The Third World War: August 1985

Since 1951, a number of important developments had taken place, both political and strategic. Although no single one might have justified a change in the command structure, their cumulative effect would do so. The developments were these: the post-war recovery of Western Europe, despite severe economic setbacks, which had transformed the relationship with the USA from dependence to interdependence; the advent of submarine-launched ballistic missiles, which had relegated the US Strike Fleet from being the primary naval strategic force, and only secondarily a general-purpose force, to being primarily a general-purpose force, with a nuclear strike capability; the rapid increase in the number of nuclear-powered general-purpose submarines in both the Soviet and the US Navies; the continued failure of scientific research and technological development to provide an effective means of detecting and accurately locating submerged submarines (while this failure preserved the second-strike capability of the SSBN forces, and hence contributed to the maintenance of strategic nuclear stability, it augmented the threat of submarine attack on shipping and surface warships, already far more serious than in the worst period of the Battle of the Atlantic in the Second World War); the discovery and exploitation of oil and natural gas in the North Sea and the Norwegian Sea; the withdrawal of British naval forces from permanent stations outside the NATO area, and full dependence upon NATO for national security; the closer political association of the Western European members of NATO, and their desire to have a greater say in the conduct of the affairs of the Alliance, vis-à-vis the United States; the adoption of communication networks, data exchange systems, warning systems and air defence systems which needed to be matched by appropriate command and control arrangements if full advantage was to be taken of these techniques; the fact that nuclear-powered general purpose submarines operate with so much less effectiveness, and are indeed much more susceptible to detection, location and destruction, in the shallow waters of the Continental Shelf (200 metres or less) than in the deep ocean beyond; finally, and most important, the adoption of a strategy of ‘flexible response’ in place of the originally declared strategy of ‘massive retaliation’ against the first identified aggression.

Thus, while the basic requirement remained, that the NATO ground forces in Western Europe should be reinforced and supplied across the Atlantic, almost every other condition which governed the original NATO command structure had altered. What was, in effect, a continuation of the Second World War-winning set-up would no longer serve. A flexible response strategy meant nothing if it did not mean the demonstration, in peacetime, of both the determination and the capability to engage major enemy forces by land, sea and air, if put to the test. Given the speed of movement and scale of attack which had to be expected, as well as the range of tactical missiles, the whole land and sea area of the north-west European Continental Shelf would have to be regarded, from the outset, as part of the central front battlefield. True, the nature of the operations thereon would be three-dimensional; and the area would retain its character as the terminal and entrepôt for transatlantic support. But one thing was certain: the purely political character of Channel Command, squeezed between a subordinate command of SACLANT, who was far away in Norfolk, Va., and the presumably hard-pressed SACEUR, across the Channel, could not be expected to meet the requirements of war.

To abolish CINCHAN, and incorporate his command in ACLANT, would merely invite that well-known over-centralization syndrome known as ‘apoplexy at the centre and paralysis at the extremities’. To subordinate CINCHAN to SACEUR, with whatever title, would cause the latter to be continually looking over his shoulder. There remained a third alternative, namely to create, out of CINCHAN, a new Supreme Allied Command, which would comprise the existing Channel Command, and part of the existing Eastern Atlantic Command, adjusted so as to be approximately contiguous with the United Kingdom Air Defence Region. The new command, which it was decided to call the Joint Allied Command Western Approaches (JACWA), would be a joint sea-air command, held by the British Naval and Air Commander-in-Chief. The British Flag Officer Submarines, and a US flag officer, would be deputies, and the chief of staff a NATO admiral of another nationality. The EASTLANT-Channel naval-air headquarters became the home of JACWA, and fairly soon the structure of subordinate commands, based upon retention of national command, but flexibility of operational command and, to an even greater extent, of operational control, was in being and working well.