Click here to be taken to a nice, quick overview of the US Army vs. USAF fight over control of air assets. This is topical because the future points toward the US Army getting into the tilt rotor/tilt wing or some type of vertical take off and one day that will lead to high performance aircraft that begins to approach airliner speed (at least).
This battle will happen again and with the USAF constantly shrinking because its heading toward an all stealth force, its creating an opening for dirty war fighters to fill the gap....Fighters flown by Army Aviators.
Over at Think Defence I have often said that the US armed services all having their own effective air arms demonstrates that the idea of having a separate air arm as the best way to deploy air power is a fallacy. The danger being that air power becomes an end itself and not what it should be a support to operations on land and sea where man actually dwells. Look at the USAF put strategic bombing (and defence against enemy bombers) before all other needs even though strategic bombing as a strategy has been shown to be less than effective and an anachronism in age of missiles and surely is redundant capability in the era of the SSBN? Having its own missiles sitting in easily targeted silos doesn't address the problem of bomber vulnerability. Look at USAF provision of CAS to the US Army and then compare it the USMC's organic capability; no wonder the US Amry wanted to fly what became the A10 themselves. PGM become even more common and its own AH mean that the US Army needs the USAF less and less; never mind missiles like ATCAMS. The US Army operates the largest helicopter fleet in the world why can't it operate its own fixed wing lift just as the USMC and USN do? That just leaves really fighters and one or two other capabilities; again the USN/ USMC do these why not the US Army? To my mind the USAF have been looking for a role since the end of Cold War. Look at the grab for cyber warfare even though the US has the NSA (and other agencies) already doing the job. And then there is space again a case could be made that this is much USN territory as USAF territory; the latter has its own satellites, space weapons (Trident), astronauts, and at a technical level a "ship" like the ISS has more in common with a nuclear submarine than a F15.
ReplyDeleteEDIT: And then there is space again a case could be made that this is much USN territory as USAF territory; the former has its own satellites, space weapons (Trident), astronauts, and at a technical level a "ship" like the ISS has more in common with a nuclear submarine than a F15.
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