Wagner, Lessons of Modern War, 102.
66. Lambeth, Transformation of American Air Power, 56.
67. Meir Finkel, On Flexibility: Recovery from Technological and Doctrinal Surprise
on the Battleeld, translated by Moshe Tlamim (Stanford, CA: Stanford Security
Studies, 2011), 169–70.
68. Van Creveld, Military Lessons, 31.
69. Anthony H. Cordesman, e Arab-Israeli Military Balance and the Art of
Operations: An Analysis of Military Lessons and Trends and Implications for Future
Conflicts (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy
Research, 1987), 43.
70. Giora Ram quoted in Finkel, On Flexibility, 171–72.
71. Starry quoted in Rabinovich, e Yom Kippur War, 509.
Chapter 2
e US Air Force and the Yom Kippur War:
Processes, Lessons, and Ocial Conclusions
e Yom Kippur War provided an opportunity for the US Air
Force to test its assumptions regarding air power in future conict.
Israeli experience oered a vicarious “x” with which to plot a course
from Vietnam to America’s next war. To nd this “x”, the US Air
Force participated in a number of formal initiatives that were co-
ordinated and comprehensive in their intended scope. ese included
joint, political and single-service missions, and interactions with key
Israeli gures. ese military analyses informed opinion at senior
policy levels. A combination of previously classied reports, correspon-
dence, and policy statements show that lessons identied were
broadly aligned with wider Western analysis, and very quickly inu-
enced Air Force capability development in technical and conceptual
areas.
e Learning Process
e US Air Force participated in a number of joint and discrete
military fact-nding activities aer the Yom Kippur War. Immediately
following the Arab-Israeli ceasere of October 24 1973, Secretary of
Defense James R. Schlesinger mandated the creation of a joint military
team to go to Israel to identify the pertinent lessons of the conict.
1
In a responding memorandum of October 30, the Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Sta, Admiral T. H. Moorer, outlined the aims and
composition of the mission, titled the United States Military Opera-
tional Survey Team (USMOST): “e team [will] be comprised of
Joint Sta, DIA [Defense Intelligence Agency], and Service represen-
tatives with the express purpose of determining rst-hand the opera-
tional lessons from the Middle-East Arab-Israeli conict. ese lessons
learned could be invaluable in our constant eort to maintain the
best possible defense posture against potential enemies.”
2
e USMOST comprised three members of the Joint Sta, four
members from each of the US Army and US Air Force, two from each
of the US Navy and US Marine Corps, one member of US European
18 │The US Air Force and the Yom Kippur War
Command, and one member of the Defense Intelligence Agency
(DIA).
3
e team was tasked to place “special emphasis [upon] weapons
system eectiveness and operational tactics.”
4
e USMOST would
interact with a DIA technical intelligence team that had already been
established in Israel, codenamed Druid Grove.
5
e USMOST was
viewed as “the rst increment of a lessons learned program that will
extend over a period of time with some portions done in Israel and
some in the United States.”
6
e team’s terms of reference outlined
several areas of interest to the Air Force, including: Israeli coordination
between air and ground forces during close air support and air
defense missions; Israeli Air Force air-to-air and air-to-ground
effectiveness; lessons regarding the employment of specic ordnance,
including the AIM-7 and Maverick missiles; SAM suppression and
the eectiveness of countermeasures, with particular emphasis on
the SA-3, SA-6 and SA-7 systems that the US had limited or no direct
experience with in Vietnam; electronic warfare; and lessons regarding
command, control and communications.
7
e USMOST was also charged with the “examination of captured
military equipment, selection and designation of specic equipment
for shipment to the United States, and on-the-spot technical intelli-
gence analysis.”
8
is focus on the assessment and potential transfer
of captured equipment was a natural extension to discussions
between US and Israeli ocials during the war: Henry Kissinger had
quizzed Israeli Air Force Chief of Sta Major General Binyamin Peled
about missile eectiveness and the Israeli capture of SA-6 equipment
during a meeting in Israel on 22 October.
9
e USMOST therefore
deployed with a comprehensive “shopping list” of areas of interest,
including many with specic relevance for the US Air Force. ese
focused on operational and tactical issues but in support of the strategic
aim of maintaining US defense capabilities relative to potential
adversaries, with an implicit emphasis on the USSR.
The USMOST was not the only joint team to deploy to Israel
immediately aer the end of the war. A parallel, equipment-focused
team stood up with the purpose of validating Israeli materiel losses
during the conict and short term resupply requirements.
10
Impor-
tantly, this team—named the US Military Equipment Validation
Team, Israel, or USMEVTI—was scheduled to arrive in Israel before
the USMOST. As a result, the USMEVTI was dual-tasked with additional
responsibility for compiling ad-hoc weapons eectiveness reviews for
transfer to the USMOST once the latter arrived in theater.
11
As a specic
The US Air Force and the Yom Kippur War│ 19
example of such cooperation, the USMEVTI was directed to “deter-
mine weapons eectiveness data as available from tank/equipment
carcasses and eld visits, and report this to the Druid Grove team for
correlation until the [USMOST] augmentation personnel are in
place.”
12
e USMEVTI, USMOST and Druid Grove teams were thus
directed to work together, transferring and supplementing informa-
tion while avoiding duplication.
13
e USMEVTI was headed by US
Air Force Major General Maurice F. Casey, who was supported by a
US Army brigadier general, two US Air Force colonels, and two US
Navy captains, with a further 15 junior and civilian sta.
14
e US Air
Force was therefore quickly involved in two mutually supporting
joint teams in Israel and had been allocated the mission lead for one
of these, the USMEVTI.
e Air Force also participated indirectly in lesson-learning via
political initiatives. e Air Force was allocated a facilitating and
“chaperone” role in the visit of a subcommittee of the House Armed
Services Committee to the Middle East in November 1973. US Air
Force Maj Gen M. L. Boswell accompanied the visiting Congress-
men, who toured not only Israel but also Egypt in order to “meet with
National decision makers, discuss tactics and weapons with military
leaders, and to observe rst-hand the impact of the 6 October war.”
15
e group met military and political leaders on each side, including
Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir and Egyptian President Anwar
Sadat. A condential summary report was subsequently sent to the
Secretary of the Air Force and the Chief of Sta.
16
In its involvement
with this House visit, the Air Force obtained insights into the
experiences of both sides in the conict at the highest political and
military levels.
Beyond these joint and political missions, the Air Force also
undertook discrete, single service initiatives. On 30 October 1973,
Secretary of the Air Force John L. McLucas suggested the Air Force
Policy Council meet to address the lessons of the Yom Kippur War.
17
Accepting that analysis would be incomplete so soon aer the conict,
McLucas was nonetheless keen to ensure “the most significant
conclusions having broader application to Air Force concerns are
incorporated into our planning and budgetary process promptly . . .
in such area as R&D, weapons acquisition, basing, training, deploy-
ment, employment and intelligence.”
18
e Air Force Directorate of
Operations in the Pentagon responded by producing a number of
talking papers that addressed specic areas of interest. One of the
20 │The US Air Force and the Yom Kippur War
members of sta tasked with this analysis was then-Lt Col C. A.
Horner, who penned summaries covering “Mid East War Data Support
of USAF Programs” and “Interdependence of Air and Ground
Operations.”
19
Not only was the Air Force learning as an organization,
but key personnel were interpreting the conict as individuals, and
drawing conclusions with long-term relevance. is theme is further
explored—with “Chuck” Horner as a developed example—in Chapter
Four.
Coincident with this work in the Pentagon, the Air Force Tactical
Fighter Weapons Center formed a Middle East working group to
“collect and evaluate tactics information available on the October
1973 conict in the Middle East.”
20
e working group comprised
three panels, one each for air-to-ground, air-to-air and surface-to-air
lessons. Each panel developed a broad range of tactical questions
within a number of dened areas of interest. Questions posed for
ghter tactics included the eects of electronic counter measures on
radar proximity weapons fuzing; weapon-to-target matching issues
for specic target sets; and Israeli experiences with laser and electro-
optically guided munitions.
21
Areas of interest for electronic counter-
measures included jamming and threat detection; cha tactics used
against the SA-6; the use of “drones”, including whether or not Arab
forces attempted to jam ground control signals; and the number of
SAMs red at Israeli unmanned vehicles—the latter question sugges-
tive of a developing program to explore the use of unmanned aircra
as decoys in saturation tactics against the growing SAM threat.
22
e
working group’s charter was later extended beyond “combat specic”
issues to include reconnaissance, airli, and command and control.
23
Finally, Air Force leaders made direct contact with their Israeli
counterparts in an eort to understand the air power lessons of the
war. Gen Robert J. Dixon, commander of Tactical Air Command,
met directly with Israeli General Peled in March 1974.
24
Dixon spent
twelve hours in discussion with Peled, including some joint sessions
with General William DePuy, head of US Army Training and Doctrine
Command.
25
Dixon and Peled would go on to establish an enduring
professional relationship that inuenced Dixon’s later changes to Air
Force training.
26
ese early meetings complemented other Air Force
initiatives to understand the conict in the rst months aer its
conclusion.
e US Air Force had clearly concluded that the Yom Kippur War
offered a useful glimpse into future force-on-force combat, and
The US Air Force and the Yom Kippur War│ 21
directed a range of “in house” analyses to provide an air-focused view
that would complement joint eorts. Air Force eorts to analyze the
war were therefore wide ranging in composition and focus. Air Force
personnel participated in complementary joint, political, single-service
and individual learning processes. Subsequent reports and correspon-
dence showed that the resulting conclusions were broadly aligned
with interpretations of the war in external analyses and literature.
US Air Force Findings
e resulting US military analyses of the Yom Kippur War are only
partially declassied. e USMOST report, for example, remains
unavailable. However, a large amount of material is accessible. e
USMEVTI report—which, as noted above, was compiled in conjunc-
tion with the USMOST and the DIA—was declassied in 1982 and, in
accordance with its secondary operational focus, retained a useful
amount of analysis beyond the recording of raw materiel statistics.
Other integrated learning processes yielded a variety of reports,
correspondence and talking papers. Taken together, this material
presented a range of ndings, comparable to external narratives of
the war and with a clear emphasis on the challenges posed by modern
air defense systems.
Lethality and the SAM threat
e US Air Force was evidently keen to understand precise aircra
loss rates and causes in order to expose the threat posed by layered air
defenses. Here, the USMEVTI fullled its secondary function of
compiling operational data by reporting on Israeli F-4 and A-4 losses,
the former contained within Air Force analysis and the latter com-
piled by the US Navy, the domestic operator of the Skyhawk. Table 1
relates the USMEVTI summary of total aircra losses by cause.
22 │The US Air Force and the Yom Kippur War
Cause of Aircra Loss
Aircra
Type
SAM AAA SAM + AAA SA-7 +AAA
Enemy
Aircra
Unknown Tota l
F-4E 9 9 1 1 3 9 32
A-4 29 12 3 No Data No Data 9 53
Table 1: Israeli F-4 and A-4 Losses by Cause, 6-24 October 1973. (Source: USMEVTI Trip
Report, Composite Data.)
SAM systems accounted for approximately half of all losses, either
alone or in combination with AAA. Moreover, Israeli combat reports
suggested many of the AAA losses were suered by aircra ying low
to avoid radar-guided SAMs.
27
In addition, the USMEVTI report
contained some data for aircra damaged, rather than destroyed, by
SAMs: 26 A-4 Skyhawks were damaged by the SA-7 during the war
but returned to Israeli airelds.
28
It seems reasonable to assume that a
percentage of losses in the “unknown” category were also due to air
defenses, or—in view of coalition experience during the Gulf War in
1991—controlled ight into terrain while avoiding threats at low
level. Israel also lost a number of French-made aircra and helicop-
ters to causes that are not outlined in the USMEVTI report, and it is
again reasonable to assume that some of these were destroyed by
SAMs and AAA guns.
29
Finally, Arab air-to-air claims far outweighed
the three losses Israel admitted to, but even allocating all of the 18
“unknown” losses to Arab aircra would derive only 21 kills, just
one-quarter of the total.
30
Overall, the USMEVTI data showed that
surface defenses had accounted for the clear majority of Israeli air
losses, even if “unknown” causes of destruction were attributed en-
tirely to Arab ghters.
e USMEVTI report provided further data concerning Israeli
losses. e report summarized overall sortie numbers and attrition
by day and, for the A-4, by geographical zone. is data showed that
loss ratios had varied considerably throughout the war. Israeli losses
had indeed been high at the start of the conict—especially on the
“black” day of 7 October—but had then abated due to improved
Israeli tactics and suppression operations. For instance, F-4 statistics
for 7 October revealed unsustainable loss rates. Israeli Phantoms ew
187 sorties for the loss of seven aircra destroyed plus two with major
damage, with an additional 14 receiving minor damage.
31
ese gures
are summarized in Table 2.
The US Air Force and the Yom Kippur War│ 23
Aircra Type Sorties Flown Aircra
Destroyed
Major Damage Minor Damage
F-4E 187 7 2 14
Table 2: Israeli F-4 Sorties and Attrition, 7 October 1973. (Source: USMEVTI Trip Report,
Composite Data.)
ese gures equated to a loss ratio of 3.7 percent, or 4.8 percent
including aircra that suered major damage, and a total ratio of
lost/damaged aircra of 12.3 percent. Expressed with reference to the
number of airframes possessed by the Israeli Air Force, rather than
total sortie numbers, the gures were even more stark. e Phantom
force comprised 85 aircra on 7 October, so the loss of seven de-
stroyed and two severely damaged—nine aircra—represented over
ten percent of the total. Overall, a staggering 27 percent of available
F-4 aircra had suered at least minor damage on this single day.
A-4 statistics were similar. In 278 sorties own on 7 October, Israel
lost 10 Skyhawks destroyed, four severely damaged, with a further 22
suering minor damage.
32
ese statistics are presented in Table 3.
Aircra Type Sorties Flown Aircra
Destroyed
Major Damage Minor Damage
A-4 278 10 4 22
Table 3: Israeli A-4 Sorties and Attrition, 7 October 1973. (Source: USMEVTI Trip Report,
Composite Data.)
e resulting ratios were very similar to those of the F-4 force—3.6
percent destroyed, 5 percent destroyed/severely damaged, and a total
ratio of 12.9 percent lost or damage to some extent. ese losses were
from a larger force of 230 aircra, and so losses as a percentage of
airframes were lower than for the F-4, at 6 percent lost or severely
damaged. Altogether, approximately one in six Skyhawks, and one in
four Phantoms, had been hit on a single day—a “black day” indeed.
ese loss rates were not sustainable, and in the event they were
not sustained.
33
e Israelis adapted their operations to minimize
attrition and air power contributed to the favorable military situation
that prevailed on both fronts when the ceasere went into eect on 24
October 24. e USMVETI report showed that only two Phantoms
were lost during the nal ve days of F-4 operations, 15 to 19 October.
34
An additional eleven suered major or minor damage. Sorties over
the period totaled 890; the loss ratio in this period was thus a mere
24 │The US Air Force and the Yom Kippur War
0.3 percent, with aircra suering some degree of damage on only
1.6% of sorties own. is was an approximately tenfold reduction in
attrition from 7 October. Nor had the F-4s simply avoided frontline
areas; this ve-day period included the attack across the Suez by
Israeli ground forces and provision of air support to those armored
formations. Reduced attrition reected the increased operational
freedom that the air force had enjoyed once Egyptian SAMs had been
destroyed or forced to withdraw.
A-4 losses in the same period told a complementary, but more
nuanced, story. Total Skyhawk losses between 15 and 19 October
were nine aircra from 947 sorties, or 0.95 percent, another huge
reduction from 7 October. However, the USMEVTI report recorded
A-4 gures sorties and losses by front, and the gures showed stark
contrasts between the Egyptian and Syrian zones. For example, no
Skyhawks were lost on 17 October on the Egyptian front from 155
sorties own, but on the Syrian front—where air defenses remained
largely intact—two aircra were destroyed across only nine sorties.
35
e apparent Israeli response to this was to suspend A-4 operations
on the Syrian front, with just four sorties own during the subse-
quent three days. is data illustrated the dierence between operating
against partially suppressed defenses on the Egyptian front and the
intact air defense “umbrella” that was maintained by the Syrians until
the end of the war.
Detailed USMEVTI examination of air attrition therefore revealed
signicant variations in loss rates across the dierent zones and
phases of the war. is data did not support early hyperbole declaring
the demise of the tactical aircra in modern war; rather, the apparent
lesson was that modern ground-based air defenses must be degraded,
as part of the control of the air task, in support of tactical air opera-
tions. e USMEVTI report concluded that, “e enemy’s improved
capabilities and massive use of surface-to-air missiles has shied the
balance over the battle arena. Improved air delivered munitions and
modern electronic countermeasures are needed to insure [sic] support
of the ground forces.
36
” e Air Force Directorate of Operations
agreed, with talking papers pointing to the need for electronic war-
fare platforms, modern countermeasures, and further development
of Wild Weasel attack aircra.
37
Direct contact between US Air Force ocers and Israeli leaders
corroborated these ndings. General Peled observed during meetings
with the House Armed Services Committee in Israel that control of
The US Air Force and the Yom Kippur War│ 25
the air requirements had changed: “[the] rst priority in battle is to
go aer the ground-to-air capability.”
38
Peled maintained this view in
his March 1974 meetings with General Dixon, outlining a sequential
approach in which medium altitude radar SAMs should be sup-
pressed rst, followed by AAA defenses, aer which “CAS [could]
then be done eectively.”
39
e challenges facing tactical aircra had
increased, but Israeli data and senior opinion rmly suggested this
did not mean an end to the attack aircra as a viable battleeld asset.
Rather, suppressive techniques and counters could be found, and
these should be a focus for development.
ese judgments were further reected in a later Department of
Defense report to Congress, e Eectiveness of United States Military
Aid to Israel, in December 1974. e report noted the “initial reaction
to early Israeli losses was to suppose that systems like the SA-6, SA-7,
and ZSU-23-4 could . . . prevent [tactical aircra] from ying eec-
tive attack air support against defended ground forces.”
40
However,
the Israeli Air Force had not trained its personnel to use American
ECM equipment, and nor had it briefed or prosecuted suppression
missions eectively.
41
Further, “the IAF did not attempt to employ US
air-to-surface guided missiles extensively in defended areas during
the war [and] lacked the command and control and targeting capability
to identify and hit the enemy ground force targets using such systems
without overight of the potential target and its air defenses.”
42
e
conclusion was clear; Israeli air operations had been compromised
because Arab air defenses had not been eectively suppressed or
countered, and not because “the missile had bent the aircra’s wing”
in any insurmountable sense. Where Israel had managed to suppress
defenses with air or ground formations, the air force had been able to
support army elements. Improved suppression capabilities and
survivability could, it seemed, “unbend” the aircra’s wing.
Attrition and Materiel Consumption
Beyond the focus on the control of the air mission and modern
ground-based threats, initial US analysis also recorded ndings in
other areas that broadly corresponded with wider, unocial observations.
e consequences of the hyperlethal battleeld—heavy attrition of
resources and enormous rates of materiel consumption—were high-
lighted, and suggested the US would require both better, and more,
26 │The US Air Force and the Yom Kippur War
equipment in future. e USMEVTI report recorded the Israeli F-4
force started the war on October 6 with 86 operational aircra.
