This html article is produced from an uncorrected text file through optical character recognition. Prior to 1940 articles all text has been corrected, but from 1940 to the present most still remain uncorrected. Artifacts of the scans are misspellings, out-of-context footnotes and sidebars, and other inconsistencies. Adjacent to each text file is a PDF of the article, which accurately and fully conveys the content as it appeared in the issue. The uncorrected text files have been included to enhance the searchability of our content, on our site and in search engines, for our membership, the research community and media organizations. We are working now to provide clean text files for the entire collection.
Corsairs, upper photograph, soar unopposed over Okinawa in 1945. Their namesakes,
A-7E Corsair IIs, and all the other swashbuckling aircraft that loosely comprise tactical air power, have had their obituaries written, perhaps prematurely, by extremists who argue that air superiority is no longer critical to the outcome of battle, and even if it were critical, is something that coidd be attained and maintained without using aircraft.
Loosely defined, tactical air power (TacAir) comprises a variety of airplanes and helicopters and the air weapons each can deliver against an enemy. In World War II, TacAir came of age as a major element of warfare.
The availability of air support dominated the planning for a battle. Its effectiveness usually determined the outcome. Early establishment of air superiority was essential, accomplished in swirling dogfights and strafing attacks on aerodromes. With command of the air came the freedom to pound at the enemy while moving friendly troops with impunity on the ground. Ground-based defenses against TacAir were notoriously ineffective, despite extensive allocations of manpower and weaponry to antiair artillery.
For the subsequent three decades, the gaining and
maintaining of air superiority has been considered prerequisite to successful combat by military planners. With air superiority, you win. Without it, you lose.
Among U. S. military forces, the new dimension offered by TacAir helped to spawn the establishment of a separate air arm, revolutionized naval warfare, and converted a large segment of the ground army into air-mobile troops. Armed forces throughout the world became equally air-minded. A dizzying succession of tactical aircraft designs appeared, each one faster, quicker, and more capable than the last. By the mid- 1960s, Soviet and American designers had far outpaced the rest, with the Russian MiG-21 and the U. S. F-4 fighters epitomizing the very best of the bunch. The modern Soviet generation of tactical aircraft includes the Foxbat, Fencer, Flogger, and Fitter B, while the United States is fielding an all-new team of F-14, F-15, F-16, F-18, and A-io.
Meanwhile, back on the ground, there has also been progress. Reliable electronics were introduced to antiair weaponry. Guided munitions were added to ballistic armament, and many of the air-to-air developments were adapted to meet the durability requirements of the ground environment. As a result of these plodding efforts from the muddy world of the foot soldier, some initial doubts of the invincibility of TacAir began to appear in the early 1960s. Soviet surface-to-air missiles, a factor in the Cuban Crisis of 1962, appeared in quantities in Southeast Asia by 1965. Over the next eight years, North Vietnam, a small nation with essentially no air power, used guerrilla tactics, persistence, and a strategy of attrition to confound the best efforts of the world’s leading TacAir practitioners, the U. S. Air Force and the U. S. Navy. During the brief Middle East War in late 1973, both Arab and Israeli TacAir forces sustained unexpectedly high losses. Tanks, infantry, and other ground-mobile forces occupied the center stage in that dramatic war, leading some observers to the conclusion that air superiority—while still critical to the outcome of a battle—could be attained and maintained without using aircraft. Another, more extreme view was that air superiority, in itself, was no longer critical to the battle. Still another opinion on the issue comes from the budgeteers and economists, who feel that airplanes have become too costly, thus inevitably less numerous, and will eventually prove ineffectual in combat.
All these viewpoints, summed together, are most succinctly described by the opinion sometimes heard today—"TacAir is dead!”
