PIREP - Winter 2002 Air Staff Rides: Wartime Leadership Experience

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Air Staff Rides

Wartime Leadership Experience

Capt Gilles Van Nederveen, USAF, Retired*
Dr. Daniel R. Mortensen

Staff rides are seminars that address contemporary issues of leadership and strategy by combining academic study with tours of actual battlefields. Although they may take different forms, they all seek to further the development of leaders. Between 1858 and 1869, Helmuth von Moltke, chief of the Prussian General Staff, institutionalized the practice by conducting annual staff rides that considered hypothetical situations, based upon possible plans of operations against Prussia’s enemies.¹ Staff rides have long been a staple of the US Army and Marine Corps, both of which use Civil War battlefields to discuss leadership, decision making, tactics, and strategy. Today, civilian businesses conduct staff rides for executives, and the leisure industry offers them to tourists.² There is a hint that even the Air Force is mining the benefits.

Staff rides are pedagogically unique in the education of military leaders. They show students the dynamics of battle, especially those factors that interact to produce victory or defeat. Students are exposed to the human dimensions of warfare via case studies in military leadership. Successful staff rides depend upon (1) the active participation of students in the systematic study of the event, including exchange of information, formulation of thought, and collective analysis of the military operation, and (2) a visit to the actual site, which facilitates complete integration of the preliminary study with battlefield analysis in three dimensions. The combination of classroom and field study enhances student involvement and retention of lessons learned.³

On the one hand, “air” staff rides differ little from conventional staff rides. After undertaking preliminary study, participants tour airfields, command posts, ammunition dumps, and battlefields where airpower played a role. On the other hand, air staff rides are distinctive in the sense that touring the battlefield at a tactical level has little or no applicability to airmen. Instead, the air ride must focus on decision making at the operational level in order for students to grasp how airpower shaped the battle. The ride does not neglect the tactical ground battle, however, since joint warfare requires knowledge of the ground conflict to understand how the air force fits in. The joint experience helps airmen become better leaders and commanders in war. Changes in technology and corresponding changes in doctrine render some lessons obsolete, especially those linked to minor tactics. But most identified lessons are timeless because they are based on universal operational principles and natural human characteristics. These lessons are most important for officers who aspire to higher command and true mastery of the art of war.

World War I tours are popular in France, but World War II sites offer the Air Force participant a greater number of choices. The Normandy campaign is considered a classic, and the Royal Air Force Staff College now offers a regular tour. Other staff rides include Rotterdam 1940, which still allows the student to see the effects of aerial bombing; Kent 1940, a Battle of Britain locale; Arnhem 1944, which examines the airborne operation; and Belgium 1940/1944, which offers the simultaneous study of two campaigns. Although Europe may include a number of accessible sites, Asia too has sites and battlegrounds worth visiting, as do Singapore, Pearl Harbor, and Tinian. In Europe the relative compactness of some campaigns facilitates their study.

Recently, United States Air Forces in Europe (USAFE) took advantage of its prime location to organize staff-leadership rides to World War II battlefields. The 86th Operations Group conducted air rides to Normandy, the Berlin airlift locations, and the Market-Garden battlefields in eastern Netherlands, in accordance with the theme of comparing historical to current airlift operations. The 86th involved personnel from all levels of its command, from airman to squadron commander. Furthermore, Gen Gregory S. Martin, USAFE commander, organized two air rides in June and July 2002 to emphasize airpower mentorship and leadership. The rides included discussion of high-level concerns and concepts at the strategic and operational levels. This experience identified lessons about command and communications in 1944, both successes and failures, that resonate in today’s world, illustrating to all attendees that the United States Air Force has been a remarkable military arm for many generations.

*Gilles Van Nederveen is employed as a senior intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) analyst at Science Applications International Corporation in Reston, Virginia. Dan Mortensen is chief of research; Airpower Research Institute; College of Aerospace Doctrine, Research and Education; Maxwell AFB, Alabama.

Notes

1. See Hansgeorg Model, Der Deutsche Generalstabsoffizier: Seine Auswahl und Ausbildung in Reichswehr, Wehrmacht und Bundeswehr (The German general staff officer: His selection and education in the Reichswehr, Wehrmacht and Bundeswehr) (Frankfurt am Main: Bernard & Graefe Verlag, 1968).

2. The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) offers staff rides for corporate executives. See SAIS Executive Education Programs, on-line, Internet, 1 October 2002, available from http://www.sais-jhu.edu/programs/executive/staffrides.html. See also MIDAS Tours, on-line, Internet, 1 October 2002, available from http://midastours.co.uk/t064a.html.

3. See the foreword to William Glenn Robertson’s The Staff Ride (Washington, D.C.: US Army Center of Military History, 1987), on-line, Internet, 1 October 2002, available from http://www.dean.usma.edu/history/outreach/staffrides/foreward.html .

Disclaimer

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.