43
By
15 October, as the rst US replacements arrived, the Israeli Air Force
had been reduced to 59 operational Phantoms—a reduction of 31
percent in a mere ten days. e US Air Force noted these reductions
in operational readiness rates and extrapolated them onto a potential
European war, noting that comparable attrition would expend US air
forces in approximately two weeks.
Israeli aircra attrition also aected American readiness levels,
creating a direct impact via an indirect combat experience. e ocial
TAC history for July 1973 to July 1974 recorded TAC deliveries of 34
F-4Es to Israel between 14 and 21 October.
44
As a result, the deploy-
ment capability of one American F-4 wing was compromised—one
squadron was le with no aircra, while a second was considered
capable of carrying out only some of its wartime missions.
45
American
strength had therefore been eroded by Israeli attrition. Here, the US
could extrapolate future force structure requirements based not only
on Israeli combat attrition in October 1973 but also projected resupply
commitments to allies.
Finally, air-delivered ammunition usage recorded by the US-
MEVTI was extremely high. e Israeli Air Force dropped its entire
inventory of CBU-58 cluster bombs plus another 1,601 of 2,460
replacement munitions provided by the US, nishing the war with
only 859 CBU-58 versus a prewar supply of 4,670.
46
e Israelis also
red 175 of 276 AIM-9 missiles and 49 of 106 AIM-7 Sparrows. e
Shrike anti-radiation missile was also heavily employed, with 197
red, in excess of pre-war stocks that had totaled just 145. Modern
combat had indeed consumed large quantities of materiel and
ammunition, and this was noted by the US Air Force in anticipation
of revising its own stock levels. e Operations Directorate related
Israeli statistics to US Air Force holdings, concluding that “current
US stocks do not meet requirements”, especially for air intercept and
anti-radiation missiles.
47
USAFE required 60 days of stocks but only
held enough for 30 days of ghting.
48
With more than a little under-
statement, the Operations Directorate report concluded the “US cannot
aord to ‘run out.’ ”
49
e Yom Kippur War therefore showed that the Air Force would
need to assume high levels of materiel attrition and munitions
employment in modern conflict. Issues of quantity played into
discussions regarding the optimum high/low force balance proposed
The US Air Force and the Yom Kippur War│ 27
between the new F-15 and the developmental Lightweight Fighter
candidate, the YF-16.
50
It was clear the US would need not only
capable aircra, but numerous aircra, along with greater quantities
of consumable stocks—an important observation as the US military
contracted in “normal” post-war fashion aer the end of its involve-
ment in Vietnam.
51
Technological Osets
e US Air Force identied a number of technological counters to
the issues of surface threats and lethality. ese included guided and
stando weaponry, countermeasures, and other aspects of aircra
survivability. e Air Force Operations Directorate recorded Israeli
experiences with the AGM-65 Maverick air-to-ground missile. Fiy
Mavericks were red by the Israelis against vehicles and fortied
positions, with 39 hits, one near miss, seven misses and three failures.
52
These results were interpreted as “quite impressive” in the 1975
Department of Defense Annual Report.
53
Pentagon talking papers
also revealed weapons systems eectiveness gures for Walleye and
Mark 84 electro-optically guided munitions, with success rates of 96
percent from 88 releases for the former and 78 percent from 32
releases for the guided Mark 84.
54
Israeli opinion expressed the utility
and desirability of the stando and high probability of kill these
weapons oered. Lt Gen David Elazar, the Israeli Chief of the General
Staff, informed the House Armed Services Committee that he
perceived “an urgent requirement for stand-o missiles.”
55
Elazar was
backed by General Peled who “came on strong” in pressing the need
for stando weapons.
56
Peled also informed General Dixon in March
1974 the Israeli Air Force had not possessed enough electro-optically
guided munitions and had oen been forced to rely on less eective
unguided cluster bombs, released in low level lo attacks.
57
e US-
MEVTI recorded a stated Israeli requirement for “a stand-o (25-40
miles) weapon which can assure destruction of mobile SAM-6
installations.”
58
Peled also conrmed Israeli satisfaction with Maverick
but expressed a desire for improved AGM-45 Shrike anti-radar missiles
or an equivalent.
59
e Pentagon talking papers were silent on Shrike
but noted that an improved Wild Weasel variant of the F-4 would oer
the advantage of carrying the AGM-78 Standard anti-radar missile.
60
Implied Israeli criticism of the Shrike and corresponding US Air
28 │The US Air Force and the Yom Kippur War
Force observations suggested some dissatisfaction with existing anti-
radiation missile capabilities.
Air Force ndings also addressed aircra countermeasures and
survivability. e USMEVTI report noted the utility of cha as a
defensive aid against radar-guided SAM systems and the implications
of not having this countermeasure available to all Israeli aircra: “It
may be signicant that the most numerous A-4 type loss was the
A-4H which does not have the ALE-29 [countermeasures dispenser]
and thus cannot use . . . cha.”
61
e report also noted only 30 radar
warning receivers were available for the prewar eet of Israeli Skyhawks,
concluding: “e quantities of ECM equipment presently on hand in
the Israeli Air Force are not sucient to prevent large losses in the
SAM environment.”
62
Operations Directorate analysis supported
these views, noting the ‘successful performance of self-protection
pods and cha’ and also recording Israeli pilot observations that “the
SA-6 homed in on the self-protection cha rather than the target
aircra.”
63
Other survivability issues were also noted. e faster A-4N variant
of the Skyhawk had suered comparatively few losses to SA-7 due its
top speed of 550 knots. e small warhead of the SA-7 also tended to
damage rather than destroy aircra, typically causing tail damage as
it homed on the hottest part of the aircra’s infrared signature. e
Israelis countered this by extending the Skyhawk tail pipe to move
any damage further a and away from the aircra’s engine.
64
Con-
icting requirements of speed and ruggedness would drive controversy
surrounding the US Air Force A-10 program; however, the Israeli
experience clearly demonstrated that aircra could be optimized to
avoid or survive hits by modern missile systems.
65
Air Force reports noted the utility of electronic jamming, both by
stando platforms and via self-protection pods carried by attack air-
cra. e Operations Directorate assessed the Israeli use of helicopters
in the stando jamming role as “eective when properly employed,”
especially against SA-2 and SA-3 acquisition radars, with the Israelis
reporting losses were lower during missions when these supporting
assets were deployed “close to victim radars, but outside the SAM lethal
range.”
66
However, the SA-6 had been a major problem. e Israelis
had not enabled experimental electronic warfare pod techniques for
fear that the semi-active SA-6 missile might home on the jamming
signals.
67
e later recollections of a USAFE ocer provided more
detail on this issue: the “Israelis wanted to know which settings we
The US Air Force and the Yom Kippur War│ 29
used to counter the SA-6 system. We gave them what we had, a
setting . . . intended to distract the missile’s COW [continuous wave]
seeker head. But . . . the Israelis decided not to use our setting. ey
were afraid the jamming pod would act as a beacon and they were
unwilling to take the chance.”
68
Senior Israeli remarks to American
ocials corroborated the utility of jamming and protective technologies
but also emphasized the need for improved capabilities. Maj Gen
Peled remarked that extensive use of helicopter stando jamming
had been eective during suppression attacks, but Lt Gen Elazar
noted the Israelis had “no good answer now to the SA-6.”
69
e Air Force also benetted from access to captured Soviet equip-
ment made available for American testing. e House Armed Services
Committee visitors and their Air Force escorts were shown a display
of captured Soviet equipment.
70
e US obtained SA-7 systems from
Israel and used this equipment in tests against aircra under develop-
ment, including the A-10 and F-15.
71
Some reports indicated the
additional transfer of SA-6 systems or components to the US for similar
testing and evaluation purposes.
72
Access to Israeli data and experience,
and “hands on” examination of captured Soviet equipment, allowed
the US Air Force to assess current defensive capabilities against modern
threats. Findings pointed to signicant challenges, but also a viable
range of technological counters.
Conceptual Osets
Beyond technological osets, US Air Force analysis noted the
relevance of Israeli conceptual and operational procedures. American
observers believed professional competence and training were integral
to the outcome of the war. e Israelis felt superior training had been
critical, especially in view of improved Arab battleeld performance
in comparison to the Six-Day War of 1967.
73
General Dixon recorded
the experience and training habits of the Israelis aer his March visit
with General Peled. e Israeli Air Force ew an average of 25 hours
per month in training and had an average experience level of 1,500
ight hours.
74
During low level attacks against Arab positions, Israeli
pilots had own as low as 20 feet—a demanding and fatiguing skill
that demanded extremely high prociency.
75
Dixon concluded that,
in addition to good equipment, “training—then tactics and guts as
these are magnied by the real survival urge - are the keys to success.”
76
30 │The US Air Force and the Yom Kippur War
e Operations Directorate supported these views, noting that in air-
to-air engagement outcomes “superior training” had been a critical
factor in Israeli success.
77
ese assessments matched those of external
observers; the quality of Israeli personnel - not merely their American-
provided equipment—had been an important lesson of the war.
Airli
Finally, the US Air Force analyzed its own airli eorts and identied
requirements to enhance these capabilities in the future. Operation
Nickel Grass had delivered 22,395 tons of materiel in 556 missions.
78
e C-5, which had proven controversial during its development and
acquisition, had been “particularly eective”, delivering nearly half
the total tonnage in only 25 percent of the total sorties.
79
Israeli leaders
directly commended the US airli, and specically the contribution
of the C-5, during the House Armed Services Committee visit in
November 1973.
80
Moreover, the Operations Directorate reported—
in an understandably satised tone—“US airli required 42 present
fewer sorties to deliver 47 percent more tonnage over nearly 4 times
as great a one-way distance” as the parallel Soviet resupply of the
Arab states.
81
Israeli leaders directly commended the US airli, and
specically the contribution of the C-5, during the House Armed
Services Committee visit in November 1973.
82
However, this success
had relied upon the availability of Lajes as a refueling aireld. e
C-141, which had been the workhorse of the operation, could not y
unrefueled between the US and Israel and also lacked an air-refueling
capability. e Operations Directorate report recommended “more
C-5 wide body type aircra”, air refueling capabilities and training for
the C-141 force, and also a new tanker with which to support future
airli operations.
83
Nickel Grass had been a success, especially for the
new C-5, but the US Air Force also knew improvements would be
required for future operations of similar or larger scale.
Ocial Conclusions
Joint and air force analysis informed early assessments of the Yom
Kippur War at the policy level. Preliminary lessons were identied by
a number of senior defense ocials during the annual budget process
completed in early 1974. Collectively, their tone conrmed prior
The US Air Force and the Yom Kippur War│ 31
suspicions in many areas: the lessons of Vietnam had been comple-
mented by the vicarious experience of October 1973. However, the
scale of the challenges experienced by the Israelis had been surprising,
and the US military faced signicant challenges in preparing for future
conict.
Regarding the “headline” issues of lethality and aircra survivability,
senior leaders emphasized a shifting of the balance between air
defenses and aircra that was signicant but had not been entirely
unanticipated. e potency of modern Soviet systems had increased
concern by degree rather than by direction, although targeting mobile
SAM systems was a particular challenge. In verbal testimony to the
House Armed Services Committee in February 1974, Secretary of
Defense James R. Schlesinger noted: “We have had an experience in
the Middle East that suggests certain potential deciencies in our
forces. For example, the air defense suppression problem is one that
comes to mind.”
84
Schlesinger’s written summary in the Annual
Defense Department Report for Financial Year 1975, released on 4
March 1974, linked this back to American experience in Southeast
Asia: “[One] conclusion we have drawn is that the defense suppression
capabilities of our tactical air forces must be further improved. We
learned that lesson earlier in Vietnam . . . But the intensity and eec-
tiveness displayed by the ground air defenses in the Middle East conict
impressed upon us even more compellingly the need to take still
further actions to enhance the defense- suppression capabilities of
our tactical forces.”
85
Dr. Malcolm Currie, Director of Defense Research and Engineering,
agreed, noting in his testimony to the House Armed Services
Committee: “We certainly, in our R&D program, anticipated the
defense suppression problem.”
86
However, this had only been true to
an extent; the war had pointed to an increased requirement to focus
on suppression capabilities and procedures.
87
Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Sta Admiral omas H. Moorer concluded: “the ability
to locate and destroy mobile SAMs must be modern and sophisti-
cated. . . . e Air Force is applying special management emphasis to
the accelerated development and procurement of systems to suppress
air defense.”
88
Suppression of air defenses had been anticipated as an
issue to be addressed, based in part on US experiences in Vietnam,
but the Yom Kippur War had revealed this problem to be more critical
than previously realized.
32 │The US Air Force and the Yom Kippur War
Senior policy statements highlighted the need to blend technical
and conceptual solutions to these lethality challenges. Secretary of
the Air Force McLucas highlighted the requirement for “qualitative
improvements in existing forces” in his testimony to the House
Armed Services Committee, again linking the Yom Kippur War to
Vietnam: “Combat experience—noted both in Southeast Asia and
the Middle East—has demonstrated the need for continually updating
tactical capabilities . . . and the introduction of new weapon systems
[including] improved detection and targeting, electronic warfare
[and] precision attack munitions.”
89
Dr. Currie agreed with the need
to pursue technological “xes” to the problems of the modern battle-
eld: “We are convinced of the revolutionary aspects of applying
precision guidance to conventional weapons.”
90
However, Currie also
emphatically highlighted the parallel theme of conceptual develop-
ments: “e single most important overall lesson of the war was the
reminder that training was crucial.”
91
Currie believed research and
development could enhance training opportunities and simplify the
operation of weapon systems.
92
A blend of technological and concep-
tual osets to the challenges posed by the modern battleeld was thus
emphasized as a developmental focus.
High attrition rates and consumption of materiel and ammunition
were more surprising to senior observers, although again the ocial
position emphasized the degree to which the Middle Eastern battle-
eld had consumed equipment. Dr. Currie noted the “war demon-
strated that weapon expenditure rates can be very high in the early
phases of a [conict],”
93
while Admiral Moorer concluded: “e
enormous expenditure of missiles . . . and anti-tank munitions,
together with the level of equipment attrition, demonstrates once
again the necessity of maintaining ample stocks . . . we must quickly
build up our inventory levels for all items of supply and equipment.”
94
Secretary of the Air Force McLucas agreed: “We must begin im-
mediately to build up our munitions, missile, and aircra inventories
to meet war reserve levels demonstrated by the Middle East crisis.”
95
Moore also noted the restrictions placed upon US readiness that had
resulted from providing “moderate quantities” of equipment to Israel,
reecting “the magnitude of worldwide deciencies in the level of
arms, munitions and war material maintained by the United States.”
96
ese senior views reected military analysis—the US needed to
increase equipment quantities in order to sustain its own future war
ghting capacity and its ability to resupply allies.
The US Air Force and the Yom Kippur War│ 33
Finally, policy statements emphasized the linked issue of airli
capability. Ocials noted that sucient war stocks must not only be
held in reserve—they must be deployable and made available on the
battleeld. Secretary McLucas believed both Vietnam and the Yom
Kippur War had “emphasized the great importance of maintaining
highly capable strategic airli and aerial refueling forces . . . the Mid-
East crisis reemphasized the need to… enhance our strategic airli
capacity.”
97
Dr. Currie also highlighted air mobility as an area of
importance: “I think [the war] gave us a renewed feeling of the
importance of that.”
98
Moorer summarized: “e conict once again
demonstrated that an ecient logistic system is the backbone of any
sustained combat capability . . . We must retain the capability to
respond rapidly with airli to move personnel and essential supplies
and equipment.”
99
Noting the impressive performance of the C-5 and
C-141 in October 1973, he concluded: “Increased numbers of out-
sized and oversize aircra are essential if we are to achieve the airli
capabilities necessary to support our NATO commitment.”
100
Opera-
tion Nickel Grass had been a success, but extrapolation of existing
capabilities onto a potential NATO scenario suggested that airli
would be a necessary acquisition focus.
Overall, the views of senior policymakers in the aermath of the
war were broadly aligned with those of external observers. The
vicarious experience of the war in the Middle East had augmented
the direct lessons of Vietnam. e war had suggested that weaknesses
rst exposed in Southeast Asia were more critical than had been sus-
pected, especially when transposed onto a NATO-Warsaw Pact
conict in Europe. e US military benetted from unique postwar
access to Israeli data and ocials, and identied a range of lessons
with relevance for force structures, equipment, training and doctrine.
ese lessons demanded a corresponding range of capability and
conceptual changes. e Air Force, and its “Vietnam Generation”
moved to implement the necessary wide-ranging improvements,
merging US and Israeli experiences to “x” American air power.
34 │The US Air Force and the Yom Kippur War
Notes
1. Adm T.H. Moorer, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Sta, to Secretary of Defense,
memorandum, 30 October 1973, Enclosure B. Document is now declassied.
2. Moorer to Secretary of Defense, memorandum, Enclosure B.
3. Moorer to Secretary of Defense, memorandum, Enclosure A.
4. Moorer to Secretary of Defense, memorandum, Enclosure A.
5. Joint Chiefs of Sta, United States Military Equipment Validation Team (US-
MEVTI), Trip Report to Israeli Defense Forces 28 October – 8 November 1973, 1973,
vii. Document is now declassied.
6. Moorer to Secretary of Defense, memorandum, Enclosure A.
7. Moorer to Secretary of Defense, memorandum, Enclosure A.
8. Moorer to Secretary of Defense, memorandum, Enclosure A.
9. Henry A. Kissinger, Secretary of State, memorandum of conversation, 22
October 1973. Document is now declassied.
10. USMEVTI Trip Report, i.
11. USMEVTI Trip Report, vii.
12. USMEVTI Trip Report, vii.
13. USMEVTI Trip Report, vii.
14. USMEVTI Trip Report, viii–ix.
15. House Armed Services Committee, to Secretary of the Air Force, memorandum,
29 November 1973, 2. Document is now declassied.
16. House Armed Services Committee to Secretary of the Air Force memorandum, 2,
17. John L. McLucas, to Chief of Sta US Air Force, memorandum, 30 October
1973. Document is now declassied.
18. McLucas to Chief of Sta U.S. Air Force, memorandum.
19. Lt Col C.A. Horner, Directorate of Operations, Air Sta Talking Papers, subjects:
Mid East War Data Support of USAF Programs; Inter-dependence of Air and
Ground Operations, 24 November 1974. Documents are now declassied. Horner
would go on to be Joint Force Air Component Commander during Operation Desert
Storm.
20. Message, 091840Z NOV 73, US Air Force, to Tactical Fighter Weapons
Center, 9 November 1973. Document is now declassied.
21. Message, 091840Z NOV 73.
22. Message, 091840Z NOV 73.
23. Col William H. Laseter, to Tactical Fighter Weapons Center, memorandum,
23 November 1973. Document is now declassied.
24. Gen Robert J. Dixon, Commander, Tactical Air Command, to Gen George S.
Brown, Chief of Sta, United States Air Force, letter, 12 March 1974. Document is
now declassied.
25. Dixon to Brown, letter.
26. Marshall L. Michel, “e Revolt of the Majors: How the Air Force Changed
Aer Vietnam,” PhD diss., Auburn University, 2006, 7, 186.
27. For example, route planning over the Golan Heights on 7 October exposed
Israeli Phantom formations to concentrated Syrian AAA. Mission reports emphasized
the volume and eectiveness of ground re. Shlomo Aloni, Ghosts of Atonement: Israeli
F-4 Phantom Operations During the Yom Kippur War (Atglen, PA: Schier, 2015), 45.
The US Air Force and the Yom Kippur War│ 35
28. USMEVTI Trip Report: Tab B, “Navy Team Report,” Israeli Air Force A-4
Missions and Battle Damage Survivability.
