Its not just for parachute troops
Much has been made of the recent decision to re-activate the 11th Airborne Division in Alaska. However, one central question remains — what to do with the Stryker brigade at Fort Wainwright. Because the 20-ton wheeled vehicles are less than ideal in an arctic operating environment, that brigade will likely revert to a light infantry outfit, surely it won’t be another parachute brigade. But there is a possibility it might be an “air assault” brigade, earmarked for helicopter-borne operations. Would that make the 11th a fully airborne division? Yes.
The term “airborne” to the average soldier has solely meant parachute forces. But that is not the original use of the word, nor its intent today.
The term referred to all those forces delivered by air during World War II. Air-landed, parachute, and later glider. It referred to those ground troops capable of vertically enveloping adversaries. The first field manual for airborne operations, FM 31–30 stated: “Air-borne Troops: Any troops transported by air.” Air landing troops were those who disembarked from powered aircraft or gliders on the ground, often following an assault by parachute troops. Those parachute troops are self-explanatory but had to be volunteers. Training Circular 113, issued after reviewing issues during Operation HUSKY into Sicily, adds the further caveat that “airborne forces” are those units that are specially organized, trained, and equipped to utilize air transportation for entry into combat.” Regardless, during World War II, the term “airborne” meant those who arrived by air and not just parachute.
After World War II, the most famous officer of the war, Maj. Gen. James M. Gavin identified the following six “characteristically airborne” traits in his book Airborne Warfare: 1) Speed and rapid initiation of combat immediately upon landing. 2) Retention of the initiative by all individuals and units from the moment of landing until the objective is seized or the mission accomplished. 3) Recognition of isolation as a normal battlefield condition. 4) Readiness of all units to attack or defend in any direction at any time. 5) Improvisation of weapons and means and the use of enemy weapons and defensive works to our own advantage. 6) Extended intervals and distances in the defense with a “screening and counterattack” type of defense. All hold true today, and none of these require a parachute.
In 1951, the Department of the Army re-designated all Parachute and Glider Infantry Regiments as Airborne Infantry Regiments, making every regiment capable of arriving in combat by glider, parachute, or air landing. The following year a Joint Airborne Troop Board declared the venerable towed glider obsolete and called for small assault transport planes to replace it. These decisions had the cumulative effect of reinforcing the term “airborne” as a catch-all for forces moved by air. As Maxwell Taylor, commander of the 101st Airborne Division during the war, said years later, “The airborne concept to me is the capability of rapid movement by air of military units, both for tactical and strategic purposes.”
In his 1953 War College paper, Col. John “Jack” Tolson advocated the formation of an “Army Airborne Corps” that included personnel who would spend all of their time working on anything that flew for the army over the combat zone, including “Army aircraft, rockets and guided missiles.” Tolson spent World War II with the 503rd Parachute Infantry Regiment and became a key member of the air mobility disciples during the 1950s and 1960s. This would require “an entirely different connotation attached to the word “Airborne” as to that used in the past,” and he recommended it be changed in the Army’s dictionary. After a brief stint in the G-3, Gavin had Tolson assigned to the Fort Benning Airborne Department. He promptly renamed that element the Airborne-Army Aviation Department, which later became the airborne-airmobile department.
Nevertheless, in June 1959, the Command and General Staff College sought to define “airmobility” and differentiate it from “airborne.” While airmobile helicopter troops did not need the special training of parachute troops, airmobile operations were often much more complicated to plan than regular ground assaults. Parachute operations were joint for the faculty at CGSC, and airmobile operations were “those airlifted combat operations conducted by and within the Army.” Further, airmobile operations were generally smaller than airborne operations and more tactical. Air and ground elements enjoyed a symbiotic, highly coordinated relationship, often from the same organic maneuver formation that works together on an intimate day-to-day basis. And finally, all significant portions of the operation are Army units commanded by a single land force commander. After this article, army doctrine used the term airmobile exclusively, and the 1960 edition of Field Manual 57–35 (previously known as Army Transport Aviation Combat Operations) was titled simply Airmobile Operations.
Army doctrine kept airborne and air mobile doctrine in separate yet related field manuals until the new 2015 Field Manual 3–99 Airborne and Air Assault Operations combined the two concepts into one manual. However, the Army’s capstone manual flip-flopped, lumping them together in 1954 (as “air transported operations”) and 1962, separating them in 1968 at the height of the Vietnam War, and finally removing them as stand-alone chapters altogether in the 1976version for good. Throughout, “air movement” doctrine was always found in the “airborne” chapter.
In late 1973 the Department of the Army announced it was eliminating the final 3,449 parachutist positions remaining in the 101st Airborne Division. Its commander at the time, Maj. Gen. Sidney Berry vehemently opposed this idea. Writing to US Army Forces Command commander Gen. Walter T. Kerwin, he lauded his division’s “capability for seizing by airborne assault an airhead into which the remainder of the division can deploy and conduct airmobile operations” and feared that losing this would degrade national security options. However, recruiting, the glamour, and the prestige of being in a parachute unit were more important to Berry. “Airborne is this division’s greatest single recruiting attraction for young men,” he wrote to Kerwin. He explained that recruiting through the promise of a parachute assignment was more critical to maintaining his division’s readiness than anything else.
Berry asked former division commander Gen. Melvin Zais, for advice about the final loss of parachute qualified personnel. Reiterating the World War II definition, the old paratrooper responded, “I felt then, and I still do, that “airborne” is a generic term, and that coming in by helicopter or rappelling is no different than during World War II when the 82nd Airborne Division and the 101st Airborne Division were formed of both glider and parachute troops and were designated airborne…even the patch on the cap which was designed in 1942 reflected the juxtaposition of a parachute and a glider.” The airborne concept is simple — anything moved by air to the battlefield.
Hope is on the way; in the 2021 edition of the DOD Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, the term airborne means those personnel specially trained to be transported by air and the debark their aircraft into an assault, “either by parachuting or touchdown.” This is virtually the exact definition as the War Department used in World War II. The problem lies in the Army’s definition of an “airborne assault.” In the Army’s manual for operational terms, “aiborne assault” is defiend as “the use of airborne forces to parachute into an objective area to attack and eliminate armed resistance and secure designated objectives.” This contrasts with the Army’s definition of “air assault,” which requires rotary-wing or tiltrotor aircraft. Meanwhile, vertical envelopment, according to Field Manual 3–99, “is a tactical maneuver in which troops that are air-dropped, air-landed, or inserted via air assault, attack the rear and flanks of a force, in effect cutting off or encircling the force.”
There is hope for the future. Perhaps the United States Army could call everything that assaults from the air “air assault” like the British Army (their parachute regiment falls under the 16th Air Assault Brigade. Regardless, it is time for the entire United States Army to embrace the word “airborne” as something more than just parachute forces. Perhaps “airborne assault” becomes the all-encompassing term, and vertical envelopment by parachute is a “parachute assault.” Changing this within the cultural lexicon of the average soldier will go a long way toward elevating other aerial delivered forces while acknowledging the critical role of any vertical envelopment, whether by parachute, helicopter, or air-land.
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