Editor's Note. This article is the first in a three-part series focusing upon the principles and employment guidelines of the Air Defense Artillery branch.

          If one Googles the term “Military Doctrine,” all types of references and definitions can be found.  But one definition developed by Dennis Drew and Don Snow, authors of Military Strategy: An Introduction to National Security Processes and Problems, is by far the most succinct and clear of all those found on Google. The definition is “Military doctrine is what we believe about the best way to conduct military affairs, or doctrine is what we believe about the best way to do things.” In other words, doctrine is the optimal solution for those who conduct military affairs.¹

             Drew and Snow also discuss the fact that doctrinal beliefs are not immutable physical laws but are interpretations of changing evidence like new technologies or new circumstances, and that doctrine is the result of experience. However, they point out that experience by itself has limited utility, and, therefore, the real key is the accurate analysis and interpretation of experience (history).

They also point out that perhaps the most ubiquitous doctrinal problem is the tendency to let doctrine stagnate. They accurately describe how doctrine can become irrelevant if the assumptions that support it are not frequently reexamined for their continuing validity. The Air Defense Artillery branch traces the roots of its current military doctrine to a conflict that occurred in the Middle East over three decades ago; it’s time for a discussion to update that doctrine.
          In 1973, the Egyptians conducted a surprise attack eastward and crossed the Suez Canal, seizing portions of the Sinai desert. The Israelis, who held that territory as a result of the 1967 War, were surprised by the attack but confident they could repulse it. Faced by an air defense phalanx, the Israeli Air Force’s confidence would soon be shaken.

            What resulted was one of the great air defense campaigns in history, a campaign that was watched and studied by the U.S. Army Air Defense Artillery (ADA) School. The war occurred right after the ADA branch had returned to the divisional force structure, and ended over a decade where the Army Air Defense Command defended America from aerial attacks. Officers and non-commissioned officers were returning to Fort Bliss, Texas, after their initial tours in divisions; the commanding general was a visionary with forward area weapons experience during World War II and the ADA School had the people who could make the CG’s vision a doctrinal reality. The Arab-Israeli war was the catalyst that incited a revolution in ADA doctrine and tactics and resulted in the creation of the Principles of Air Defense and the Air Defense Employment Guidelines. What was learned then, still applies today.

            In 1973, the ADA career course was nine months in duration and in October; the Class of ’73 was one third of its way into the course. One October evening, the officers in the career course were ordered to report to the auditorium in Hinman Hall for a briefing. However, when the officers arrived at the overflowing auditorium that evening, the first thing that caught their attention was a huge map of the Suez Canal region. After being seated, all those in attendance were informed that the Egyptians had attacked across the Suez Canal the morning of 6 October and were expanding their lodgment on the east side of the canal. It was an incredibly bold move given the Arab performance in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. The scenario in 1967 was similar to 1973 in that the Arabs had conducted a surprise attack, but in 1967 the Israeli Air Force (IAF) had immediately blunted the surprise offensive, and bought time for the mobilization of the Israeli citizen army, which gained back all the lost territory and then went on to obtain new buffer zones, including the Sinai desert east of the Suez Canal. For those familiar with the 1967 conflict, the first impressions from that October 1973 briefing were that this latest offensive was a big deal, but the IAF was going to clean up the battlefield very quickly.

Egyptian Air Defense Sites

          However, late the next day, when the career course students met again for the daily briefing they were briefed that the IAF had attacked, but had not fared as expected. Instead of ruling the skies as they had done in ‘67 and controlling the incursion with their close air support, the IAF found itself confronted by an Egyptian air defense umbrella, consisting of hundreds of ADA missile and gun units. The IAF took heavy losses during those first days of the 1973 campaigns, but in their truly adaptive tradition, the IAF began studying how to defeat this new threat.
 

