via Foreign Affairs.
The United States needs air power, but it does not need an air force.Uh. Wow!
In fact, it never really did. The U.S. Air Force, founded in 1947, was the product of a decades-long campaign by aviation enthusiasts inside the U.S. Army. These advocates argued that air power could not achieve its promise under the leadership of ground commanders. With memories of the great bombing campaigns of World War II still fresh and a possible confrontation with the Soviets looming, the nation’s would-be cold warriors determined that the age of air power was upon them. But it wasn’t. Advocates of an independent air force had misinterpreted the lessons of World War II to draw faulty conclusions about air power’s future.
Their mistake produced a myriad of problems. Modern warfare almost invariably demands close cooperation across air and surface units. In naval operations, all of these assets -- submarines, surface ships, and aircraft -- belong to the same service. In the case of the army and the air force, however, the component parts end up being divided -- or needlessly replicated -- by separate bureaucratic organizations, each with its own priorities. As a result, the services tend to plan operations and procure equipment based on their own needs rather than those of the military as a whole. When they ask lawmakers for funding, moreover, they tend to concentrate on missions that they believe they can accomplish on their own. Finally, during wars, the services often struggle to cooperate by scaling the bureaucratic walls they constructed in peacetime.
With the benefit of hindsight, the United States should fold the U.S. Air Force back into its two sibling services, the army and the navy. Done properly, such a reform could improve military readiness, cut mounting and unsustainable defense costs, and refocus the Pentagon on preparing for the fights of the future.
I'm just gonna sit back and watch the fireworks on this one.
Its gonna get good. Read the entire article here first. MANY GREAT POINTS.
Side Note: I can't wait to see the reaction from ELP Blog, Elements of Power, Think Defense, Bill Sweetman and Peter Goon on this. Fireworks baby!
Side Note 1: This Boston Globe article brought the subject of this post to my attention. Read it here.
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ReplyDeleteSome of us have been saying the same thing about the RAF for years.
ReplyDeleteOver at a certain UK defence blog I once listed out how each of the 5 US armed uniformed serivces used airpower and who the customer was in each instance. I started with the USN and finished with the USAF. Most thought it was OK until they reached the part about the USAF being a service arm of the US Army (and at times not good a service provider!) and the fact that main combat power of the USAF sat in silos in the Midwest! Then I was being unrealistic,biased, and all the other guff that gets trotted out. No point in arguing with them. Using examples like the USMC only confuses matters because many Brits, most Brits, don't know or appreciate how the USMC fits into US defence now or its roots. My favourite argument is that without the RAF UK military aviation would fall down the batting order. That both the other services operate air arms of their own and that capabilities that support the other services seem to get the chop first if there is a need for money go unnoticed. Jaguar, Nimrod, and perhaps soon Sentinel all chopped for Typhoon; the latter is capable and coming on leaps on bounds and yes is vital but is it a capability we need in current numbers. But such is life.
DeleteRead it yesterday. Shows a lot of what Chuck Spinney has been saying for years.
ReplyDeleteI know ELP maintains that the Air Force loves providing CAS to ground pounders but Chuck Spinney pointed at their funding.
-All in on NextGen Stategic Nuclear Bomber to replace the B-2.
-Need to cut the A-10 to save money and not replace it with an improved version.
What about the Marine Corps? Quite the same bureaucratic organizational status as the Russina airborne troops. Lately I read an article about how the size of paratroops is related to the organizational status inside an army e.g. Russian paratroopers with own headquaters ...
ReplyDeleteWhat is a Marine deployed by aircraft?
I would recommend to move the Marine Corps over to a "Mobile" Corps inside the Army. More fireworks?
first, how dare you compare a FILTHY paratrooper to the finest fighting men God ever created, US Marines?
Deletesecond, no fireworks. its a generational battle. once every 10 years someone will write an article saying the Marine Corps should be disbanded. its part of our culture to fight that battle on an ongoing basis.
USMC is supposed to be a separate branch. These air-sea kill the land forces idiotss would lump us together before the sell off the whole thing. Now say the USAF/USN go out in some far away land and lose? Whats left after that? That's why we have ground forces. The USMC is only getting 4% of the DOD budget, but they represent a larger portion of the forces, now see that's why the US Army doesn't want to jump up under the department of the navy. Or the Navy getting some money and the army isn't. Is there an admiral that sees the value in ground troops not a lot but yes.
DeleteIts an insulator to technology buffs that understand warfare like a stack of baseball card statistics.
