Follow-on-Forces-Attack

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FOFA (Follow-on-Forces Attack) was a military concept of NATO or military doctrine in the Cold War era of the 1980s, which was supposed to enable enemy forces of the Warsaw Pact to be fought in the depths of the area in the event of a defense.

Starting position

NATO developed a number of strategic concepts for Western Europe in order to be able to counter a possible conventional attack by the Warsaw Pact. NATO military planners saw the problem of a rigid defense on the inner-German border in the fact that the geographical latitude of the "hinterland", especially at the Fulda Gap, was too small to adequately counter a large-scale attack by the Warsaw Pact. The distance from Fulda to Frankfurt is only 86 kilometers as the crow flies and 375 kilometers as the crow flies from Frankfurt to The Hague near the North Sea coast. These short distances would offer the NATO armed forces hardly any opportunities to fall back into the "hinterland" during a Soviet offensive and to be able to prepare an effective counter-attack from the depths of their own defense area. A counter-offensive would then have to be carried out from a territory whose infrastructure would already be severely damaged by air strikes and artillery fire. Taking into account these parameters and the imbalance in the troop strengths of both parties to the conflict, NATO's defense capability could collapse after an estimated three to four days, according to US General Bernard W. Rogers . In his opinion, failure of conventional warfare by NATO would encourage the possible use of tactical nuclear warheads.

Goal setting

The FOFA principle was based on considerations by General Rogers in 1984 and was presented as a “long-term planning guideline for combating follow-up forces” at NATO headquarters in Brussels. Rogers described FOFA as a concept in which NATO's lack of depth of defense could be compensated for by combating enemy targets in the “hinterland” of the enemy. The main focus of the follow-on-forces attack was the elimination of advancing troops (attack on following forces) of the Warsaw Pact. The range, whether 50 or 500 kilometers, was initially not defined or limited by Rogers. The FOFA concept was only part of the entire Rogers plan, which included several measures of an attack into the depths of the enemy space. In addition to the FOFA concept, the Air-Land-Battle-Doctrine , the destruction of the enemy air forces on the ground and the prevention of the enemy’s second and third attack squadrons from opening up were among the foundations of the NATO warfare concept. The Rogers Plan included a general modernization of conventional weapons systems through technical-electronic warfare. Another word for the FOFA concept on a possible European theater of war was the designation "Strike Deep" and in a broader sense meant a conventionalization of ordnance and strategic processes, which gave more leeway for agile warfare when fighting targets at a distance of up to 150 Could create kilometers.

Planned implementation

The area of ​​the enemy to be combated and the range of the weapon systems used were extended by the Western Allied planners in accordance with the FOFA concept to Poland , Czechoslovakia and the western military districts of the USSR. With cruise missiles and rockets , airfields, bridges and railway junctions were to be eliminated in a targeted manner. Furthermore, the provision and concentration of armored units and the command and telecommunication system should be permanently destroyed and the deployment of the enemy’s second wave of attacks disrupted or destroyed, thus creating an operational deep combat zone. Roger's proposal would have the advantage of retaining the prevailing NATO doctrine of " flexible response " and not necessarily having to fear a nuclear escalation of the conflict. Rogers estimated the additional NATO expenditure to be an estimated 90 billion DM over a period of ten years.

Assault Breaker

As part of the FOFA concept, assault breaker missiles (cruise missiles and ballistic missiles) were developed, which were designed for a technique to achieve long ranges and long-range targets in the enemy’s hinterland, e.g. B. replenishment bases to successfully locate and combat. The army and air force refrained from further developing the assault breaker technology , as a NATO corps would have a weekly ammunition requirement of eight billion USD. The following warheads and missile types were intended as assault breakers:

  • AVCO "Skeet" (BLU-108 / B Sensor-Fuzed Weapon)
  • General Dynamics TGSM (Terminally-Guided Sub-Missile)
  • T-16 based on MIM-104 Patriot
  • T-22 (MGM-52 Lance ballistic missile)

In the years 1981/1982 14 test flights were undertaken under non-combat conditions. The rockets were guided to the target using PAVE MOVER radar. In 1982 the Assault Breaker program was terminated for the time being. The concept of fighting armored targets behind the lines later went into the concept of the MGM-140 ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile System) missiles. It was not until 1986 that a fully developed weapon technology was available, which Rogers' plans could possibly have realized. This generation of guided missiles had an increased accuracy that was previously only possible with tactical nuclear weapons, so that up to 60 percent of a tank company could have been eliminated with one blow. A new type of multiple rocket launcher from the Bundeswehr is able to fire intelligent ammunition. Types of ammunition that only respond to certain types of tanks, for example. Newly developed cruise missiles with a range of over 100 kilometers and an intelligent type of submunition could thus be used very precisely against enemy command posts , deployment rooms, traffic junctions and marching columns.

criticism

As early as the 1985 White Paper it was stated that the NATO armed forces were not capable of offensive warfare due to their structure and the way their logistics were designed. Thus, they would not have the potential to lead counter-attacks with terrestrial forces in the depths of the enemy space.

Critics such as Defense Minister Manfred Wörner criticized FOFA for the high costs to be expected from the retrofitting. Bundeswehr Inspector General Wolfgang Altenburg advised that, in the event of a defense, all concentration should be directed towards defending against the first attack of the first offensive wave. The fight against advancing troops is initially secondary.

For Rogers, both defending the front and hitting the opponent's successor forces had the same priority.

