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force that would apply across the board. It will be up to the theater commander and subordinate commanders to mix these two elements to form the specific compound for a particular situation.
Many new organizations will be conceived as a result of our Vietnam experience and that is as it should be. However, we must make certain we do not invent something we have already thoroughly tested in combat. For example, there is a great deal of experience in the record of armor working with airmobile units; there was an air cavalry combat brigade, in fact if not in name, operating as part of the 1st Cavalry Division in 1970. We should be certain that we pick up any extrapolations for the future where we left up in combat. There is so much work that needs to be done that we can ill afford time to prove what has been proven or preparing answers to questions that will not be asked again.
We must use a similar approach to future Army-Air Force relationships. One lesson should stand out loud and clear from our ten years of experience in Vietnam: the command and control procedures evolved in combat, often hammered out by the very men whose lives depended on them, proved sound and workable. While this monograph has not tried to detail the Air Force story in Vietnam, I trust it has given enough examples of the magnificent support that the Air Force provided, and the trust and confidence that was generated in the minds of every major ground commander. As our experience grew, the close integration and timing of Air Force support to the organic Army support could not have been improved. I see no need for the Army and the Air Force to go through another agonizing reappraisal of their command and control structures (and the haggling over hardware to do the job) such as was experienced after World War II and Korea. In these latter two periods, valuable and important lessons were forgotten in the peacetime budget exercises while the Services engaged in bitter and often emotional debates which proved unnecessary and detrimental. Now is the time to capitalize on the vast reservoir of experience in both Services to put the ad hoc arrangements of Vietnam into lasting doctrine. It is not the time to debate new interfaces, new organizations and new command relationships that are untested.
In any activity where two Services operate the interface between them will seldom be a comfortable enmeshing of capabilities—whether these capabilities are competitive, supplementary, or complementary. Army-Air Force aviation relationships are no exception. The important thing to recognize is that there are gaps more often than overlaps in all areas of the interface. This has occurred