Benjamin Friedman notes that with his new picks to run the Air Force, Secretary Gates is breaking with the longstanding tradition of letting the service by run by people with a background as fighter pilots. Everything Gates is doing seems like steps in the right direction, but the problems he's trying to address stem from the fact that the separate Air Force is a fundamentally misguided idea.
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Bye-Bye Fighters
09 Jun 2008 06:39 pm
Comments (44)
That American Prospect article basically claims that from now on, we'll be threatened mainly with terrorism and counterinsurgency. Which sounds reasonable...except seriously, how do we know that?
It seems to me that fighting insurgencies has never been our strong suit as a nation. We're just not very good at going and taking over places and suppressing resistance. We're not a very good empire. Nor, in my opinion, should we be.
What we are good at is deterring other powerful countries from building their own empires. And that's where strategic bombing comes in as a deterrent. Doesn't it seem like deterring other countries' imperial adventures is a more worthy use of our military than launching our own?
Admittedly I know little to nothing about the military. But I always find it strange that what the Air Force does and does not 'show interest in' always comes up. Shouldn't there be people telling them what to do, what their mission is, etc... and the people in the Air Force do their best to execute those orders? There seems to be a tremendous amount of advocacy (not to mention outright lies and propaganda) coming out of the Air Force that has more bureaucratic self-interest than national self-interest in mind.
My dad was in Vietnam (Army) and one of the few things he'll talk about regarding that war (or any war) is how much he hates the Air Force. My impression is that he felt the Air Force was off doing its thing, measuring success by tons-of-bombs-dropped, and was otherwise totally disconnected from whatever the ground forces were doing.
There is an enormous amount of institutional arrogance in the Air Force, with its roots in the Douthat theory of strategic bombing from the 20s, which should have been discredited by the results of actual testing of the theory during WWII, were it not for the atom bombing of Japan, which only seemed to win the war. Then LeMay and SAC comes along, which was basically a monstrously arrogant version of the Air Force within an already arrogant Air Force.
Basically, no one told Curtis LeMay what he could or couldn't do, and we were damn lucky that he didn't go off half-cocked during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
My impression is that he felt the Air Force was off doing its thing, measuring success by tons-of-bombs-dropped, and was otherwise totally disconnected from whatever the ground forces were doing.
Bingo. And the air force doesn't give a shit today.
"the Air Force should be responsible for strategic bombing, air transport and air superiority."
The problem with that notion is that as long as the US has nuclear weapons - and the only other big countries we might ever fight with, namely Russia and China (and I suppose, India and Pakistan) have nuclear weapons - there really isn't likely ever to be a fight with any of those nations.
"Strategic bombing" is best handled by cruise missiles from submarines - much less risk to the attacker than flying over the target and probably just as accurate. Not to mention that "strategic bombing" tends to be a euphemism for "bombing civilians" which is a war crime.
"Air transport" is best handled by whatever service is actually being transported. Witness the problems when the Army discovered they had built the Stryker too big to fit inside a C-130 (IIRC.)
"Air superiority" is, again with the exception of Russia and China, a given in any conflict the US is likely to fight - and in any event could also be engaged in if those fighters were primarily intended to support those planes engaged in ground support. In other words, you have ground support aircraft run by the Army, and you have fighters run by the Army to protect those ground support aircraft.
After all, "air superiority" only exists to allow you to do "strategic bombing" and "ground support". It's a secondary objective to those more primary objectives.
And those primary objectives are mostly useless against terrorism and insurgencies which can only be defeated by policy changes and boots on the ground.
As for "deterring" other nations imperial adventures, that is where the nuclear arsenal comes in. When the Russians were sending planes to the Middle East back in the day, the President got on the red phone and said, "Back off or it escalates to something neither of us wants to handle".
Let's take 1991. Saddam invades Kuwait, First mistake: we let him - we practically told him we didn't care. Second mistake: we supported him when he was becoming powerful enough to do that. Third mistake: we made a big military project out of getting rid of him. None of that was necessary and none of it required "strategic bombing" or "ground support". Saddam could have been taken care of using a handful of his own people.
Fast forward to 2003: Again, none of it was necessary.
