Air Campaign vs. Ballistic Missiles: Seeking the Strategic Win in the 21st Century - World War II Operation Crossbow Response to Hitler's V-Weapons, Hussein's Scud Surface-to-Surface Missiles (SSM‪)‬

This report has been professionally converted for accurate flowing-text e-book format reproduction. Most literature concerning the use of surface-to-surface missiles (SSMs) is focused on counter-proliferation. The authors are concerned with the emerging missile capabilities of rogue state missile arsenals. They fear that increasing ranges and accuracy will eventually threaten the US homeland. This concern is certainly warranted, but largely misses another potential consequence of enlarging SSM arsenals around the world: the threat of derailing 21st century strategic air campaigns. This thesis explores two case studies. First it explores the Allied response to Adolf Hitler's V-weapons campaign, Operation Crossbow. It then it examines the US-led coalition's response to Saddam Hussein's Scud missile campaign, the Great Scud Chase. The cases show that while both Germany and Iraq's missile campaigns failed to win their wars for them, the campaigns did cause a significant diversion to their enemies' strategic air campaigns. Both cases also explore how the Allies and the US-led coalition were able to simultaneously accomplish their original strategic air campaigns along with their politically mandated counter-SSM campaigns. A cross-case comparison then condenses the cases' findings into two products. The first product is labeled "The Dictator's Handbook for SSM Use" whose purpose is to educate US theater planners on the possible ways that SSMs can be used to disrupt their air campaign plans. The second product is a summary of "best practices" that collects lessons learned from the counter-SSM efforts for use by both theater air planners and procurement strategists. The paper concludes by applying the "best practices" to a potential future conflict with China to highlight potential existing vulnerabilities in current theater air plans and air-platform acquisition plans.

1 Operation Crossbow * 2 Desert Storm's "Great Scud Chase" * 3 "The Dictator's Handbook For SSM Use" And Suggested Countermeasures * 4 Conclusions And Implications.

This compilation includes a reproduction of the 2019 Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community.

Hitler's V-weapon and Saddam's Scud campaigns were not the only significant missile wars, but they consist of two out of the three missile wars against an asymmetrically dominant air power that have taken place to date. The Yom Kippur War (1973) is the third missile war in this category. The "Dictator's Handbook for SSM Use" will incorporate insights from the Yom Kippur War alongside those of World War II and Desert Storm. The Yom Kippur War was not considered for a full-length case study for two reasons. First, missiles used by the Arabs in 1973 were so poor that most missed their targets. Ascertaining their true targets, and the Arab missile-employment strategy, amount to little more than a guessing game. Second, while the Israeli Air Force (IAF) eventually escalated the war after the use of Arab SSMs, it is unclear if their actions were ever correlated to SSM use. In other words, it is difficult to determine if the Arabs failed to provoke a response by air or if the IAF's escalation was, in part, a response to SSM use. Other significant missile wars, in terms of quantity used, include the Iran-Iraq War and the Soviet-backed Afghanistan government versus the Mujahideen. The Iran-Iraq war was not considered as a case study because neither belligerent possessed a significant airpower advantage. More importantly, neither wide waged a strategic-air campaign of enough scale to draw useful insights on the effect of SSM use on air campaigns. The Afghan regime's use of Scuds against the Mujahideen was not considered as a case study because the Mujahideen lacked an air force.