Søren Nørby

Since the end of the Cold War the Royal Danish Navy has experienced a period of significant change. Though the size of the fleet has decreased dramatically, it now includes a small number of large, powerful and flexible warships. It also comprises the Danish Task Group, which is a deployable command staff consisting of approx. 20 officers and NCOs. When deployed, the staff can direct maritime operations in a wide variety of tasks. Based at Naval Station Korsør, the staff is also responsible for the planning and implementation of exercises, training of maritime forces and the development of maritime doctrines at task group level. Doctrine was a subject for discussion in Danish military ranks in the late 1990s. An intense debate arose as to whether the Danish Defence should develop and adopt a joint national doctrine. Officers from the Royal Danish Navy spoke against the idea, arguing that the navy was already integrated in NATO doctrine, and that a national doctrine would thus be superfluous. This article gives a brief history of the Danish Task Group and serves as an introduction to the use of and development of doctrines in the Royal Danish Navy.

This brief examines the development of the first Danish Air Force Air Operations Doctrine, which was officially commissioned in October 1997 and remained in effect until 2010.The development of a Danish air power doctrine was heavily influenced by the work of Colonel John Warden (USAF), both through his book ”The Air Campaign” and his subsequent planning of the air campaign against Iraq in 1990-1991. Warden’s ideas came to Denmark and the Danish Air Force by way of Danish Air Force students attending the United States Air Force Air University in Alabama, USA. Back in Denmark, graduates from the Air University inspired a small number of passionate airmen, who then wrote the Danish Air Operations Doctrine. The process was supported by the Air Force Tactical Command, which found that the work dovetailed perfectly with the transformation process that the Danish Air Force was in the midst of during the latter part of the 1990s. The ideas generated by the Danish Air Force later came to good use when Danish air force officers participated in the work that led to the formulation of the NATO Air Power Doctrine (AJP 3.3). During the latter part of the 2000s, the Danish Air Force found that the AJP 3.3 had overtaken and superseded the existing Danish doctrine, which was therefore replaced with a list of recommended readings.