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11 AirLand Battle Richard M. Swain The long ninth decade of the twentieth century proved to be the heyday of the tank in American notions of land warfare. Driven largely by the presence of the Soviet armored threat to NATO, the years from the end of U.S. military involvement in Vietnam to the Gulf War were marked by the creation of the most powerful armored force in U.S. history. It was better equipped, better trained, and generally more soundly schooled than any armored force that preceded it. Ironically, by the time this army was tested in battle, it was already undergoing its dismantling. The battle that validated the efforts of the long ninth decade was fought in Iraq by an armored force on its way to the scrap yard, its long-time Soviet rival overcome by that state's own internal political and economic contradictions. In the wake of the Cold War, the U.S. Army was downsizing and simultaneously turning its search for qualitative superiority to a narrow focus on technical rather than conceptual superiority. The polymorphic nature of post-Cold War problems and the concomitant shift to continental U.S. basing brought into question the continued centrality of heavy armored striking forces as the basis of U.S. military power. Creation of the Desert Storm army was the result of an extraordinary effort to create a land force qualitatively unmatched anywhere in the world. Such qualitative superiority was required because it was accepted that any U.S. force in the world almost certainly would be outnumbered. Quality was to redress quantitative inferiority. The effort to achieve qualitative superiority involved the enlistment and retention of highly skilled and disciplined volunteer soldiers; the development of the world's best fighting equipment; the evolution of a near science of realistic, performance-oriented training to standard; and the development of a sequential and progressive professional education system designed to hone leader skills. VII Corps's victory in the desert Airland Battle 361 in 1991 rested to a marked extent upon the skills and leadership of a noncommissioned officer corps unique in the world for its professionalism and level of responsibility. Tying all of these human and material investments into a focused and harmonious whole was a doctrine of war on land called AirLand Battle. This chapter traces the evolution of that body of beliefs and practices from 1973 to 1986—the year in which the last edition of the army's capstone doctrinal manuals to employ the trademark was published . The 1986 Field Manual (FM) 100-5, Operations, codified the doctrine the army took to the Persian Gulf in August 1990. Doctrine, as an authoritative and formal declaration of how a military organization intends to fight, is a creation of the nineteenth century general staff culture. The purpose of doctrine is to unify or harmonize the individual efforts of members of an organization in the performance of their collective tasks. It guides training, organization, and acquisition.1 Because it is directive in nature, it can also be used to change an organization's focus. However, the use of doctrine to perform this relatively short-term function abruptly may produce or exacerbate existing instabilities in the organization. And, when a proposed modification of published doctrine is not accepted by the institution's membership, its failure can call for its rectification in a sort of dialectic process of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Doctrine is a matter of choice.2 Someone ultimately has the authority to choose between alternatives. Others have the authority to vote or veto, and still others to advise. To that extent, the development of doctrine is hierarchical and doctrinal choice can be influenced heavily by the personal idiosyncrasy of those with authority to choose or advise . No matter how the choice is made, however, doctrine development may be seen conceptually in two ways. It may be viewed as a bottom-up, building block process—take care of the fundamentals and the larger issues will solve themselves, for example. It may also be viewed as a process of relating inferior means to superior ends—a topdown process in which the ends are first well defined and qualified, then appropriate ways and means are developed. The choice of doctrine in either case is affected by institutional and extrainstitutional contexts—social, historical, cultural, and political. Choices are influenced heavily by the range of available or anticipated technologies or tools. The evolution of doctrine in the 1970s and 1980s reflected the presence of...

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