29. Henry A. Kissinger, Secretary of State, memorandum of conversation, 9 Oc-
tober 1973. Document is now declassied.
30. Tom Cooper et al, Arab MiGs Volume 5: October 1973 War: Part 1 (Houston,
TX: Harpia Publishing, 2014), 7.
31. USMEVTI Trip Report: Tab A, “Air Force Team Report,” Appendix 1.
32. USMEVTI Trip Report: Tab B, “Navy Team Report,” Appendix 1, Addendum c.
33. Martin Van Creveld, e Sword and the Olive: A Critical History of the Israeli
Defense Force (New York: Public Aairs, 1998), 233.
34. USMEVTI Trip Report: Tab A, “Air Force Team Report,” Appendix 1.
35. USMEVTI Trip Report: Tab B, “Navy Team Report,” Appendix 1, Addendum c.
36. USMEVTI Trip Report: Tab A, “Air Force team report,” 9.
37. Horner, Mid East War Data; Capt G.W. Dixon, Directorate of Operations,
Air Sta Talking Paper, subject: Israeli Electronic Countermeasures (ECM), 21
November 1973. Document is now declassied.
38. House Armed Services Committee to Secretary of the Air Force, memorandum, 7.
39. Dixon to Brown, letter, attachment, 1.
40. Department of Defense, e Eectiveness of United States Military Aid to
Israel (ISMILAID): Report by the Secretary of Defense to the Congress in Compliance
with PL 39–199 (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, December 1974), 35.
Document is now declassied.
41. Department of Defense, ISMILAID Report.
42. Department of Defense, ISMILAID Report, 36.
43. USMEVTI Trip Report: Tab A, “Air Force Team Report,” Appendix 1.
44. History, Tactical Air Command (TAC), July 1973 to July 1974, Vol 1, 92.
Document is now declassied.
45. TAC History, 93.
46. USMEVTI Trip Report: Tab A: “Air Force Team Report,” Appendix 2.
47. Lt Col W.D., Telford, Directorate of Operations, Air Sta Talking Paper, subject:
Need for War Reserve Materiel (WRM) Munitions Stockpile, 21 November 1973.
Document is now declassied.
48. Telford, Need for War Reserve Materiel.
49. Telford, Need for War Reserve Materiel.
50. TAC History 119–20; Schlesinger to Senate, 5 February 1974, Fiscal Year
1975 Authorization for Military Procurement, Research and Development, and Active
Duty, Selected Reserve, and Civilian Personnel Strengths: Hearings before the Committee
on Armed Services, United States Senate, 93rd Cong., 2nd sess., 1974, 116.
51. TAC History, v-vi.
52. Mr Bachmann, Directorate of Operations, Air Sta Talking Paper, subject:
Maverick Use in Mid-East War, 21 November 1973. Document is now declassied.
53. Department of Defense, Report of the Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger
to the Congress on the FY 1975 Defense Budget and FY 1975-1979 Defense Program,
March 4, 1974 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Oce, 1974), 152.
54. Lt Col Blake, Directorate of Operations, Air Sta Talking Paper, subject:
Walleye Mod I Success in Mid-East, 21 November 1973. Document is now declassied.
55. House Armed Services Committee to Secretary of the Air Force, memorandum, 5..
36 │The US Air Force and the Yom Kippur War
56. House Armed Services Committee to Secretary of the Air Force, memorandum, 5, 7.
57. Dixon to Brown, letter, attachment, 2.
58. USMEVTI Trip Report: Tab A, “Air Force Team Report,” 9.
59. Dixon to Brown, letter, attachment, 4, 6.
60. Horner, Mid East War Data, 2.
61. USMEVTI Trip Report: Tab B, “Navy Team Report,” Israeli Air Force ECM
Loss Validation.
62. USMEVTI Trip Report: Tab B, “Navy Team Report,” Israeli Air Force ECM.
63. Horner, Mid East War Data, 3; Dixon, Israeli Electronic Countermeasures, 1.
64. USMEVTI Trip Report: Tab B, “Navy Team Report,” Israeli Air Force A-4
Missions and Battle Damage Survivability.
65. TAC History, 152, 157.
66. Dixon, Israeli Electronic Countermeasures, 1.
67. Dixon, Israeli Electronic Countermeasures, 1.
68. Lt Col Dave Brog, quoted in Cooper et al, Arab MiGs: Vol 5 Part 1, 152.
69. Dixon to Brown, letter, attachment, 1-2; House Armed Services Committee
to Secretary of the Air Force, memorandum, 5.
70. House Armed Services Committee to Secretary of the Air Force, memorandum, 2..
71. General Evans to Senate, Hearings before the Committee on Armed Services,
1078.
72. Marshall L. Michel, “e Revolt of the Majors: How the Air Force Changed
Aer Vietnam,” PhD diss., Auburn University, 2006, 185.
73. House Armed Services Committee to Secretary of the Air Force, memorandum, 5, 7.
74. Dixon to Brown, letter, attachment, 6.
75. Dixon to Brown, letter, attachment, 5.
76. Dixon to Brown, letter, 4.
77. Horner, Interdependence, 3.
78. Maj R.H. Baxter, Directorate of Operations, Air Sta Talking Paper, subject:
Importance of Strategic Airli, 24 November 1973, 1. Document is now declassied.
79. Baxter, Importance of Strategic Airli.
80. House Armed Services Committee to Secretary of the Air Force, memorandum, 4.
81. Baxter, Importance of Strategic Airli, 2.
82. House Armed Services Committee to Secretary of the Air Force, memorandum, 4.
83. Maj R.H. Baxter, Directorate of Operations, Air Sta Talking Paper, subject:
Need for Increased Strategic Airli Capability, 24 November 1974, 1. Document is
now declassied.
84. Schlesinger to Senate, 5 February 1974, Hearings before the Committee on
Armed Services, 274.
85. Department of Defense, Report of the Secretary of Defense 1975, 142–43.
86. Currie to Senate, 26 February 1974, Hearings before the Committee on Armed
Services, 956.
87. Currie to Senate, 26 February 1974, Hearings before the Committee on Armed
Services, 956.
88. Moorer to Senate, 5 February 1974, Hearings before the Committee on Armed
Services, 272.
89. McLucas to Senate, 7 February 1974, Hearings before the Committee on
Armed Services, 318.
The US Air Force and the Yom Kippur War│ 37
90. Currie to Senate, 26 February 1974, Hearings before the Committee on Armed
Services, 809.
91. Currie to Senate, 26 February 1974, Hearings before the Committee on Armed
Services, 791.
92. Currie to Senate, 26 February 1974, Hearings before the Committee on Armed
Services, 791.
93. Currie to Senate, 26 February 1974, Hearings before the Committee on Armed
Services, 791.
94. Moorer to Senate, 5 February 1974, Hearings before the Committee on Armed
Services, 272.
95. McLucas to Senate, 7 February 1974, Hearings before the Committee on
Armed Services, 318.
96. Moorer to Senate, 5 February 1974, Hearings before the Committee on Armed
Services, 272.
97. McLucas to Senate, 7 February 1974, Hearings before the Committee on
Armed Services, 318.
98. Currie to Senate, 26 February 1974, Hearings before the Committee on Armed
Services, 956.
99. Moorer to Senate, 5 February 1974, Hearings before the Committee on Armed
Services, 272.
100. Moorer to Senate, 5 February 1974, Hearings before the Committee on
Armed Services, 272.
Chapter 3
Equipment, Training, and Tactics:
Tracing Developments rough—and To—the Yom
Kippur War
e Yom Kippur War contributed to signicant developments in
Air Force equipment, training and tactics—the means, and elements
of the ways, of air warfare. e conict was instrumental in the adoption
of an “oset strategy” that aimed to provide “qualitative advantages to
American forces to oset the quantitative advantage [of] Soviet
forces.”
1
Analysis of the war catalyzed ongoing developments in some
technical areas while creating renewed or novel emphasis in others.
An overview of post-1973 budget initiatives illustrates the broad
scope of the war’s inuence on Air Force acquisition and development
planning. A more focused consideration of two capability areas—
suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD), and stealth—highlights
the war’s diering forms of inuence. In the case of suppression capa-
bilities, long term development can be traced back through the Yom
Kippur War. For stealth technology, and specically the F-117, capability
development can be more accurately traced back to the conict.
ese technological osets were complemented by parallel conceptual
developments in training and tactics. Vietnam-era inadequacies were
addressed with added urgency as a result of the Israeli experience in
1973. e war inuenced revolutionary training reforms including
Exercise Red Flag and the establishment of realistic threat simulations.
ese training reforms interacted in turn with equipment programs that
had been catalyzed by the Yom Kippur War, ensuring that advanced
technologies were translated into true operational capabilities. e
1991 Gulf War revealed the maturity of these reforms, and showed
how eectively the Air Force translated aspiration into capability aer
1973.
Acquisition Programs and Technology
e Yom Kippur War contributed to the adoption of an “oset
strategy” by the US military during the 1970s.
2
is strategy pursued
“leap-ahead technologies to oset Soviet superiority in Europe.”
3
e
Equipment, Training, and Tactics 39
Department of Defense Annual Report for FY 1975 declared: “Our
tactical air forces not only represent a great investment of national
resources, they are also a most essential element in our national
defense strategy. We count on them to oset in part possible numerical
inferiorities in land forces as compared to potential adversaries.”
4
e breadth of areas addressed within the report revealed the
speed and extent to which the Yom Kippur War inuenced the devel-
opment of capabilities with signicant, and enduring, relevance for
US air power. e ocial TAC history for 1973/1974 observed:
“Procurement authorizations for FY 1975 generally represented a
move away from Southeast Asia constraints to an awareness of a rapidly
growing Soviet threat highlighted by its Mideast power play.”
5
In
testimony to the Senate Committee on Armed Services, Secretary of
Defense Schlesinger explained that the proposed FY 1975 budget
reected “what we regard as our lessons learned from the recent Middle
East conflict.”
6
The report identified a number of supplemental
requests for the existing 1974 budget: “e Supplemental request . . .
reects the most urgent deciencies in the condition of our forces
that were made apparent by the Middle East hostilities. With these
deciencies in mind, I have included $1,397 million to improve the
readiness of our forces, $169 million to increase our airli capability,
and $516 million to buy certain high-value weapons and equipment
which are now in short supply in our Services.”
7
ese supplemental requests included a number of items with
specific relevance for the Air Force, such as new air munitions,
improvements to “a number of USAF aircra”, and increased research
and development funding.
8
ese represented the outcome of pro-
grammatic reviews directed by Air Force Chief of Sta Gen George S.
Brown, who had asked his sta for “a priority listing of projects which
would help penetrate SAM defenses, defeat armor, and permit close
air support in a dense SAM environment.”
9
ese short-term xes
were then extended into the full budget proposal for 1975, which
reinforced or initiated key acquisition programs.
e broad scope of these programs indicated the extent of the Yom
Kippur War’s inuence. e FY 1975 budget emphasized tactical air-
cra that were already in development, notably the F-15 and A-10,
preempting TAC’s later conclusion that the war had supported the
requirements for these modern platforms.
10
is in turn corroborated
Operations Directorate summaries that related the appropriateness
of existing Air Force programs to the lessons identied from October
40 │Equipment, Training, and Tactics
1973.
11
e A-10 in particular oered characteristics that promised to
address some of the requirements identied aer the war—rugged
survivability, maneuverability, and the ability to destroy enemy
armor in the close air support mission—as the Air Force contem-
plated an enforced “yo” with the older A-7.
12
e F-15 and the
A-10 predated the Yom Kippur War, but the suitability of these programs
against future requirements was reinforced by Israeli experience.”
New tactical aircra would require enhanced command and control
capabilities. e budget report stated: “Defense planners have been
convinced for some time that future demands on our surveillance,
warning and control capabilities in support of tactical air operations,
particularly in the context of a European conict, will be quite severe.
is conviction was reinforced by the complexities of the surveil-
lance, warning and control function in both the Southeast Asia and
the Middle East conicts.”
13
As a result, the E-3 AWACS program was
scheduled to transition from development to procurement in FY
1975, with $770 million allocated for the purchase of the rst 12 air-
frames.
14
As with the F-15 and the A-10, the relevance of the AWACS
program was conrmed by the perceived lessons of the Yom Kippur
War.
e high attrition rates observed in October 1973 reinforced the
need to focus on both weapon system quality and quantity. In terms
of qualitative developments, the Air Force drew a number of preci-
sion capabilities together within the Pave Strike program. is in-
cluded enhancements to weapon guidance capabilities including a
laser-guided variant of the Maverick; suppression capabilities
including the EF-111 aircra; and other improvements to precision
and stand-o attack capabilities.
15
e Yom Kippur War catalyzed
this collection of programs, and emphasis would now be “given to an
expeditious development leading to an early [Initial Operating
Capability].”
16
Regarding issues of platform and weapons quantity,
the 1975 budget report noted a damaging trend for increasing com-
plexity and cost that resulted in decreased overall numbers: “quantity
as well as sophistication is essential if our general purpose air forces
are to be able to perform successfully their assigned missions. No
matter how eective a particular tactical aircra may be, a certain
minimum number is needed to cover a battleeld, a front or a combat
theater . . . we stand in danger of falling below that minimum quanti-
tative level if present trends are allowed to continue unabated.”
17
Equipment, Training, and Tactics 41
is observation supported the existing concept of a “high/low”
force mix and validated the emerging Lightweight Fighter program
that resulted in the F-16.
18
It also drove decisions to procure greater
numbers of munitions; as an example, $88 million allocated to the
purchase of an additional 6,000 Maverick missiles in FY 1975.
19
e budget report also identied air transport as a key investment
area, drawing on the direct American experience of Operation Nickel
Grass. Schlesinger observed that a “fundamental examination of our
airli capabilities . . . is necessary.”
20
Further: “e crucial importance
of immediately available strategic airli forces of substantial capacity
was once again convincingly demonstrated during the recent Middle
East conict . . . a major expansion of our strategic airli capacity
deserves a very high priority in the allocation of resources among our
general purpose forces programs.”
21
e proposed budget therefore allocated funding to a variety of
airli programs, including airframe modications, additional C-130
purchase, and—in a direct correlation of Operations Directorate
analysis—an extension of air refueling capabilities across air trans-
port eets to minimize dependence on intermediate air basing.
22
These acquisition initiatives supporting the airlift mission again
indicated how the Yom Kippur War validated or inspired a range of
programs that shaped future Air Force capabilities.
Finally, aircra survivability and defense suppression received
“special” attention in the FY 1975 budget report, which emphasized
measures including improved “radar warning equipment, tactical
electronic warfare support forces, and a greater number and variety
of improved defense-suppression weapons and devices.”
23
e report
made a supplemental request for the immediate provision of $31
million to procure an Advanced Location Strike System (ALSS) that
would detect threat emissions and enable guided weapon employ-
ment against SAM radar sites.
24
e report also requested additional
cha dispensers and radar warning receivers, to be retrotted to
existing aircra including the F-4 and F-111.
25
e report identied
supplemental funding for 800 additional Shrike missiles, plus $4
million for development of the next-generation High Speed Anti-
Radiation Missile (HARM).
26
e largest supplemental request was
$75 million for “new [jamming] pods and modication of existing
pods to improve the capability of our tactical aircra to cope with the
Soviet tactical air defense threat.”
27
e full FY 1975 budget devel-
oped these defensive programs, allocating an additional $18 million
42 │Equipment, Training, and Tactics
to HARM and $25 million to the development of a Precision Emitter
Location and Strike System that would enhance or replace ALSS.
28
ese budget requests clearly showed that the Yom Kippur War had
created a sense of urgency in improving countermeasure and sup-
pression capabilities.
is sense of urgency was undermined to some extent by eco-
nomic factors. e geopolitical impact of the Yom Kippur War acted
as a paradoxical braking inuence on the wide-ranging capability
changes it inspired. e oil shock of late 1973 and its economic legacy
applied pressure to defense spending throughout the remainder of
the decade. e FY 1975 budget report already recorded an increase
in fuel prices of 123 percent—amounting to an additional $1.7 billion
of forecast expenditure—in response to the “oil shock” that followed
October 1973.
29
e Air Force would endure a period of “hollowing”
before many technical programs entered service.
30
However, the plat-
forms and weapons that were inspired or catalyzed by the Yom Kippur
War did mature, and interacted in turn with parallel training reforms
that turned technological solutions into true capabilities.
e Yom Kippur War and SEAD
An expanded analysis of the Yom Kippur War’s impact on SEAD
capabilities provides an example of the conict’s inuence upon longer
term developmental trends. e evolution of the defense suppression
mission can be traced back through the Yom Kippur War. e inu-
ence of the war in this area was catalytic, rather than initiating. US
Air Force analysis of Israeli experiences added impetus to earlier
developments and accelerated the maturation of linked capabilities
and concepts.
e suppression of enemy air defenses existed as an air power con-
cept, but was not tightly dened, prior to the Yom Kippur War. e
US Air Force had attacked anti-aircra artillery sites during the Second
World War and in Korea, and the “birth” of SAM-focused suppres-
sion occurred during Vietnam.
31
e introduction of the SA-2 into
North Vietnam led to the creation of an Air Force working group in
August 1965 that focused specically on the theater SAM threat.
32
Over three weeks, the task force considered hundreds of proposals
from military, industry and scientic sources, and produced four key
recommendations: e modication of a small number of ghter
Equipment, Training, and Tactics 43
aircra with electronic locating systems that would enable them to
nd active SAM sites for attack by other aircra; the development of
an anti-radiation missile; the development of self-protection jamming
equipment that could be carried on ghter aircra; and the procure-
ment of radar homing and warning (RHAW) receivers for installation
into ghter aircra operating in theater.
33
e speed of reactive innovation was impressive. e Air Force
rapidly created a “Wild Weasel” program with modied F-100 air-
cra and achieved a rst conrmed SA-2 kill on 22 December 1965.
34
By the end of the Rolling under campaign in 1968, the Air Force
had invested in all of the 1965 working group’s recommendations and
employed early generation RHAW equipment, emitter location systems,
self-protection jammers and anti-radiation missiles. By the end of the
war, North Vietnamese SA-2 effectiveness had been degraded,
requiring 100 missile rings to destroy one US aircra against an
early war rate of only 20 rings per kill.
35
e “building blocks” of
later SEAD were thus already established prior to October 1973—
indeed, American ECM equipment and Shrike missiles were supplied
to Israeli forces during the Yom Kippur War.
However, the Air Force never attempted a dedicated suppression
campaign in Vietnam, and SEAD as a formalized concept—with an
emphasis on coordinated degradation of an enemy defensive system
rather than discrete attacks on individual air defense sites—matured
only aer the Yom Kippur War.
36
In a study of SEAD developments
completed at the Airpower Research Institute, US Air Force Lt Col
James R. Brungess summarized that, over time, “SEAD grew from
necessary informal structure to institutional status.”
37
In Brungess’s
view, suppression activities in Vietnam had been “piecemeal” through-
out, with “defenses around the immediate target area . . . attacked as a
function of the target, not as an element of the enemy’s overall air de-
fense structure” (emphasis in original.)
38
As a result, while US aircra
were increasingly able to suppress or destroy individual missile sites,
other aspects of the air defense network—notably ground control
radars and communications—were ignored. e US Air Force nally
launched an “all out attack on the North Vietnamese air defenses”
only in response to B-52 losses during Linebacker II.
