The post-World War II drawdown left the Air Force ill-prepared for conflict. The parallels with today are enlightening.
North Korean forces crossed the 38th parallel into South Korea at 0400 on Sunday, June 25, 1950, launching a war that would fundamentally reshape the global security environment. South Korean and American land forces were caught by surprise, but air power transformed the panicked fallback into an effective counteroffensive. Air power proved to be the principal tool at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels, delivering air superiority, air-to-ground strikes, close air support, reconnaissance, command and control, and mobility that surface forces alone could not manifest. Ultimately, air power enabled UN forces to bring overt hostilities to an end.
Yet Airmen had to overcome severe challenges, including a shortage of aircraft to sustain operations. Many front-line planes dated to World War II, and too often remained out of commission with maintenance problems. The shortfalls were exacerbated by the lack of suitable airfields on the Korean Peninsula, requiring fighters to fly from Japan, stretching their aerial range to the limit. Command decisions were complicated by fears that the war could turn into an overt conflict with Russia, barring Airmen from targeting major sources of enemy power. Meanwhile, ground commanders clashed with air leaders over how best to leverage their air power, whether conflicting on the benefits of focusing on the last tactical mile or targets deeper behind enemy lines.
These experiences are still relevant today, as the Air Force seeks to address a strikingly similar set of challenges: a small, aging aircraft inventory; not enough air base availability; lack of training capacity; and disagreements with joint counterparts about how best to employ air power.
Douglas A. Birkey is the Executive Director for the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.
Download the entire report at http://MitchellAerospacePower.org.
No Bucks, No Air Power
North Korea’s invasion of the South was a surprise to the United States and its allies, who were not ready to fight so soon after World War II. Massive disarmament efforts had slashed the U.S. Air Force active aircraft inventory 82 percent from its peak in WWII to 1950. A mere 2,500 jets of all types populated Air Force ramps, and the rest were predominantly WWII leftovers of dubious technological relevance. Air Force manpower and budgets had been slashed, squeezing training pipelines, spare parts inventories, maintenance depots, and logistics lines. Everything was in short supply.
The Cold War was now well underway. Air operations over Korea ranked behind Cold War activities as national concerns, and leaders prioritized maintaining sufficient reserves in Europe to deter and, if necessary, fight a war against Soviet forces. The same held true for defending the continental United States. The Air Force was now too small to concurrently meet the nation’s requirements.
The motley collection of aircraft in theater at the start of the war included 657 airplanes: F-80 jet fighters, F-82 Twin Mustang propeller-driven interceptors, B-29 and B-26 bombers, plus C-54 and C-47 WWII-era transports. USAF’s Far East Air Force (FEAF), the command responsible for air operations over Korea, asked for more aircraft, but too often spares did not exist or were not readily accessible. Airmen were left to improvise with was available. To meet the demand for more F-80s, early models lacking key combat capabilities had to be rapidly upgraded and deployed.
In March 1951, FEAF commander Gen. George E. Stratemeyer wrote to Gen. Hoyt S. Vandenberg that he was losing F-80s so quickly that new types, like the F-84, had to be rushed to Korea to sustain operations. One month later, FEAF lost 25 P-51s, 13 F-80s, and 2 F-84s to ground fire. Strategic Air Command, worried that F-84 crews were losing bomber escort proficiency for the nuclear deterrence mission, withdrew their F-84s later that year, further squeezing the force. Backfill fighter aircraft were receiving just a 10 percent attrition reserve, rather than the 50 percent required for a combat unit.
Shortages affected everyone. In August and September of 1951, B-26 squadrons lost 11 aircraft, but the Air Force had no combat-ready replacements available, and no production line to produce new planes. Desperate to offer combat units a solution, Air Force leaders deployed B-26s without required operational capabilities.
A pilot shortage contributed to the troubles. The A-26 training pipeline produced only 45 crews per month, too few to overcome FEAF attrition that demanded 58 to 63 crews a month. FEAF air commanders had to limit A-26 sortie rates, matching not what combat requirements demanded, but what crew and aircraft backfills could sustain.
