Joint Training for Night Air Warfare

Publisher Marketing: The genesis of this book can be traced to two specific assignments, the author's Air Force-Navy officer exchange duty in F-14s and his tour on the staff in the Special Management Organization for low-altitude navigation and targeting infrared for nigh (LANTIRN). From his experiences with the Navy, he gained an appreciation for how well the services can work together if we can overcome the challenges to joint operations. The author's experiences since then with Marine and Army personnel convinced him that the same discipline, pride, and expertise run through any warrior, regardless of what color uniform he or she wears or what service insignia is painted on the side of the airplane. This ingrained devotion to duty, properly directed toward mission accomplishment, can override any sense of interservice rivalry and greatly increase the sum total of military power through joint operations. This inherent capability is limited, though, because of a lack of an in-depth aware of each other's capabilities and limitations. Following this exposure to the possibilities of joint operation, the author's tour in the LANTIRN office at Headquarters TAC convinced him that future air warfare must include night combat. He felt that the tactical capability provided by the emerging night technology was too great to be neglected. Each of the armed services had or was developing the technology for night warfare, but there was no formal program to develop or train for joint night tactics or operations. When offered the opportunity to compete for the PACAF command-sponsored research fellowship at AUCADRE, he saw this as an opportunity to point out what he considered an oversight and propose a solution to the issue. Although this book was started well before the events of Operations Desert Shield/Desert Storm, the author was gratified to see his initial assumptions validated. Joint operations, including joint night operations, are a critically important part of modern war. The success of Operation Desert Storm was the result of joint development and training efforts during the months of Desert Shield. Continuous efforts must be made to ensure a future capability. This report has a proposed training method for ensuring that capability.