Much of the support for this opinion cites the rapid proliferation and improved lethality of sophisticated surface-to-air guided missiles. This is an oversimplification. More likely, it is the close integration of a large family of air defense equipment that is responsible. The surface-to-air missile is but one member of that family—albeit an important one. Equally essential are many other "weapons,” such as early warning radars, netted communications links, coordination and control centers for radars, guns, missiles, and interceptor aircraft, covert intelligence collectors, evaluators of operational intelligence, and the mobility built into each "weapon.” All these elements, joined together, represent a systems approach to the air defense problem.
Within this system, target data must move quickly through redundant radio and wire links. Radars must have fast on-off cycles and a plethora of antijam and antideception modes. Missiles must be quickly loaded onto launchers, easily camouflaged, and be capable of no-warm-up firing. Missiles in flight must be fast and maneuverable. Their destinations should not be "advertised” by strong emissions of radio energy. Visual guidance modes should be available for backup or for changing firing doctrines. Home-on-jam, multi-mode sensors, and pop-up launching techniques are useful added options. Antennas should be remotely located to minimize damage from antiradiation missiles. Defense against short-range air attacks should be provided by rapid-fire guns, automatic small arms and man- and truck-mounted heat-seeking missiles. Entire missile-gun complexes should be easily and rapidly movable to permit either "shoot-and-move” or "move-and-shoot” tactics. And above all else, the overall system must be firmly but flexibly commanded.
The North Vietnamese used such a systems concept for their air defenses in the Hanoi-Haiphong complex. One early effect was a rapid increase in the ratio of combat-support to combat aircraft for each U. S. strike effort. Highly sophisticated, specially trained and equipped TacAir units were assigned to suppress surface-to-air missiles. Whole flights were devoted solely to chaff dropping. Command and control facilities were quickly expanded to support new tactical requirements. A host of weight- and space-consuming equipment of a purely defensive nature was added to each tactical aircraft. Attacking aircraft were laden with electronic jamming pods. Introduction of the man-mounted SA-7 missile forced costly heat-suppression modifications on helicopters, gunships, and low-flying attack aircraft- Bomb release altitudes were pushed upward, and bombing accuracy decreased accordingly.
By late 1973, when the Middle East fighting erupted, the ground system had been refined to the degree that an offensive posture appeared almost practical. The Arab tactics, reflecting Soviet instruction and training, relied upon rolling the air defenses along with the ground forces. Arab TacAir, rapidly decimated by superior Israeli fighter pilots, was rarely a factor. The battle for air superiority then became a series of duels between U. S.-built attack aircraft and a Soviet-built, mobile ground-based air defense system. The Israelis were able to maintain air superiority. Nevertheless, the attrition of expensive TacAir resources was unexpectedly higher, and their effectiveness markedly lower, than experienced fo the similar war of 1967. Perhaps more significant was the Arabs’ reliance upon a ground-based system to achieve air superiority.
The implications inherent in the alleged demise of TacAir are unusually serious for the United States. As a nation built upon an economic philosophy of high productivity, and with the value of the human held paramount, the development of TacAir as a principal tnilitary weapon was quite natural. TacAir capitalized upon superior technology and the trainability of superspecialist aircrews. It provided a system of superbly accurate, controlled, ultra-long-range artillery while exposing a minimum number of humans to combat
hazards.
The TacAir philosophy extends far beyond the U. S.
Force’s Tactical Air Command. It pervades the Navy, where carrier-based attack aircraft now represent the paramount means of applying naval force against an enemy. In the Army, the cavalry has been remounted in helicopters, and close air support resources have almost replaced artillery. In the Marine Corps, "vertical envel- °pment” has become the preferred method for the mitial onslaught, and close air support has been honed t0 an incredibly fine edge to support forward moving troops. If TacAir really is dead, an awesome amount of rethinking, reequipping, and retraining is required for all the U. S. armed forces.
