Robert Farley says no. A debate ensues. My sympathies lie with Farley. Obviously, our military needs air power capabilities, but creating a specific bureaucratic entity given exclusive purview over air power was an idea grounded in a 1940s-vintage overestimation of strategic air power's capabilities, and its continued existence creates an artificial constituency for continuing such overestimations.
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Do We Need an Air Force?
02 Nov 2007 07:16 am
Comments (22)
furthermore, the air force is not authorized by the constitution, as the army and navy explicitly are.
sure, you can find it in penumbras and emanations.
but i expect all strict constructions to denounce it.
not entirely a joke, either, when you remember that the constitution treats the army very differently from the navy.
standing armies were an object of deep suspicion and distrust to the founders. they could be used for imperialistic adventures abroad or tyrannical oppression at home. and this is the reason that there is an explicit provision in the constitution that "no Appropriation of Money to that Use [i.e. raising and supporting an army] shall be for a longer Term than two Years".
a navy, on the other hand, was uncontroversially necessary as a defense against invasion, and obviously unfeasible as a means of domestic repression (when the chinese crushed tiananmen square, they did not send in their gunboats).
that's why there is no restriction put on the funding structure for the navy.
now as to the airforce: is it more like the army or the navy in its capacity for subversion and abuse as a tool for domestic repression? hmmm... maybe better ask the kurds.
should its funding be restricted to two-years cycles, as is constitutionally mandated for the army? so long as it was part of the 'army air corps', this constitutional provision applied to it.
removing it from the army also allowed it to dodge this constitutional restriction on its funding.
I think we should rent the air power capacity of our mercenary friends.
Do We Need an Air Force?
Before I try to answer this question, could someone pass me the bong and order a fuckin pizza?
maybe not, but the day the air force allows itself to be rolled into the army/navy/marines is the day I start finding college girls in sl00ty halloween costumes offensive
A bit nitpicky, I guess, but I don't think that, in the 1940s, there was any particular "overestimation of strategic air power's capabilities," it was just that the wars fought and anticipated back then were ones in which the enemy had the decency to maintain static strategic targets (i.e. bases, cities, oil refineries, etc.) well suited to having nightmarish amounts of explosives dropped on them from high above. It's less a measure of how ineffective the Air Force has been all along, and more a measure of how reluctant those in charge are to concede that strategic air power isn't very useful anymore, since these new "insurgent" fellows don't seem to stand still long enough (or at a far enough remove from small children and other "collateral," for that matter) for a well-coordinated B-52 strike to be effective.
This only serves to strengthen your argument, of course, given that you seem to be saying that Air Force generals are probably more interested in holding onto their jobs/power/influence than actually arriving at an effective strategy.
Do we need the Marines? Or a Navy? We need boats and people who can leave boats to fight, but why separate those ground fighters from the Army's? Why not just roll everything up into one bureaucracy called the US Military?
Do we need the Marines? Or a Navy? We need boats and people who can leave boats to fight, but why separate those ground fighters from the Army's?
Because small m marines have always been a part of the navy, as they are in our Navy. There are differences between what Marines are trained to do and what the Army is trained to do.
Why not just roll everything up into one bureaucracy called the US Military?
Because we would miss out on non-important college football games :)
not entirely a joke, either, when you remember that the constitution treats the army very differently from the navy.
For instance, there's no amendment about quartering ships in citizens' houses...
Lame jokes aside, you made good points.
Do we need the Marines? Or a Navy? We need boats and people who can leave boats to fight, but why separate those ground fighters from the Army's? Why not just roll everything up into one bureaucracy called the US Military?
Canada did it some time ago, and while the Canadian armed forces are much smaller than those of their southern neighbors, they've generally distinguished themselves in a host of peacekeeping and combat deployments since.
crack -
While you could possibly reorganize the military in a more radical fashion, the logic is that the Navy / Naval air forces / Marines / Marine air forces are all designed around a collection of missions and purposes which are largely complementary and logically group together, which I might oversimplify as: the ability to rapidly project American military power anywhere in the world and either deliver a decisive strike or establish a beachhead for further military action. (Also to protect our shipping lanes, but that's pretty much neither here nor there.) To the extent that the Marines are of late utilized like an elite adjunct of the U.S. Army (badass like the Rangers, but with more tanks!), they're edging away from the missions which justify their not being part of the Army in the first place.