Parts shortages further degraded sortie rates. Production lines had long since closed for WWII-era aircraft, so there was no ready source of component parts. By January 1952, the F-86 mission capability rate was just 45 percent. Spare parts supplies were programmed at peacetime, not wartime rates, forcing planners to ration flight hours to what they could sustain.
Rapid technological development ratcheted up the pressure. Air Force pilots challenging communist opponents over MiG Alley along the North Korea-Manchurian border began the war flying propeller-driven and early jet aircraft. But on Nov. 1, 1950, Chinese pilots flying Soviet MiG-15s squared off against U.S. aircraft over the Yalu River. “Almost overnight, communist China has become one of the major air powers of the world,” Vandenberg declared. Air Force leaders had no choice but to deploy their newest fighter, the F-86 Sabre.
The first F-86 engagement against MiG-15s followed just weeks later, on Dec. 17, 1950, and for the rest of the war, the U.S. Air Force would struggle to keep enough F-86s in the Korean theater to control the skies. F-86s were often outnumbered by MiG-15s three or four to one, even by accelerating F-86 production with added manufacturing capacity in Canada.
In the wake of World War II, flying budgets had been cut, depriving new pilots of needed flight training. Combat skills atrophied. Once in theater, pilots had to learn on the job; the shortage of aircraft was such that noncombat missions to build competence were all but impossible.
The entire air warfare system was badly out of balance, and Airmen were paying with their lives. Yet losing air superiority posed dire risks to every facet of the war. UN ground forces would be subject to indiscriminate aerial attack. Strike missions against enemy logistics lines would be unsustainable. Naval forces operating offshore would be forced to retreat further out to sea. Managing air power to survive another day, rather than flying and fighting to win, posed dangerous risks. Had these operations been against a peer threat, the results could have been catastrophic.
No Air Power without Air Bases
When communist forces first invaded the South, there were 10 principal airfields in the region, mostly WWII relics in poor repair. Only two—Suwon and Kimpo—possessed concrete runways. The others were gravel, dirt, and grass airfields not able to support jet aircraft. Combat engineers were also in short supply. Of 4,315 authorized billets, FEAF could fill just 2,322, a little more than half. Outdated equipment made their work harder. It took over a year to bring units to full strength; growing new talent took time.
Covering primitive WWII-era runways in pierced steel planking was an improvement. While still a far cry from a robust tarmac capable of hosting jets, it allowed basic operations for piston engine aircraft like the F-51, B-26, and C-47. Upkeep was a constant challenge: In the spring of 1951, the pierced steel plank runway at Taegu had to be shut down for a complete overhaul, having been beaten to pieces by nonstop takeoffs and landings.
Supply lines and maintenance were no less difficult. The 51st Fighter Group at Kimpo Airfield consumed 60,000 gallons of fuel daily. Lacking proper hangers, maintainers kept much of their gear in crates. The 49th Fighter Wing operated from Taegu, but sent their F-80s back to Japan for major overhaul work; such rotations back to Japan proved essential in keeping mission capability rates at an acceptable level.
Many combat aircraft operated from Japan, a distance of 700 miles, effectively reducing useful mission employment time to a handful of minutes. Just getting from Japan to Korea ate up 85 percent of F-80 flight operations, leaving a mere 15 minutes for combat. F-84s launching from Japan could provide close air support over front lines for just 30 minutes. Operating from bases in South Korea was no better, though: F-86s leaving South Korean bases were limited to 25 minutes over MiG Alley along the North Korean-Manchurian border. MiG pilots knew the limitations—and took advantage.
North Korean fighters were also in range to attack U.S. bases. On the opening day of the war, a C-54 was strafed and destroyed by North Korean fighters, and in the autumn of 1950, enemy aircraft destroyed 11 P-51s at a forward air base. Such raids continued for the duration of the war. As with everything else, air base defense was often underresourced.
Air-minded Leadership
Air and ground commanders during the Korean conflict held divergent views regarding how best to employ air assets. Ground commanders favored focusing air power on enemy forces along the front line of battle, while air leaders sought to engage further into the north, expanding the enemy territory under attack, by focusing on the strategic and tactical targets whose destruction could have a greater impact on the conflict.
