Barren SEAD: USAF Defense Suppression Doctrine 1953-1972

By James L. Young Jr.

Since 1972, the United States Air Force has argued that its operations against North Vietnam were unsuccessful primarily through a combination of civilian interference and poor strategic choices. Often citing the "success" of Operation Linebacker II as an example of what might have been had its leaders been given free rein, for almost fifty years the Air Force has maintained that its proper employment is the key to winning America's wars.
 

In Barren SEAD, award-winning historian James L. Young Jr. propagates a different theory: Instead of being a sign of what the Air Force was capable of, Linebacker II was a bitter failure that starkly outlined the USAF's limitations. Furthermore, the meddling of the Johnson and Nixon Administrations played a minor role in this outcome. The USAF's defeat was not brought about by civilian meddling, but resulted from Air Force leaders' refusal to develop a Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD) doctrine from 1953-1972. Relying primarily on Air Force archival documents, memoirs, and contemporary doctrinal publications, Dr. Young illustrates just how dangerous the Air Force's inability to nurture its SEAD capability was during this period of the Cold War.

 

James L. Young Jr. holds a doctorate in U.S. History from Kansas State University and is a graduate of the United States Military Academy. Barren SEAD is his first non-fiction book. Previously he has won the United States Naval Institute's 2016 Cyberwarfare Essay Contest, runner up in the 2011 James Adams Cold War Essay Contest, and has had an essay selected by the U.S. Naval Heritage Command for its professional reading list. Dr. Young's other professional articles can be found in Armor Magazine, The Journal of Military History, and Proceedings. For those who prefer fiction, Dr. Young also writes alternate history (Usurper's War series / Phases of Mars anthologies) and military science fiction (Vergassy Universe).

• Language: English
• Publisher: James Young
• Release date: Aug 11, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393852025

Book preview

Barren SEAD

USAF Defense Suppression Doctrine

1953-1972

James L. Young, Jr.

Barren SEAD

James L. Young, Jr.

© 2015, James Young

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

Typesetting: Anita C. Young

Cover Design: Anita C. Young

ISBN: 978-1508998174

ISBN-13: 1508998175

Printed in USA

Dedicated to the men who flew up on Thud Ridge and played the big game, pilots and bears alike.

F-105s In Formation (John Bedke)

Contents

Acknowledgments

A VERY UNHAPPY EASTER

Defining SEAD

THE IMPORTANCE OF DOCTRINE

USAF Doctrine, 1953-1960

Peacetime or Armageddon

Whither SEAD?

Harbingers of Change

A PRESSING NEED FOR SEAD

The State of the Air Force, February 1965

Conventional Operations, Gradualism,and SEAD

The Myth of Civilian Restrictions

The North Vietnamese-IADS

NV-IADS Command and Control

AAA Systems

SAMS

Northern Bandits: MiGs

Fighting the IADS: USAF SEAD Doctrine During Rolling Thunder

Failing to Exploit a Vulnerability: USAF ECM Doctrines

The Changing Paradigm of Air Superiority: Direct Attack on the NV-IADS

Iron Hand Flights

Destroying SAM Sites and Radars

No Aces Here: Combating the MiGs

The State of the Air Force, November 1968

BETWEEN THUNDER AND A LINEBACKER

SEAD Doctrine, 1968 through 1972

Thoughts on Air Defense

Explaining the Excluded

Air Force Leaders

THE LINEBACKER OPERATIONS

Measuring Effectiveness

Goal #1: Battlefield Interdiction

Goal #2: Punishment

Goal #3: Conventional Deterrence

Goal #4: Preserving the Manned Strategic Bomber Deterrent

AFTERWORD

From Barren SEAD to New Fruit

APPENDIX A: THE AIRCRAFT OF TAC AND AIR DEFENSE COMMAND

North American F-100 Super Sabre

McDonnell F-101 Voodoo

Lockheed F-104 Starfighter

Republic F-105 Thunderchief

Air Defense Command Interceptors

Air Defense Command and Advances in Aerial Warfare

McNamara Intervenes: The F-110 Spectre / F-4 Phantom

The Problem With Missiles

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources

Secondary Sources

ABOUT THE ARTIST

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Acknowledgments

No individual, regardless of how gifted they are, concludes a project such as this without help. Rather than naming every individual who helped make this project a reality, I will simply say a humble and gracious thank you to the dozens of people who aided me in ways great and small.