The national security strategy of the United States depends heavily upon a quick reaction capability deployed forward upon demand—notably TacAir elements in the form of Air Force fighter wings and Navy attack carriers. If quick response capabilities are to be linked to the speeds of tanks or ocean convoys rather than those of jet aircraft, no overwhelming and sudden application of force will be possible in an overseas conventional war scenario. The nuclear threshold would inevitably be lowered. In a long-term war, the criticality of sheer manpower would be felt instead of technology and productivity.
On the other hand, TacAir supporters argue that the actual death certificate to document the passing is nowhere to be found. They argue that the standoff in Vietnam was not a fair test, since TacAir was not used there to support an offensive, land-occupying ground army. They point out that the vaunted Arab air defenses did not prevail in 1973. Nevertheless, even the stoutest defenders readily concede that there were no milk runs into downtown Hanoi in 1972, and that no force could long endure the attrition suffered by Israeli air forces in 1973.
If TacAir is not dead, it is certainly in trouble. What is worse, one wonders if the U. S. military establishment has recognized the problem. The Air Force is buying new airplanes which promise little more than aerodynamic performance increases over their predecessors. The F-15 and F-4 are remarkably similar tactical aircraft. The F-i6 is often called a "throwback to the World War I Spad—a tinkertoy for the Air Force Flying Hot Dog Association, good for airshows at county fairs on a sunny summer afternoon.” The A-io is a grossly slow(by jet standards) flying titanium tank, designed to slug it out at close quarters with ground batteries. The AWACS (airborne warning and control system) is an incredibly expensive airborne control center whose longevity in combat is often compared to that of a clay pigeon. The Navy is doing much of the same with its TacAir dollars. The carrier air wing planned for the next decade shows a marked similarity
Against heat-seeking missiles such as SAM-6 (in homing stage)
Surveillance helicopter spots SAM-6 launch and gives warning W
Violent evasive maneuvers aimed at turning ”cold"side of aircraft toward missile and sharpening missile's turning angle
heat intensity flares
to confuse missile's infrared guidance system as it tries to home on jet exhaust
TacAir provides a system of superbly accurate, controlled, ultra-long-range artillery while exposing a minimum number of humans to combat hazards. Thus, carrier-based attack aircraft now represent the paramount means of applying naval force against an enemy.
to the one used for almost a decade off Vietnam. F-i4s are replacing F-4 Phantoms, F-i8s will replace A-7s, and either an F-i4 or an F-18 derivative will someday supersede the venerable A-6. In combat, they will fly a bit longer, farther, higher, and faster than their predecessors, carrying fewer, but smarter bombs, rockets, and missiles.
When considered in individual terms, each of these new TacAir planes is a good one. The Navy’s swingwinged F-14 Tomcat, with its 100-mile Phoenix air-to- air missile, is the ultimate in an all-weather interceptor design. The Air Force’s F-15 Eagle is sleek, super-powered, and unusually versatile at a variety of fighter and attack missions. The F-16 is Walter Mitty’s dream come true: small, powerful, maneuverable, and a joy to pilot. The F-18, a compromise design, shows lots of promise for ample performance, adequate power, and enough range and endurance to give the carrier Navy a respectable fighter-bomber. The A-10 is capable of lugging tremendous quantities of munitions to the forward lines, and the AWACS is a marvel of sophisticated electronics.
It is not the aircraft themselves, nor even their astronomical costs that are knocking TacAir all akilter. Instead, it is the basic philosophy concerning just how they will be used in combat. If TacAir’s historical precedents are followed, the F-i4s, F-15S and F-I6s will first take on the enemy’s fighters to establish air superiority. Then the F-i8s, A-ios, and most of the fighters will lug bombs and rockets to pulverize ground targets.
That seems to be the plan. It worked in World War II, in Korea, in Vietnam, and in the Middle East. Ergo, it will work the next time, too.
Maybe.
Maybe not.
