Page 218 - Airpower in 20th Century - Doctrines and Employment

218 airpower in 20 Century doCtrines and employment - national experienCes
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ment processes of these four air force pillars – combat aircraft, guided weapons,
transport aircraft and helicopters – followed their own patterns. Even though the air
force leadership recognised and acknowledged the individual importance and raison
d’être of these four pillars, for a long time, they were not considered as equally im-
portant. During the Cold War, the RNLAF accorded priority to the combat aircraft
and, to a lesser extent, to the guided weapons. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the
emphasis shifted more and more to air transport and helicopter operations.
Until the 1970s, the RNLAF’s combat aircraft were divided over two separate
commands: one of which focused on air defence, and the other on the conduct of
tactical tasks, the principal ones being attacking ground targets, providing support
to ground troops and conducting (photo) reconnaissance. Specific types of fighter
aircraft were selected for the various tasks. The British-made air defence fighters
were assigned to the Commando Luchtverdediging, (CLV, Air Defence Command),
which had several squadrons operating from the air bases of Leeuwarden, Twenthe,
Soesterberg and Ypenburg. The US-made tactical fighter bombers came under the
Commando Tactische Luchtstrijdkrachten (CTL, Tactical Air Command); the squad-
rons were stationed at the air bases of Eindhoven and Volkel. The fighter aircraft of
the two commands were gradually integrated into the NATO alliance. The integra-
tion of the tactical squadrons in particular proceeded smoothly; they rapidly came
under Allied command and were integrated in 1952 into the multinational Second
Allied Tactical Air Force, headquartered in Rheindahlen, Germany. The advent of
the F-104G Starfighter in 1962 was an important step towards the standardisation
of the air fleet. The F-104 fulfilled both air defence and tactical roles. Partly as a
result of that, 1973 saw the amalgamation of the Air Defence Command and the
Tactical Air Command into a single command for all operational combat units under
the name of Commando Tactische Luchtstrijdkrachten (Tactical Air Command). The
F-16, from the 1980s onwards, proved a worthy successor to the Starfighter, also
owing to the fact that it had excellent multi-role capabilities, much more so than its
predecessor. Seeing that the F-16 was also to take over the tasks of the NF-5 fighter
bomber, which had been phased out at the beginning of the 1990s, the standardisa-
tion process by transfer of tasks to one fighter aircraft had been effected at the end
of the Cold War period.
At the beginning of the 1960s, the Dutch armed forces were assigned six (tacti-
cal) nuclear tasks on top of its conventional tasks, as part of the NATO strategy.
Two of these nuclear tasks were to be carried out by the RNLAF. 311 Squadron
and 312 Squadron, which were both stationed at Volkel Air Base, were assigned a
fighter bomber strike task, and so made a contribution to NATO’s offensive nuclear
air forces. The pilots of the two squadrons were subjected to an intensive retraining
programme in order to master the techniques of launching tactical nuclear weapons.
The aircraft – initially the Thunderstreak, followed by the Starfighter and finally the
F-16 – were modified to be able to carry out the strike task using atom bombs.
The second nuclear air force task was of a defensive nature and was assigned to