NATO-CommandStructure

NATO UNCLASSIFIED NATO UNCLASSIFIED 1 The Evolution of NATO’s Command Structure, 1951-2009 by Dr. Gregory W. Pedlow SHAPE Historian When the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 raised fears that Europe could be the next target of Communist aggression, the leaders of the North Atlantic Alliance - which was then slightly more than one year old - took a look at their ability to deter such aggression and did not like what they saw. In addition to major shortages of manpower and equipment, the Alliance lacked the vital military element of command and control because there was neither a headquarters structure nor an overall commander. During the next twelve months the leaders of the Alliance carried out a series of measures that transformed what had thus far been mainly a loosely-structured political alliance into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization with an elaborate political and military structure. One very important first step in the establishment of a military command structure for NATO was the North Atlantic Council’s selection of General Dwight D. Eisenhower as the first Supreme Allied Commander Europe in December 1950. After General Eisenhower arrived in Paris in January 1951, he and the other members of the multinational SHAPE Planning Group immediately began to devise a structure for the new Allied Command Europe. They quickly established a basic command philosophy that divided Allied Command Europe into three regions: the North, containing Scandinavia, the North Sea and the Baltic; the Center, with Western Europe, and the South, covering Italy and the Mediterranean (Greece and Turkey were not yet members of NATO). As for the organizational structure, General Eisenhower’s initial concept was to give each region an overall Commander-in-Chief (CINC). Underneath the CINCs there would be separate Land, Air and Naval Commanders for each region. 1 This concept made great sense militarily, but its implementation soon encountered major political problems in two of the three regions. The exception was the Northern Region, where General Eisenhower and the SHAPE Planning Group were able to implement their concept without any major difficulties. They viewed this region as one in which naval and air actions would predominate. Actions on land would take place in two separate areas (Norway and Denmark) that were not mutually supporting because they were separated by water, so the planners soon decided to create separate land headquarters for each area. As a result, the command structure for Allied 1 In discussing NATO command structures it is important to note the difference in titles between a command, its commander, and sometimes even the headquarters itself. Generally speaking the command and the headquarters have had the same name (with the abbreviation “HQ” added in the latter case), while the title of the commander depended on the level of his command. Until the beginning of the 21 st Century, a major subordinate commander reporting directly to SACEUR was designated as a Commander-in-Chief (CINC), and all lower level commanders were simply designated as Commanders. Thus the former regional command Allied Forces Central Europe (AFCENT) was commanded by CINCENT, whose headquarters was known as HQ AFCENT. One of AFCENT’s subordinate commands was Allied Land Forces Central Europe (LANDCENT), whose commander was known as COMLANDCENT and the headquarters as HQ LANDCENT. The one exception to this rule was Allied Command Europe itself, whose commander is SACEUR and whose headquarters is called SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe). After the US abolished the title of CINC in its command structure in 2002, NATO followed suit and since then the former CINCs have simply been called Commanders. NATO UNCLASSIFIED NATO UNCLASSIFIED 2 Forces Northern Europe (AFNORTH) consisted of an overall Commander-in-Chief (CINCNORTH) with four subordinate commands: Allied Air Forces Northern Europe (AIRNORTH), Allied Naval Forces Northern Europe (NAVNORTH), Allied Land Forces Norway (LANDNORWAY), and Allied Land Forces Denmark (LANDDENMARK). Devising command arrangements in the vital Central Region, which contained the bulk of NATO’s forces, proved to be much more complicated. General Eisenhower considered naming an overall CINC there as well but soon realized it would be difficult to find an arrangement that would satisfy all three major powers with forces in the Center - the United States, United