A New Look at Air Policy

by THOMAS K. FINLETTER

AIR policy has its ups and downs. At the moment it is in one of its downs. The 143wing Air Force has been temporarily abandoned. This is not good for the country. Our national safety and the hopes of our foreign policy depend largely on the kind of air power we have. This is not because of any special importance of the element air, as opposed to the elements ground and sea. It is because air power is atomic power, and atomic power is the most terrible military weapon man has ever had in his hands. It is also because the Russians as well as we have airatomic power; and theirs is growing every day.

The United States simply must have a supremacy in air-atomic power which will be overwhelming. There is a minimum level of air-atomic power we must have at all times — a level which must have a big margin of superiority over the Russians. We will not have it unless we reverse the recent decisions which have interfered with our planned build-up of air-atomic power.

There are serious, perhaps unmanageable, forces at work which make it doubtful whether we shall get the kind of air power we need. These are not sinister forces. They come from the legitimate differences of opinion in a free country, and above all from those defeating compromises with clear-minded policy which are so natural to free governments. Compromises will not build an air-atomic force of the kind I am talking of. Nothing but a clear and very uncompromising recognition of the importance of this weapon will produce the air policy we must have.

Free countries have one adv antage in working out policies of this kind: the right of free discussion. I shall use this right to argue that we go back to the policy we had before the recent decision to cut air power, and that we go it one better by putting even more emphasis than we did on air-atomic power as the keystone of our military forces.

The decision to cut the Air Force back from the 143-wing level involves a real dispute of policy. Let us not be confused by the technicalities — lead time, uncommitted funds, unspent funds, and all the rest of those complicated details whose only effect is, and indeed may have been intended to be, to confuse and stifle a discussion on the merits.

The policy issue is between the air-atomic priority theory and the balanced force theory. I shall argue in this article for the air-atomic priority theory, in which I deeply believe.

The air-atomic theory is based on the following propositions: —

The atomic bomb combined with the airplane has revolutionized warfare. A war may now be decided in the first weeks or days of combat.

Russian atomic power—bombs plus the ability to deliver them on the centers of power of the Free World — is now substantial. The Russians could make a serious atomic attack now. Soon — and for planning purposes I would define soon as within two to three years — a Russian atomic at tack on our cities and our industry and those of our main allies would be so serious as to raise the question whether the Free World could fight back.

Copyright 1953, by The Atlantic Monthly Company, Boston 16, Mass. All rights reserved.

The Russians may start a war with an atomic blitz of this kind. Here there can be a difference of opinion — but not, I believe, of assumpt ion. There are those who believe that the Russians will keep away from a general war as long as possible; that they are doing so well in the cold war that there is no point in their starting a hot one. This may be. But even the most convinced believer that the Russians will not make general war would not want to put us in the position of being in jeopardy of a Russian decision. The assumpt ion, for our planning purposes, must be that the Russians may make an atomic blitz at any time after they are in a position to do it.

There are those, too, who believe that the Russian state may break up, or that the present or some future regime may become peaceably inclined. Anything is possible. But I suggest that we wait until these things happen before we start making our national policy on the premise that they have happened.

Even if the Russians do not make an atomic blitz, the air-atomic power they soon will have will give them a much stronger position in the cold war than they now have. Unless we build up a counter blitz which will be materially more impressive than theirs, our political position will be badly hurt in three areas.

First, in the continental United States. It is intolerable that we should be open to a Russian atomic blitz without having in our hands the most terrible counter atomic blow this country can build.

Second, in the rest of the NATO territory. If we do not have a counter to possible Russian atomic attack, all our military plans in SHAPE for the defense of Europe will be nullified, and the political effects in some European countries may be disastrous. The Free World has to be strong as well as right.

Third, in the Gray Areas —the long line of contact of the Free World with Communism from the eastern extremity of NATO in Turkey to NATO’s western extremity in Alaska, as well as the areas back of the line of contact which are not firmly bound to the cause of freedom. The political effect of Russia’s ability to make an air-atomic attack without our having a proper counter to it would be most serious in all this territory. The Gray Areas are more vulnerable, politically and militarily, than NATO territory because the Gray Areas do not have a political base such as the North Atlantic Treaty to hold them together, or a combined military force like NATO’s for their common defense. An answer to this new Russian atomic power must be found. We must have a devastating counter to it.