Because the aircraft are, individually, far more expensive than their predecessors, there will be fewer of them available for use. Because they are even more sophisticated, specialized, and complex, more of them will remain grounded for maintenance, repair, and want of a scarce spare part. Because ground defenses are markedly improving, more attrition will take place over the target. Even though each of the new airplanes is expected to accomplish more than several of its predecessors could, airplanes still get shot down one at a time. With fewer numbers of more effective, but more costly, tactical aircraft, the limit of acceptable attrition may well be lower in the future than it was in the past. There is more than adequate warning to the United States that such a condition could exist in the next combat situation. Now is the time when we should look very critically at the ground defenses as well as at our own philosophy of attack.
Ground defenses are effective only as a total system. They have many vulnerable points. They must remain coordinated. Their personnel must be well trained. Their equipment must be maintained, exercised, repaired, and supplied. They must be numerous. They must move. Each of their pieces of equipment is very fragile against an air attack, and their total resources, just as ours, are finite. Complexity, sophistication, and high unit costs are plagues to them as well as to us.
Each of these vulnerabilities has been exploited by TacAir in the past, and each, in turn, has been strengthened by the ground defenders. In this essentially piecemeal, seesaw battle, TacAir is still winning, or was in October of 1973. Nevertheless, the rate of progress of ground defenses is faster. Piecemeal improvements in TacAir will probably not suffice in the future. Improvements of a more basic nature are needed if TacAir is to retain its winning ways.
A basic philosophy guiding our TacAir efforts in the past has been to avoid ground-based air defenses rather than to destroy them. We used surprise, terrain masking, speed, maneuverability, decoys, and jamming to provide safe ingress and egress. We employed flak suppression, antiradiation weapons, and standoff weapons only when the other efforts were inadequate.
In the future, surprise and terrain masking won’t work. Modern long-range air search radars with remote gap-fillers are just too good. Aircraft performance in speed and maneuverability is bounded very stringently by physics, and we have long since been pushing hard at these extreme limits. There is little respite available from improved aerodynamics or greater "G” tolerances. Antiradiation missiles will probably always be a help, as will standoff weapons of many kinds. However, the former will always be limited by both technical and tactical changes, as well as by dense electronic environments, and the latter will always be constrained by target acquisition problems, high relative costs, and other factors. Jamming and decoys are diversionary in nature and rarely decisive except in brief encounters.
Accordingly, the basic philosophy of avoidance of ground defenses is probably obsolete. The only viable alternative is destruction. In order to destroy or otherwise foreclose the effective use of ground defenses, they must be detected, then located and identified, and finally attacked with lethal weapons. Because of their mobility, all three steps must rapidly follow one an- °ther. In an overall sense, this is very like the antisubmarine problem which our Navy has struggled mightily to solve for more than four decades. It cannot be accomplished without a system. A single aircraft, even two or three together, would be no match for either a submarine or a good air defense complex. While the Navy’s antisubmarine experience is lengthy, TacAir’s aPprenticeship for surface-to-air missile-busting is confined pretty much to the Wild Weasel-Iron Hand efforts of the late stages of Vietnam.1 These involved specialized aircraft equipped with the best electronic listening and localizing devices, and the stationing of these aircraft adjacent to target areas, hopefully just beyond the range of the missiles. When antiair missile emitters came on the air, individual fast reaction was made by firing antiradiation, air-to-ground missiles from the Wild Weasel-Iron Hand aircraft. In a light- to-moderate threat environment, a reasonable degree of success was claimed. However, many basic shortcom- lngs soon became evident. Prebriefed location information was usually outdated or inaccurate. Localizing equipment on board each aircraft was rough. Tactics were largely individualized for each aircraft, and there Was little mutual support. Informational data transfer tates between aircraft and controlling authorities were severely limited by voice radio constraints. Dense ground defense environments complicated problems, and a mobile missile battery tended to deny any airspace sanctuary for the on-station aircraft. The main battery °f the missile-buster aircraft was the Shrike antiradia- ti°n missile. Results were hard to measure and even
Wild Weasel aircraft are Air Force fighters (usually F-4s) modified and spe- Clalized for working against surface-to-air missiles. Iron Hand planes were Navy aircraft performing similar duties, usually on a mission-to-mission basis.
harder to assess. A permanent diversion of assets was required to support the effort, leading a large segment of combat-experienced TacAir pilots to feel that the entire program was wasteful. Nevertheless, significant successes were achieved. Surface-to-air missiles were forced to shut down during critical time periods, and their radar emissions were shortened, thus lowering their accuracies. Less effective visual guidance modes were often forced into use.
