via War is Boring...
Last week at Foreign Affairs, U.S. Air Force Col. Robert Spalding III offered a response to my earlier article “Ground the Air Force.” I’d like to thank Col. Spalding for his contribution, and to offer the following response to several of his points.Read it all here.
Colonel Spalding opens with a revealing anecdote:
When ground commanders controlled aircraft, the results were disastrous. As Col. F. Randall Starbuck writes in Air Power in North Africa, 1942–43: “One example, relayed by Gen. [Jimmy] Doolittle, was the incident where a ground commander asked him to provide a fighter to cover a Jeep that was going out to repair a broken telephone line. He refused. The plane that would have wasted its time on that mission shot down two German Me-109s.”
Was the jeep ambushed? Were communications restored? How critical were these communications to maintaining offensive momentum? Did anyone bother to ask? Maybe Doolittle did, and maybe he had good reason to believe that, on that day, one of his planes could catch and kill two Bf109s.
Col. Starbuck doesn’t tell us, and Col. Spalding doesn’t seem to care.
And this, in short, is why some people don’t trust the Air Force with airpower.
In my opinion, Farley scores a flawless victory. The USAF needs a better "spokesmen" or else they're gonna have a rough ride in the out years. Things look rosy now. The huge (and largely unrealized) cost of the F-35 coupled with horror stories of how experienced, combat Soldiers and Marines are being tossed on the street will get the attention of the public and Congress.
The pie might be reapportioned in the future and the USAF will only have themselves to blame.
Not quite the same topic but close, I have already expressed my concern and solution to USAF nuclear forces. We are going to have to deal with this better than whatever strategy and training we have today. We are only about 2 decades removed from end of Cold War and this is what is happening NOW!
ReplyDeleteWhat's our nuclear posture and personnel assigned going to be like in another 2 decades????
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-25753040
I also thought this was a particularly good article, especially considering it was from WIB. I think the militaries around the world are paying close attention to this one.
ReplyDeleteSpalding fell flat on his face with that effort. There is nothing the Air Farce does that couldn't be done by a different service.
ReplyDeleteThe entire Pentagon needs an enema and every restriction like Key West, etc. needs to be thrown out the window.
Great googgly mooggly!
ReplyDeleteThat is how you slap down a service. Just to sum up, the Air Force's biggest contribution to the wars over the last 13 years were only done with the Air Force not actually wanting to do them and the Army probably would have done it better and more enthusiastically anyway.
I wonder how many, C-17s, C-130s and C-27s the Army Air Corps would have vs. the current USAF?
Solomon, more fuel to the fire?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2014/01/16/new_nuke_scandal_34_officers_accused_of_cheating_107036.html
Minus the bomber command and you have an Army Air Corps tailored for close support missions.
ReplyDeleteMissile command? That's just fancy artillery and the Army can do that also.
Frankly Air Force is Strategic and when it comes to Tactical Navy and Marines have them beat and the Army can do the job better.
Cannot do it all and will pick an Air Force specialty mission every time, fighting other airplanes.
The reason it was stupid to request a fighter to escort a jeep was because even if the AF WANTED to escort the jeep, a fighter (especially a wwii fighter) is an entirely inappropriate asset to use for such a mission. Namely, flying from altitude the jeep would appear like an ant to the pilot, making it nearly impossible for him to keep SA on the asset he's supposed to escort. Additionally, it would likely require several fighters launched at vafious intervals to escort the jeep throughout the entirety of it's mission. And finally, fighters never fly alone, so it would every flight of fighters launched to protect that jeep would require two (and preferably 4) aircrart.
ReplyDeleteFarley: jeep = squirrel
ReplyDelete