Kingdom and France - because they had strongly differing views on the proper relationship of air and ground power. Drawing upon his World War II experience, Eisenhower decided to retain overall control himself and did not appoint a CINC for the Central Region. Instead there would be three separate CINCs (CINC Allied Air Forces Central Europe, CINC Allied Land Forces Central Europe and Flag Officer Central Europe), all reporting directly to SACEUR along with the commanders of the Northern and Southern Regions, CINCNORTH and CINCSOUTH (see Table 1). Table 1 Major ACE Commanders, 1951-1952 In establishing subordinate headquarters to the three CINCs in the Central Region, Eisenhower and the SHAPE staff relied heavily upon existing national headquarters in order to save time and expense. Thus the two subordinate ground commands of Allied Land Forces Central Region (LANDCENT) - namely the Northern Army Group (NORTHAG) and the Central Army Group (CENTAG) - were based upon the headquarters and personnel of the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR) and the US Army Europe (USAREUR) respectively. Similarly for the air forces in the Central Region, SHAPE established two Allied Tactical Air Forces (ATAFs) in order to take advantage of the United States’ and United Kingdom’s existing command and control organizations in their respective former zones of occupation. Thus the RAF’s 2nd Tactical Air Force was combined with Belgian and Dutch elements to become the 2 nd ATAF, while, the US 2 nd Air Division was converted into the 12 th (US) Air Force and at the same time combined with the French 1 er Division Aerienne to become the 4 th ATAF. All four of these subordinate headquarters in the Central Region remained primarily national in composition until the late 1950s, when they were reorganized as fully integrated allied headquarters. SACEUR CINCNORTH CINCAIRCENT CINCLANDCENT FLAGCENT CINCSOUTH NATO UNCLASSIFIED NATO UNCLASSIFIED 3 As for the Southern Region, Lord Ismay, the Alliance’s first Secretary General, provided a classic example of British understatement when he wrote in his history of the first five years of NATO that “the problem of command in the Southern Region was more difficult to resolve.” Trying to devise a command structure that would be acceptable to all of the nations in the Southern Region was a task that took two years and resulted in a NATO command structure for the Mediterranean that made sense only if viewed in political rather than military terms. Some of the problems did not even involve Southern Region issues. Thus when General Eisenhower attempted to name an overall Commander-in-Chief for Allied Forces Southern Region (AFSOUTH) in the spring of 1951, his plans became embroiled in a much larger controversy that was not of his making, a quarrel between the United States and the United Kingdom over command of the Atlantic Ocean (the proposed Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic - SACLANT - post). When news leaked out in February 1951 that NATO would soon name a US Admiral to be SACLANT, thus giving both Supreme Allied Commander positions to US officers, a storm of controversy arose in the United Kingdom, led by opposition leader Winston Churchill. The UK government quickly withdrew its consent to the SACLANT appointment, causing it to be delayed for almost a year, and even the appointment of a US Admiral as Commander-in-Chief Southern Europe (CINCSOUTH) was delayed until June 1951, two months after the command arrangements for the Northern and Central Regions were put into place. The initial command arrangements for AFSOUTH consisted of the classic division into land, sea, and air headquarters desired by General Eisenhower: Allied Land Forces Southern Europe (LANDSOUTH), Allied Naval Forces Southern Europe (NAVSOUTH), and Allied Air Forces Southern Europe (AIRSOUTH). All of these headquarters were located in Italy. In 1952, after Greece and Turkey jointed the Alliance, their geographic distance from the LANDSOUTH headquarters as well as some political disagreements over which nation should be the overall commander for the two nations’ ground forces, led to the establishment of a second land headquarters - Allied Land Forces Southeastern Europe (LANDSOUTHEAST) - in Izmir, Turkey, under a US Army General. As part of the compromises that broke the deadlock over the SACLANT appointment, a third major NATO headquarters reporting directly to the Standing Group (the executive body of the Military