The battle between the U.S. Air Force and everyone else gets even hotter as the Army moves to add air support capabilities that press up against the boundary that's traditionally divided the services.
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Air War
22 Jun 2008 04:18 pm
Comments (11)
I've asked this before on this topic, so here goes again:
What justification (not historical explanation) is there for separate branches at all?
The Navy has ships, planes, and Marines. The Army has tanks, troops, helicopters, and (I think) some planes.
And on the post above, how do the Marines support the Navy--isn't it the other way around? The boats give the troops a ride to go fight on land. Similar to the way, oh, planes might drop paratroopers on land.
I don't have much of a dog in this fight. I don't see much difference between having three separate branches for the three separate environments - land, sea, air - and at the same time having each of those branches have their own land, sea, air units.
I mean, the Navy has ships, planes AND soldiers - Marines and SEALs. The Army has soldiers, planes, helicopters, and amphibious vehicles. The Air Force has planes, some troops, but AFAIK no ships - but they have missiles - just like the Army has rockets and cannon.
One could say that the competition between the services would be good if it lead to improvements in capability. It's also clear that such competition is bad if it leads to overlaps and empire building.
I think it's time to abolish all three services, and revamp the entire Pentagon around some other set of concepts than "land, sea, air". Treat all of that as mere "transportation" - ie., have a "vehicle command" that handles ships, planes, and all other vehicles, have ONE set of "combat operators" who are delivered by all those vehicles, and have one "logistics" service which moves supplies by all those vehicles.
Merge the Army, the Marines, the SEALS into one combat unit.
Separate out things like the missile commands into something like "continental defense", which has nothing to do with the "Air Force".
Separate out ships that are used for combat - destroyers, aircraft carriers and submarines - from those that are used strictly for transporting combat units.
Take the "cyberspace" command away from any of the services and have it function as a support and defensive/offensive operation in support of the other functions - like an IT staff should (which is not to say that some embedding wouldn't be a good idea.)
In short, design around "function" rather than "environment".
well there' something to be said to put the Marines in the sky. After all their role in sailing ships was to climb the rigging and give aimed rifle fire from above during close-in ship battles (hopefully you've seen Master and Commander: Far Side of the World, damn what a great movie).
As for combining the Army and Marines as a single ground force, that would quickly turn into a mess. Its a touchy subject because individually there are many heroic Army soldiers led by capable officers (and I have two army officers in my own family). However, Marine units tend to be more capable with better discipline and morale, better training and better officers. To give one example, every Marine officer (including aviators and lawyers) goes through 6 months of infantry training. That's two months more training than the Army gives actual infantry officers.
The biggest problem the Army has is that it siphons off its best troops into elite units (Airborne, Rangers, Green Berets, Delta Force), leaving the rest of the army with fewer "super troopers" to lead and set examples for the rest. In contrast, the Marines think the whole damn Corps is elite and expect every Marine to meet that standard.
The Air Force responds that it has only a limited number of those remotely piloted Predators and other advanced surveillance aircraft, so priorities for assigning them must be set by senior commanders at the headquarters in Baghdad working with counterparts at the Air Force’s regional command in Qatar.
So who are those "senior commanders"?
Army officers, mainly. All of them dedicated to the overall task of prosecuting the ground war in Iraq.
In contrast to Predators, which are assigned by the top headquarters for missions all across Iraq, Task Force Odin is on call for commanders at the level of brigade and below, an effort by the Army to be responsive to the needs of smaller combat units in direct contact with adversaries — and a clear sign of rivaling concepts with the Air Force.
So, to recap -- the Army tells the Air Force what intel requirements it has and where they should send their Predators to go and fulfill Army needs, and then when the Air Force is off fulfilling Army-directed requirements, the Army throws together its cobbled-together solution "to be responsive to the needs of smaller combat units," the NYT's reports it, and it comes off as "the Army is doing it because the Air Force isn't supporting them."
If the Army wanted the Air Force "to be responsive to the needs of smaller combat units," the higher headquarters would release the Predators to support those units. Instead it turns into proof in the minds of the Matt Yglesiases and Rob Farleys of the world that the Air Force (and its tens of thousands of Airmen deployed to do both Air Force *and ARMY jobs*) isn't supporting the Army, and the Army needs its own toys. Of course each brigade would want its own dedicated air support--but how unfortunate that we live in a world of finite resources!
