The USAF experience –

Creech Blue: Gen Bill Creech and the Reformation of the Tactical Air Forces, 1978–1984

The “Warfighter Conference”

Shortly after taking command of TAC, General Creech called his subordinate air division and wing commanders to Langley AFB, Virginia, for a conference that would, in retrospect, play a significant role in shaping the future of the Air Force. In a national magazine, Creech read an interview with a young captain who had just returned from a Red Flag exercise. When asked what he learned at Red Flag, the captain replied, “I learned you can’t survive in combat.” Creech described his reaction: “I came up out of my seat! The problem wasn’t that he thought that way; the problem was that he was exactly right in thinking that way. We were using tactics that weren’t going to work.” Creech recognized that TAC had a “propensity 27 to put a ‘realistic training’ tag on unrealistic wartime strategy and tactics” and called a commander’s conference, requiring his commanders to wear their flight suits and fly their own combat aircraft to Langley. The conference covered many topics, but the central issue was what Creech has since described as “go low disease.” Gen Jack I. Gregory, then a TAC wing commander and later the Pacific Air Forces (PACAF) commander, recalled, “We covered multiple issues in the way we were training to go to war, but the key focus was clearly on low-level tactics. He articulated a refreshing new vision for employing from more effective sets of altitudes through the use of the full range of defense suppression assets . . . and he got full buy in from his commanders.”

Creech had long been skeptical of the low-level tactics then in use, and he was determined to change Air Force tactical thinking. As Soviet surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems became more prominent in Vietnam, American pilots began to fly under the radar coverage of the missile systems, only to find an increasingly deadly AAA threat at low altitudes. As Vietnam came to a close, it was apparent that the AAA threat was far more deadly with 1,433 of 1,543 aircraft being shot down from the ground, being lost to ground fire, and the remaining 110 being lost to SAMs. Yet the low-level tactics continued, in part because the SAM threat was viewed as unbeatable. As the USAFE director of operations and intelligence in 1973, General Creech was privy to the very latest intelligence concerning modern Soviet SAMs, and he had heard firsthand accounts from Israeli pilots about the futility of attempting to underfly the SA-6. His own experiences and thinking led him to the conclusion that to enable other air operations, air defenses had to be rolled back rather than avoided. Once the air defense threat was degraded, operations could adjust to higher, more survivable altitudes and take advantage of precision munitions. In this sense, air defense rollback became an integral part of Creech’s vision of air superiority. In the “TACAIR Rejuvenated” briefing given circa 1983, Creech’s slides articulated that “our basic concept of operations rests on the fact that we must penetrate enemy defenses. To do that, we will roll back those defenses using a combination of disruptive defense suppression and selective destruction with both standoff and overflight weapons.”

Creech’s description of the conference’s conclusion highlighted four instructive results:

1. We’re going to dramatically change our approach, simply because it’s wrong. We’re now going to make defense roll-back and taking the SAMs out our first order of business. No more trying to fly past SAM sites to get to other targets. That can’t be done. Taking them out can be done, and it will be easy if we go about it right. We need to get up out of the weeds as soon as possible to avoid the AAA, a far more formidable threat.

2. We’ll train at low altitude, sure, but we’ll also emphasize training at high altitude with the munitions that work there.

3. We’ll go on a full court press to develop and field the systems and munitions that fit our new tactics. Our fixation on low-altitude ingress, egress, and delivery and the systems and munitions that fit solely that approach is over.

4. We’ll also launch a major effort to educate tactical people throughout the Air Force on this major shift and the reasoning that lies behind it.

Creech’s most significant influence on airpower thought came from the Warfighter Conference, undoubtedly a seminal event in airpower history. Based on the work done at that conference in 1978, Creech and his fellow Airmen plotted a new course for the way the TAF would approach a sophisticated enemy with formidable air defenses.

Welch’s recollection of the conference provides a useful summary:

By the end of the conference, there was full agreement that low-level tactics might be necessary for a time but that we needed to get out of that mode as early as possible. Perhaps even more important for the subsequent evolution of both systems and tactics, there was a much greater appreciation for the potential of new tactical thinking, some further enabling defense suppression help, and the right munitions with precision guidance—all clearly within our technology capabilities.

Realistic Training Takes Root

The scope of Red Flag training expanded significantly during Creech’s tenure as the TAC commander. Reflecting Creech’s long-held opinion that the Air Force lacked a credible capability to fight at night, Red Flag exercises began to incorporate night operations at least twice per year shortly after Creech assumed command. During Creech’s command at TAC, Red Flag exercises grew from approximately 55 aircraft per exercise in 1977 to more than 250 by the time he relinquished command on 1 November 1984. Some exercises later grew to more than 400 aircraft. The exercises often included multinational participation—17 nations as active participants and 12 as observers by 1984. The realism of the threats on the Nellis ranges increased substantially. During Creech’s tenure, TAC spent more than $600 million on range improvement and instrumentation. This money bought, among other things, 11 acquisition radars, 33 AAA radars, and 42 SAM systems. Gen John L. Piotrowski, who served as Creech’s operations deputy and vice-commander before becoming the Ninth Air Force commander, recalled that Creech also instituted composite force training in which large packages of fighters trained with all the support assets they would need in wartime. He added that while Dixon and Suter had created Red Flag, Creech deserved credit for making each one more realistic than the previous and for upgrading the Fighter Weapons School from “a few cowboys and a few airplanes to a major enterprise. . . . It was a completely different world [than when I taught there in the 1960s]. General Creech professionalized it.”