The present TacAir philosophy calling for surface- to-air missile avoidance should not (and can not) be changed overnight. It takes time. Much testing and evaluating need to be done. An overall goal—or series of goals—must be set. A new "system” is needed for TacAir, and this means that a "systems approach” has to be used.
Thus far, the problem has not been viewed in this fashion. Instead, the aircraft designers are working on speed and maneuverability, the ordnance experts are happily developing bigger bangs from the same old pound of TNT, and the electronic warfare experts have retired to their sacred avionics laboratories for the endless diddling with dials which they so love. The fighter pilots are too busy mastering the intricacies of a dogfight, and the bomber crews are working hard to become as smart as their new smart bombs. When each group is queried about the growing threat from ground defenses, each has a parochial answer. The designers say better aerodynamic performance, and the ordnance fellows say a bigger bang. The fighter pilots are going to dazzle the opposition with vertical scissors and high- energy turns, and the bomber types are going to stand off and lob in some smart weapon. The electron wizards talk, but in unintelligible languages.
No single group can be expected to have the answer. Some possibilities do exist and are being worked on— individually.
One of these is a very sophisticated system calling for airborne, high-altitude, high-accuracy, long-range sensors, a battery of ground computers, and a readily available stable of attack aircraft armed with precision guided standoff air-to-ground munitions. In this intricate game, a missile or radar emission is picked up by the airborne sensors and relayed to the ground computers. Within a matter of seconds, the type of the emitter is identified and its location fixed through triangulation. The attack airplane is called in, directed to a release point, and the smart weapon is launched to hit the established location. It’s a good idea, but it has a lot of limitations. To begin with, it’s expensive. It’s more or less fixed, implying usefulness only for a relatively static battleground. Location accuracies gained from weak signals at long ranges present myriad technical and operational problems, and there is an inherent time lag between the signal receipt and the weapon’s impact that can permit target escape through mobility. The system must be very sophisticated to avoid high false alarm rates and decoys.
Another possibility lies in the use of remotely piloted vehicles. This concept envisages a TacAir effort much like the present, but with wholesale substitution for manned aircraft. If the remotely piloted vehicles can be made to do the many jobs which now require manned tactical aircraft, a much higher rate of attrition can be accepted. They have been used with a fair degree of success in combat photo roles, and there seems little doubt that they can be profitably employed for longterm, on-station, sensor-carrying missions. All such vehicles, irrespective of size or mission, retain the basic disadvantages of complexity, high cost, and inflexibility in operation inherent in any substitute for a manned vehicle. It is probably the tradeoff of cost versus flexibility in operation which most seriously weakens their case. To be effective, they must be both numerous and inexpensive. When they are made to be as smart as a pilot, their costs skyrocket, and their numbers become miniscule. Payloads are pretty low and recovery techniques very tricky and specialized. At night, or in bad weather, it’s almost impossible to get them home safely. Remotely piloted vehicles have a lot of utility in various special-mission forms and as one-way weapons. However, it would be very misleading to presume that TacAir’s problems can be solved by any unmanned aircraft concept.
Another approach to the revitalization of TacAir involves the use of slow but less vulnerable individual tactical aircraft. Engine noises and exhaust temperatures can be greatly muffled. Radar reflective areas can be drastically reduced by several clever schemes. Flying titanium tanks such as the A-io can be built to shrug off hits from antiair artillery. Each modification, individually, provides an appealing reduction in vulnerability for an affordable reduction in operational capability. When put together into one design, however, it usually won’t even fly, much less fight. Neither the "invisible airplane” concept nor the titanium tank syndrome is going to solve the problem.
