AirLand Battle

AirLand Battle was the overall conceptual framework that formed the basis of the US Army's European warfighting doctrine from 1982 into the late 1990s. AirLand Battle emphasized close coordination between land forces acting as an aggressively maneuvering defense, and air forces attacking rear-echelon forces feeding those front line enemy forces. AirLand Battle replaced 1976's "Active Defense" doctrine, and was itself replaced by the modern "Full Spectrum Operations".

The basic concept of the Blitzkrieg and similar doctrines was for the attacker to secretly concentrate his forces before a limited frontage to gain a local superiority over the defenders, culminating in an attack with at least tactical surprise leading to a breakthrough, which is then rapidly exploited to threaten the rear areas and destabilize the entire defensive position.

As the war in Vietnam wound down, the US Army started studying their organization and structure, looking for ways to better align it with real-world conflicts. In 1973 they formed the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), under the direction of General William E. DePuy, to study these issues and produce better doctrine for their forces.

TRADOC concluded that there were two main possibilities for future conflicts, a major armored conflict in Europe, or a primarily infantry fight in other locations around the world. The latter possibility led to the ill-fated Rapid Reaction Force. The former was more problematic given the Warsaw Pact's massive numerical superiority, especially given the ending of Selective Service.

When the Yom Kippur War broke out in 1973, it demonstrated a new lethality of conventional weapons, especially the anti-tank guided missile (ATGM). The new vulnerability of tanks, combined with the improved defensive power of the infantry, led to a revolution of thought within the US Army—that a war in Europe was winnable with conventional weapons. Impressed by the new weapons, DePuy started the process of re-arming the heavy divisions with weapons that would dramatically improve their firepower.

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