According to the air-atomic priority theory, the military answer lies in the Free World’s having a force-in-being centered in United States air-atomic power.

2

THE backbone of the Free World counter to Russian air-atomic power must be overwhelmingly stronger air-atomic power. And the Russians and everyone else must know it is overwhelming. The United States alone can provide the bombs and the planes that together make it up.

The prime political purpose of this force is to stop the Russians from starting a general war. Its purpose, also, is to give political strength to the Free World during the cold war, and it must be able to save the Free World from disaster in the unlikely event that the Russians would start a war in the face of such an overwhelming counter blast.

This is something worth paying for. But this force will be able to do all these things only if it is strong enough. It will be no good at all unless it is very good.

To get an overwhelming counter air-atomic force we w ill have to set up in our military planning a Priority 1. The charter member would be the Air Force’s Strategic Air Command and those parts of Navy carrier air that can properly be assigned to this task.

There would be other forces in Priority 1, but they would have to prove their case. Air defense of the U.S., for example — and considerably more of it than the present military budget can possibly provide. There can be nothing like absolute air defense against a Russian atomic blitz — especially a sneak attack — but that does not justify us in having our air defenses at the inadequate level they are now. Also the ground divisions that were assigned by the U.S. to NATO (about 6) and other divisions mainly for training in the U.S. Also naval forces to protect the sea lanes, mainly against submarines. But unassigned, general-purpose forces, which do not directly meet the Russian air-atomic threat or are not needed to carry out the treaty obligations to NATO — these should not be in Priority 1.

It is no answer to this to say that we need these general-purpose forces because they could be used to defend the areas outside NATO territory — such as, say, Indo-China. The fact is that the United States is not building military forces to hold the Gray Areas comparable to those we have in NATO.

Perhaps we should have such forces. I do not think we should, for the simple reason that as long as we have no political union such as NATO in the Gray Areas, the forces that would be required to hold this vast territory are far beyond any practical possibility. Our main reliance to hold the Gray Areas must be on diplomacy, backed by our worldwide air-atomic power.

But in any case oven if we were ready to pay the huge costs — many billions of dollars annually — that would be necessary to provide the forces to contain the Communists in the Gray Areas, they should be in Priority 2, not in Priority 1. And they should not be planned for until the Priority 1 requirements are filled. This is not the way it works now. We do have Priority 2 and lower forces in our military establishment now, and they cut into and deprive us of the kind and amount of Priority 1 power we ought to have. We should never have Priority 2 forces at the expense of the vital Priority 1, especially not at the expense of air-atomic power. Only by a tightly planned force with the priorities strictly enforced will we get ihe combination we are seeking — an overwhelmingly strong military force-in-being, adequate for the purposes of our foreign policy, at a bearable cost which the economy can and the people will support, year in and year out, as long as the Russians act the way they do.

3

IN opposition to the air-priority theory is the balanced force concept, which has the advantage of being not only theory but practice. Only once since 1945 has the balanced force theory failed to dominate our military planning.

The balanced force concept calls for a roughly equal division of the defense dollar among the three services — Army, Navy, and Air Force. Priorities are made by each service within itself. But no over-all strategic concept, no proper relating of the forces to our national objectives, no preoccupation with the rising Russian air-atomic threat, dominates the decision as to how much each of the services is to have. Under the balanced force method we get too much of some forces and too little of others.

In the main this is not the fault of individuals but of the system — the statutory structure of the Defense Department and the lack of arrangements within the government for the proper relating of foreign policy to the size and nature of the military services, and vice versa. Individuals can, and do, direct the governmental machinery wisely or unwisely, and thus have considerable influence on the results. But the structure and procedures of the government make compromise — that is, about one dollar each to the Army, Navy, and Air Force — the normal and almost irresistible course.