Standoff, air-to-ground weapons are highly touted these days as the way to go with TacAir. There are myriad official definitions and classification systems used to describe these weapons, none of which accurately covers the full spectrum. The term "smart bomb” is probably as good as any. All smart bombs have two design goals in common. Accuracy enables one bomb to replace dozens, or even hundreds of older free-fall bombs, and the standoff capability allows the delivering tactical aircraft to remain outside the more lethal ranges of the ground defenses. A major problem with all smart
bombs appears in the process of acquiring and identifying the target. If a pilot has to go all the way to a target in order to get his smart weapon to lock onto it, the long standoff range capabilities are not doing him much good. On the other hand, if he stands way off and lobs the weapon in, then the weapon’s superb accuracy is in doubt. If the smart bomb does its own acquiring after a long-range, self-powered flight, it might go haywire and home in on the wrong target— possibly even one of our own!
Smart bombs have other problems as well. Each one is astronomically more expensive than a single dumb bomb. Unless one of them equals the effectiveness of a whole bunch of dumb bombs, they just aren’t cost- effective. This may not be much of a factor to the men fighting the war, but it sure is back in Washington, at the annual bomb-buying time. Then, too, if the target is a railroad marshaling yard, or fields full of enemy troops, the pinpoint accuracy of the smart bomb is an extravagance. And on top of all this, buying expensive smart bombs does not imply saving money on inexpen- J sive dumb airplanes. In fact, almost the opposite is often the case, since the launching airplane has to carry specialized hardware in the form of racks, rails, pods, data links, control panels, and fancy television tube cockpit displays.
Despite all these shortcomings, smart bombs will certainly be useful for destroying surface-to-air missiles because increased standoff ranges and a high degree of accuracy are much needed. But before the smart bomb can be put to work, the pilot—or the system—must know where the target really is. High IQ ordnance is only a part of the answer to TacAir’s problem.
Since most of the proliferating breed of sophisticated ground defense equipment relies heavily upon electronic emissions of one sort or another, any concept for countering the ground system must contend in the electronic arena. Because most of our anti-surface-to-air missile efforts in Vietnam were built around electronic equipment, all of the services look toward their electronic warfare experts for future developments in defense suppression. Unfortunately, these electron wizards are all too often isolated from the operational pilots by their technical expertise. In truth, extremely close cooperation and transfer of knowledge between electronic warfare experts and operating aircrews is imperative to the success of any new TacAir concept. Progress in electronics has probably far outpaced that of any other scientific area over the past decade, and the stellar performer in this fast world is digital data processing- Digitalized equipment has had an impact on almost every segment of modern society, from moon-walking to supermarket checkout counters. There is an overwhelming need for compact, reliable, flexible, and in-
expensive data processing equipment on all tactical aircraft. But they must be integrated, in support of a system concept, to make any sense. Without the concept to provide the requirements, each new aircraft tends to be built around its own individual design. As a result, tactical aircraft can’t work with each other very well. In the future, they must.
One of the best of the potential answers to TacAir’s problem is a concept called TacStrat, an unofficial abbreviation for tactical strategy. In a grossly simplified description, TacStrat involves arming each ordinary tactical aircraft with antennas, a computer, data links and the concomitant displays, control boxes, and smart weapons. A group of aircraft, tied together through automated electronic navigational wizardry, would sally forth into the surface-to-air missile jungle. As each ground defender turned on an emitter, many aircraft would pick up the signal. The computers would then whirl out the location, pick the aircraft best located for immediate counterattack, warn off the aircraft in danger, and keep the rest of the TacAir team informed but uninvolved.