In addition, it was feared that the electronics for the weapon systems to be provided would become much more expensive in the future and the budget would thus be far exceeded. So z. B. Cruise missiles increased in price from 2.2 million USD to 6.4 million USD. To combat the 40 most important military airfields in the Eastern Bloc, 800 conventionally equipped assault breaker missiles would be required. The Pentagon advisor Donald Cotter announced a quantity of 3,000 missiles, if one wanted to also eliminate enemy tank columns.

Timothy Garden , Director of Defense Studies for the Royal Air Force, suggested that “firing a large number of missiles in the first hours of an armed conflict would leave the Soviets an extraordinarily short time in deciding whether or not they were nuclear Strike NATO acts or not ”. It is not to be expected that the other side will wait for the impact of the FOFA missiles unanswered and possibly not be able to react immediately with nuclear warheads.

The US military analyst Steven Canby was of the opinion that the amount of FOFA missiles to be deployed could hardly stop the 30 divisions of the first attack wave, while behind it a second wave of 70 divisions would prepare for the offensive.

The FOFA missiles also have technical defects. For example, under real combat conditions, their infrared sensors are not able to specifically track down and combat enemy tank columns. Transporting tanks on semi-trailers would not emit particularly hot exhaust gases to which the IR seeker heads of the FOFA missiles could react. The use of FOFA missiles on mobile targets has generally been seen as problematic.

The strategist David Greenwood criticized that "the weapons of tomorrow are to fight the targets of yesterday". If the Warsaw Pact were to react differently than planned and not throw successive waves of attack against NATO territory every 36 hours and at the same time try to force through the lines of defense with operational maneuver groups in division or army strength with the first attack wave, would be the FOFA concept in the opinion of Christopher Donnelly immediately ineffective. The US American magazine Newsweek called the Soviet military strategy "Blitzing NATO" in reference to the rapid, armored Blitzkrieg advances of the Wehrmacht . " Warsaw Pact troops would have been in the positions of the conventional NATO missiles long before a second Soviet squadron even appeared on the battlefield. "

literature

  • United States Congress, Office of Technology Assessment: Technologies for NATO's follow-on forces attack concept: a special report of OTA's assessment on improving NATO's defense response. UNT Libraries Government Documents Department, July 1986, OCLC 4435153292 .

Web links

Notes and individual references

  1. ↑ See attack on advancing forces
  2. ↑ The border strips to the GDR and Czechoslovakia are only 70 to 100 kilometers
  3. ↑ Blitzing NATO, DER SPIEGEL 48, 1984. "The 'reconquest' by NATO would lead over the ruined battlefield of Germany - there would hardly be anything worth fighting for."
  4. ^ Battlefield Germany. In: DER SPIEGEL. 38/1977, BMVg 1975/76 “Longer conventional battles in the densely populated Federal Republic would destroy the substance of what is to be defended, because modern conventional weapon systems such as bulk bombs, napalm and area weapons almost achieve the destructive effects of tactical nuclear weapons. According to Bundeswehr analysts, a conventional war lasting 20 days would have the same effect as a nuclear war lasting five days. A war that goes over the people twice and completely devastates half-destroyed areas would claim millions of deaths and turn the Federal Republic into a field of rubble. "
  5. ↑ Rogers, NATO Commander in Chief from July 1, 1979 to 1987
  6. ^ Anthony King: The Transformation of Europe's Armed Forces. Cambridge University Press, 2011, ISBN 978-0-521-76094-2 , p. 108.
  7. ↑ Long Term Planning Guideline for Follow-On Forces Attack (FOFA)
  8. ↑ Our FOFA sub-concept is designed to attack with conventional weapons those enemy forces which stretch from just behind the troops in contact to as far into the enemy's rear as our target acquisition and conventional weapons systems will permit . In: Anthony King: The Transformation of Europe's Armed Forces. Cambridge University Press, 2011, ISBN 978-0-521-76094-2 , p. 108.
  9. ↑ Air-land battle. Extension of the war front by attack helicopters and precision ammunition to the rear of the opponent's disposal and readiness areas
  10. ^ Olaf Achilles, Jochen Lange, Werner May: Tiefflieger. 2nd Edition. Rowohlt TB-V., 1991, ISBN 3-499-12579-X , p. 56.
  11. ^ Olaf Achilles: Military Stress Analysis and Regional Conversion. Communal instruments for a disarmed region, p. 20.
  12. ↑ Blow down
  13. ↑ Rogers Plan, 'Airland Battle' and NATO's Forward Defense. In: Politics and Contemporary History. Supplement to the weekly newspaper Das Parlament, Vol. 48, 1984, pp. 3–17.
  14. ↑ T16, T22 n. D. Diameter in inches
  15. ↑ " and the system was never tested against fully combat-realistic (ie multiple moving) targets "
  16. ↑ US Air Force radar system
  17. ^ Directory of US Military Rockets and Missiles, Assault Breaker
  18. ↑ sub-ammunition such as B. bomblets or cluster munitions
  19. ↑ DER SPIEGEL 43/1986, Develop with renewed momentum, SDI technology improves conventional weapons
  20. ^ SDI: Strategic Defense Initiative
  21. ↑ BMVg: White Book 1985, p. 9.
  22. ↑ BMVg: Federal Ministry of Defense
  23. ^ Steven L. Canby, The Operational Limits of Emerging Technology, International Defense Review, p. 878, July 1985.
  24. ↑ within 24 hours, according to the approach of the Warsaw Pact military strategists, they should already be operating in the rear of the NATO front
  25. ↑ The plan was to be able to victoriously lead a conventional war in Western Europe within a few days
  26. ↑ STRATEGY: Blitzing Nato . In: Der Spiegel . No. 48 , 1984 ( online - Nov. 26, 1984 ).