39
is belated
awareness of the need to attack enemy air defenses as a coherent system,
rather than as individual weapons, was quickly reinforced by the
spectacle of heavy lsraeli losses to integrated Egyptian and Syrian systems
in October 1973. Building upon existing but immature concepts of
44 │Equipment, Training, and Tactics
defense suppression, the lessons of the Yom Kippur War produced a
signicant uptick in the developmental vector of SEAD capabilities
for the US Air Force.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Sta Admiral Moorer summarized
the heightened relevance of SEAD aer the Yom Kippur War in
February 1974:
e classic doctrine that the priority of employment of air assets must be
given to gaining and maintaining air superiority over the battleeld had been
proven once again. Today, gaining air superiority includes defeating enemy
SAMs in detail. . . .e surface-to-air arsenal provided to the Arabs included . . .
missile systems . . . guns . . . re control radar . . . plus smaller crew-served
weapons. . . . Supporting these weapons systems was a surveillance radar sys-
tem providing complete overlapping coverage at altitudes. . . . In order to
achieve air superiority in the face of such defenses, it is necessary to avoid,
suppress, or destroy such systems. ECM and the ability to locate and destroy
mobile SAMs must be modern and sophisticated. Stando weapons can play
a major role in this eort.
40
Moorer’s narrative captured many of the elements of modern
SEAD: the requirement to obtain control of the air as a prerequisite
for other air and ground operations; recognition that adversary sys-
tems were integrated and overlapping, representing an Integrated Air
Defense System, or IADS, in modern terms; and the need to employ
a mix of electronic and kinetic means to locate, avoid, suppress or
destroy enemy systems. Moorer’s use of the phrase “defeating enemy
SAMs in detail” was instructive, suggesting later concepts of rolling
back enemy defenses and revealing an appreciation that the threat
had crossed a lethality threshold beyond that experienced in Vietnam.
Moorer’s summary revealed the extent to which defense suppression
grabbed the Air Force’s attention in the immediate aermath of the
Yom Kippur War, adding urgency to concepts that had been rst
understood in Vietnam.
Increased organizational emphasis was evident in the prevalence
of SEAD-related terminology in ocial reports aer 1973. e 1975
budget report contained 13 references to “suppression.” ere were
15 references to “suppression” in the subsequent 1976-77 budget
report and, extending the sample into the next decade, nine uses of
the term in the 1983 report.
In comparison, there had been no uses of
the term in the equivalent FY 1974 report; only a single use in the
1973 summary; and no references in 1971.
ese earlier reports had
discussed Soviet air defenses only briey, focusing on low-level
Equipment, Training, and Tactics 45
strategic bomber ingress and making only incidental references to
suppression technologies such as air-to-surface missiles and elec-
tronic warfare. Even though suppression activities had been under-
taken in Vietnam, the SEAD mission was evidently seen as secondary
prior to the Yom Kippur War and had not attracted headline status in
high-level Defense Department expenditure debates. Changes in pre-
vailing terminology have proven enduring. Current Air Force strategy
declares, in language that might come directly from the 1975 budget
summary: “We cannot allow the ever-increasing potential of enemy
air defenses to diminish our oensive capabilities. Our penetrating
weapon systems must have high probability of success.”
41
e war
made suppression of enemy defenses an established part of the defense
task, and an emphasized component of budget allocation processes.
e uptick engendered in the developmental vector of Air Force
SEAD capabilities was further accelerated by another Israeli experi-
ence—this time successful—against Syrian defenses in the Lebanese
Bekaa Valley in 1982. A dedicated Israeli SEAD force, employing
electronic and physical attack and supported by long-range ground
res, rendered the Syrian air defense system impotent before a fol-
lowing wave of strike aircra destroyed the paralyzed SAM batteries
without loss.
42
e Israelis had coordinated ghters, command and
control aircra, electronic warfare platforms, strike aircra, UAVs,
and ground support. e Israeli commander, Gen David Ivri, described
the operation, Arzav, as “a concert, rather than dozens of solos.”
43
e
US Air Force once again sent a fact-finding mission to Israel to
capture relevant lessons.
44
Assessing the development of American
air power between Vietnam and Desert Storm, Benjamin Lambeth
asserted “the results of the Bekaa Valley shootout oered grounds for
guarded Air Force . . . assurance that their investments . . . over the
previous decade had been vindicated.”
45
If Vietnam had birthed the
tactical SAM threat, and the Yom Kippur War revealed that Soviet-
made defenses had come of age, then the 1982 Bekaa Valley battle
showed that the necessary countering capabilities had also reached
maturity. For the US Air Force, the developmental vector was rmly
set.
e Air Force built a SEAD force around a triad of electronic combat
and defense suppression platforms—the F-4G, EF-111, and EC-130H
—and by the late 1980s had made the “transition from single-system
to holistic analysis of the SEAD threat”, viewing the SEAD task with
reference to an integrated enemy system rather than maintaining the
46 │Equipment, Training, and Tactics
Vietnam-era “function of the target” approach.
46
SEAD was estab-
lished as a specic Air Force focus; the 1984 version of Air Force
aerospace doctrine, Air Force Manual 1-1, identified SEAD as a
subset of the Oensive Counter Air mission, dened as: “Aerospace
operations which neutralize, destroy or temporarily degrade enemy
air defense systems in a specic area by physical and/or electronic
attack.”
47
A 1985 publication, e Tactical Air Force Guide for Inte-
grated Electronic Combat, identied SEAD as an integrating concept
that would meld weapons systems from across the Air Force and the
other services.
48
e Air Force-Navy attack against Libya in April
1986 showed that suppression capabilities were developing, but true
maturity was revealed in January 1991.
49
Operation Desert Storm
opened with a comprehensive SEAD campaign, with specialized sup-
pression aircra supported by non-specialist aircra attacking air
defense-related targets. e US Army supported the Air Force with
attack helicopter and surface-to-surface missile strikes.
50
US Navy
Tomahawks and aircra, Marine Corps aviation, and Coalition aircra
rounded out a sustained SEAD campaign. US suppression capabilities,
initiated in Vietnam and then accelerated by Israeli experiences, had
come of age. e form and scale of the integrated suppression campaign
during Operation Desert Storm went far beyond earlier American air
operations, even if the principles themselves were not truly new.
51
e Yom Kippur War was thus a signicant milestone in the devel-
opment of Air Force SEAD capabilities over time. Vietnam, the Yom
Kippur War in 1973, the Bekaa Valley in 1982, and Desert Storm in
1991 represented striking wayposts in the development of SEAD in
the surface-to-air missile age. Direct US experiences at either end of
this developmental process were augmented by the vicarious experi-
ences of the Israeli Air Force. is was indicative of a broader trend
of American-Israeli parallelism, and this theme is explored in the
concluding chapter of this study; specically in terms of SEAD capa-
bilities, however, the Yom Kippur War was a very signicant event
through which the development of American SEAD capabilities can
be traced.
e Origins of the F-117
e closely linked issue of platform survivability also received
prominent attention after the Yom Kippur War. As with SEAD,
Equipment, Training, and Tactics 47
capabilities such as radar warning receivers and cha predated the
conict, with some again extending as far back as the Second World
War. In many cases these capabilities can therefore again be traced
back through the Yom Kippur War. However, in one notable case—
stealth technology—developments prior to 1973 had been extremely
limited, and it was the lethality observed over the Sinai and the Golan
that specically animated the development of the rst US stealth air-
cra. e F-117 therefore represents an example of a capability that
can be justiably traced back to the Yom Kippur War for an explana-
tion of its genesis.
e concept of reducing an aircra’s radar cross section (RCS)
predated the 1973 conict - Germany had experimented with stealth
during the Second World War - but attempts to create low observable
platforms had achieved very limited success.
52
e SR-71 was the sole
US military example of a manned aircra that employed some stealthy
characteristics, but these were compromised by the aerodynamic
requirements of high altitude, high speed ight.
53
American experi-
ence in Vietnam had resulted in a 1971 Air Force recommendation to
develop a very low RCS test vehicle.
54
However, this project was not
pursued, with funding prioritized for alternative non-stealth projects.
55
Low RCS projects only gained traction aer the Yom Kippur War,
when survivability become a critical focus. The Department of
Defense and its research organizations directed a number of work-
shops and studies in response to the challenges perceived in October
1973. A Scientic Advisory Board met with TAC personnel at Langley
AFB in November 1973 to discuss aircra survivability issues.
56
A
later Defense Science Board study, completed during the summer of
1974, extrapolated the results of the Arab-Israeli conict onto a Euro-
pean scenario, and concluded that US and NATO air forces would be
decimated in a general war in as little as two weeks.
57
Following this
study, Director of Defense Research and Engineering Dr. Malcolm
Currie instructed the pursuit of “radical new ideas” that might over-
come the air defense problem.
58
DARPA, sponsored by the Air Force,
proposed a “high stealth aircra” that, for many observers, represented
“a silver bullet . . . that could blow a hole through [Soviet] defenses.”
59
e key novelty was a focus on radar signature reduction as a passive
defense, quite dierent from prevailing opinions that RCS reduction
could only ever be partially eective and would be necessarily com-
plemented by electronic countermeasures.
60
DARPA requested low
RCS feasibility studies from ve aerospace companies—Northrop,
48 │Equipment, Training, and Tactics
McDonnell Douglas, General Dynamics, Fairchild and Grumman.
61
Ultimately, however, it was Lockheed—with experience in Skunk-
works programs including the A-12 precursor to the SR-71—that
developed a concept air platform, “Have Blue”, and then the F-117
itself, which was allocated the codename “Senior Trend.”
62
e F-117
achieved Initial Operating Capability in 1983 before achieving its rst
operational employment during Operation Just Cause in Panama in
1989. Most famously, the F-117 penetrated heavy defenses, without
loss, to attack targets in Baghdad in January 1991.
63
Stealth gave the
aircra “built in” air superiority, and a threat environment of the type
perceived in October 1973 was thus tamed by an aircra that had
been developed as a direct outcome of American analysis of the Arab-
Israeli war.
64
Stealth technology has since broadened in its applica-
tion, and the low-RCS F-22 and F-35 perhaps most clearly fulll the
intention to develop tactical aircra that could survive where Israeli
Phantoms and Skyhawks had perished. e tangible genesis of this
family of capabilities, originating with the F-117, can be traced back
to requirements that emerged from the Yom Kippur War.
Training Reforms and Tactical Development
Improvements in technical capabilities were matched by parallel
improvements in training. is process of reform was a key conceptual
oset that enabled the exploitation of new technology that “in and of
itself, could not guarantee air combat success.”
65
US Air Force
training had been identied as inadequate during the Vietnam War.
is observation was reinforced by Israeli experience during October
1973 that showed the value of effective preconflict training. By
reconguring training programs to incorporate modern threats and
complex tactical challenges, the US Air Force blended the lessons of
Vietnam and the Yom Kippur War, and honed the ghting instru-
ment that proved itself in combat in the Persian Gulf in January 1991.
e US Air Force had observed the inadequacies of its training
programs and processes during the Vietnam War. Aircrew deploying
to Southeast Asia completed training programs that delivered “a poor
learning experience that did not adequately prepare them for the
rigors of war.”
66
Partly due to the dominance of SAC and the strategic/
nuclear mission prior to Vietnam, “training programs for ghter pilots
did not emphasize maneuvering to avoid surface-to-air missiles or
Equipment, Training, and Tactics 49
how to properly dogght against enemy aircra.”
67
Air Force training
did not expose pilots to dissimilar opponents, preferring instead simple
scenarios in which one aircra conducted basic maneuvering against
another of the same type.
68
Moreover, the universally assignable pilot
program, in which tanker and airli pilots were transferred to ghter
duties via short and simplistic courses at replacement training units,
diluted the quality of combat aircrews.
69
e disconnect between
training and combat operations was exemplied by the fact that
F-105 pilots deploying to Vietnam had to prove themselves combat
ready by demonstrating prociency in irrelevant nuclear weapon de-
livery proles.
70
e result was a tactical force of mixed ability pilots who had
received too little training, especially in the high-end scenarios they
would experience in combat.
71
Newly deployed aircrews therefore
survived or perished based on their ability to adapt and improvise
during their rst operational sorties.
72
e Air Force recognized these
problems and conducted detailed studies, such as the Red Baron
series of air-to-air engagement analyses, but change occurred slowly.
73
Senior ocers resisted the idea that training was inadequate, empha-
sizing low relative loss rates compared to earlier conicts and down-
playing air-to-air exchange ratios, despite the growing disquiet of pilots
such as Chuck Horner who returned from Vietnam to ll training
and then sta appointments.
74
While the US Navy established its
“Top Gun” Fighter Weapons School in 1969, the US Air Force only
started to seriously prepare revisions to its tactical training processes
aer a Fighter Weapons Symposium convened at Nellis AFB in 1972,
and fundamental changes had not been implemented by the war’s
end.
75
e rst Aggressor squadron, ying agile F-5 aircra to simu-
late Soviet MiGs, was not operational until June 1973.
76
Exercise Red
Flag, in many respects the heart of revised training as it developed
aer Vietnam, was rst completed in November 1975.
77
Air Force
training was patently not t for purpose during the Vietnam War, and
improvements were nascent at best by the time US combat forces
were withdrawn from Southeast Asia in 1973.
e Yom Kippur War therefore occurred during a period of im-
minent, but as-yet unrealized, change. Would-be reformers had “lots
of velocity, but no vector” aer Vietnam; Israeli experience provided
the missing vector, and injected vicarious support into proposed
training reforms.
78
For example, the TAC history for 1973-1974 noted
that the expansion of dissimilar air combat training and the Aggressor
50 │Equipment, Training, and Tactics
squadron concept was “reinforced by lessons learned in SEA [South-
east Asia] and in the Middle-East conict.”
79
Moreover, the nature of
the Yom Kippur War, in which Israeli losses had been primarily
caused by ground-based threats rather than enemy ghters, and air
support to ground forces had been critical, extended the focus of
reformers from air-to-air combat to complex threat evasion and
targeting challenges. General Dixon, who oversaw the creation of
Exercise Red Flag, noted aer the visit of Israeli General Peled in
March 1974: “Our air-to-air training needs to be made more realistic
and more so our air-to-ground training.”
80
In the same month, TAC
directed the Tactical Fighter Weapons Center to prepare realistic
continuation training packages, ‘based on Israeli experience in the
October War, to introduce realism into air-to-ground training.”
81
Dixon later stated the Yom Kippur War had been a key inuence on
his reshaping of TAC’s training programs.
82
e ocer considered to be the “father” of Red Flag at the tactical
level, Maj Richard “Moody” Suter, transferred from the Fighter
Weapons School at Nellis to the Operations Directorate in the Penta-
gon just aer the Yom Kippur War.
83
Suter, who had already begun to
design a centerpiece exercise for Air Force tactical training, was
further energized in a working environment dominated by the impli-
cations of the Arab-Israeli conict.
84
His discussions as part of a
cohort nicknamed the “Iron Majors”—also including John Corder,
who had helped to form the Aggressor program, and Chuck Horner,
who composed several of the talking papers that the Pentagon pro-
duced in response to the Yom Kippur War—matured the Red Flag
concept that Suter would later propose to General Dixon.
85
e Air
Force’s “Vietnam Generation” did not, therefore, base their training
reforms purely on the Vietnam experience. In a process that paralleled
the dynamics of acquisition change, the Yom Kippur War reinforced
training reforms that had conceptual origins prior to 1973.
The Israeli experience also contributed to American training
reform through direct bilateral interactions. Israeli Air Force personnel
undertook a training-focused visit to the US in May 1974 with the
intention of critiquing TAC’s F-4 training programs.
86
e ocial
TAC history of the visit noted the Israeli Air Force “trained realisti-
cally using combat tactics and navigational problems, and low-level
target bombardment.”
87
TAC, by inference, did none of this, and
noted the need to “improve performance in this area.”
88
e resulting
Israeli visit report was scathing, and especially critical of an American
Equipment, Training, and Tactics 51
focus on ight safety that compromised operational competence.
89
By
providing an external view of US training, the visiting Israelis used
their own training and combat experience to provide a hard, albeit
positively intentioned, critique of American practices.
In addition, the Israelis provided access to information and materiel
that helped the US Air Force to more accurately train against enemy
threat systems. Various reports indicated the Israelis transferred cap-
tured Soviet equipment to the US, and the Air Force subsequently
incorporated this materiel into its training reforms. e Israelis had
already transferred Arab MiG-17 and MiG-21 aircra to the US in
the 1960s, subsequently own by American pilots under the code-
names Have Drill and Have Donut.
90
US aircrews trained in simu-
lated combat against these aircra under the Constant Peg program
through the 1970s and 1980s.
91
Following the Yom Kippur War, the
Israelis provided the US Air Force with further access to captured
Soviet radar and missile equipment, including components of the
SA-6 system, providing a “huge windfall” for TAC as it revised its
training processes.
92
e transfer was overseen by John Corder in his
role within the Operations Directorate, further cementing the inu-
ence of the Yom Kippur War on the eld grade ocers who were
pushing for training innovation from the tactical level.
93
is Soviet/
Arab equipment was used in several ways. e Air Force created a
hands on reat Training Facility—later known as the Petting Zoo—
at Nellis AFB in which US personnel could increase their familiarity
with the appearance and characteristics of these enemy systems.
94
In
terms of tactical training, possession of this equipment allowed the
use of real Soviet radars, or the derivation of emulation systems, to
provide aircrew with realistic threats during training missions.
95
Later
developments of the training program at Nellis resulted in Exercise
Green Flag, an electronic warfare and suppression variation of the
original Red Flag program that maximized the use of electronic range
assets.
96
Access to captured Soviet equipment aer October 1973
contributed greatly to the realism and, therefore, the value of the
exercises conducted at Nellis, improving the complexity of TAC’s
advanced training programs and better preparing US aircrews for
combat.
ese enhanced training programs allowed the development of
tactics that were in turn analyzed and revised by aircrews and leaders
as their competence increased. As an example, the attrition experi-
enced during the rst days of the Yom Kippur War had led the Israelis
52 │Equipment, Training, and Tactics
to adopt low level tactics in order to defeat radar SAM systems with
terrain masking and by minimizing tracking times.
97
e results were
ambiguous; losses to radar-guided SAMs reduced, but the threat
from AAA and man-portable missiles such as the SA-7 increased at
low level. e Israelis, however, emphasized this “go low” approach as
a tactical solution to the air defense problem, and the US Air Force
followed the Israeli lead.
98
Heeding Israeli criticism that TAC was
excessively risk averse, and content that the “go low” approach was an
appropriate counter to the SAM threat, General Dixon introduced
low-altitude tactics into Exercise Red Flag despite the increased risk
of accidents in complex training scenarios.
99
As a result, the US Air
Force proceeded to train pilots to y and ght at altitudes as low as
100 feet.
100
Training losses were, however, indeed high; during the
rst four years of Red Flag, 24 aircra were lost on the Nellis ranges,
many due to collision with the ground, and this represented more
than three times the loss rate that TAC suered in general training
ights.
101
By the mid-1980s, the “go low” mindset had been changed due to
a changed appreciation of the ground defense problem and the matur-
ing of alternative, technology-based solutions. Gen Wilbur “Bill”
Creech, commander of TAC from 1978, observed that avoiding,
rather than destroying, SAMs meant that pilots would, in combat,
face the same threats and risks during each mission in an extended
campaign.