The story of our military budget since the end of World War II shows how firmly entrenched the balanced force method is. The first phase was the demobilization from the end of t he war to the beginning of the Korean War. Economic considerations ruled. We had just been through a great war with budgets running to over $100 billion a year and with big deficits; we had to work to get back into balance. During this phase the Director of the Budget and the other economic advisers in government had the greatest influence in deciding the force levels of the armed services. It was they who recommended the ceiling figure for the defense budget to the President; and the man who recommends in government is in a key position. The ceiling figure then went to the Secretary of Defense, who passed it on to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who were told to make recommendations of force levels which would come within the assigned dollar limit. The Joint Chiefs, each representing his own service, made what was in effect a treaty setting up force levels — so many divisions, so many warships, so many air wings — which in fact brought the budgets of the Army, Navy, and Air Force out in roughly balancing dollar amounts. It could not be otherwise. When three independent services divide a deficit by unanimous agreement it is almost sure to come out in roughly three equal parts.

After the Korean W ar began, the system changed. The shock of this brutal aggression, with American troops taking heavy casualties and being pushed backward to the Pusan perimeter, shifted the emphasis from the economic to the military. Under the new system, which grew apace with the changing climate of opinion, it was not the dollar limit but the military need which took first place. The first recommendation as to the size of the military establishment we were to have, not just for Korea but world-wide, was now made by the Joint Chiefs, and without any previously assigned limitation as to what it must cost. The military requirement, not the dollar limit, was the first step in the process. This was a heavy, and I think unfair, burden to put on the Joint Chiefs. They had to, and did, observe the form of the Constitutional precept that they should make military recommendations only. But in fact when they recommended certain force levels — so many divisions, so many ships, so many air wings — they were making judgments of the highest foreign policy and economic significance.

Neither of these two methods is right. The assigned dollar limit system is bad because an economic man should not make the key recommendation on a subject with such a high military and foreign policy content. The Joint Chiefs system is not good because military men should not make the key recommendation on such a subject, either.

However, the main point about this Joint Chiefs system is that as the Army, Navy, and Air Force jumped forward in size, they did so in balanced fashion. The dollar budgets went up roughly equally. The Navy trailed somewhat, but Army and Air Force kept about even in the budgets of 1951 and 1952. As the Air Force went from 48 wings to 95, the Army and the Navy went up apace. The balanced force method still applied.

So it went until the fall of 1951. Then a decision of great moment was made. The balanced force method was broken. By decision of the Joint Chiefs — unanimous and approved all the way through the Secretary of Defense, the President, and the Congress — the Air Force, then at 95 authorized wings, was jumped to 143 authorized wings, while the force levels of Army and Navy stayed where they were. One change only was made by higher authority: the President on the advice of his economic advisers stretched the date of readiness of the Air Force from the date recommended by the Defense Department by one year, from June 30, 1954, to June 30, 1955.

This was a major victory for the air-atomic priority principle — but only a partial one. For there was a great deal of built-in “balance” in the levels of forces already established. But still it was a victory of considerable importance.

The 1951 air-atomic decision was reflected in a budget for Fiscal Year 1953 of which the Air Force got much more than the Army and Navy. The decision was carried over into the Fiscal Year 1954 budget which Mr. Truman proposed just as he left office. The 1954 Truman budget called for $16.7 billion for the Air Force and only $12.1 for the Army and $11.3 for the Navy.

This partial victory for the air-atomic priority method did not last long. The normal pulls to the balanced equal-division-of-t he-money method were too much for it, and it has now been crushed — let us hope for a while only.

Under the unfortunate system which requires a defeated Administration to propose and the new Administration to dispose of the national budget for the first fiscal year of the new Administration, the Truman figures and the victory of the airatomic priority method had to be reviewed by the incoming Administration before the new Defense Department officials could possibly have fully learned their trade.

The review was made by the civilian officials of the Department of Defense, as it should have been. The Secretary of Defense should recommend the force levels to the President and Congress. The force levels are a very mixed matter of foreign and military policy, and it is the Secretary of Defense’s duty to translate the foreign policy given to him by the President and the Secretary of State into military strengths. But the Secretary of Defense should have the most complete military advice before he makes this important strategic decision of the force levels. It is reckless for him to make a force level decision without the most exhaustive study of the subject with his military men. Yet there seems to be a considerable doubt whether any military men, the Joint Chiefs of Staff or any others, were consulted by the Secretary of Defense before he made this recent cutback in air power. And this was a great strategic decision of our time.