A VERY UNHAPPY EASTER

On March 30, 1972 the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) launched a conventional assault, dubbed the Easter Offensive, against South Vietnam. For the first time, the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) eschewed its traditional guerilla and light-infantry oriented tactics in favor of a mechanized, multi-divisional attack against the Republic of South Vietnam. Dubbed the Easter Offensive by the Americans, the assault was intended to simultaneously shatter the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), occupy South Vietnam’s regional capitals and, through these two events, destabilize the South Vietnamese government [ ¹ ]. In response to this act President Richard Nixon ordered the United States Air Force and Navy to resume bombing North Vietnam.

For the next nine months, USAF conducted offensive operations against the whole of the DRV in an attempt to accomplish four major objectives. First, USAF sought to sufficiently interdict the North Vietnamese Army’s (NVA’s) supply lines in order to preclude continued conventional operations in South Vietnam. Second, President Nixon had directed the Air Force to inflict sufficient punishment on North Vietnam that the DRV Politburo was deterred from authorizing further aggression against South Vietnam. Third, as implied by the Nixon Doctrine, USAF was to establish convincingly its ability to conduct conventional operations in support of an allied nation during a major conflict [ ² ]. Finally, with the introduction of B-52 bombers in December 1972, the Air Force was to maintain the credibility of manned strategic aircraft as part of American nuclear deterrence policy.

Since the conclusion of Operation Linebacker II, various U.S. government agencies, and civilian defense observes have all maintained that the United States Air Force succeeded in all four tasks. For instance, the Smithsonian Institution’s To Hanoi and Back states that air operations against Hanoi were an obvious success. [ ³ ] In his memoirs, Admiral Ulysses S. Grant Sharp, the former Commander in Chief, Pacific Command (CINPACCOM) during Operation Rolling Thunder, stated that the B-52 strikes had irrevocably shattered North Vietnam’s will and that the United States could have asked for whatever it wanted in December 1972 [ ⁴ ]. Finally, in the United States Air Forces official history Winged Shield, Winged Sword, the B-52s had forced the enemy to negotiate and served to reinforce the pledge given [South Vietnamese President] Thieu that in case of future invasions American air power would come to his aid. [ ⁵ ]

Given these views, each of which was adapted after careful, thorough research, it is easy to see why it has become an article of faith with many U.S. Air Force officers that in 1972 USAF and USN aircraft had pummeled the NVA spearhead in the field, shattered the North Vietnamese supply net, then bludgeoned and dragged a recalcitrant North Vietnam back to the peace table only to have civilians give away a hard fought victory. [ ⁶ ] Unfortunately, this view is incorrect. Instead of a smashing victory, the United States Air Force only managed to interdict the NVA’s supply lines, with the majority of this objective achieved through the tactical application of airpower in South Vietnam.

Instead of a victory, the 1972 operations against North Vietnam (heretofore referred to as Linebacker Operations) were actually a major defeat for the United States Air Force. Over nine months, the USAF was unable to demonstrate convincing conventional capability, punish the North Vietnamese to deter future attacks against South Vietnam, or demonstrate that its manned bombers were still viable strategic weapons systems. As with Operation Rolling Thunder, these shortcomings did not stem from civilian interference, but the Air Force’s decision not to develop an adequate Suppression of Enemy Air Defense (SEAD) doctrine from 1968 through 1972. The evidence presented in the following pages will clearly illustrate that the Air Force’s civilian and military leaders made decisions in this area which lead directly to USAF possessing obsolescent equipment and lacking operational guidance when offensive operations resumed against North Vietnam in 1972. As a result, it was clear to impartial observers that USAF could not penetrate an integrated air defense system (IADS) by the end of Linebacker operations. This outcome had serious implications for the United States’ conventional and nuclear military policy for the remainder of the Cold War.