102
Moreover, ducking under radar SAMs exposed crews to
the AAA and man-portable threats that had inicted so many losses
on the Israelis in 1973. High rates of simulated attrition on the Nellis
range supported these conclusions: “Red Flag pilots complained that
the primary lesson they were learning was that combat was not sur-
vivable. For Creech, the tactical approach was simply wrong: We were
using tactics that weren’t going to work. . . . We’re now going to make
defense roll back . . . our rst order of business. . . . We need to get up
out of the weeds as soon as possible to avoid the anti-aircra artil-
lery, a far more formidable threat.”
103
e US Air Force subsequently reverted to a medium altitude
emphasis, with only some force elements maintaining a preference
for low level navigation and attack. is reduced training losses and
also promised to minimize combat attrition to AAA, man-portable
SAMs and controlled ight into terrain. is revision of tactical
emphasis was enabled by the maturity of the technical capabilities
that had been catalyzed by the Yom Kippur War. ese allowed the
Equipment, Training, and Tactics 53
Air Force to “evolve toward a high technology system, based on real-
time command and control, sophisticated defense suppression, and
precision-guided munitions.”
104
e ecacy of this approach was
demonstrated in practice in 1991.
105
During Desert Storm, the US Air
Force lost only 13 ghters in a 43-day air campaign, having quickly
abandoned low level attacks in the face of Iraqi defenses. General
Creech later compared this loss rate to that of the British Royal Air
Force—whose Tornado force remained wedded to a “go low” mental-
ity—concluding: “had the [US] Air Force had the same loss rate as
the [British], we would have lost 160 ghters, not 13.”
106
e Yom
Kippur War had thus encouraged US training and tactics to rst
move in one direction, toward low altitude tactics; but, as technologies
that had themselves been inspired by Israeli experience matured, the
US had developed improved techniques to overcome the SAM problem
at lower risk to American aircrew. Technological and conceptual
developments had interacted in an iterative, mutually reinforcing
manner.
Capability Realization: e Gulf War
Finally, it is instructive to compare briey the developmental vectors
established immediately aer the Yom Kippur War—representing the
Air Force’s articulation of what it needed to do—with the post-1991
analysis of the Gulf War Air Power Survey (GWAPS) that reected
what, by the early 1990s, had been done. Dr. Malcolm Currie, Direc-
tor of Defense Research and Engineering, stated in testimony to the
Senate in 1974 that the lessons of the Yom Kippur War “reinforced
and expanded our initiatives in the areas of command and control,
precision weapon delivery, air mobility, defense suppression and air
defense.”
107
e authors of the later GWAPS noted that during Desert
Storm: e United States provided all or almost all of the Coalition’s
command and control systems, electronic warfare aircra, heavy
bombers, cruise missiles, and stealth capabilities. . . . Some [capabili-
ties] were based on quality (for example, stealth), others on a quantity
so great that it brought a quality all of its own (for instance, aerial
refueling and airli).
108
Performance in specic capability categories, each of which had
been inuenced by the Yom Kippur War, supported these GWAPS
conclusions. Airli underpinned success in Desert Storm. At its peak,
54 │Equipment, Training, and Tactics
Coalition airli ew approximately four times the combined ton-
nage/mileage that had been achieved in Operation Nickel Grass.
109
Tactically, the Air Force’s focus on precision munition development
yielded capabilities far beyond the other American services and
Coalition allies. Air Force attack aircra dropped 8,546 guided
bombs, 90 percent of the US total, during Desert Storm, and also
red 96 percent (5,255) of the guided missiles—mainly Maverick—
that were expended.
110
While the bulk of munitions employed in 1991
were unguided “iron bombs”, with LGBs amounting to less than 5
percent of the ordnance dropped, these precision weapons allowed
the successful attack of key targets and provided elements of risk-
minimizing stando, exactly the requirements that had been inferred
from the Israeli experience in October 1973.
111
e Air Force contri-
bution to air-to-air combat was no less spectacular: the E-3 AWACS,
of which the Air Force provided eleven, enabled beyond visual range
(BVR) engagements that accounted for more than 40 percent of the
Coalition’s air-to-air kills, the rst time in history that such a high
percentage of kills had been achieved in BVR engagements.
112
Air
Force pilots claimed the majority of the 38 Iraqi aircra that were
shot down.
113
Lessons derived from the attrition and expenditure statistics of
October 1973 also paid o, as the available quantity of aircra and
materiel contributed to success in the Persian Gulf. A combination of
prepositioning and in-conict resupply meant that the Air Force was
able to transfer roughly two-thirds of its LGB and Maverick stocks to
theater, of which approximately one-half were expended.
114
In contrast
to the Israeli experience during the Yom Kippur War and mid-1970s
forecasts of a European conict, this ensured plentiful stocks both
within the active theater of operations and back in the Continental
US. e quantity issue was not perfectly resolved—the Air Force
deployed more than 90 percent of its air refueling and LGB-capable
assets to the Gulf, lacking redundancy in these areas—but overall “the
air campaign was never constrained by a lack of fuel, parts, [munitions]
or maintenance capability, truly a remarkable accomplishment.”
115
Overall, the developmental vectors established immediately aer
the Yom Kippur War underpinned American success in 1991. e
Gulf War demonstrated the maturity of the oset strategy that had
been pursued aer 1973; moreover, this strategy was enduring. Echoing
the primary themes of its 1975 predecessor, the 1992 Department of
Defense Annual Budget Report, published soon aer Desert Storm,
Equipment, Training, and Tactics 55
concluded that “capable and survivable tactical air forces with sus-
tainable global reach” would continue to be “key to this nation’s success
in meeting future challenges.”
116
If the Gulf War did indeed represent
a Revolution in Military Aairs, this was due in no small part to the
inuence of the Yom Kippur War.
e Yom Kippur War had a signicant catalyzing eect on the
development of US Air Force capabilities. A variety of aircra and
weapons systems can be traced back through—or, as with the F-117,
to—the lessons of October 1973. Advanced technology was, however,
of little use if employed incorrectly, a lesson that the US Air Force had
learned in Vietnam. e vicarious experience of the Yom Kippur War
therefore encouraged parallel conceptual improvements, promoting
realistic training regimes that yielded improved tactics, and these
interacted in turn with advanced technical programs. e Air Force
thus reshaped itself to achieve unparalleled results when faced with a
simulacrum of the earlier Israeli conict in 1991, and it achieved this
reshaping in a relatively short time. Fewer years elapsed between the
Yom Kippur War and Operation Desert Storm—a little more than 17
—than between Desert Storm and the bombing of Libya in 2011. e
Air Force weaved observations from Israeli experience into analysis
of its own shortcomings and failures in Vietnam, and pursued revo-
lutionary improvements in technology, training and tactics that
remain relevant today.
56 │Equipment, Training, and Tactics
Notes
1. Keith L. Shimko, e Iraq Wars and America’s Military Revolution (New York,
NY: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 36; Robert R. Tomes, U.S. Defense Strategy
from Vietnam to Operation Iraqi Freedom: Military Innovation and the New
American Way of War, 1973-2003 (Abington, Oxon: Routledge, 2007), 66.
2. Tomes, US Defense Strategy, 58.
3. Tomes, US Defense Strategy, 65.
4. Department of Defense, Report of the Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger
to the Congress on the FY 1975 Defense Budget and FY 1975-1979 Defense Program,
March 4, 1974 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Oce, 1974), 112.
5. History, Tactical Air Command (TAC), July 1973 to July 1974, Vol 1, 121.
Document is now declassied.
6. Schlesinger to Senate, 5 February 1974, Fiscal Year 1975 Authorization for
Military Procurement, Research and Development, and Active Duty, Selected Reserve,
and Civilian Personnel Strengths: Hearings before the Committee on Armed Services,
United States Senate. 93rd Cong., 2nd sess., 1974, 6.
7. Department of Defense, Report of the Secretary of Defense 1975, 17.
8. Department of Defense, Report of the Secretary of Defense 1975, 18.
9. TAC History, 121.
10. Department of Defense, Report of the Secretary of Defense 1975, 150–52;
TAC History, 190.
11. Lt Col C.A. Horner, Directorate of Operations, Air Sta Talking Paper,
subject: Mid East War Data Support of USAF Programs, 24 November 1973.
Document is now declassied.
12. TAC History, 152, 157.
13. Department of Defense, Report of the Secretary of Defense 1975, 152.
14. Department of Defense, Report of the Secretary of Defense 1975, 146.
15. Currie to Senate, 26 February 1974, Hearings before the Committee on Armed
Services, 810.
16. Currie to Senate, 26 February 1974, Hearings before the Committee on Armed
Services, 810.
17. Department of Defense, Report of the Secretary of Defense 1975, 142–43.
18. Department of Defense, Report of the Secretary of Defense 1975, 145, 151.
19. Department of Defense, Report of the Secretary of Defense 1975, 152.
20. Department of Defense, Report of the Secretary of Defense 1975, 18.
21. Department of Defense, Report of the Secretary of Defense 1975, 157, 158.
22. Department of Defense, Report of the Secretary of Defense 1975, 159–61.
23. Department of Defense, Report of the Secretary of Defense 1975, 112–13.
24. Department of Defense, Report of the Secretary of Defense 1975, 154.
25. Department of Defense, Report of the Secretary of Defense 1975, 154–55.
26. Department of Defense, Report of the Secretary of Defense 1975, 155.
27. Department of Defense, Report of the Secretary of Defense 1975, 54.
28. Department of Defense, Report of the Secretary of Defense 1975, 155.
29. Department of Defense, Report of the Secretary of Defense 1975, 19.
30. Stephen P. Randolph, Powerful and Brutal Weapons: Nixon, Kissinger, and
the Easter Oensive (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 117.
Equipment, Training, and Tactics 57
31. Maj William A. Hewitt, “Planting the Seeds of SEAD: e Wild Weasel in
Vietnam,” thesis, School of Advanced Airpower Studies, 2010, 4–11.
32. Maj John J. Deeney, “Finding, Fixing, and Finishing the Guideline: e
Development of the United States Air Force Surface-to-Air Missile Suppression
Force During Operation Rolling under,” thesis, U.S. Army Command and
General Sta College, 2010, 41.
33. Deeney, “Guideline.”
34. Deeney, “Guideline,” 51.
35. Deeney, “Guideline,” 83–84.
36. James R. Brungess, Setting the Context Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses
and Joint War Fighting in an Uncertain World (Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: Air
University Press, 1994), 12.
37. Brungess, Setting the Context, 2.
38. Brungess, Setting the Context, 4.
39. Brungess, Setting the Context, 9.
40. Moorer to Senate, 5 February 1974, Hearings before the Committee on Armed
Services, 271–72.
41. United States Air Force, America’s Air Force: A Call to the Future, July 2014,
16.
42. Shmuel Gordon, “Air Superiority in the Israel-Arab Wars,” in A History of
Air Warfare, ed. John Andreas Olsen (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2010),
151.
43. Gordon, “Air Superiority in the Israel-Arab Wars,” 151.
44. Benjamin S. Lambeth, e Transformation of American Air Power (Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 2000), 41.
45. Lambeth, Transformation of American Air Power, 96.
46. Brungess, Setting the Context, 104, 98.
47. Air Force Manual (AFM) 1-1, Basic Aerospace Doctrine of the United States
Air Force, 16 March 1984, 3–3.
48. AFM 1-1 (1984), 3–6, 3–7: Brungess, Setting the Context, 104.
49. Brungess, Setting the Context, 26.
50. Maj Stanley J. Dougherty, “Defense Suppression: Building Some Operational
Concepts,” thesis, School of Advanced Airpower Studies, 1992, 17–18.
51. omas A. Keaney and Eliot A. Cohen, Revolution in Warfare? Air Power in
the Persian Gulf (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1995), 202.
52. Brian D. Laslie, e Air Force Way of War: U.S. Tactics and Training Aer
Vietnam (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2015), 92; David C.
Aronstein and Albert C. Piccirillo, Have Blue and the F-117A: Evolution of the
“Stealth Fighter” (Reston, VA: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics,
1997), 195–96.
53. Aronstein and Piccirillo, Have Blue, 199–200.
54. Aronstein and Piccirillo, Have Blue, 11.
55. Aronstein and Piccirillo, Have Blue, 11.
56. TAC History, 125.
57. Aronstein and Piccirillo, Have Blue, 12, 14; Paul G. Kaminski, “Low
Observables: e Air Force and Stealth,” in Technology and the Air Force: A
Retrospective Assessment, eds. Jacob Neufeld, George M. Watson, Jr., and David
58 │Equipment, Training, and Tactics
Chenoweth, (Washington DC: Air Force History and Museums Program, 1997),
299–300.
58. Ian A. Maddock, “DARPA’s Stealth Revolution,” in 50 Years of Bridging the
Gap, DARPA, 2012, 152.
59. Maddock, “Stealth Revolution,” 152; Kaminski, “Low Observables,” 300.
60. Robert H. Van Atta et al, Transformation and Transition: DARPA’s Role in
Fostering an Emerging Revolution in Military Aairs, Volume 2 – Detailed Assess-
ments, Institute for Defense Analyses Paper P-3698 (Institute for Defense Analyses:
Alexandria, VA, November 2003), I-1, I-2.
61. Tomes, US Defense Strategy, 79.
62. Aronstein and Piccirillo, Have Blue, 32–33.
63. Aronstein and Piccirillo, Have Blue, 3, 154.
64. Keaney and Cohen, Revolution in Warfare, 208.
65. Lambeth, Transformation of American Air Power, 59.
66. C. R. Anderegg, Sierra Hotel: Flying Air Force Fighters in the Decade Aer
Vietnam (Washington DC: Government Reprints Press, 2001), 17.
67. Laslie, Air Force Aer Vietnam, 5.
68. Marshall L. Michel, Clashes: Air Combat over North Vietnam, 1965-1972
(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1997), 289; Laslie, Air Force Aer Vietnam,
8.
69. Laslie, Air Force Aer Vietnam, 10–11.
70. James Kiteld, Prodigal Soldiers; How the Generation of Ocers Born of
Vietnam Revolutionized the American Style of War (Washington D.C.: Potomac
Books, 1997), 76.
71. Laslie, Air Force Aer Vietnam, 11.
72. Kiteld, Prodigal Soldiers, 76.
73. Laslie, Air Force Aer Vietnam, 20–23.
74. Laslie, Air Force Aer Vietnam, 28, 32; Horner’s training experience in
Kiteld, Prodigal Soldiers, 76.
75. Michel, Clashes, 289; Lambeth, Transformation of American Air Power, 61,
65.
76. Lambeth, Transformation of American Air Power, 60.
77. Marshall L. Michel, “e Revolt of the Majors: How the Air Force Changed
Aer Vietnam,” PhD diss., Auburn University, 2006, 217.
78. Michel, “Revolt of the Majors,” 189; Laslie, Air Force Aer Vietnam, 37.
79. TAC History, 115.
80. Gen Robert J. Dixon, Commander, Tactical Air Command, to Gen George S
Brown, Chief of Sta, United States Air Force, letter, 12 March 1974, 4. Document
is now declassied.
81. TAC History, 111.
82. Michel, “Revolt of the Majors,” 186.
83. Laslie, Air Force Aer Vietnam, 56.
84. Michel, “Revolt of the Majors,” 202.
85. Michel, “Revolt of the Majors,” 202–03.
86. TAC History, 110.
87. TAC History, 111.
88. TAC History, 111.
Equipment, Training, and Tactics 59
89. Michel, “Revolt of the Majors,” 196–97.
90. Michel, “Revolt of the Majors,” 109.
91. Laslie, Air Force Aer Vietnam, 51.
92. Michel, “Revolt of the Majors,” 185–86.
93. Anderegg, Sierra Hotel, 96.
94. Anderegg, Sierra Hotel, 96; Laslie, Air Force Aer Vietnam, 60–61.
95. Anderegg, Sierra Hotel, 94; Michel, “Revolt of the Majors,” 203, 213.
96. Lambeth, Transformation of American Air Power, 63.
97. Lambeth, Transformation of American Air Power, 68–70.
98. International Institute for Strategic Studies, “e Middle East War,” Strategic
Survey 74 (April 1974): 55.
99. Laslie, Air Force Aer Vietnam, 59; Michel, “Revolt of the Majors,” 214–15.
100. Lambeth, Transformation of American Air Power, 70.
101. Anderegg, Sierra Hotel, 100.
102. Laslie, Air Force Aer Vietnam, 69.
103. Creech quoted in Laslie, Air Force Aer Vietnam, 69.
104. Michel, “Revolt of the Majors,” 304.
105. Lambeth, Transformation of American Air Power, 70.
106. Creech quoted in Laslie, Air Force Aer Vietnam, 152.
107. Currie to Senate, 26 February 1974, Hearings before the Committee on
Armed Services, 772.
108. Keaney and Cohen, Revolution in Warfare, 153.
109. Keaney and Cohen, Revolution in Warfare, 154.
110. Keaney and Cohen, Revolution in Warfare, 171.
111. Keaney and Cohen, Revolution in Warfare, 191.
112. Keaney and Cohen, Revolution in Warfare, 51, 208.
113. Keaney and Cohen, Revolution in Warfare, 49–50. is gure includes xed
and rotary wing aircra.
114. Keaney and Cohen, Revolution in Warfare, 177.
115. Keaney and Cohen, Revolution in Warfare, 173–74, munitions 178.
116. Department of Defense, Report of the Secretary of Defense to the President
and the Congress, February 1992 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing
Oce, 1992), 84.
Chapter 4
e Yom Kippur War and Air Force Doctrine:
Operational Concepts and Operational Success
Tactics and training evolved aer 1973 to exploit emerging techni-
cal capabilities, but each of these developmental strands interacted
under broader operational themes. e Yom Kippur War inuenced
the evolution of Air Force doctrine in multiple ways. Here, the Air
Force learned not only vicariously, but by proxy, as the US Army
drove doctrinal changes that aected both land and air power. e
key individual in this process was Gen Don Starry, head of the Army’s
Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) from 1977. Starry was
profoundly inuenced by Israeli experiences in 1973, and his TRADOC
created the AirLand Battle doctrine that dominated US military
thinking through the 1980s and channeled the Air Force into a joint
operational construct. Even when later Air Force thinking pursued
the independent application of air power—exemplied in the ideas of
John Warden—the inuence of the Yom Kippur War remained visible.
Warden referenced the war in his theoretical works, and retained an
emphasis on defense suppression as a key part of the control of the air
mission. Moreover, Warden’s proposed application of independent
air power relied upon capabilities that had been informed by Israeli
experience and then reinforced by AirLand Battle doctrinal require-
ments and concepts. Finally, Operation Desert Storm once again
demonstrated the realization of the Yom Kippur War’s inuence on
the “Vietnam Generation.” Conceptual maturation was evident not
only in the organizational trends that enabled US success in 1991, but
also in the understanding and attitudes of key individuals who
planned and executed the air campaign in the Persian Gulf.
Learning by Proxy: e US Army, AirLand Battle, and
the Air Force
While the Air Force focused on technical solutions to the chal-
lenges that had been perceived in October 1973, and the training
reforms that would enable technology to become useful capability,
the US Army took a deep look at the tactical and operational lessons
The Yom Kippur War and Air Force Doctrine│ 61
of the Yom Kippur War and pursued sweeping doctrinal change. In
terms of reforming emphasis, the Air Force prioritized improvements
in the tactical means and ways of air warfare; the Army drove what
would become a joint eort to develop the operational ways, and this
inuenced the overall mode and emphasis of Air Force operations as
executed in the Persian Gulf in 1991.
e key individual in this process was US Army General Don
Starry. Starry was commander of Fort Knox and the Army Center
and School during October 1973, and he was sent to Israel on an
Army fact-nding visit in January 1974.