TacStrat offers many advantages. No specialized aircraft would be needed, although every plane would need additional sensory and data processing avionic equipment. These pieces of equipment will have to be capable but not super smart, since the aircraft will be close to the ground defenses, and many of them will coordinate to make the fix. Reaction time is short— certainly fast enough to preclude loss of a target due to mobility. Prebriefed intelligence would not need to be highly accurate. A variety of air-to-ground munitions could be employed and the mutual support of many a*rcraft can be brought to bear.
Like any concept, TacStrat has a few problems of its own. From a technical point of view, the system should work. The toughest problem here is in the software, or the instructions that have to be fed to the many computers involved. With enough testing and evaluating, the TacStrat proponents feel that this can be worked out. From an operational point of view, there are many unknowns. For example, what happens when three, four, or a dozen threat emitters simultaneously come on the air? The black boxes can handle that situation with milli-second computations, but what about the pilots of aircraft? Can they respond rapidly and accurately enough to follow the critical succession of orders coming to them, much less fully understand what the whole situation means? How far apart, physically, should the aircraft be? How large a chunk of airspace should they take on for each antimissile sweep? if the ordinary tactical aircraft is to be used, this also Cleans that the ordinary TacAir flight crew will be used. Can these "ordinary” people be trained well enough to master their TacStrat roles, while still maintaining their essential skills in the basic roles of flying, dogfighting, intercepting, bombing, and strafing? Could TacStrat be introduced gradually, both in training and in hardware, or must it be done in one fell swoop, with all the attendant organizational disruption of people and equipment? The experienced TacAir experts shake their heads and mutter about all the nitty-gritty problems that can arise.
Here the problem lies, at least for the present. Ground defenses continue to proliferate and be refined, increasing the threat to TacAir and decreasing its usefulness in combat. Most of the large TacAir programs for the near future are hardware-oriented. And most of the hardware has been conceived for individuals, rather than for mutually supportive use. Long-range planning for long-range problems is mired in a muddle-puddle of competing concepts.
There is probably no quick and ready answer. It isn’t a fixed-base, long-range antimissile system. It isn’t higher speed and better maneuverability in aircraft. It isn’t remotely piloted vehicles. It isn’t an invisible airplane or a flying tank. It isn’t an arsenal of smart bombs. It isn’t a total reliance upon either magic black boxes or intricate, dazzling displays of data.
Some parts of the answer are apparent. It is some sort of a system, using mutually supportive aircraft. It isn’t unsophisticated. It must rely heavily upon integration of the new breed of avionics, the new breed of smart weapons, and probably a new breed of TacAir pilots. Its introduction implies large-scale changes in thinking, in training, in equipment, and in operating procedures both flying and fighting. It will take time to be developed, matured, and perfected. And right now it hasn’t even been conceived!
If the TacAir thinkers and TacAir leaders don’t come to grips with the problem pretty soon, TacAir will be dead!
Captain O’Rourke is a U. S. Naval Academy graduate, Class of 194$, who served principally in carrier-based, all-weather fighter squadrons throughout his early career. He was officer-in-charge of a detachment of F3D jet night fighters in the Korean War, was a test pilot at Naval Air Test Center, Patuxent River, Maryland, and later led three F-4 Phantom squadrons, VF-101 Det A, VF-102, and VF-121, during the early years of that program. Captain O’Rourke served as aide to Commander, Sixth Fleet in 1958-59 and returned as Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations and Plans, 1968-70. He commanded the USS Wrangell (AE-12), 1967-68, and the USS Independence (CVA-62) in 1970-71. He served as OP-05W and Director, Navy Fighter Study Group prior to his retirement in 1974. He holds an M.A. degree in education from Stanford University and was a 1967 graduate of the National War College. He has written extensively on aviation topics, is a frequent contributor to the Proceedings, and was formerly a member of the Institute’s Board of Control. He is presently an associate of Farnsworth Cannon, Inc., McLean, Virginia.