The Air Force thinks atomizing air power is an inefficient and bad idea, because those long-dwell time Predators can support multiple different ground units during a single sortie, so the Air Force worries about prioritizing and orchestrating support as efficiently as possible across the whole battlespace. Each of those individual Army battalion commanders is concerned about his area of responsibility only.
Can we get some metrics, please?
How many requests for airborne ISR are there?
How many are fulfilled by the Air Force?
How many Baghdad-levied taskings by the headquarters take precedence over requests from battalion commanders?
How many requests for Task Force ODIN support are there? How many go unfulfilled?
How much does TF ODIN cost, comparatively?
How much financial and headquarters attention is it getting because its stated purpose--to reduce the IED threat--has such visibility?
Is that level of effort replicable everywhere?
Is it surprising that a purpose-built Task Force is having some success towards the purpose for which it was designed? Etc.
The task force of about 300 people and 25 aircraft is a Rube Goldberg collection of surveillance and communications and attack systems, a mash-up of manned and remotely piloted vehicles, commercial aircraft with high-tech infrared sensors strapped to the fuselage, along with attack helicopters and infantry.
How far across the battlespace can the commercial aircraft range? Are they usable in other circumstances besides supporting a counter-insurgency in a permissive air space over a series of urban areas that are by and large under control? (Read Cobra II if you want a good account of how well Apaches performed in a non-permissive environment, i.e. being shot at from every rooftop by AK-47s--remember, when we invaded Iraq and toppled a government, which was a necessary first step to get to the counter-insurgency so many pundits now claim is the only type of war we're going to fight from now on?) Is this combination of attack helicopters, commercial aircraft and infantry workable in anything but a counter-insurgency? How much does this really encroach on the Air Force's territory, considering the AF doesn't have attack helicopters?
In the Soviet Army, a General controlled all air and land units in his area of command (I don't recall the relationship with naval forces). The "services" were responsible for providing equipment and training. The idea, of course, being that all resources should serve as port of an integrated command structure. Don't know how well this worked in practice and the Soviet military had it's own, very serious problems but it is a differnt way of viewing things.
I do tend to think it makes sense to spin off the Air Force's close air support mission and give it to the Army. But I'm a little wary of focusing the Army too much on counterinsurgency. Do we really want an army dedicated to fighting little imperialist wars?
OT
"Master and Commander" may be a great movie, but the books are tedious beyond belief.
Respectful,
With respect, I think the problem is how the Air Force as a whole wants to use its finite resources. The number of Predators we have, for instance, is not based on a number on some stone tablet handed down by God, but is a consequence of the Dod budgeting process, and you bet the Air Force brass has a big say in how that happens. It is no secret that with massive demands for ground support and surveilance, the Air Force's priority is to build more F-22 fighters, because Air Superiority is the sexier mission.
As a counterpoint to your argument, I note you mention the problems of the Apache in a "non-permissive" air environment. I would say this is very much at the heart of the matter: helicopters are often a poorer choice for various support missions than are fixed-wing aircraft, but the Army isn't allowed to have fixed-wing aircraft, and they have to put _something_ in the air to do the job. The Marines, by contrast, are allowed both fixed-wings and attack helicopters, and they choose to fly a _lot_ of fixed-wings. Is there any doubt that the Army would do the same if they could? Even if their budget didn't change by a single dollar?
As in any war, modifications are made in response to real-world considerations that didn't figure in to the original procurement and operational plans. It's been pretty plain that since the fall of the Soviet Union the Air Force has been in search of a relevant mission, but it doesn't seem to really want the ones we actually seem to need.
Rumsfeld made a good start at reorganizing our forces, but there's a lot left undone. Since it seems likely that we're going to be the de-facto Iraqi Air Force for the foreseeable future, we should get this one right.
Iraq doesn't need a fucking Air Force, Powell. Nobody's going to invade it, with the possible exception of the Turks, and they're only going to invade the north where the Kurds are.
And the Iraqis are going to make "the foreseeable future" a lot shorter than you think. The US will be out of Iraq within the next 18-24 months - that will drop to six months if Bush attacks Iran.
Comments closed July 06, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
A friend of mine has an interesting theory that the Air Force should become a part of the Marines. Yes, the Marines. And he served in both the Air Force and the Army. His argument was the the Army should control the lands and the Navy should control the seas. The Marines should provide the necessary support for the Army and the Navy, and that would include the air support currently provided by the Air Force. It makes sense to me, but I've never served in the military.
Posted by fostert | June 22, 2008 4:49 PM