In any case the review was fatal to t he air-atomic idea; $5 billion was taken off the Air Force budget, $1.7 off the Navy, and the Army was increased by $1.5 billion. The Army had the most money, the Air Force second, and the Navy third; but broadly we were back with the balanced forces. The emphasis on air-atomic power that had obtained for a year and a half was smashed. The brief era when the air-atomic principle had its foot in the door was now but a moment of history. The priorities, the low as well as the very highest, were back in equal status. And the country was started down the tracks toward a time of peril.

The 143-wing force was centered on one controlling purpose: to have an “atomic capability” — atomic bombs, aircraft (planes and guided missiles), and defenses against Russian attack (air defense and tactical air)—so strong that the Russians would not dare to strike at us or the rest of the Free World.

The time to be ready for this Russian air-atomic danger is now. But the danger will get worse with each month. From 1954 on it will be at a serious point — and it is for 1954 on that the 143-wing force was planned. It is also from 1954 on that the great damage of the $5 billion cut in appropriations will be felt. Of course we will have stronger air power next year and the year after than we have now — that will be the result of the appropriations made in previous years. But we will not have, from now on, and notably from 1955 to 1957, anything like the deterrent power to Russian attack that the 143-wing force would have provided. W e are building deliberately a period of weakness in our deterrent power. We are cutting back our airatomic deterrent while the Russians, we may be sure, are redoubling their efforts at this sign of American vacillation and weakness.

The decision cutting back our air-atomic power apparently is about to be reviewed. But even if the cutback is wholly reversed, precious time will have been lost and much damage to our air-atomic buildup will have been done. And in view of the vigor with which the decision to cut back has been defended before Congress and the people, it will be very difficult to repudiate it.

4

THE balanced force method is, though, defended by many as the right way of planning our armed forces. Warfare, it is said, requires the effective interplay of all arms. The land, sea, and air must work together as an integrated team. We must avoid a single weapon concept. By the proper balance of all arms we must make up a single, concentrated, and flexible striking unit.

There are two difficulties. First, this is a theory for fighting a war of a kind that will never happen again; it ignores the happenings since 1945 in the greatest technological revolution in armaments in all history — a revolution that has utterly changed the nature of warfare and has developed a weapon which in all probability will be decisive in the early weeks or days of a war. A balanced force is just what we do not want to handle this new weapon. We want imbalance; we want concentration on having superiority in the decisive weapon, not having a lot of indecisive weapons and letting the enemy get superiority in the one weapon that will give the decision to the side which will have superiority in it.

Second, the balanced force concept fails to take into account that we are building a force under entirely different foreign policy and economic considerations than obtained during World War II. Then our foreign policy was simple: to beat Germany and Japan. To do this almost all we could get of anything was useful, and economically the sky was the limit. Now our foreign policy is complicated, and, economically, we are trying to keep expenditures down. For the purposes of our foreign policy we have to have the kind of force which fits in with our political purposes and commitments. Dividing up the military budget and the military forces into three arbitrary parts will not produce that kind of force. Economically we have to use priorities. Since we cannot have all we want of everything, we have first to get all we need of the most important things; and only after the high priority needs have been met can we afford, militarily, the items of second and lower importance.

The balanced force method is incompatible with a system of first things first. It never can produce, in a time of limited funds, the military force we need. The result is militarily bad and there is not even the partially saving grace that balanced forces are cheaper economically.

We are paying a huge sum every year for an inadequate force when for somewhat less money we could get a force which might of itself prevent World War III. The secondary forces —those in Priority 3 or lower — run into several billions of dollars a year which would be saved if the airatomic priority method were followed. We would have to debit against these savings the cost of the increases in the Priority 1 items we are not now getting but should be. We probably also would have to deduct from the savings the cost of additional Mutual Security aid (to build up NATO air which is now much too low). Balancing these debits and credits, I estimate that the air-atomic method, it strictly applied, would produce a very much stronger striking force for about $2 billion under the $36 billion budget submitted by the present Administration. But, to do this, the theory would have to be really strictly applied.

The reader may wonder why this balanced force concept has such a sway. It is, I believe, for these reasons: —

First, the organization of the Defense Department under existing legislation makes compromise among the claims of the three armed services almost unavoidable.