Service views were represented by component commanders: Far East Air Forces, Naval Forces Far East (NAVFE), and Army Forces Far East (AFFE). But the overall commander, Army Gen. Douglas MacArthur, established a precedent of triple-hatting the Army component commander as the lead commander, adding Commander of U.N. Forces and Commander in Chief Far East (CINCFE) to his titles. Air Force and Naval leaders were thus placed in a distinctly subordinate status. Similarly, MacArthur populated his staff with Army officers primarily; the official Air Force of the Korean War goes so far as to characterize the General Headquarters (GHQ) as “essentially an Army staff.”
“Lacking joint representation of air, naval, and ground officers, the GHQ staff was unable to accomplish the most efficient and timely employment of air power in Korea,” the official history states.
With outsized influence, the Army commanded the employment of air power from the earliest stages of the war. Air crews were ordered to focus missions on the front lines, even when more lucrative targets further north were largely undefended. In the opening weeks, enemy logistics lines, supply depots, air bases, and other centers of gravity were not threatened by U.S. air attack. Not for a full month after hostilities erupted did Airmen gain authority to strike targets north of the 38th parallel.
With Air Force, Naval, and Marine aircraft in the theater all flying and fighting over the same territory, command was service-centric at the start without formal coordination. In fact, Air Force leaders could not even talk to their naval counterparts during the initial weeks of the war because the aircraft carriers sailing off the Korean Peninsula insisted on maintaining radio silence. To manage requests for air power, the CINCFE staff organized a “target group,” but Army staffers, who lacked background in air power strategy and tactics, held most of the seats and routinely outvoted Navy and Air Force representatives.
When Gen. Mark W. Clark assumed the U.N. Command and CINCFE role in 1952, however, among his first actions was to fix the balance of service representation in his headquarters staff. The group “should be a joint, tri-service operation, rather than an Army project,” he said. When joint principles were attacked by his Army counterparts, he advocated joint solutions. Some Army leaders understood the merits behind Clark’s approach. As Gen. Walton Walker explained, “You hear and read about the type of support furnished by the Marine air units. It’s good, it’s excellent, and I would like to have that kind of air support available too—but if the people who advocate that would sit down and figure out the cost of supplying air units for close air support only, in that ration to an army the size we should have, then they would be astonished.”
These lessons had been learned previously during WWII, but the debates resurfaced in Korea anyway.
Applying the Lessons of Korea Today
Viewed with hindsight 70 years later, the Korean experience remains relevant today, especially in the context of the threat posed by China in the Pacific. Then as now, the Department of the Air Force faced a severe resource challenge.
In the aftermath of the Cold War, the Air Force budget was cut severely. From fiscal 1989 to fiscal 2001, procurement spending plunged 52 percent, nearly 20 percent more than the other services. Then, in the wake of 9/11, budget increases failed to keep pace with joint commanders’ demand for air power. New joint missions, including the surge in requirements for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance over Afghanistan and later Iraq, did not come with their own funding streams.
The Air Force acquired and operated a huge fleet of remotely piloted aircraft while reducing the size of its overall force. Then, with the creation of the Space Force in 2019, the department assumed a new mandate to launch a new military service—all within its existing budget wedge.
At the same time, pass-through spending—funds allocated to the Department of the Air Force but then passed through directly to other agencies—continued to rise. Today, $40 billion of the annual DAF budget is allocated to other agencies in DOD. While those funds would be enough to buy some 400 F-35s or half that many while still nearly doubling the Space Force budget, the Department of the Air Force has no say in how those funds are used.
Similar to 1950, today’s Air Force is a shrunken version of its former self, operating what is now the oldest, smallest aircraft inventory in its history. The bomber inventory now stands at 141, an all-time low; fighters reached an all-time low in 2016 and are only beginning to recover. At 5,625, the Total Force aircraft inventory is less than half the size it was 40 years ago.