            The Egyptian ADA had all Russian systems; the high altitude SA-2 and SA-3 systems and a new mobile, medium-ranged ADA system, the SA-6, which was seeing its first combat action. The SA 2s and 3s were similar to the U.S. Nike Hercules system: long-ranged, fairly immobile systems intended to provide high altitude defense of the battlefield. It was learned later that the IAF discovered that the SA 2s and 3s had a radar dead zone directly over the fire unit, and since they were fairly immobile, the IAF had no trouble in finding them in order to suppress them.

Egyptian forces employed the SA-2 Guideline (left) and SA-3 Goa (right) surface-to-air missiles during the Yom Kippur War.

But instead of the success they expected when attacking the high altitude enemy SAM systems, the IAF fighters found themselves being engaged by the SA-6s, which were working in tandem with the SA 2s and 3s. Aerial photography of the attack locations taken just hours before the suppression of enemy air defense (SEAD) missions were rendered useless by the SA-6s that not only maneuvered on the battlefield, but were always positioned to engage medium-altitude threats, including those directly over adjacent SA-2 & -3 sites. The IAF came to realize that the Egyptian air defenses were working together to produce the capability to attack every threat entering the defense, along with protecting supporting air defenses so they could continue the fight. The net result was an air defense porcupine, a phalanx of air defense that featured massed and supporting fires at any altitude and range, due to the hundreds of Egyptian ADA units deployed throughout the battlefield.

But every air defense system has limitations, and the IAF learned the SA-6 radars had difficulty detecting very-low-altitude targets, making the system vulnerable to attacks coming in on the deck. However, when the Israelis tried to suppress the SA-2s, -3s and -6s simultaneously, they discovered a lattice like network of gun positions positioned throughout the underbelly of the defense, which made low altitude attacks costly. 
 

           As the war dragged on, the IAF did have some success against the Egyptian ADA force and was able to establish and maintain air superiority. But the campaign did not end until the Israeli Army attacked the Egyptian lodgment east of the Suez and drove those forces back into Egypt. Despite the overall Egyptian defeat, Egyptian ADA had prevented the quick victory that the Israeli’s achieved in 1967 and also shocked air defense communities throughout the world into re-looking how they were going to deploy and “fight” ADA units.
 

            The U.S. Army ADA led this effort. Throughout its history, the ADA had been masterful at its ability to be flexible and adapt to accomplish whatever mission it was assigned. In 1968, ADA had become a separate branch, and in the early 1970’s the branch was reassigned to the division, but to most of the senior leadership in the branch, it was déjà vu. This was because, prior to World War II, the Coast Artillery had defended all the key metropolitan areas of the United States from naval attack. However, when World War II occurred, the Coast Artillerymen became Anti-Aircraft Artillerymen and fielded over 800 Anti-Aircraft (AA) battalions in support of the eight million man strong U.S. Army. During the 1950s and 1960s, the branch returned to its strategic role of defending metropolitan areas, this time from Russian bomber attacks. When the Russian bomber threat subsided by the 1970s, the fixed-wing and helicopter threats to U.S. forces that were defending the International German Border from Russian and Eastern Bloc forces became the priority, and ADA migrated once again back to the divisions to execute that mission. But the branch continued its strategic legacy with the 32nd Army Air Defense Command, which provided echelon-above-corps (EAC) defense for Central Europe.

            The reassessment of the doctrine began with a brutally honest appraisal of the ADA weapon system capabilities. The weapon systems used in the divisional battalions during the 1970s included the Chaparral, which featured a modified Navy Sidewinder tail-chase missile and the Vulcan, a 20MM Gatling gun mounted on an armored personnel carrier. Both weapons were off-the-shelf systems, and the intent was to replace them quickly with a foreign system such as the French Roland or the German Gephardt Gun. The branch knew the Chaparral and Vulcan (C/V) had limitations, but the belief was, if employed properly, they could replicate the success of the Egyptian ADA on a local scale. Meanwhile, the Hawk system provided medium-altitude air defense for the Army Air Defense Command and a Hawk battalion was assigned to each corps.