Second, the tendency of a nation which has won the latest war, especially a defense-minded nation with no intention of attacking anyone, is to think too much in terms of the forces and techniques that have just produced victory — that is, to look backwards and, understandably, to believe that what worked before will work again. Much of our military advice comes from men whose experience is deeply grounded in the warfare of World War II. It is very difficult for such men to set aside ruthlessly the lessons of their proven experience for the uncertainties of the unproven future. And the lessons of the experience are strong for balanced forces: that is what we had in World War II.

Third, the failure to relate properly our military planning to our foreign policy. The National Security Council exists for this purpose, but in practice the important decisions are often made outside the Security Council without the proper intermeshing of military, political, and economic considerations.

Fourth, the lack in the government of adequate representation of the air-atomic point of view. No cabinet member today can present to the President, the Congress, or the people the uncompromised arguments for the importance of this all-important weapon. The Secretary of Defense represents all three points of view — land, sea, and air. So, too, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission can argue for atom bombs, but he cannot speak for the air power which carries them against an enemy and defends against them when they are in the hands of an enemy. By the time the arguments for air-atomic power, generated in the submerged Departments of the Air Force and Navy, get to the President, the Congress, and the people under the present system, the beliefs of the men who know intimately the facts of the revolutionary nature of air-atomics have become so diluted by economic decisions and by compromises that they do not get the hearing they should.

5

I HOPE I have made clear how deeply entrenched the balanced force method is. The statutory structure of the Defense Department is not going to be changed overnight; nor is the method of relating foreign policy to military policy and vice versa. And yet we are facing the certainty that unless we reverse our military plans about air-atomic power, our present margin of superiority over Russia in atomic-air will dwindle down and down, perhaps to the point where the superiority is theirs. For we may be quite certain that if we give them the chance the Russians will take it. They do not have to compromise with anyone when they want to give priority to building atomic weapons and the planes that carry them.

We are too ready to think that because we have and probably will continue to have a superiority in atomic bombs, we will always have a greater atomic power than Russia. Atomic bombs do not deliver themselves. They have to be carried. And carrying them is a very difficult and complicated business. Look at a map. And they have to be defended against, when they are carried by an enemy. Unless we reverse this balanced force business, we are likely to find our atomic lead dangerously cut because we will not have the air wings to carry the weapons and to defend against them.

Let us remember also that the Russians have one great advantage over us. If it suited their purposes they would not hesitate to make a sneak atomic attack, without warning, on us and our friends — and the world knows it. It is therefore not enough for us to have a small lead in these decisive weapons and in the means of carrying them. We must have a clear, overwhelming superiority in both respects. Priority 1 must therefore be kept at an unmistakable level of power. The balanced force notion is keeping us from hav ing this minimum level.

What to do about it? Changes in the legal structure of the Defense Department are not the answer; they would take too long. It might be possible, though, to get amendments to the Atomic Energy Act to permit the most effective move that could be made to put atomic-air back in the place it should be — to allow the United States Government to tell the American people very fully the facts of the air-atomic situation today, and where it will be, say, two, four, six years hence.

It is being suggested more and more insistently by those who know the air-atomic facts that the American people ought to be told about this very serious situation affecting their country and themselves; and that they could be told, without revealing to the Russians anything of importance they do not know. Nothing would do more to rid us of this balanced force incubus which is doing us such damage. If the facts of the air-atomic situation were made known officially and fully to the American people, the balanced force notion would blow up overnight. The people would not stand for it.

But as a practical matter what has to be done must be done quickly. The most immediate and urgent ly needed stop is a basic change in t he present down-grading of air-atomic power.

The effects of this cutback in air-atomic power will reach a peak in from two to three years from now. This is when the “paper wings,” the full 143wing force, would have been flying — but now will not be. This also is when the Russian atomic-air will be two to three years closer to the point in time when the Russians will be able to risk a devastating air-atomic attack on the cities of the United States and the rest of the Free World.

Whether the Russians will have reached and passed this point in two to three years no one can say with absolute assurance. But we do know that we are cutting our own air-atomic power for that period — and for as long thereafter as the present policy is not changed. We are playing with our biggest military asset. We are cutting and perhaps imperiling the margin of superiority we have so far had in this greatest of all weapons. We are handing the Russians the chance to close the airatomic gap and, if we persist in degrading air-atomic power long enough, even to pull ahead of us. Every month that goes by without a reversal of the antiatomic-air policy strengthens the Russian position relative to us.