1
Starry toured the Golan
battleeld with Israeli General Musa Peled, commander of the Israeli
Defense Forces Armored Corps. Paralleling General Dixon’s experi-
ence in TAC, this visit initiated a longstanding relationship between
Starry and senior Israeli ocers, and this heavily inuenced Starry in
his later activities.
2
Starry drew key lessons from repeated visits to
Israel, echoing the views of Air Force and external observers and
incorporating both land and air issues into a joint perspective:
. . . we learned that the U.S. military should expect modern battleelds to be
dense with large numbers of weapons systems whose lethality at extended
ranges would surpass previous experience by nearly an order of magnitude. . . .
Second, because of numbers and weapons lethality, the direct-re battle will
be intense, resulting in enormous equipment losses in a relatively short time.
. . . ird, the air battle will be characterized by large numbers of highly lethal
aerial platforms . . . and by large numbers of highly lethal air defense weapons.
Fourth, the density-intensity-lethality equation will prevent domination of
the battle by any single weapons system; to win, it will be necessary to employ
all battlefield systems in closely coordinated all-arms action . . . Finally,
regardless of which side outnumbers the other . . . the outcome of battle at the
tactical and operational levels will be decided by factors other than numbers
and other than who attacks and who defends . . . battles will continue to be
won by the . . . combat excellence of well-trained units.
3
Starry noted the resilience of the early lessons he derived from the
war: “For several years aer [the conict], TRADOC and other agencies
in the United States would collect data, conduct analysis, and publish
studies. All too oen the height and breadth of data and information
could be measured in kilometers, the death of analysis in millimeters.
In the end nothing changed signicantly the conclusions we had
drawn early on from walking the battlegrounds with those who had
fought . . . listening to their descriptions of what had happened [and]
availing ourselves of [their] penetrating operational analysis.”
4
He
concluded that deep attack of Soviet-style echelons, and the joint
62 The Yom Kippur War and Air Force Doctrine
suppression of enemy air defenses required to achieve those attacks,
would be key to success on a European battleeld.
5
In his later written
recollections, Starry noted these Israel-derived lessons “framed the
beginning of what grew into, some nine years later, the doctrine
called AirLand Battle, a concept of war at the tactical and operational
levels that U.S. and coalition commanders employed in Operation
Desert Storm.”
6
Starry’s AirLand Battle was built upon foundations laid by Generals
Dixon and William DePuy, who had worked in tandem as the com-
manders of TAC and TRADOC immediately aer the Yom Kippur War.
e Dixon/DePuy doctrine, outlined in the 1976 edition of Army
Field Manual 100-5 (FM 100-5), Operations, and known as Active
Defense, incorporated many tactical lessons from Israel’s experi-
ence in October 1973. For example, it integrated air and ground
forces in its concept of defense suppression, emphasizing the reciprocal
synergies required between joint forces on the modern battleeld.
7
Here, Active Defense recognized that air power was not always sup-
porting in nature. is had not been a prominent observation in the
immediate aermath of the war in the way that issues such as the
lethality of modern battle had been; nonetheless, it had been noted by
some external observers and within Air Force internal analysis. e
Israeli raid across the Suez Canal on October 16 had shown that
sometimes air must in fact be supported by other elements: establish-
ment of control of the air by ground forces had in turn enabled the
eectiveness of air support to ground troops. As Martin van Creveld
observed: “If the air force has traditionally been used to clear the way
for ground forces, the reverse may now become equally frequent.”
8
Within the Air Force, then-Lt Col Chuck Horner authored a talking
paper for the Directorate of Operations, titled Interdependence of Air
and Ground Operations, in which he observed that “Israeli ground
forces enhanced Israeli Air Force operations.”
9
Finally, General Dixon
had noted Israeli success in destroying SAM sites with ground forces
during his March 1974 meetings with Peled, which DePuy had also
attended.
10
ese observations carried through into revised Army doctrine.
e 1976 edition of FM 100-5 stated: “e suppression of enemy air
defenses requires a coordinated Air Force/Army eort.”
11
e mutually
supporting nature of the suppression mission continued to be expressed
in later concepts, and was expanded beyond Army doctrine to the
Air Force’s own high-level documents. e 1992 edition of Air Force
The Yom Kippur War and Air Force Doctrine│ 63
Manual 1-1, Basic Aerospace Doctrine of the United States Air Force,
cited the Israeli attack across the Suez Canal as an example of useful
air-ground synergy, in which “[land] forces can be an especially eec-
tive means for degrading the enemy’s surface-based aerospace
defenses.”
12
Both Army and Air Force doctrine noted in enduring
revisions that air power was not always supporting in nature, but
might in fact be supported by ground forces.
Active Defense was, however, perceived overall to be excessively
reactive, and too focused upon repower and the close ght instead
of maneuver and multiple-echelon engagements.
13
General Starry,
mindful of the lessons of 1973, sought to extend the scope of the doc-
trine to the operational level of warfare.
14
He worked closely with
General Creech at TAC, knowingly building upon the legacy of the
earlier cooperation between Dixon and DePuy.
15
Much of the work
between TRADOC and TAC was informal to maintain exibility and
relevance, and to avoid the bureaucratic inertia endemic to the Pentagon
that Starry described as “Pentacrete.”
16
is informal mode of working
was fruitful: Starry praised Creech’s “endorsement of our AirLand
concept and his willingness to work with us for mutual benet”, and
later summarized: “e Army, the nation, the Armed Forces 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 o by
myself.”
17
Here, Starry acknowledged that while he had been the driving
force behind doctrinal reform, TAC and General Creech had been
essential co-actors in achieving useful change.
e formal output of these joint eorts was the 1982 edition of FM
100-5, published aer Starry had handed over command of TRADOC
but very much the product of his vision and drive—which were
themselves the product of his analysis of the Israeli experiences of
October 1973. e 1982 edition of FM 100-5 laid out the principles of
AirLand Battle. Starry summarized the doctrine as “an operational
level concept; it combined the best tactical lessons of the Yom Kippur
War with operational-level schemes designed to defeat Soviet opera-
tional-level concepts.”
18
Air-ground synergy was fundamental to the
doctrine, as its title clearly suggested.
19
e emphasis was weighed
toward air support to the land campaign, but this included control of
the air and interdiction vice simple close air support, and the doctrine
retained Active Defense’s articulation of mutually supporting joint
SEAD.
20
Starry outlined the fundamental tenets of the doctrine in a
presentation at the Air University, Maxwell AFB, in March 1980:
64 The Yom Kippur War and Air Force Doctrine
. . . we must see deep—into the enemy second echelons—and establish a
picture of what the enemy is doing. We must move fast to concentrate re-
power to oppose his maneuver and . . . disrupt his operational scheme. ose
repower and maneuver forces must strike quickly . . . We, on the ground, can’t
do that very well, and we must depend on the Air Force. . . . Our force
structures—Army and Air Force—must be designed to be complementary
and supplementary, not competitive. It’s not a roles and missions ght, it’s a
ght for survival against an enemy who has a signicant edge over us. We
need everything that each service has to oer the other.
21
AirLand Battle inuenced the Air Force in many ways. It further
directed equipment programs that complemented those prioritized
immediately aer 1973. e primacy of information and the need for
target acquisition capabilities drove the Joint Surveillance Target
Attack Radar System, or JSTARS, program.
22
Likewise, the Army was
a key potential consumer of imagery that could be obtained by
unmanned air systems, which demonstrated their utility in Israeli
operations in the Bekaa Valley in 1982, the year that AirLand Battle
was published.
23
e doctrine also led to the creation by Army and
Air Force chiefs of sta of a list known as the “thirty-one initiatives,”
which included joint munitions programs and the extension of con-
ventional interdiction roles to SAC assets, such as the B-52.
24
AirLand
Battle thus reinforced the technical emphasis that the Air Force had
pursued since 1973, further driving Yom Kippur War-inuenced
acquisition and development emphases with a doctrine that was itself
a product of Israeli experiences. ose technical programs and sup-
porting training reforms encouraged the emergence of a changed
organizational focus, in which even “strategic” assets would support
the Army on the battleeld.
25
is in turn contributed to a “rise of the
ghter generals” and the ascendancy of TAC as the most inuential
Air Force command.
26
e Air Force that fought in Desert Storm was
thus in many ways a post-strategic and post-tactical organization,
with platform-derived distinctions increasingly blurred, although
formal reorganization did not occur until 1992 with the creation of
Air Combat Command.
27
Overall, AirLand Battle did much to channel
the capabilities and focus of the US Air Force. Here, the Yom Kippur
War aected air power at the operational level through its impact on
land power, and via a senior soldier, Don Starry, who had been pro-
foundly inuenced by the Israeli experience of October 1973.
The Yom Kippur War and Air Force Doctrine│ 65
e Airman’s View of Air Power:
e Yom Kippur War and John Warden
e US Air Force that fought in January 1991 was not, though,
entirely the product of an army-originated doctrine. Individuals
within the Air Force had also conducted their own conceptual thinking,
albeit following the Army’s lead, and this contributed to aspects of
Desert Storm that went beyond the deep interdiction envisaged by
Don Starry and supported by Bill Creech. e Gulf War was charac-
terized less by air support to active ground operations than by an
extended “preparation of the battleeld” phase that blurred into the
destruction of the Iraqi army from the air, while the Air Force also
prosecuted strikes against leadership and infrastructure targets in
Baghdad.
28
ese aspects of the 1991 air campaign were the result of
organic Air Force thinking, specically the work of Colonel John
Warden, whose most signicant ideas included the model of an enemy
regime as a system comprising centers of gravity within ve intercon-
nected “rings.”
29
Warden codified much of this into an air-only
campaign plan with which to defeat Iraq, codenamed Instant under.
30
While Instant under was not prosecuted in a “pure” form, much of
its targeting emphasis survived into Desert Storm, and Warden’s
inuence extended beyond 1991 into a renewed Air Force focus on
independent conventional air attack.
31
Warden therefore added a
“blue” conceptual strand alongside the joint doctrine of AirLand Battle;
and he, like Starry, was inuenced by the Yom Kippur War, both in
his individual understanding of air warfare and in his conceptual
reliance on capabilities that were the result of post-1973 trends.
Warden’s air power ideas were underpinned by an emphasis on the
requirement to obtain and maintain control of the air, and here Warden’s
developing thoughts were clearly inuenced by Israeli experience.
Warden, an F-15 pilot, had expressed his early views that air superiority
rather than close air support should be the prime focus of tactical US
air power in a 1972 essay titled Employment of Tactical Air in Europe.
32
en, in August 1975, Warden was posted to the Middle East and
Africa Division within the Air Force Planning Directorate in the Pentagon,
which was still dominated by the repercussions and lessons of the
Yom Kippur War.
33
His familiarity with Israeli experience in 1973 was
readily apparent in his later theoretical ideas. Warden’s dening work,
e Air Campaign, published in 1988, referenced the Yom Kippur
66 The Yom Kippur War and Air Force Doctrine
War repeatedly. Warden used the war as his primary example of the
criticality of air superiority in modern warfare. He asserted that the
Israelis “paid a terrible price [in October 1973] for not gaining air
superiority in the rst phase of the war. Only aer recognizing the
need to suppress enemy missile systems—their primary barrier to air
superiority—were they able to turn the tide of battle and go on to win
the war.”
34
Warden also used the 1973 conict to show that he—like
Peled, Dixon, Starry and Horner—recognized the joint nature of the
control of the air mission, noting that: “Israeli gunboats [had] attacked
Egyptian surface-to-air missile systems on the Egyptian le ank, to
pave the way for Israeli air force movements through the opened
corridor . . . at about the same time that General Sharon crossed the
canal and destroyed several [SAM] batteries by ground attack.”
35
Warden’s use of the Yom Kippur War was not restricted to sup-
porting his views on control of the air. He highlighted Israeli Air
Force attacks on Syrian fuel and ammunition reserves to stress the
utility of air interdiction over close air support.
36
Here, Warden cor-
roborated the doctrinal emphasis of AirLand Battle, but he moved
beyond this by using the Yom Kippur War to illustrate his developing
views on using conventional air forces for strategic attack. He noted
approvingly that the Israelis had attacked economic and political tar-
gets in Syria to force the withdrawal of air defense assets from the
Golan front.
37
Warden also made wider references to Israeli Air Force
trends and operational technique, discussing aspects of the 1967 Six
Day War, the 1981 raid against the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq, and
the 1982 operation to destroy Syrian air defenses in the Bekaa Valley.
In all, e Air Campaign’s use of Israeli experience was roughly equal
to its emphasis upon the direct lessons of Vietnam. Warden refer-
enced the Yom Kippur War repeatedly, in contexts ranging from air
superiority through to his developing ideas of strategic attack against
critical nodes.
Warden’s Instant under plan for Desert Storm represented the
maturation of the ideas expressed in e Air Campaign. Critical aspects
of the plan relied upon capabilities such as suppression, stealth and
precision attack that were themselves the product of developmental
vectors established by the Yom Kippur War. In this way, Warden’s
ideas, directly informed by Israeli experience, were indirectly enabled
by organizational capabilities that had themselves been inuenced by
the lessons of October 1973. Perhaps the best example of this was the
combination of two “icons” of modern air warfare—stealth and
The Yom Kippur War and Air Force Doctrine│ 67
precision weapons—in F-117 attacks against command and control
facilities in Baghdad.
38
e object of these attacks reected the ideas
of Warden as an individual, while the enabling nature of the means
employed was the result of organizational developments. Similarly,
Warden’s use of vicarious Israeli experience continued when supporting
the developing Desert Storm air campaign from his position in the
Pentagon-based “Checkmate” think tank. He suggested the use of
unmanned aircra as decoys against Iraqi SAMs based upon Israeli
success in the Bekaa Valley 1982.
39
Again, Warden’s idea was based
upon Israeli experience, but it was also reliant upon technical means
that themselves had some link to the lessons of the October 1973.
ese developmental strands—conceptual and physical—inuenced
each other in a reinforcing, interactive process that resulted in some
of the most striking aspects of the Gulf War.
Inuential—and Inuenced—Individuals in Operation
Desert Storm
Finally, the experiences of the ocers charged with executing
Operation Desert Storm once again demonstrated the interactive
inuences of the Yom Kippur War on individuals and the broader
organization. Both Brig Gen Larry L. Henry, the architect of the elec-
tronic warfare campaign plan for Operations Desert Shield and Desert
Storm, and the now-Lt Gen Horner, appointed Joint Force Air Com-
ponent Commander for the Gulf campaign, were inuenced by their
familiarity with the events of October 1973.
Brig Gen Henry specically credited Israeli experiences as having
inspired his concept of operations for Desert Storm.
40
He had co-authored
a paper while a student at the National War College in 1983 that com-
pared Israeli failures in 1973 with the success achieved in the Bekaa
Valley in 1982.
Henry and his co-authors interviewed US and Israeli
ocials and noted the contribution of the lessons of 1973 to the
focused Israeli plan in 1982.
41
ey also highlighted the relevance of
joint operations and qualitative superiority in weapons systems.
42
Henry carried this analysis forward into his own planning for Desert
Storm, seeking to emulate the Israeli successes of 1982—and avoid
the failures of October 1973—by denying Iraqi forces a SAM “umbrella”
of the type enjoyed by Egyptian forces in the Suez Canal zone.
43
Moreover, and as had been the case with Warden, the plan that Henry
68 The Yom Kippur War and Air Force Doctrine
delivered was made viable by a suite of capabilities that owed their
genesis at least partly to the lessons of October 1973. In later inter-
views, and with specic reference to his earlier studies at the National
War College, Henry stated: “Israeli combat experience in 1973 and
1982 had inuenced [his] concept of operations” in 1991.
44
General Horner was less categorical in linking his Desert Storm
leadership to earlier analysis of the Yom Kippur War, emphasizing his
own Vietnam experience in post-1991 recollections. However,
Horner, like his peers, was a member of the Air Force generation that
was inuenced by the Israeli experience on an organizational level;
moreover, and as earlier referenced, he had completed a sta tour in
the Operations Directorate during which in his own words he “studied
the 1973 Middle East war in detail.”
45
It is reasonable to infer that this
mid-career experience shaped enduring views, and his leadership in
1991 does indeed suggest a merging of Vietnam and Yom Kippur
War lessons in his attitude to air operations. Specically, Horner’s
assessments of the appropriateness of low level tactics, the utility of
air-ground synergies, and the need to target of an enemy’s elded
forces with air power, were coherent with both his own Vietnam
experience and the in-depth analysis of the Yom Kippur War that he
completed while on the sta of the Operations Directorate in the
Pentagon.
During Desert Storm, Horner ordered the suspension of low-altitude
attacks aer the loss of multiple aircra during the rst week of the
war, including an F-15E Strike Eagle and, notably, ve Royal Air
Force Tornado GR1s.
46
Horner’s decision was not isolated from his
underlying attitudes; by his own later admission, he had a longstanding
aversion to the risks of low altitude tactics. Horner had own in the
Air Force’s rst SAM suppression mission during Vietnam.
47
e
raid, own on 27 July 1965 in response to the downing of two F-4
Phantoms by North Vietnamese missiles, had been a disaster. Mission
planning was poor, with identical low-level attack routes planned for
multiple 4-ship elements. Six of the attacking F-105s were lost to anti-
aircra guns or controlled ight into terrain, with only one of the
pilots subsequently recovered. Horner himself had been unable to
prosecute his attack successfully, concentrating almost entirely on
avoiding terrain and AAA re.
48
Horner concluded that although
low-level tactics negated the SA-2 threat, with aircra able to remain
below the system’s minimum engagement altitude, aircrew were instead
exposed to intense AAA and “every man, woman and child with an
The Yom Kippur War and Air Force Doctrine│ 69
automatic weapon.”
49
In an interview aer Desert Storm, he summarized:
“I learned a lesson that day the hard way . . . not only did we lose a
bunch of airplanes but we had a bunch of airplanes shot up. . . . I came
away with the conclusion that low level was a non-starter . . . you
don’t want to go low altitude, you’re giving everybody a shot.”
50
It is likely that Horner’s analysis of the Yom Kippur War during his
tour in the Operations Directorate reinforced these views.
51
Data
such as that recorded by the USMEVTI showed signicant Israeli
attrition to AAA and the low altitude, short range SA-7.
52
is mirrored
Horner’s own experience in Vietnam. Moreover, the tactical eec-
tiveness of Israeli low-level weapon releases had been ambiguous, as
evidenced by post-war Israeli and American focus on precise stand-
o weaponry, and the Israelis acknowledged the stresses of ying at
altitudes as low as 20 feet.
53
While at the Operations Directorate,
Horner also authored a talking paper that assessed ongoing US Air
Force technical programs against the initial lessons of the Yom Kippur
War. In this, he emphasized electronic counter measures, Wild Weasel
aircra, and suppression weapons, making no recommendations for
low-level navigation or attack capabilities.
54
While Horner’s post-
1991 comments emphasized the role of his own Vietnam experience
in forming his attitude towards low level tactics, it is reasonable to
infer that Horner’s detailed study of the Yom Kippur War reinforced
his Vietnam-derived views, even as others drew alternative conclu-
sions from the Israeli experience and, as discussed in Chapter ree,
chose to “go low.”