By the summer of 1982, the tactics articulated at the Warfighter Conference and practiced at numerous Red Flags had been largely validated. In June 1982, the Israeli air force used the defense rollback strategy adopted by the USAF, decimated Syrian air defenses in the Bekàa Valley in a matter of 10 minutes, and destroyed 17 of 19 SA-6 missile sites and several SA-2 and SA-3 missile sites. The remaining sites were destroyed the following day. Meanwhile, 85 Syrian aircraft were destroyed in the air without a single Israeli loss. This stunning success served to reinforce the vision that emerged at the Warfighter Conference and had been practiced regularly at Red Flag exercises. By building on the successes of the Red and Blue Flag exercises, Creech began to expand the focus on realistic training into other areas of air warfare as well as many of the critical support functions across the TAF.

I do think that this discussion is in danger of mixing historical contexts.

If you want to discuss the contribution a low level optimised design could make before the widespread use of PGMs and stand off cruise missiles (which was the case for the RAF in GW1), then fine.

However, in discussing the F35, Rafale, TLAM-D, Stormshadow or any other post GW1 system or munition in the same breath as the above is a distortion of facts.

Err.. the TLAM-D was very much in service in 1991. IOC – 1986.

The shift away from low-level tactics for the USAF came in the wake of the Vietnam war and probably more importantly – the 1973 Yom Kippur war where Egyptian AD effectively blocked IAF strikes. SA-2s & SA-3s had the upper altitudes covered but when the IAF tried to go in low (as it did in ’67) it ran into SA-7 (Strela-2) equipped infantry, with the SAMs covered by AAA, forcing the jets to climb.. right back into the SAM envelop. Fast forward 9 years to the Bekaa Valley – entirely different outcome. In the USAF’s case – you had the F-117 (coming in roughly at the same time as the Tornado) while the F-15E was selected to replace the F-111.

Whilst it can be argued that the proliferation of stand off weaponry is proof that low level penetration is too costly for a manned fighter, the B2 design was modified to allow it to fly at low level. So, in the minds of 1980s planners even extreme stealth did not eliminate the need for that mission profile.

Sure. But that was the kind of just-in-case planning that equipped the F-22 with TVC. Also, keep in mind that the B-2 is VLO at all altitudes. Any low-level flights will taken place at night-time; minimal threat from optical systems with similar resistance to EM-guided SAMs while staying clear of low-frequency EW radar.

not only Rafale, I simply wanted to point out the fact that the tactics still have their importance and that the most lethal part of a flight is the overflight of the target which is usually very heavily defended, something that stand off weapons are made to avoid

You’re assuming that only the target is defended i.e. the defences are static.

There is no way to account for unknown threats along the ingress/egress path. The horizon FoV limit in low-level flight means that they’ll be no advance warning and very limited reaction time. And then of course there’s the threat from enemy fighters.

And that’s without going into the threat from enemy fighters. Modern terrain following radars can help you go lower but modern radars can filter out ground clutter even more effectively.

Let’s define modern please, we are talking about planes (both Tornado than teen fighters than mirages or Jaguar) of the Cold war era with no RCS at all, so the only way they ALL hadto reduce vulnerability to enemy radars was to fly low and fast.

No. That exchange with TooCool_12f was about the relevance of low-level flight in modern warfare. He probably had the Rafale in his mind (it supposedly compensates for the lack of stealth with low-level tactics & ECM).

Today, with more modern terrain following systems, you can go even lower and faster, and shoot from a safer distance your weapons… the days of low level penetration aren’t over yet…

thing is, when you look at these losses you have six combat losses:

two were at medium altitude, so it leaves only four at low level

No mention of medium altitude in that link. And SR-SAMs are very real threats at low level. More so than AAA.

Not one has been reported to be destroyed by enemy fire on its way to target area while being low

In general, the Iraqi defences were static allowing the attack jets the luxury to plan safe ingress/egress routes. Whole different situation when facing mobile air defences, to say nothing of threats in the air.

JP233 : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JP233

An effect achievable through a combination of LGBs & TLAM-Ds. (The IrAF assets, if any, that managed to get airborne they could have been handled in the air without too much fuss.)

Its also worth noting is that just a decade after the Gulf War, the (widely-used) Durandal was replaced by the new Apache missile by the French.

…and also for the sake of accuracy, do you think it would be worth posting the RAF view, rather than a necessarily removed US version or the British Army view (no matter now eminent)?

Well USAF (F-111s & F-15Es) were right there in mix with the Tornadoes, especially in the early days. Their experiences are hardly ‘removed’.

And while de la Billiere might be an Army officer, he was being advised in the matter by Bill Wratten, and his concerns were shared by Patrick Hine, both of the RAF.