Combat Pair: The Evolution of Air Force-navy Integration in Strike Warfare,  By: Benjamin S. Lambeth, RAND Corporation, ISBN/EAN: 9780833042095, is now available. Free download, PDF format.

Preface:

This report was prepared as a contribution to a larger RAND-initiated study for the U.S. Air Force aimed at exploring new concepts for bringing land-based air power together with both naval aviation and surface and subsurface naval forces to enhance the nation’s ability to negate or, if need be, defeat evolving threats in both major combat operations and irregular warfare.

The report describes the evolution of Air Force and Navy integration in aerial strike warfare from the time of the Vietnam War, when any such integration was virtually nonexistent, to the contemporary era when Air Force and Navy air combat operations have moved ever closer to a point where they can be said to provide both a mature capability for near-seamless joint-force employment and a role model for other possible types of closer Air Force and Navy force integration in areas where the air and maritime operating domains intersect.

It was sponsored by Major General R. Michael Worden, USAF, then-Director for Operational Plans and Joint Matters in the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Air, Space and Information Operations, Plans, and Requirements (AF/A5X), Headquarters, United States Air Force. The research reported here was conducted within the Strategy and Doctrine Program of RAND Project AIR FORCE as a part of a fiscal year 2006 study titled “Exploring New Concepts for Joint Air-Naval Operations.”

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Summary:

During the more than three decades that have elapsed since the war in Vietnam ended, the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy have progressively developed a remarkable degree of harmony in the integrated conduct of aerial strike operations. That close harmony stands in sharp contrast to the situation that prevailed throughout most of the Cold War, when the two services lived and operated in wholly separate physical and conceptual worlds, had distinct and unique operating mindsets and cultures, and could claim no significant interoperability features to speak of. Once the unexpected demands of fighting a joint littoral war against Iraq in 1991 underscored the costs of that absence of interoperability, however, both the Air Force and the Navy quickly came to recognize and embrace the need to change their operating practices to accommodate the demise of the Soviet threat that had largely determined their previous approaches to warfare and to develop new ways of working with each other in the conduct of joint air operations to meet a new array of post–Cold War challenges around the world.....

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PDF format, 711KB, 129Pages. Provided by RAND Corporation.

The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit research organization providing objective analysis and effective solutions that address the challenges facing the public and private sectors around the world. RAND’s publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.

RAND Project AIR FORCE (PAF), a division of the RAND Corporation, is the U.S. Air Force’s federally funded research and development center for studies and analyses. PAF provides the Air Force with independent analyses of policy alternatives affecting the development, employment, combat readiness, and support of current and future aerospace forces. Research is conducted in four programs: Aerospace Force Development; Manpower, Personnel, and Training; Resource Management; and Strategy and Doctrine.

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