Defining SEAD

Before proceeding, it is first necessary to define exactly what is meant by Suppression of Enemy Air Defense doctrine as many services, nations, and references describe SEAD differently. To illustrate this point, consider that Edward Luttwak and Stuart Koehl’s The Dictionary of Modern War defined SEAD in 1991 as a U.S. term for weapons, tactics, and operations whose aim is to destroy or otherwise neutralize anti-aircraft guns and surface to air missiles in order to allow attack aircraft to operate more freely. [ ⁷ ] This definition, however, was written by USAF and intended for that service’s use only. [ ⁸ ] In the aftermath of Operation Desert Storm, which saw engagements of immobile SAM batteries by U.S. Army artillery and the opening salvo of the war fired by U.S. Army Apache attack helicopters, many military professionals agreed on the need for a broader definition. [ ⁹ ] Although these officers were initially few in number, subsequent operations against Iraq and Serbia in the 1990s reinforced the point that all of the services had a vested interest in SEAD. Thus, in June 2004 the Department of Defense modified the definition to include that activity that neutralizes, destroys, or temporarily degrades surface-based air defense by destructive or disruptive means. [ ¹⁰ ] Although at first reading this may appear to be a small change in wording, in military terms the second definition greatly expanded the number of systems, activities, and operations that could be included in SEAD operations.

In general, military historians and analysts have followed the thrust of Luttwak and Koehl’s definition when examining the history of SEAD even if national militaries have not. For example, Anthony Thornborough and Frank Mormillo’s Iron Hand: Smashing the Enemy’s Air Defenses focuses on attacks against surface-to-air missile (SAM) and gun sites during Vietnam while excluding any information on efforts to destroy the NVAF’s interceptors. [ ¹¹ ] Likewise, books which focus on aerial combat (e.g., Ivan Rendall’s Rolling Thunder) ignore the often potent effect that ground-based defenses had on the air-to-air tactics employed by both sides of the conflict. [ ¹² ] Only a handful of works give a comprehensive view (i.e., one that encompasses all aspects of the struggle) of aerial combat over North Vietnam and the majority of these do not focus on the role that the Air Force’s doctrinal evolution played in its eventual defeat. [ ¹³ ]

Artificially limiting SEAD’s definition to merely those efforts undertaken against SAMs and AAA sites is problematic given USAF doctrine of the time period in question. Instead, the following pages will establish a new paradigm for discussing SEAD in six ways. First, this book define SEAD as actions taken to degrade, destroy, or neutralize one or multiple aspects of an air defense system, to include enemy fighters. Second, rather than considering SEAD solely a tactical mission, the subsequent pages will focus on its application as an operational task as well. Next, by treating the North Vietnamese defenses as an integrated whole, Barren SEAD will provide evidence that there were critical nodes whose destruction would have unraveled the entire NV-IADS. Tying into this, this work will illustrate that the United States Air Force was incapable of detecting, identifying, and destroying these nodes from 1965 through 1968. Fifth, it will show that it was this weakness, not civilian interference, that led to the extraordinary losses of Operation Rolling Thunder. Sixth, it will present evidence that shows the Air Force’s leaders, rather than drawing on these experiences, instead made an informed decision not to change the USAF’s SEAD doctrine from 1968-1972. Finally, I will outline how this unwillingness to change resulted in the Air Force’s defeat during the Linebacker Operations in 1972.

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1 Michael Maclear, Vietnam: The Ten Thousand Day War, 1945-1975 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981), 304-305; John Pimlott, Vietnam: The Decisive Battles (London: Marshall Editions, 1997; Edison, New Jersey: 2003), 160-171; Stephen P. Randolph, Powerful and Brutal Weapons: Nixon, Kissinger, and the Easter Offensive (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2007),, 22-31; John Schlight, Vietnamization and Withdrawal, 1968-1975, Winged Shield, Winged Sword: A History of the United States Air Force, Volume II, 1950-1997, Bernard C. Nalty, ed. (Washington, D.C.: Air Force History and Museums Program, 1997), 295-336; and Lieutenant Colonel James H. Willbanks, USA ret., Thiet Giap!: The Battle of An Loc, April 1972 (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute, 1993), 3.

2 Richard Nixon, The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1978), 394-395 and 588.

3 Wayne Thompson, To Hanoi and Back: The U.S. Air Force and North Vietnam, 1966-1973 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000), 281.

4 U.S.G. Sharp, Admiral, USN (ret.), Strategy for Defeat: Vietnam in Retrospect (San Rafael, CA: Presidio Press, 1978; 1979), 254-258.

