It seemed to work. The army established a reputation for excellence which
appeared to have a historical pedigree but which was at odds with its perceived
record after the Crimean War or the First World War, and was not really backed
by its achievements in the Second World War, at least in 1940–2. In the past, if it
had been deemed to have been any good at anything, it was the ‘small wars which
allow scope for the man and his Regiment to shine’, but these were now seen by
Johnson and others as a ‘trap’ to be avoided. 97 Second, the government was
persuaded. Constraints on the defence budget did not prevent the continuing
procurement of equipment designed to implement the manoeuvrist vision.
JOINT WARFAREThe success which doctrine had produced convinced the other services to imitate
the army’s example. The trouble was that the army’s departure point for doctrine,
the operational level of war, had less conceptual resonance in the air or at sea, than
it did on land. In one respect, at least from the army’s viewpoint, the RAF had
nothing to lose by following its lead.Design for Military Operationsrested on the
idea of the ‘air–land’ battle, of fighting on NATO’s Central Front in three dimen-
sions. Group Captain Peter Millar, the RAF officer on the army’s first Higher
Command and Staff Course, dutifully concluded his course essay by writing:
The case is clear that the worst possible threat to the Central Region [of NATO] requires
the full use of air power to help counter it, that air power should be controlled by the corps,
and that many other advantages accrue to the corps in having the ability to use air power
beyond the FEBA [forward edge of the battle area] as much as possible. 98
No soldier was going to dissent from that, but many airmen did—particularly in
the aftermath of Operation Desert Storm in the first Gulf War. In 1991, driven by
its awareness of the need to make a wider political statement about the utility of
air power against the background of ‘Options for Change’, the RAF producedAir
Power Doctrine. In 1993, the revised edition ofAir Power Doctrinestressed not the
air–land battle but the strategic air offensive, arguing for the relevance of the
independent use of air power in the post-Cold War world. Although it paid ritual
obeisance to the notion of jointness, it made no mention of ‘manoeuvrism’, and
its preferred adjective was ‘strategic’ not ‘operational’. 99
The navy’s response,The Fundamentals of British Maritime Doctrine, though
delayed until 1995 and even then reluctant, similarly made a statement about
national strategy more than about operational methods or effects. As its use of the
descriptor ‘maritime’ rather than ‘naval’ suggested, its focus was on sea control,
sea denial, and maritime power projection, rather than on war. The First Sea
Lord, Sir Jock Slater, referred in his foreword to ‘an evolving set of principles,
procedures and practices’ that was more redolent of the tone of the 1909Field
Service Regulationsthan it was of the army’s more recent publications (although,
unlike the 1909Field Service Regulations,The Fundamentals of British Maritime
124 The Evolution of Operational Art