The Air Force also ostensibly has a collection of missions and purposes which might justify its separate existence, but in my opinion and I presume that of other Ditch the Air Force! advocates, (a) they don't much logical coherence and (b) it doesn't care to perform the more relevant and arguably important ones very well. The same reasons why the Air Force isn't going to be abolished - there is a powerful, influential, and firmly ingrained Air Force Culture in the military and defense communities - are why I think it probably should.
Why does Robert Farley hate America?
I am sure there are a few Kosovars who are very happy that we have a strong air force.
Quarterican: but the US military doesn't really do opposed beach-heads any more, does it? In all its recent wars it's gone in across a land border from a friendly neighbouring state, or by air (Iraq 2003, Afghanistan 2001, Iraq 1991) and when it has come ashore directly from the sea (Haiti 1994, Somalia 1993, Lebanon 1983, Vietnam 1965) it's done so in fairly permissive conditions.
(The exception, Grenada, was an almost-perfect controlled experiment - Marines take one half by heliborne/amphib assault, Rangers take the other by para/airhead tactics - to show that the Army is no worse than the Marines at that sort of job.)
Which is good. An opposed amphibious landing, even one conducted well, is a bloody business. And supporting and sustaining a force landed over open beaches is a logistic nightmare.
So why does the US need such a large force whose ostensible purpose is to do something that it really hasn't done since 1945?
The US needs expeditionary light forces, no question. But does it need the USMC?
"I am sure there are a few Kosovars who are very happy that we have a strong air force."
try to read the post, okay?
yglesias started off by conceding:
"Obviously, our military needs air power capabilities"
the kosovos benefitted from our having air *power*, not an air *force*.
do you really think the kosovars cared that the air power that helped them came from an independent service, rather than a section of the army or navy?
(for that matter: are you sure that none of the kosovo missions were flown by navy aviators? yeah, i could look it up, but the larger point doesn't depend on the historical facts.)
"The US needs expeditionary light forces, no question. But does it need the USMC?"
Which pretty much summarizes the UMC job description. That this administration has willfully misused them in order to avoid admitting that they don't have sufficient numbers in the army to do the job they set out to do doesn't change that.
What Roger said. This topic is probably better defended by someone for whom military history, etc., is more than a second-string hobby, but when I wrote beachhead I was speaking more rhetorically - i.e., literal beachheads, but also metaphorical ones. I believe the USMC tends to call what I had in mind kicking in the door; if there's a rapid strike type job, the Marines can do it, and if there's call for a more sustained Army action, the Marines/Navy can get there first and pave the way for subsequent operations.
All of which is sort of tangential to the idea that the Air Force may or may not be unnecessary, and kid bitzer covered one of the more common but pointless rebuttals. (I've also seen people say "but we need airlift capacity!" Well, duh, and the Army would be ecstatic to inherit all the Air Force's C-130 and similar aircraft.) The resolution to the question is an examination of what the roles are we expect an air force to perform, followed by an assessment of whether it makes sense to put all those things under one independent roof. The one thing that I think justifies the Air Force's continuous autonomy is the question of who controls ICBMs and the like, but there are (interesting, unlikely) suggestions on that mark. As far as I can see there's no reason why the Army shouldn't have control over the air missions acting in its support.
Please make this part of the Democratic Platform for next year.
The Soviet Union, actually fairly sensibly, split their Air Force into four parts. Long Range Aviation - strategic bombers, Frontal Aviation - battlefield interdiction and close-air support (under control of Army field commanders), Military Air Transportation - all air transport, and Air Defense Forces - ground based anti-aircraft and interceptor aircraft. The best feature was that Frontal Aviation was under the direct command of the ground commanders who needed it.
Oh and also, whereas our ICBMs are part of the Air Force, the Soviets set up Strategic Rocket Forces as a totally independent branch of the military.
The Soviet Union, actually fairly sensibly, split their Air Force into four parts. Long Range Aviation - strategic bombers, Frontal Aviation - battlefield interdiction and close-air support (under control of Army field commanders), Military Air Transportation - all air transport, and Air Defense Forces - ground based anti-aircraft and interceptor aircraft.
