Page 347 - Airpower in 20th Century - Doctrines and Employment

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u.s. air forCe doCtrine:. tHe searCH for deCisive effeCt

communist powers. An Air Force study headed by Bernard Brodie concluded that the
traditional strategy of striking at the enemy’s “sources of national power” might not
be applicable in a limited conflict. US Air Force General Weyland, head of the Air
Force’s Tactical Air Command, remarked that “we must have adequate tactical air
forces in being that are capable of serving as a deterrent to the brush-fire kind of war,
just as SAC (Strategic Air Command) is the main deterrent to global war.” 34
By the early 1960s the doctrine of “flexible response” became the American war
doctrine and strategy. The United States was to have a variety of options to deal with
threats from total nuclear war to the limited “Korea-type” wars. General Maxwell
Taylor, special military advisor to President Kennedy and later chairmen of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff noted in 1962. .. “Mindful of the awful dangers of atomic warfare,
we require a military policy which takes it primary purpose the deterrence of that
disaster. At the same time, … it must giver due recognition to the need to cope with
many situations short of general war—particularly para-war.” 35
Beginning in the Kennedy presidency, American conventional military forces
were again built up as the confrontations between the Western and communist nations
began to heat up—especially in Southeast Asia. The doctrine of flexible response
would soon be tested in the conflict in Vietnam.
When the question of how America ought to respond to North Vietnam’s support
of the insurgent movement in South Vietnam arose the Kennedy and Johnson
administrations looked to air power as a means of decisively defeating the North
Vietnamese. Curtis LeMay, the famous bomber commander of World War II, was
chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force in the early 1960s and directed his staff to develop
an airpower solution to stopping the North Vietnamese. The Air Force developed a
list of 94 strategic targets whose destruction would cripple North Vietnam’s armed
forces and military capability. The 94 targets included transportation, industry,
command centers, and fuel storage. LeMay and the Air Force believed that the
destruction of all these targets in a quick, sharp campaign would quickly force North
Vietnam to sue for peace. 36
Academic theorists working for the Kennedy and Johnson administrations,
notably Walt Rostow and Assistant Secretary of State William Bundy, favored the
use of airpower against North Vietnam and the bombing of the 94 targets advocated
by the Air Force. But Rostow and Bundy also advocated a strategy of using bombing
as a means of sending signals to the North Vietnamese. The destruction of the target
list would be gradual and would escalate in violence until the North Vietnamese gave
in to a negotiated settlement. 37

34
Cited in Budiansky, pp. 374-375.
35
Cited in Futrell, Vol. 2, p. 40.
36
Budiansky, pp. 378-379.
37
Donald Milne, Our Equivalent of Guerrilla Warfare: Walt Rostow and the Bombing of North Viet-
nam, 1961-1968, “Journal of Military History” Vol. 71/1. January 2007, pp. 169-203. See 183.