Committee) came into existence in February 1952. Allied Command Channel (ACCHAN) was responsible for the sea areas around the English Channel, which was vital for Allied shipping approaching Europe. This area had been controlled by the UK CINC Portsmouth since 1949 under arrangements instituted by the Western Union, and the new NATO post of Commander-in-Chief Channel (CINCHAN) took over these responsibilities while reporting to the Standing Group through a political body known as the Channel Committee, with representatives from the four countries bordering the area. Although known as a CINC rather than a Supreme Allied Commander, CINCHAN was subordinate neither to SACEUR nor SACLANT and his post was subsequently recognized as being one of the three Major NATO Commanders together with SACEUR and SACLANT (see Table 2). Thus the English Channel area was not part of ACE at this time. NATO UNCLASSIFIED NATO UNCLASSIFIED 4 Table 2 Major NATO Commanders, 1952-1991 1 1 The Standing Group – made up of representatives from France, the United States, and the United Kingdom - was abolished during the major reform of 1967 that resulted from France’s departure from the Integrated Military Command Structure. Meanwhile the dispute over naval commands in the Mediterranean was continuing, with the United Kingdom called for the establishment of a Supreme Allied Commander for the Mediterranean - a “SACMED” - with this post to be held by a British Admiral. The United States and CINCSOUTH (US Admiral Robert Carney) argued strongly that any new naval command in the Mediterranean belonged underneath AFSOUTH. These opposing views were two levels of command apart, and it is amazing that it took almost two years for a compromise to be reached that was exactly in-between the two proposals. In March 1953 NATO created a new headquarters for Allied Forces Mediterranean (AFMED) under British Admiral of the Fleet Earl Mountbatten of Burma. The new position was neither the equal of SACEUR and SACLANT, as had been desired by the United Kingdom, nor the subordinate of CINCSOUTH, as had been proposed by the United States, but the subordinate of SACEUR and the equal of CINCSOUTH, with the title of CINCAFMED. When the new headquarters was established, NAVSOUTH was disestablished and all of its forces transferred to AFMED with the exception of the US Sixth Fleet, which the United States wished to keep under an American chain of command. As a result, a new headquarters, Naval Striking and Support Forces Southern Europe (STRIKFORSOUTH) came into existence under CINCSOUTH to serve as the NATO command and control headquarters for the Sixth Fleet. The result of all these compromises that were needed to get the command structure up and running was an unwieldy structure with a very large span of control for SACEUR (see Table 3). Instead of the three joint-service headquarters for North, Center, and South that had been envisioned by General Eisenhower, there were now six Commanders-in-Chief all reporting to General Matthew B. Ridgway, who had succeed Eisenhower as SACEUR in May 1952, and four of the six were single-service commands. While he could do nothing about the political compromise that had resulted in the proliferation of naval commands in the Mediterranean, General Ridgway did act quickly to simplify command in the Central Region. In August 1953 he established a single Commander-in-Chief (CINCENT) for the region with subordinate Land, Air and Naval Commanders (COMLANDCENT, COMAIRCENT, and COMNAVCENT respectively). Now the number of Major Subordinate Commanders in ACE was down to four (see Table 4). SACEUR SACLANT NATO Military Committee’s Standing Group CINCHAN NATO UNCLASSIFIED NATO UNCLASSIFIED 5 Table 3 Initial ACE Structure, 1951-1953 1 2 3 1 Established in March 1953. 2 Disestablished in March 1953 when AFMED came into existence. 