Which of these had the "Air Superiority" mission (i.e., defeating the enemy air force, which is not really related to close air support of ground forces)? To me, that is probably the most important component of our Air Force, as it is the one that makes ours qualitatively different than any other in the world.
My biggest problem with the Farley article was that he underplay's this mission. The reason our strategic bombing of Serbia worked was that our Air Superiority forces were so good that Serbia didn't ever try to fly its own planes to attack our bombers. In Iraq 1991, the Iraqi air forces were so afraid of our fighters that they never even tried to defend themselves (and some simply fled to Iran). The air superiority mission is what makes both our strategic bombing and our close air support missions possible.
According to Wikipedia:
"During the Cold War the VVS [Soviet Air Force] was divided into three segments: Long Range Aviation (Dal'naya Aviatsiya or 'DA'), focused on long-range bombers; Frontal Aviation (Frontovaya Aviatsiya or 'FA'), focused on battlefield air defense, close air support, and interdiction; and Military Transport Aviation (Voenno-Transportnaya Aviatsiya or 'VTA'), which controlled all transport aircraft. The Air Defense Forces (Voyska protivovozdushnoy oborony or Voyska PVO), which focused on air defense and interceptor aircraft, was then a separate and distinct service within the Soviet military organization."
There is also an independent air arm for the Russian Navy, Naval Aviation.
So it would seem that "air superiority" would come under the "Frontal Aviation" since the point of "air superiority" is to secure the "front" for the close air support and interdiction applications. Air operations away from the front come under the heading of Air Defense.
In a situation where you don't have a "front", i.e., in an insurgent situation, and you're not in your own country, you don't need "air superiority" OR "close air support". You need ground troops.
I think the question of a US Air Force is an interesting hypothetical, but I have no specific opinion at this point - other than to say that a truly competent military wouldn't need much of the crap we have. They would follow the logic of Chiun: "Armies create problems by killing many, when the solution to all problems is to kill one - the right one."
Of course, occasionally that might not work, so you'd something more than professional assassins in your military.
But basically, what you need is one organization the point of which is to deliver precision power sufficient to knock out an enemy before he can do the same to you. Before that is necessary, you need competent intelligence to detect any possible threat to you.
This is the way a real national defense would work:
1) First, make no enemies. Follow George Washington's advice.
2) If you have enemies anyway, know everything there is to know about their intentions and capabilities. Identify the weak spots that if hit would paralyze their ability to project power against you. Develop the capabilities to hit those weak spots. Don't spend a lot of time worrying about "defense" - the best defense is a good offense. But that doesn't mean "projecting military power" all over hell.
3) If it looks like they're going to make a move, expose the fact that you already know when and where and that you already have a counter.
4) If that doesn't make them back down, take them out. Or if the threat is severe - which means you screwed up 1) and 2) - forget 3) and just take them down.
Right now, there are only two states that can threaten the United States - Russia and China (I leave out unlikely wars between the US and England or the EU or Canada or Tonga.) And that's only because they have nukes. Convince them to get rid of the nukes, they cease to be threats.
NOBODY else is a threat to the United States. If we had a military one tenth the size of the present one at one tenth the cost, nobody else would STILL be a threat to the US. Like who? Mexico? Except for Mexico, you have to cross a frickin' OCEAN to get to us!
China is not going to march four million troops across the ice to Alaska and down into the US. Neither is Russia. Neither is anybody else going to send troop transports over here. And unlike "Red Dawn", you don't attack the US with paratroopers landing in Colorado...(that was the dumbest part of the movie - how the initial attack could occur at all!)
Nobody else has ICBMs except Russia and China. A few states such as Israel, Iran or North Korea might have submarines with SRBMs and conceivably even nukes on those. While devastating to the targets hit, even that wouldn't be an existential threat to the US, absent an ability to target a majority of cities.
There simply is zero reason for the military we have - except that it's being PAID FOR. And that it can be used to force other countries to do the bidding of our politicians for the benefit of our corporations.
It's about MONEY and POWER - not "national defense".
They should change the name back from the "Department of Defense" to the "War Department" since it's more accurate.
Comments closed November 16, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
As President, I would double the Air Force.
Posted by Bill | November 2, 2007 7:52 AM