Armed with the capabilities of the current ADA weapons, the mechanism to create and then iterate the lessons learned from the Arab Israeli war and convert them into a new ADA doctrine was the Air Defense Tactics Briefing team. MG C.J. LeVan, the commandant of the ADA School, formed a small cell of officers who had experience with C/V and Hawk. All these personnel came from the Combined Arms and Tactics Department, and their effort was synchronized by LTC Jim Webb, who was the head of the Tactics Division. The lessons learned from the Arab Israeli War was the start point for the creation of the ADA tactics briefing. The branch had spent the spring and summer of 1974 analyzing the lessons learned from the war under the leadership of COL Mike Digennaro, the Deputy Assistant Commandant. COL Digennaro’s team not only collected the specifics of what had happened during the Arab-Israeli campaign, but it also deduced the principles and guidelines that became the foundation for new branch doctrine, for as the Lessons Learned Team provided the data to the Briefing Team, the ADA branch’s how to fight principles were refined under MG LeVan’s personal direction.

The air defense principles are the core operating precepts, or company values, of the how to fight for ADA tacticians. The first principle deduced from the study of the Arab Israeli war was the concept of mass. The Egyptians deployed hundreds of ADA systems on the battlefield.  The thinking was similar to the tactics of European infantrymen in the 17th and 18th century who were armed with inaccurate smooth-bore muskets. To offset the inaccuracy issue, the infantry marched in tight formations, shoulder to shoulder, and fired in volume at similarly organized enemy formations. The side that could reload and fire more rapidly won the day. Volume was the counter for inaccuracy. The same applied in 1973 because the Egyptian ADA systems had a relatively low probability of kill, so the Arabs just deployed hundreds of systems.

Colonel Digennaro’s team also deduced that the Egyptians had mixed their air defenses. That is they had positioned their guns and missiles to complement one another. Guns protected the dead zone of the SA 6s; SA 6s protected the dead zone of the high-altitude systems. It was a complementary arrangement where the inability of the SA 6 to detect low-altitude targets was mitigated by positioning guns where they could engage low altitude threats It was the idea of integrated guns and missiles—different technologies working together to create a synergistic effect and multiply the effectiveness of the overall defense—that was most impressive and which became a key principle of fighting ADA weapons.
 

Colonel Digennaro’s team was also impressed with the Egyptian ADA’s ability to move with their maneuver forces when they crossed the Suez Canal. The Egyptian ground forces never moved out from under the protection of the air defense umbrella. Instead, the air defense umbrella moved forward with the Egyptian ground forces. The SA-6s and ZSU 23-4 guns accompanied the maneuver forces across the canal. Although the IAF did have better luck in suppressing the front line Egyptian ADA, they never were totally successful until the area was overrun with Israeli tanks. This situation was noted by the Lessons Learned team, and this ensured the inclusion of mobility as an ADA principle.

The final ADA principle that emerged at that time was integration;  the ADA branch had a tradition of working closely with Air Force command and control agencies since World War II. The principle was best expressed in the phrase “Centralized Command and Decentralized Execution,” a concept that still has applicability today. Although integration was not a principle deduced from the Arab-Israeli war, it was a tenant in how the branch did business, so it was added as the fourth principle when FM 44-100, ADA Operations, was re-published in 1974.

E. Paul Semmens is the cofounder of Imprimis, Inc., Colorado Springs, Colorado, and Huntsville, Alabama. A retired Air Defense Artillery officer, he served as director of the Combined Arms and Tactics Department (now the Directorate of Training and Doctrine-Leader Development), U.S. Army Air Defense Artillery School, and as commander of the 10th Air Defense Artillery Brigade and Army Space Command. He has also been involved in the defense contracting sector  as president and co-founder of his own company, PRIMA Enterprises, Inc.

Writing credits also belong to Christina Semmens, Imprimis, Incorporated analyst for editing and to Eric Savage, Imprimis, Incorporated IMI engineer, for photo and image insertion and editing.
 

Go To Part II
Also by E. Paul Semmens:
Hammer of Hell The Coming of Age of Antiaircraft Artillery  in World War  II	D-Day, June 6,1944 Storming ashore with the first waves, Antiaircraft Artillery units battle their way off Normandy's fire-swept invasion beaches.