3 Established in March 1953 after NAVSOUTH was disestablished. ACE AFNORTH AIRCENT LANDCENT FLAGCENT AFSOUTH AFMED AIRNORTH NAVNORTH LANDNORWAY LANDDENMARK NORTHAG CENTAG AIRSOUTH LANDSOUTH LANDSOUTHEAST NAVSOUTH GIB MEDEAST MEDCENT MEDOC MEDNOREAST MEDSOUEAST TWOATAF FOURATAF STRIKFORSOUTH NATO UNCLASSIFIED NATO UNCLASSIFIED 6 Table 4 Major Subordinate Commanders in ACE, 1953-1967 The next challenge for Allied Command Europe was the integration of the armed forces of the Federal Republic of Germany, after it joined the Alliance in 1955 and began to create an army, navy, and air force. This issue quickly became tied in with a boundary dispute between AFNORTH and AFCENT, because the northernmost portion of Germany (Schleswig-Holstein) had been transferred to the Northern Region during the early 1950s due to the fact that at that time the only troops stationed there were from Denmark and Norway. The new German Armed Forces objected to the boundary line running through their country, and the French CINCENT also called for Schleswig-Holstein to be returned to his command area. In 1958 CINCENT went even further, arguing that the entire Danish peninsula and its Baltic approaches were natural extensions of the Central Region and should therefore belong to AFCENT. While recognizing the military logic behind such proposals, SACEUR Lauris Norstad believed that the Scandinavian nations should not be separated, and he therefore rejected CINCENT’s requests to change the command boundary. In doing so he was not merely thinking in terms of retaining the status quo. General Norstad viewed Denmark, Schleswig-Holstein and the Baltic Straits as a strategic entity and he therefore wished to create a new, integrated command for the Baltic region. At first he called for a naval command to cover the entire Baltic area (NAVBALT), with the newly created German naval forces to be integrated under this headquarters. But when his proposal ran into political difficulties, he had to resort to an interim solution for integrating German naval units into the NATO command structure. In 1956 he therefore created two small headquarters - Allied Naval Forces Northern Area Central Europe (NAVNORCENT) and Allied Naval Forces North Sea Sub Area (NORSEACENT) - under Allied Naval Forces Central Europe to command German naval forces in the Baltic and North Seas respectively. Thereafter the Central Region remained unchanged until France’ withdrawal from the integrated military command structure in 1966 (see Table 5). SACEUR CINCNORTH CINCENT CINCSOUTH CINCAFMED NATO UNCLASSIFIED 7 NATO UNCLASSIFIED Table 5 The Central Region, 1953-1966 1 2 2 1 Disestablished in 1962. 2 Established in 1956; disestablished in 1962. Still hoping to achieve a unified approach for the Baltic area, SACEUR Norstad adopted a more ambitious proposal by AFNORTH in 1958 to create a tri-service command that would integrate Danish and German land forces in Jutland and naval forces in the Baltic approaches. Once initial Danish reluctance to the proposal was overcome, the establishment of Allied Forces Baltic Approaches (BALTAP) was approved in December 1961 and activation of the new headquarters followed in July 1962. The headquarters’ commander (COMBALTAP) was a subordinate of CINCNORTH, and the post was held on a rotating basis by Denmark and Germany. With German naval forces now falling under COMBALTAP, there was no longer any need for the small headquarters of Allied Naval Forces Central Europe and its two subordinate commands, and they were disestablished in 1962. As a result of the changes in 1962 - the creation of Headquarters BALTAP and the elimination of NAVCENT, ACE now had the structure shown in Table 6 (following page) since AFSOUTH and AFMED had remained unchanged. AFCENT LANDCENT AIRCENT NAVCENT NORTHAG CENTAG 2 ATAF 4 ATAF NAVNORCENT NORSEACENT NATO UNCLASSIFIED 8 NATO UNCLASSIFIED Table 6 Allied Command Europe, 1962-1967 1 Major Reorganization in 1966-67 The next major changes in the command structure for Allied Command Europe were the result of France’s 1966 decision to withdraw from the NATO Integrated Military Command Structure. SHAPE had already been studying the problem of the proliferation of headquarters within ACE, particularly in the Central Region, and with the French withdrawal from ACE making reorganization necessary, SACEUR Lyman L. Lemnitzer decided to cut out an entire echelon of command by eliminating LANDCENT and AIRCENT and incorporating their functions into the overall Allied Forces Central Europe (AFCENT) headquarters. As a result of this reorganization in November 1966, the Army Groups and Allied Tactical Air Forces reported directly to AFCENT but were paired together (NORTHAG with TWOATAF, CENTAG with FOURATAF) to ensure proper support (see Table 7). 1 The subordinate commands of AFMED were all naval commands and had the following names: Gibraltar (later known as Gibraltar-Mediterranean or “GIBMED”), Eastern Mediterranean, Central Mediterranean, Western Mediterranean (which used the French term “Mediterranée Occidentale”), Northeast Mediterranean, and Southeast Mediterranean. ACE AFNORTH AFCENT AFSOUTH AFMED AIRNORTH NAVN