Maybe they can give the CAS to the ARMY and USMC and leave the Air dominance and Strategic defense to the US Air force. In turn, the Army would have to give up the Air defense Artiliery and give it back to the USAF. I can see the US Army & Marines using Super Tucano's for CAS/LAS/ISR and a manned predator.
ReplyDeleteAMD is an army job. If you give it to the fly boys they will buy a jet instead and AMD is too important to be dicking around like that. The USAF already had air defenses and sold that part of their contract for jets already.
DeleteWe are not France lol, we have anti-air
Dr. Farley has had that idea for sometime now. The problem is that as a baseline, he appears (I say "appears" because I do not know) to have not observed various USAF units operate through the whole chain of command..close up..for years. I have. Today (as in other services) 4-star leadership in the USAF has proved to be dangerous. The current guy wants to get rid of the A-10. Shocking is the same guy has come up with the idea to get rid of the KC-10. This shows a serious lack of knowledge of the good things thins platform does. The current USAF boss is dangerous. Captain America hat and all. The guy before him signed of on getting rid of the F-22. Even penned an article with the then empty-suit SecUSAF that backed this up. The guy before them had serious ethics issues. Sad because there are many in the USAF that do good things each and everyday and many that will do whatever it takes to help their team-mates in the other services as a strong sense of duty. I have already pointed out how the basic home air sovereignty requirement for the USAF (about 20 locations that do not include anti-access threats) can be handled by a low-cost-per-flying hour jet run by..... Army Aviation and/or Guard. Next? Close air support....where...close is an Apache picking off some bad guys 10-15 meters away from friendlies that are pinned down. At night. A very long collection of videos that back this up. Then too there is fire support where whole kinds of new-gen arty don't collect flight pay. Also most of our ground wars are dirt-insurgent permissive air. Interdiction? J-weapons from any existing non-USAF airframes et al as one example. ICBMs? Army Artillery (we trusted the Army with the Pershing II nuke mission in the 80s and other nukes before that)...Rescue Scott O'Grady? USMC, Navy and Rangers when needed.. Note: I hate.... HATE... the idea of getting rid of the USAF, however one has to look at the idea and look at each mission. And the idea that we are deep in debt.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you about the F-22. He signed off on that because Obama wasn't going to let him be the boss unless he did. But have you seen just how easy SEAD is when there isn't a fighter group to support those air defenses? Because everyone knows what happens to forces at the hands of an air force once the air defenses are gone. We need the USAF
DeleteFarley doctor of what? basket weaving? What a dumb ass. This is the special kind of idiocy that thrives in an austere funding environment. Just plain stupid.
ReplyDeleteWOW. The Army is obsessed with helicopters.
The USMC never designed a fixed wing aircraft that wasn't VTOL attack plane.
The Navy has an obsession with putting all of its jets on boats too close to the enemy.
All of them attack the enemy in a close air support role with little thought about battlefield interdiction or strategic bombing. Air superiority is an afterthought with these branches.
Without the USAF's autonomous air battle doctrine that can see the forest as the forest and seek out the enemy instead of staring at all of frigging the trees US casualties would skyrocket. Cluttering Air superiority funding in with the guys that want a new tank to get bombed in isnt very good either.
The least backwards air battle program next to the USAF is the Navy's but is you've ever taken a long hard look at carrier ops you would understand that they are a partial solution and lack the dispersion and high volume attack ability of ground based fighter wings.
DoD needs more money, that we can all agree on. But going toxic on each other isn't going to help anyone but the bastards that want to do us in. Stand together and hand those fags the bill.
DoD already has far, far too much money and therefore automatically engages in gross habitual waste; it is far past time to spend all those same taxpayer receipts on America's domestic needs and thereby create a country truly worth defending. Our national infrastructure is falling apart due to lack of adequate funding and yet we continue to throw good money after bad in maintaining an obscenely bloated self-serving military establishment.
DeleteAnd did you really say "fags"? You did yourself absolutely no favor by totally undermining whatever argument you were trying to present when you resorted to this churlish throwaway insult.
Busting up the Air Farce would be a good start. Won't happen, but oh well, we can dream.
ReplyDeleteI've said it before, I'll say it again. Ditch Key West agreement.
Give Air Farce the National Missile Defense program, let them hold onto the bombers, ICBMs and strategic reconaissance, re-badge it the Aerospace Force. Start developing space weapons and platforms, not some silly manned NGB.
Tac-Air goes to the Army. Ditch the F35, start building new F-16s and F15s while a '6th Gen' fighter is developed.