Horner also maintained a focus on air support to the land battle
and highlighted the importance of targeting enemy elded forces. He
famously objected to John Warden’s original Instant under plan
that completely ignored Iraqi troops and armored formations.
55
Horner retained much of Warden’s proposed target list but insisted
on targeting Iraqi troops.
56
is attitude was coherent with both the
prevailing AirLand Battle doctrine that had been inspired by the Yom
Kippur War, and Horner’s own observations of Israeli combat in
October 1973. It is again relevant to note the content of his sta output
at the Operations Directorate. In a talking paper of November 1973,
Interdependence of Air and Ground Operations, Horner noted repeat-
edly that Israeli air support had been critical to success on the ground.
Horner observed that the “Air Force enhanced Army operations . . .
[it] blunted armor thrusts . . . Air interdiction eorts disrupted Arab
movements of reserve forces. . . . Over 4,000 A-4 sorties [were]
70 The Yom Kippur War and Air Force Doctrine
committed for support of ground forces.”
57
The overall tone was
approving, and suggested that Horner was likely a ready subscriber to
the doctrinal emphases of rst Active Defense and then AirLand
Battle. is assessment is in turn supported by Horner’s rejection of
John Warden’s Instant under plan as originally presented.
While it is impossible to state the extent to which Horner’s aware-
ness of history inuenced his decisions when confronted with “half a
million” Iraqi troops on the Kuwait border, neither is it likely that his
familiarity with the Yom Kippur War played no role at all in his attitude
and decisions.
58
As a sta ocer, Horner had studied an Israeli experi-
ence in which qualitatively superior troops had been unable to repel
Arab attacks without heavy losses, and in which Israel’s air force had
played a key role in by targeting Arab forces. In accordance with cognitive
trends identied by the political scientist Robert Jervis, Horner may
have learned most from his own early experiences in Vietnam, but he
perhaps learned best from his studies of combat over the Suez Canal
and the Golan Heights in October 1973.
59
He was therefore a product
of more than just his own combat experience; the attitudes of Lt Gen
Horner, Joint Force Air Component Commander during the Gulf
War, owed at least something to the vicarious experience gained by
the younger Lt Col Horner at the Pentagon.
Henry and Horner were members of a post-Vietnam generation
that was inuenced by more than just the American war in Southeast
Asia. ey executed plans and directed capabilities that were the
products of multiple interacting factors. e Yom Kippur War had
established developmental vectors for technical programs, training,
tactics and doctrine. Inherently linked, these developmental strands
reinforced each other as they collectively matured. The resulting
capabilities reected the hybrid lessons of Vietnam and the Yom Kippur
War. ese capabilities cohered within revised doctrine that was itself
profoundly inuenced by Israeli experiences, and this doctrine in
turn encouraged further capability change. At the heart of these or-
ganizational processes were individuals, representing both the Air
Force and the Army: Dixon, Creech, Suter, DePuy, Starry, Warden,
Henry, and Horner. ese reformers and leaders each assimilated the
lessons of the Yom Kippur War, before together forging an unparalleled
American instrument of air power.
The Yom Kippur War and Air Force Doctrine│ 71
Notes
1. Lewis Sorley, ed., Press On!: Selected Works of General Donn A. Starry, Vol. 1
(Fort Leavenworth, KS.: Combat Studies Institute Press, US Army Combined Arms
Center, 2009), x.
2. Sorley, Press On, x–xi.
3. Gen. Donn A. Starry, “Reections,” in Press On!: Selected Works of General
Donn A. Starry, Vol. 1, ed. Lewis Sorley (Fort Leavenworth, KS.: Combat Studies
Institute Press, US Army Combined Arms Center, 2009), 25–26.
4. Gen. Donn A. Starry, “TRADOC’s Analysis of the Yom Kippur War,” in Press
On!: Selected Works of General Donn A. Starry, Vol. 1, ed. Lewis Sorley (Fort
Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, US Army Combined Arms
Center, 2009), 223.
5. Gen (Ret) Donn A. Starry, interview by Dr. Harold R. Winton, School of
Advanced Airpower Studies, 13 May 1995.
6. Starry, “Reections,” 25.
7. Field Manual (FM) 100-5, Operations, 1 July 1976, 8-4.
8. Martin Van. Creveld, Military Lessons of the Yom Kippur War: Historical
Perspectives (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1975), 36.
9. Lt Col C.A. Horner, Directorate of Operations, Air Sta Talking Paper,
subject: Inter-dependence of Air and Ground Operations, 24 November 1974.
Document is now declassied.
10. Gen Robert J. Dixon, Commander, Tactical Air Command, to Gen George S.
Brown, Chief of Sta, United States Air Force, letter, 12 March 1974, 3. Document
is now declassied.
11. FM 100-5 (1976), 8-4.
12. Air Force Manual (AFM) 1-1, Basic Aerospace Doctrine of the United States
Air Force, 1 March 1992, 140–41, 145.
13. Benjamin S. Lambeth, e Transformation of American Air Power (Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 2000), 85; Starry, “Reections,” 27–28.
14. Starry, “Reections,” 27-28.
15. Gen. Donn A. Starry, “Oensive Air Support - Message to General E.C.
Meyer 22 February 1980,” in Press On!: Selected Works of General Donn A. Starry,
Vol. 1, ed. Lewis Sorley (Fort Leavenworth, KS.: Combat Studies Institute Press, US
Army Combined Arms Center, 2009), 6.
16. Starry, interview by Winton.
17. Gen. Donn A. Starry, “Army-Air Force Cooperation - Message to General
E.C. Meyer 30 March 1981,” in Press On!: Selected Works of General Donn A. Starry,
Vol. 1, ed. Lewis Sorley (Fort Leavenworth, KS.: Combat Studies Institute Press, US
Army Combined Arms Center, 2009), 9.
18. Starry, “Reections,” 28.
19. Field Manual (FM) 100-5, Operations, 20 August 1982, 7-1.
20. John Andreas Olsen, John Warden and the Renaissance of American Air
Power (Washington D.C.: Potomac Books, 2007),103; FM 100-5 (1982), 7-11, 7-12.
21. Gen. Donn A. Starry, “Force Structure - Air University Airpower Symposium
5 March 1980,” in Press On!: Selected Works of General Donn A. Starry, Vol 1, ed.
72 The Yom Kippur War and Air Force Doctrine
Lewis Sorley (Fort Leavenworth, KS.: Combat Studies Institute Press, US Army
Combined Arms Center, 2009), 461.
22. Starry, “Reections,” 28.
23. Starry, “Reections,” 30.
24. Lambeth, Transformation of American Air Power, 86.
25. Lambeth, Transformation of American Air Power, 88, 91.
26. Michael R. Worden, Rise of the Fighter Generals: e Problem of Air Force
Leadership 1945-1982 (Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: Air University Press, 1998),
211, 220–22.
27. Olsen, John Warden and Renaissance, 124.
28. Lt Col David Deptula quoted in Keith L. Shimko, e Iraq Wars and
America’s Military Revolution (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2010),
69; omas A. Keaney and Eliot A. Cohen, Revolution in Warfare? Air Power in the
Persian Gulf (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1995), 33–42.
29. John A. Warden III, “Smart Strategy, Smart Airpower,” in Airpower Reborn:
e Strategic Concepts of John Warden and John Boyd, ed. John Andreas Olsen,
(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2015), 106–09.
30. Olsen, John Warden and Renaissance, 289–93.
31. Olsen, John Warden and Renaissance, 280–81.
32. Olsen, John Warden and Renaissance, 23.
33. Olsen, John Warden and Renaissance, 33.
34. John A. Warden III, e Air Campaign: Planning for Combat (Washington,
DC: National Defense University Press, 1988), 16.
35. Warden, e Air Campaign, 19, 36.
36. Warden, e Air Campaign, 96–97.
37. Warden, e Air Campaign, 37.
38. Frans P.B. Osinga, “e Enemy as a Complex Adaptive System: John Boyd
and Airpower in the Postmodern Era,” in Airpower Reborn: e Strategic Concepts
of John Warden and John Boyd, ed. John Andreas Olsen (Annapolis, MD.: Naval
Institute Press, 2015), 82–83.
39. Olsen, John Warden and Renaissance, 199–200.
40. Diane T. Putney, Airpower Advantage: Planning the Gulf War Air Campaign
1989-1991 (Washington DC: Air Force History and Museums Program, 2004), 103.
41. Col Gordon M Clarke et al, “e 1982 Israeli War in Lebanon: Implications
for Modern Conventional Warfare,” Strategic Studies Project, National War College,
1983, 16–17.
42. Clarke et al, “e 1982 Israeli War,” 22, 31–32.
43. Putney, Airpower Advantage, 104.
44. Putney, Airpower Advantage, 103, referencing interview with Henry in July
1997.
45. Horner quoted in Horner and Tom Clancy, Gen (Ret) Chuck Horner, and
Tony Koltz, Every Man a Tiger: e Gulf War Air Campaign (New York: Berkley
Books, 2005), 105.
46. Kiteld, Prodigal Soldiers, 389, but note that - contrary to Kiteld’s gures -
ve rather than six Tornado aircra were lost at low level during the rst week of
the war. See Royal Air Force, “Statement on the Loss of RAF Tornado Aircra in
Combat During the Conduct of Air Operations against Iraq.” F-15E loss: William L.
The Yom Kippur War and Air Force Doctrine│ 73
Smallwood, Strike Eagle: Flying the F-15E in the Gulf War (Washington DC:
Potomac Books, 2005), 96.
47. Kiteld, Prodigal Soldiers, 51–52.
48. Kiteld, Prodigal Soldiers, 53–55.
49. Kiteld, Prodigal Soldiers, 79.
50. Gen C.A. Horner, Interview by PBS, transcript at PBS.org. http://www.pbs.
org/wgbh/pages/frontline/gulf/oral/horner/1.html.
51. Horner quoted in Clancy et al, Every Man a Tiger, 105.
52. See Chapter 2, Table 1.
53. Dixon to Brown, letter, attachment, 5.
54. Lt Col C.A. Horner, Directorate of Operations, Air Sta Talking Paper,
subject: Mid East War Data Support of USAF Programs, 24 November 1973.
Document is now declassied.
55. Olsen, John Warden and Renaissance, 179–81.
56. Olsen, John Warden and Renaissance, 186–87.
57. Horner, Interdependence.
58. Horner, interview with PBS.
59. Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), 246.
Conclusion:
An American-Israeli Way of War
e Yom Kippur War of October 1973 stimulated much
thought in the United States, including evaluation and reaction
that was perhaps keener than the evaluation and reaction to
US experience in Southeast Asia.
Robert Frank Futrell
Basic inking in the United States Air Force 1961-1984
e Yom Kippur War had a fundamental inuence on US Air
Force equipment, training, tactics and doctrine. e war captured the
attention of civilian and military observers alike. e Air Force par-
ticipated in a number of joint and single service analyses and drew
pertinent conclusions in a wide range of mission areas. Primary lessons
focused on the lethality of the modern battleeld and the threat of
ground based air defense systems; requirements for defense suppres-
sion, targeting, and platform survivability; the importance of quantity
as well as quality in attrition-intensive warfare; and the need for airli
capabilities to transport the vast quantities of materiel necessary to
sustain military operations. ese lessons catalyzed or initiated the
acquisition of technological “osets” to the Soviet threat in Europe.
e war also energized training reforms, which interacted in turn
with new equipment to encourage the evolution of ever more eec-
tive tactics. All this inuenced—and was further inuenced by—
doctrinal changes that were themselves informed by Israeli experi-
ences in October 1973. Key individuals drove these organizational
reforms. Members of the “Vietnam Generation” leveraged Israeli
experience as they rehabilitated American air power, achieving stunning
rebirth in the Persian Gulf in 1991.
ere is, however, a nal, overarching legacy of the Yom Kippur
War that explains its essential inuence on the US Air Force. e war
reinforced an “American way of war” characterized by a focus on
high-end regular warfare. e battle-oriented conict of October
1973 was entirely consistent with this paradigm, and conrmed an
institutional tendency to assimilate only the regular lessons of the air
war over Vietnam. is view of “war as battle” has produced unparal-
leled success in conventional conicts; it has also, however, created
Conclusion│ 75
recurring challenges when employing American air power in contexts
other than high intensity, regular war.
is understanding of “war as battle” is also evident in an American-
Israeli military parallelism that can be traced back to the Yom Kippur
War. US and Israeli air power have tracked similar developmental
paths since 1973. In many cases, Israel tested American technologies
in combat, allowing the US to continue a theme of vicarious learning.
Israel has also, however, exhibited its own pseudo-American way of
war, and has experienced equally conicting results in irregular war-
fare, notably in Lebanon between 1982 and 2000 and again in 2006.
Challenges in broadening a conventional warfare paradigm to incor-
porate low-intensity conict have therefore characterized both the
Israeli and American experience in recent decades. Each air force has
adapted to an extent, for example in the use of air power for precise
targeting of key individuals. However, this enduring tension between
peerless regular capabilities and problematic irregular warfare repre-
sents a lingering American-Israeli legacy of the Yom Kippur War.
At the High End: War as Battle
e historian Russell Weigley rst articulated the concept of an
American way of war in 1973. Writing as the US withdrew from Vietnam,
but before the Yom Kippur War, Weigley argued:
In the Indian wars, the Civil War, and then climactically in World War II,
American strategists sought in actuality the object that Clausewitz saw as that
of the ideal type of war . . . the destruction of the enemy’s armed forces . . .
When American military resources were still slight, America made a promising
beginning in the nurture of strategists of attrition; but the wealth of the country,
and its adoption of unlimited aims in war cut that development short, until
the strategy of annihilation became characteristically the American way in war.
1
Beyond this focus on the annihilation of an enemy, Weigley also
asserted: “A central theme of the history of American strategy came
to be the problem of how to secure victory in its desired fullness with-
out paying a [high] cost.”
2
e resulting American way of war has
been characterized as “technology-loving and technology-dependent
. . . repower-oriented . . . aggressive and oensive . . . profoundly
regular… [and] frequently tone deaf to the historical [and cultural]
context it is operating in.”
3
Expressed in more general terms, this un-
derstanding identies the phenomenon of “war” very closely with its
76 Conclusion
sub-component, “battle”, and on a large scale. e American military has
been most eective when faced with situations that conform to this
paradigm of battle-oriented warfare and, by contrast, it has been “un-
comfortable waging war with constrained means for limited or am-
biguous objectives.”
4
Individual attitudes and perceptions have been fundamental to the
formation of this organizational outlook. Historian Brian M. Linn
contends that “how military ocers perceive their ‘lessons’ . . . creates
a ‘way of war’ . . . e military intellectuals’ interpretation of the past
shapes their service’s concept of war, which in turn inuences its pro-
curement, organization and training, doctrine, and planning for
future conicts.”
5
Naval War College professor and former Deputy
Assistant Secretary of Defense omas G. Mahnken argues these
“intellectuals” have tended to pursue innovation in accordance with
established service culture and preferences.
6
As a result, an American
strategic outlook focused on high-end regular warfare has been self-
reinforcing, and has tended to reject unconventional and therefore
uncomfortable forms of armed conict.
The Yom Kippur War therefore represented an exemplar and
afrming conict tted to American conceptions of war. Arab and
Israeli forces engaged in profoundly regular battles that constituted a
kind of Second World War redux, on a miniature geographical scale.
e conict was also impactful in its timing. It occurred immediately
aer the end of an uncomfortable mismatch between the preferred
American mode of conict and an incompatible context in Vietnam.
e eect was to build on analytical trends that already privileged
regular over irregular aspects of the war in Southeast Asia. Early Air
Force analysis had focused on air-to-air exchange rates in studies
such as the Red Baron report.
7
e Easter Oensive had introduced a
regular opponent into the conict, and the Air Force had targeted
North Vietnamese Army formations with far more success than it
had been experienced when trying to destroy irregular Vietcong
forces earlier in the war.
8
In addition, the perceived success of the
Linebacker II campaign contributed to a renewed sense of air power’s
inherent utility, represented by B-52 raids against North Vietnam
that were thematically similar to the strategic bombing campaigns of
the Second World War.
9
e Air Force therefore focused on regular
aspects of the Vietnam War, such as air-to-air combat and attacks on
conventional military targets, as it contemplated the training reforms
that the Yom Kippur War further energized. e Air Force’s emblems
Conclusion│ 77
of Vietnam were MiG-killing Phantoms, SAM-hunting Wild Weasels,
and B-52 raids against xed targets, and many of these reappeared in
the skies over the Sinai and the Golan.
Conversely, uncomfortable lessons derived from the irregular war
experience in Vietnam were “forgotten before they were assimilated”,
and the spectacle and timing of the Yom Kippur War contributed to
this process.
10
Alternative icons of the war in Southeast Asia—Vietcong
guerrillas operating among peasant populations—would have captured
the essence of the conict rather better; however, these were problem-
atic for an American view of “war as battle.” As a result, by the early
1980s the US military had “closed the door” on irregular warfare such
as that experienced in Vietnam and was hoping “that there will be a
conventional war if there is a war and we’ll use our conventional
forces.”
11
e typical US military response had been to blame the dif-
cult context in Southeast Asia rather than critically engage with it.
For example, Air Force General William Momyer, who as deputy air
commander in Vietnam had been responsible for the Rolling under
campaign during the 1960s, published a postwar analysis in which he
“associated the shortcomings of the Vietnam conict with failure to
follow the principles of air power.”
12
Momyer blamed contextual factors,
including political constraints, for compromising a proper applica-
tion of air power. In eect, the Air Force had not failed in Vietnam;
the irregular aspects of the war had failed the Air Force.
Momyer’s view typied an interpretation of air power that “limited
its validity and utility in other than general or total war between
industrialized states” and “would prove a major handicap in counter-
insurgency warfare”, both in Vietnam and aer.
13
is view ignored
the reality that “the possible military obligations of the United States
ranged widely over the spectrum of intensity.”
14
War would not always
equate to regular battle. is reality, however, was further obscured
by the immediate spectacle of an Arab-Israeli war that t rmly
within the band of the intensity spectrum that the Air Force was pre-
disposed to focus upon. If the American military had indeed been
tone deaf to contextual issues in Southeast Asia, then the Yom Kippur
War was a symphony of violent battle that was easily heard, and readily
understood. e nature and timing of the Arab-Israeli conict con-
tributed to a process in which considerations of regular warfare in
Vietnam were privileged by the US military, and potentially useful
irregular warfare lessons were discarded.
78 Conclusion
e Air Force constructed aer 1973 was therefore the product of
regular warfare lessons derived from Vietnam combined with analysis
of the profoundly regular Yom Kippur War. e resurgent air power
instrument unveiled in the Gulf War was also therefore profoundly
regular in its force structures, capabilities, and focus. e means and
ways employed in Desert Storm were entirely consistent with an
American way of war, and so too was the operational context. e Air
Force found a thematic successor to the Yom Kippur War in January
1991 and achieved spectacular results against regular Iraqi opponents.
is success was repeated, once more against conventional Iraqi
forces, in March 2003. e primacy of American air power in paradigm-
consistent conicts—in “war as battle”—epitomized the military
strength behind the post-Cold War “unipolar moment” and subse-
quent American hegemony in interstate relations.
15
In 1991, and
again in early 2003, the US Air Force showed that it had mastered its
way of war.
Not all war since Desert Storm, however, has been characterized
by battle. In the Balkans during the 1990s, and in Iraq and Afghanistan
aer mid-2003, American air power has faced challenges for which
its paradigmatic focus has proved an uncomfortable t. From a stra-
tegic point of view, the result has been a mismatch between means
and contextually viable ends, echoing the experience in Vietnam.