Mobility; command and control (C2); and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) inventories are similarly fragile. Critical attributes like stealth are in short supply—just 20 percent of the USAF fighter inventory and 13 percent of the USAF bomber inventory can evade enemy radar this way. Spare parts are again a problem, having too often been chosen targets for budget cuts, even though parts availability can be directly correlated to mission capability rates. A persistent shortage of pilots again plagues the Air Force, which lacks the training aircraft and flying hours to produce enough pilots fast enough to close the gap between requirements and reality. Shortages also persist among seasoned maintainers and others—just as they did 70 years ago in the runup to the Korean War.
The Air Force is investing and experimenting with new operating concepts designed to better prepare U.S. forces should combat in the Pacific become necessary once again. Concepts like Agile Combat Employment (ACE), in which detachments move forward from larger operating bases to make U.S. actions more dispersed, flexible and less predictable ultimately, depend on solving larger issues with the logistics and sustainment enterprise, which must evolve to meet new requirements. The austere conditions Airmen faced in Korea 70 years ago are not that different than those Airmen will face under ACE today, except they expect now to operate across a broader region and against a much more sophisticated foe, armed with fifth-generation sensing and strike capabilities.
In that context, limiting sorties for want of parts or maintenance or available aircraft, as happened in Korea, poses greater risks now than before. If war does erupt, there will not be time to backfill deficiencies in personnel and aircraft. The timeline necessary to train new pilots or build new airplanes is measured in years and decades, not months. Commanders not postured to fight and win from Day One risk defeat.
The Korean War leadership issues are also similar to patterns seen today. No Air Force officer has ever been the joint commander for U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, U.S. Central Command, or U.S. Forces Korea. Only one Airmen has ever commanded U.S. Southern Command. When Gen. Tod D. Wolters retired in July and turned over U.S. European Command to Army Gen. Christopher G. Cavoli, he was just the fourth Airmen to hold the position in the 70 years since the command was established. Gen. Richard B. Myers was the last Air Force Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, serving from 2001 to 2005. Even the Secretariate has become land-centric, with the last three confirmed secretaries of defense all having been retired ground commanders: former Marine Gen. James Mattis, former Army Lt. Col. Mark Esper, and former Army general and now Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. This parallels the situation in Korea in 1950.
Joint does not mean everyone gets to engage in each mission area. It means developing centers of gravity for each domain and allowing them to articulate their value to a joint commander who assembles a menu of capabilities that will best net the desired strategic effect, regardless of the domain form which they originate.
As air power expert Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.), dean of AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, explains: “To be joint, the U.S. and its allies require separate services. It is an imperative that service members understand how to best exploit the advantages of operating in their domains. Articulating the virtues and values of your service is in fact ‘being joint.’” The failure to appoint Air Force leaders to lead major joint commands relegates Airmen—and air power—to understudy status. This has an impact and influence on how the services invest and posture for future conflict and can inadvertently steer strategy. Consider long-range strike, for example. The Army is investing in a wholly organic long-range strike solution—its own munitions, launch vehicle, and C2ISR construct—rather than developing solutions that leverage joint capabilities. Similarly, the Space Force has subsumed almost all Air Force and Navy space assets, but full consolidation has yet to occur, with the Army retaining significant organic space capabilities.
Finally, the issue of limited warfare faced by Airmen in Korea presents incredibly useful areas for today’s Air Force leaders to consider, especially as the United States and its allies focus on a renewed era of peer competition with specific focus upon China. Military leaders must carefully consider whether they have the tools to achieve the desired outcome given the actors involved.
As the U.S. learned in Afghanistan and Iraq, superior military prowess is of little value if there is a fundamental disconnect between strategic objectives and the indigenous population. The U.S. achieved a favorable, if imperfect, outcome in the Korean War because the U.N., the United States, and the people of South Korea shared a common objective. Such alignment is the foundation of any successful campaign, but which was fundamentally lacking in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In 2018, then-Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson proclaimed, “We must see the world as it is. That is why the National Defense Strategy explicitly recognizes that we have returned to an era of great power competition. We must prepare.”
That call to action, echoed by all Air Force leaders since, speaks directly to the air power lessons of the Korean War. That conflict’s history is instructive today because air power has been crucial to every successful military campaign in the past century. In the 21st century, as in the 20th, “Victory Through Air Power” is possible—only if we apply the lessons of the past to the challenges of the future.