5 Schlight, Vietnamization and Withdrawal, 1968-1975, 328.

6 For examples of Air Force publications promulgating this viewpoint, see Porter, Linebacker: Overview 53-55 and 57-69; James R. McCarthy, Brig. Gen., USAF and George B. Allison, Ltc. USAF, Linebacker II: A View from the Rock, USAF Southeast Asia Monograph Series, ed. Colonel Robert E. Rayfield (USAF), Volume VI, Monograph 8 (Maxwell AFB, AL: 1979; Washington, D.C.: Office of Air Force History, 1985); Colonel Mike Worden’s Rise of the Fighter Generals: The Problem of Air Force Leaders, 1945-1982 (Maxwell AFB, AL: Air University Press, 1998), 196-198; or Thomas C. Hone Strategic Bombing Constrained: Korea and Vietnam, Case Studies in Strategic Bombardment, R. Cargill Hall, ed. (Washington, D.C.: Center for Air Force History, 1998), 469-526 with particular attention paid to 517-520.

7 Edward Luttwak and Stuart Koehl, The Dictionary of Modern War (New York: Harpers-Collins, 1991), 514.

8 Ibid..

9 James R. Brungess, Lt. Col., USAF, Setting the Context: Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses and Joint War Fighting in an Uncertain World (Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama: Air University Press, 1994), 35-47.

10 Department of Defense, Joint Publication 1-02, Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms April 2001 (As Amended Through 9 June 2004) (Washington, D.C., 2004), 513.

11 Anthony M. Thornborough and Frank B. Mormillo, Iron Hand: Smashing the Enemy’s Air Defences with Tony Cassanova & Kevin Jackson (Somerset, England: Patrick Stephens Limited, 2002; Reprint Sparkford, England: Sutton Publishing, 2002). All subsequent page citations are to the reprint edition. Further research does not indicate why there was a reprint published in the same year as the original.

12 Ivan Rendall, Rolling Thunder: Jet Combat From World War II to the Gulf War (New York: Dell Books, 1997).

13 Examples of work which provide this view are Michael L. Michel III’s Clashes: Air Combat Over Vietnam, 1965-1972 (Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 1997) and Craig C. Hannah’s Striving For Air Superiority: The Tactical Air Command in Vietnam, Texas A&M Military History Series #76, Joseph G. Dawson III, Ed., (College Station, Texas: Texas A&M University Press, 2002).

THE IMPORTANCE OF DOCTRINE

As with SEAD, there are numerous opinions on what exactly what doctrine encompasses. For example, The Dictionary of Modern War states that doctrine consists of [o]fficially enunciated principles meant to guide the employment of military forces under specified conditions. [ ¹⁴ ] The current Department of Defense dictionary, Joint Publication 1-02, considers doctrine to be [f]undamental principles by which military forces or elements thereof guide their actions in support of national objectives. [ ¹⁵ ] For purposes of clarity, when referring to doctrine from this point forward the reader should combine these definitions to consider the word synonymous with a military organization’s methodology for the conduct of war in support of specific operational and strategic objectives.

Doctrine’s importance to warmaking cannot be overstated. Without a doctrinal template that creates a common language, the vagaries of war can rapidly reduce a powerful military force to an undisciplined mob. In contrast, a military force that enjoys a well-developed, flexible, and widely disseminated doctrine is able to rapidly shift forces and change its force structure, tactics, and operational goals in order to meet whatever threats its opponent(s) present. Therefore, once senior leaders decide upon the methodology for fighting the next conflict, it is incumbent on a military service to ensure that commanders and the field grade officers which will constitute their staff are fully educated in these guiding principles. In this manner, a service’s senior leaders allegedly ensure that the opening phases of a conflict will not see units employing disparate methods for accomplishing the operational and strategic goals laid out for them by higher headquarters. Thus, in theory, an effective military doctrine combined with rigorous training minimizes the effect of friction or unforeseen events. In contrast, an ineffective or rigid doctrine often leads to rapid, repeated defeats and, in most cases, to losing the war.

USAF Doctrine, 1953-1960

In practice, doctrine is only useful if senior leaders choose the correct one. In the case of the USAF, there were many factors that