British academic Alice Hills has noted that the oensive application
of air power is problematic in irregular and urban conicts, and
“could not stop looting in Baghdad, or ethnic cleansing in Kosovo.”
16
Mary Kaldor has identied a more fundamental tension between
“old” and “new” war, with the former typied by regular warfare
norms that are poorly suited to the complex irregular forces, endemic
violence against civilians, and political constraints that dene the latter.
17
Kaldor focused on NATO experience in the Balkans, and the Kosovo
example is instructive. Adopting a line that echoed that of his prede-
cessor William Momyer, Air Force Lieutenant General Michael Short
complained that political constraints, and especially an inability to
strike targets in Belgrade, prevented the eective application of
NATO air power.
18
Confounded by circumstance, and attempting to
employ forces and doctrine that had been configured entirely in
accordance with the regular precepts of the traditional American way
of war, Short argued, as Momyer had, that the Air Force was being
failed by the prevailing context. Eventually, political constraints were
eased, allowing NATO to pressure Serbian leadership with attacks on
Conclusion│ 79
infrastructure and political targets, in eect bypassing the tactical dif-
culties experienced in Kosovo itself. But this option of switching
focus to regular warfare targets would not be available in later irregular
conicts where such targets simply did not exist. If the Gulf War had
been a thematic successor to the Yom Kippur War, Kosovo was closer
in many respects to Vietnam. e Air Force, however, was congured
to win a war modeled on the conicts in the Middle East, and had not
processed the irregular aspects of its own experience in Southeast
Asia.
A mismatch between regular warfare norms and irregular realities
was even more apparent in Iraq and Afghanistan aer 2003. Both
theaters lacked regular military, government, and infrastructure targets
aer the fall of pre-occupation regimes. e insurgencies therefore
echoed the irregular challenges of Vietnam and Kosovo but without
viable options for transition to conventional modes of warghting,
and this created extreme diculties for US and coalition forces.
Frederick Kagan has criticized “transformed” American military
power in Iraq for reducing war to a “targeting drill”, exhibiting a
“technologically driven obsession with identifying and destroying
enemy assets as the key problem of warfare” in a conflict that
demanded restraint and a focus upon protecting the civilian population
rather than attacking insurgent targets.
19
Some within the Air Force
recognized these limitations during the Iraq insurgency. A 2007 dra
report argued the “US Air Force needs to reassess its capabilities
across the spectrum of conict and recognize the limitations resident
within its current force construct toward irregular warfare. . . . Air
Force doctrine and theater command and control were designed to
defeat conventional forces and eld armies in major combat
operations.”
20
Recent Air Force policy also admits that, in earlier
years, a “high-end focus le a force structure that was less eective
and ecient in conducting combat operations at the lower end of the
spectrum of conict.”
21
Overall, however, the airpower community
has been criticized for being “slow to understand conicts in the
lower band of the intensity spectrum.”
22
Colin Gray argues that: “[To]
an air person who naturally believes that his most favored military
instrument inherently is an oensive and strategic tool of policy, the
world of the enemy is akin to a bombing range or even a dartboard . . .
the error [is] in confusing targeting with its eects and in conating
those eects with the whole narrative of warfare and of war itself.”
23
80 Conclusion
e answer may be an increased emphasis on non-kinetic forms of
airpower such as reconnaissance, and this is an observed trend; how-
ever, this remains in tension with the oensive traditions of a combat-
focused Air Force, and must also be balanced against the potential
threat of near-peer competitors that have not necessarily disappeared.
24
It is important to balance this critique of Air Force capabilities in
conflicts other than high-intensity “war as battle.” The Air Force
rebuilt itself during the later Cold War in response to a strongly
perceived Soviet threat. Moreover, while the threat of interstate warfare
on the NATO-Warsaw Pact model has abated since the end of the
Cold War, it is not certain that a prudent nation might abandon regular
warfare advantages such as those enjoyed by the US without conse-
quence. In addition, American air power has not been impotent in
irregular war situations. Hills admits that the “potential value of air-
power’s competencies” is “not at issue,” and the Air Force has devel-
oped considerable tactical experience during more than a decade of
irregular warfare.
25
Ultimately, however, American air power has not
achieved the kind of decisive success observed during Desert Storm
in subsequent conicts. e mismatch between “old war” means and
“new war’” problems is a continuing challenge, and a repeating theme.
Mark Clodfelter has argued that, in Vietnam, “doctrine deemed ap-
propriate for a general war with the Soviet Union was ill suited for a
limited conict against an enemy waging guerrilla war.”
26
is criticism
remains as valid today as in its original context. Following Vietnam,
the Yom Kippur War acted both as a lens that refocused existing
organizational predispositions, and as a reecting barrier that inhibited
the assimilation of uncomfortable—but potentially useful—lessons.
is dual function enabled the creation of an unparalleled instru-
ment of regular air warfare, but it also compromised an understanding
of that instrument’s limitations in conicts at the messy, irregular
edges of the intensity spectrum. Clodfelter’s criticism can be inverted
to reect the fact that an updated doctrine “appropriate for general
war with the Soviet Union” was extremely well suited to warfare
against the Iraqi regime in 1991 and again in 2003. In the Balkans,
however, and in later counterinsurgency campaigns in the Middle
East and Afghanistan, Clodfelter’s unmodied critique stands. e
enduring legacy of an American way of war—reinforced aer Viet-
nam by the spectacle and timing of the Yom Kippur War— is a con-
tinuing tension between a regular military paradigm and frequently
irregular contextual realities.
Conclusion│ 81
American-Israeli Parallelism
is tension has also been a feature of Israeli experience, and this
leads to a nal observation regarding the inuence of the Yom Kippur
War—its initiation of a long-term trend of American-Israeli military
parallelism. e Yom Kippur War has been labeled “an almost unalloyed
blessing because it marked the beginning of close ties between the
USAF and the Israeli Air Force.”
27
is study has already identied
the close relationships that were formed between American ocers
such as Robert Dixon and Don Starry and their Israeli counterparts
aer the 1973 war.
28
Equipment commonality was an additional element
of US-Israeli interaction, and one that benetted both Israel and the
US Air Force. For example, the Israelis purchased the F-15 in the
mid-1970s to contend with new Soviet aircra in Arab service, but
the sale also benetted US leaders who sought to counter proposals
that the F-15 program should be downscaled or abandoned in favor
of simpler ghters.
29
e adoption of the F-15 by the “most combat-
ready air force in the world” bolstered the platform’s credibility, and
also oered “an excellent chance the F-15 would be tested in combat.”
30
Indeed, the rst recorded F-15 kill was achieved by the Israeli Air
Force in 1979.
31
e 1981 raid on the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak
achieved a similar combat “blooding” for the F-16.
32
More signi-
cantly, the 1982 operation in the Bekaa Valley employed these aircra
and other American types such as the E-2C Hawkeye in combined
operations that, as previously described, attracted follow-up American
analysis.
33
e bilateral military relationship established aer 1973
gave the Israelis continued access to advanced technologies as they
conducted ongoing operations against their Arab neighbors. e US
Air Force meanwhile benetted from further vicarious combat experi-
ence as it recongured itself during the latter stages of the Cold War.
However, this military parallelism has extended beyond shared
relationships, common equipment, and operational lessons. At a con-
ceptual level, and in terms of strategic outlooks, the US and Israel
have exhibited a similar view, or “way”, of war. Israeli strategic culture
has been described as emphasizing “preemption, oensive opera-
tions, initiative and—increasingly—advanced technology.”
34
is
clearly echoes American predispositions toward certain means and
modes of warfare, and Israeli and American experiences have likewise
been similar when applying an “old war” paradigm to contextually
dicult “new war” problems. e high-intensity combat of October
82 Conclusion
1973 has not typied later Israeli experience. Israel has not fought a
major conventional conict against a neighboring Arab state since
battling Syrian forces in Lebanon in 1982. In subsequent decades,
Israeli security concerns have increasingly focused upon countering
irregular forces in occupied territories. Rather than armored Arab
formations and Soviet-supplied combat aircra, Israel has fought
adversaries including the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO),
Hamas, and Hezbollah. In a sense, Israel’s “Desert Storm moment”
came early, in the Bekaa Valley in 1982. e later application of Israeli
air power in irregular warfare has been no less ambiguous in its
effects than parallel US experiences.
Israeli conflicts in Lebanon offer the clearest example of this,
between 1982 and 2000 and again in 2006. e 1982 operation led to
a prolonged ground occupation that deteriorated into “Israel’s Vietnam”
as attacks on occupying Israeli troops quickly diminished the aer-
glow of initial success in the Bekaa Valley.
35
Israel attempted to use air
power to minimize risks to ground forces, rst against the PLO in
Beirut and then against Hezbollah throughout southern Lebanon.
However, civilian casualties in Beirut invoked strategically damaging
international criticism and, in the longer term, the “policy of air
strikes on Hizbullah [sic] had no discernible eect.”
36
e campaign
was ultimately a “military victory and a political defeat for Israel” and
Hezbollah remained a coherent organization when Israel pulled out
of southern Lebanon in 2000.
37
e subsequent invasion of Lebanon in 2006 featured another
extensive application of Israel airpower in response to Hezbollah
border incursions, the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers, and the ring of
rockets into Israeli towns and settlements. Israeli Air Force opera-
tional briengs focused on the number of targets engaged and the
number of Hezbollah rockets destroyed, but this was a “classic and
unsatisfying articulation of warfare as physical destruction and
‘attrition.’”
38
In fact, rocket rings continued throughout the 34 day
conict, and a belated Israeli ground campaign suered over 100
military fatalities against Hezbollah forces that employed an unex-
pected combination of irregular and conventional capabilities and
tactics.
39
An ocial Israeli post-war commission found that the use of
air power had been optimistic, and poorly matched the operational
context: “there were those in the [Israeli Defense Force] high com-
mand, joined by some in the political echelon, who entertained a
baseless hope that the capabilities of the air force could prove decisive
Conclusion│ 83
in the war.”
40
In fact, the Israeli Air Force “conducted two weeks of air
strikes . . . in which it conspicuously failed to halt Hezbollah rocket
attacks while it equally and conspicuously hit Lebanese civilian targets
and caused extensive civilian casualties, serious collateral damage,
and massive Lebanese evacuations.”
41
Writing in 2007 on the problems
experienced by Israeli air power against Hezbollah ghters in Lebanon,
William Arkin summarized: “e primary task ahead then for military
theorists and practitioners is to conceive of an integrated air-ground
‘eects based’ strategy that is suitable to the task of ghting terrorism
and all of the inherent political realities associated with the modern
use of force.”
42
Further echoing Kaldor’s views on “old” and “new”
war, Arkin asserted that the 2006 Lebanon conict “demonstrates
and justies a clear transition needed from conventional to wholly
new modes of warfare required for counterterrorism.”
43
Coincident
with American struggles against insurgent forces in Iraq, the Israeli
Air Force had struggled to defeat an unconventional enemy with con-
ventional air power.
Finally, in these extra-paradigm and uncomfortable conflicts,
reciprocal learning seemed to be much reduced. e similarities
between Israeli experiences in Lebanon between 1982 and 2000; initial
American attempts to apply air power against insurgents in Iraq aer
2003; and Israel’s second invasion of Lebanon in 2006, are striking.
ey suggest a repetition of mistakes or, at least, a shared inability to
overcome the mismatch between “old war” ways and “new war” problems.
Each nation could no doubt see that the other was failing to translate
conventional superiority into strategic success, but it is not clear that
either understood why. ere was little evident mutual transfer of
unambiguous best practice because, it seems, no such best practice
could be found.
In some areas, however, mutual learning or inspiration does appear
to have continued, even if outcomes remain uncertain. e use of
Israeli air power to target key individuals in occupied territories has
been mimicked by the US and its allies in the ongoing struggle against
Islamist extremists, especially in the Pakistan/Afghanistan border
regions. Here, the US has combined a technology which the Israelis
emphasized as “early adopters”—unmanned air vehicles—with an
operational concept also pioneered by Israel. is innovation has not
been without controversy, however, and neither has it been unam-
biguously eective. Collateral damage remains an emotive issue;
there are concerns that such strikes may increase popular resentment
84 Conclusion
rather than degrade local support for opposition groups; the extent of
CIA, vice Air Force, involvement has created some unease in the US;
and such tactical actions appear symptomatic of managing, rather
than resolving, ongoing conicts.
44
Nonetheless, this mutual innova-
tion represents an attempt to broaden the air power paradigm and
apply technological advantages against “new war” foes. In conducting
unmanned air strikes against individual extremists, and attempting
to reconcile the tension between a still-dominant regular warfare
paradigm and irregular threats, the US has once more followed an
Israeli lead.
Overall, then, the Yom Kippur War reinforced and initiated signi-
cant trends at an overarching conceptual level, and these established
still-relevant developmental vectors. e dominant inuence of an
American way of war can again be traced back through the intense
regular combat of October 1973, while a military parallelism between
the US and Israel can be traced back to the conict. Both of these
trends gave the developmental processes that have been outlined in
the body of this study—in equipment, training, tactics, and doctrine—
their direction, and their shape. e shaping of the modern US Air
Force cannot be explained by considering direct American experience
in isolation. e post-Vietnam generation was predisposed to rebuild
an air force focused upon regular warfare, and the Yom Kippur War
ensured this is exactly what it did. Moreover, signicant mutual inu-
ence between the Israeli and US Air Forces may have begun in October
1973, but it has not been limited to that conict—even if neither Israel
nor the US has yet managed to translate “old war” modes of air warfare
into eective solutions to “new war” problems.
e Vietnam-focused view of the US Air Force’s development aer
1973 is not, therefore, wrong; but it is incomplete. e Yom Kippur
War encouraged trends and themes that continue to inuence the Air
Force today. From discrete capabilities to an overall organizational
mindset, the modern Air Force is a product of blended experiences—
direct, and vicarious. Interacting personal and organizational learning
processes have created an unparalleled air instrument, although both
the US and Israel continue to strive to understand the application of
air power outside of conventional war. e key insight, however, lies
in recognizing the importance of mutual, vice autonomous, develop-
ment. e US Air Force may rightly understand the F-4 Phantom as
an icon of its Vietnam experience and the subsequent reshaping of
American air power; that reshaping, however, also owes a great deal
Conclusion│ 85
to the experiences of Israeli Phantoms, dueling Arab SAMs, over the
Sinai Desert and Golan Heights in October 1973.
Notes
1. Russell F. Weigley, e American Way of War: A History of United States
Military Strategy and Policy (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University
Press, 1973), xxii.
2. Weigley, American Way of War, xxii.
3. John Andreas Olsen, “Airpower and Strategy,” in Airpower Reborn: e
Strategic Concepts of John Warden and John Boyd, ed. John Andreas Olsen (Annapolis,
MD: Naval Institute Press, 2015), 190 (footnote 97).
4. omas G. Mahnken, Technology and the American Way of War since 1945
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 3.
5. Brian McAllister Linn, “e American Way of War Debate: An Overview,”
Historically Speaking 11, no. 5 (November 2010): 22.
6. Mahnken, Technology and the American Way of War, 11.
7. Brian D. Laslie, e Air Force Way of War: U.S. Tactics and Training Aer
Vietnam (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2015), 20.
8. Phil Haun and Colin Jackson, “Breaker of Armies: Air Power in the Easter Of-
fensive and the Myth of Linebacker I and II in the Vietnam War,” International
Security 40, no. 3 (2016): 139.
9. Mark Clodfelter, e Limits of Air Power: e American Bombing of North
Vietnam (New York: Free Press, 1989), xiii.
10. Donald J. Mrozek, e US Air Force Aer Vietnam: Postwar Challenges and
Potential for Responses (Maxwell AFB, AL: Air University Press, 1988), 28.
11. Lt Gen William P. Yarborough, quoted in Mrozek, US Air Force Aer
Vietnam, 27–28.
12. Mrozek, US Air Force Aer Vietnam, 16.
13. James S. Corum and Wray R. Johnson. Airpower in Small Wars: Fighting
Insurgents and Terrorists (Lawrence, KS.: University Press of Kansas, 2003), 270.
14. Mrozek, US Air Force Aer Vietnam, 17.
15. Charles Krauthammer, “e Unipolar Moment,” Foreign Aairs 70, no. 1
(1990): 23–33.
16. Alice Hills, Future War in Cities: Rethinking a Liberal Dilemma (London:
Frank Cass, 2004), 74.
17. Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era
(Stanford, CA.: Stanford University Press, 2013), vi–vii.
18. Dag Henriksen, NATO’s Gamble: Combining Diplomacy and Airpower in the
Kosovo Crisis, 1998-1999 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2007), 191.
19. Kagan quoted in Keith L Shimko, e Iraq Wars and America’s Military
Revolution (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 162.
20. Dag Henriksen, “Airpower: e Need for More Analytical Warriors,” in
Conceptualizing Modern War, eds. Karl Erik Haug and Ole Jorgen Maao (London:
Hurst, 2011), 221.
86 Conclusion
21. United States Air Force, America’s Air Force: A Call to the Future, July 2014,
16.
22. Henriksen, “Analytical Warriors,” 228.
23. Colin Gray, “Airpower eory,” in Airpower Reborn: e Strategic Concepts of
John Warden and John Boyd, ed. John Andreas Olsen (Annapolis, MD: Naval
Institute Press, 2015), 172.
24. Corum and Johnson, Airpower in Small Wars, 272.
25. Hills, Future War, 75.
26. Clodfelter, Limits of Air Power, 73.
27. Marshall L. Michel, “e Revolt of the Majors: How the Air Force Changed
Aer Vietnam,” PhD diss., Auburn University, 2006, 185.
28. See Chapter 2, page 32, and Chapter 4, page 82.
29. Michel, “Revolt of the Majors,” 249.
30. Michel, “Revolt of the Majors,” 249.
31. Brig Gen Moshe Marom-Melnik (Israeli Air Force), interview by Boeing,
transcript at Boeing.com. http://www.boeing.com/news/frontiers/archive/2003/
december/i_ids5.html.
32. Ehud Yonay, No Margin for Error: e Making of the Israeli Air Force (New
York: Pantheon Books, 1993), 361.
33. Corum and Johnson, Airpower in Small Wars, 403. US post-conict visit: see
Chapter 3, page 65.
34. Mahnken, Technology and the American Way of War, 3.
35. Anthony H. Cordesman and Abraham R. Wagner, e Lessons of Modern
War Volume 1: e Arab-Israeli Conicts, 1973-1989 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press,
1990), 260–61.
36. Corum and Johnson, Airpower in Small Wars, 413.
37. Corum and Johnson, Airpower in Small Wars, 407.
38. William H Arkin, “Divining Victory: Airpower in the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah
War,” Air University Press (August 2007), 142.
39. Anthony H. Cordesman, William D. Sullivan, and George Sullivan, Lessons
of the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah War (Washington, D.C.: CSIS Press, 2007), 5.
40. “English Summary of the Winograd Commission Report.” New York Times,
30 Jan 2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/30/world/middleeast/31winograd-
web.html?_r=0.
41. Cordesman et al, Lessons of the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah War, 120.
42. Arkin, “Divining Victory,” 143.
43. Arkin, “Divining Victory,” 157.
44. Mark Mazzetti, e Way of the Knife: e CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at
the Ends of the Earth (New York: Penguin, 2013), 14, 228, 254.
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