We don't need a separate Air Force, and we don't need half the crap the US military has now. We could DEFEND this country - and deter other imperial powers - with ten percent of the military we have and ten percent of the cost (maybe twenty percent if we up the technology). What we can't do is be an imperial power with that.
Never mind the air force, which may be a bridge too far; what about the marines? They're soldiers, for christ's sake, why aren't they just part of the regular army like the marines in England? Does anybody else even have them?
Forget the Air Force; please don't another fighter pilot run your country.
"Never mind the air force, which may be a bridge too far; what about the marines? They're soldiers, for christ's sake, why aren't they just part of the regular army like the marines in England? Does anybody else even have them?"
Short answer? Iwo Jima. Or so I've read.
calipygian: Giving the Army back their own fixed wing air support and transport is an excellent idea, even if it probably won't happen.
Chris: The Royal Marines are attached to the Royal Navy, just like the USN/USMC. The rationale is that the Fleet has a dedicated amphibious force that can secure a coastal area quickly, without need to crank up the Army.
The Army is institutionally focused on heavy infantry and preplanned, large scale actions. The Marines are light infantry, institutionally focused on more flexibly planned, small scale actions.
It would seem that the civilian leadership would be able to tell the various components of the Armed Forces to play nice together, and they're doing a better job at it than they used to. As a practical matter, overcoming the Army/AF/Navy/Marine "way" of doing things is a bear, since all the President's wo/men can't constantly be out there micromanaging.
The Air Force is now an audition for Starfleet Command.
Even though I am an AF brat, I have no love for them. I agree that they have a mission but tactical air support is not one they care about or do well. We need the AF to stay focussed beyond the horizon (air superiority, interdiction, airlift, strategic bombing)and let the Army handle the close fight.
Someone mentioned cruise missiles; cruise missiles have an acute limitation, namely payload and targeting.
If you think the SecDef has the service secretaries sitting around and is issuing them orders then you don't understand how the Department of Defense works. It is a convoluted mess ruled by "rice bowls". Secretary Gates is taking a step in the right direction by firing the AF leadership as they are not actively supporting the GWOT. Whether they think it is their mission or not, they aren't volunteering to help out in an active fashion. BLUF - the Army and Marines are doing the heavy lifting. The Navy is constrained by reality but I think the AF is actively avoiding signing up for anything as it is not their "bag".
Chris: yes, just about every nation's navy maintains a naval infantry, using my previous rationale.
The USMC ground/air is larger than most nations entire armed forces becase the vast WWII Pacific theater was the Navy's (and therefore the Marines) bailiwick while Army focused on Europe.
They tended to be more successful, and have better morale, unit cohesion, and discipline than the Army in Korea and Vietnam, which made for an easier sales job for maintaining their size after WWII. As someone pointed out a few days back, that flag on Iwo Jima made a big impression.
Many in Colorado Springs are now being ardently led in prayer, hoping Secretary Gates enjoys an early Rapture.
From the (extremely) limited security study I've done, it seems to me that Mr. Noah and danceswithgoats have it: there are some very specialized tasks that just don't make sense for other branches to carry out.
While most of them are not particularly useful in the GWOT - aerial surveillance likely being the one exception - it's folly to assume that we'll never ever fight another conventional war with another state.
Plus, if there's no Air Force, who will lead the air/space war when the aliens attack?
And to think, I thought this was a blog entry on the paper tigers of this year: The New England Patriots, the campaign of Hillary Rodham Clinton, and quite likely, the Los Angeles Lakers.
"Basically, no one told Curtis LeMay what he could or couldn't do, and we were damn lucky that he didn't go off half-cocked during the Cuban Missile Crisis."
Except that he did. IIRC, SAC flew two overflights of Cuba, without Kennedy's knowledge, during the Cuban Missile Crisis. My source is Rhodes's Dark Sun, which has a lot more to say—all bad—about LeMay. Well, actually, it's quite complimentary regarding his busting of the Berlin Blockade, a case where his faults where virtues.
But, nevertheless, he was a dangerous lunatic who did everything he could to draw us into a nuclear conflict with the USSR. After they built up their counter-strike capability, he softened some (he wanted to strike first while we could get away with it..."get away with it" meaning that we'd only lose a few cities). It's quite amazing that he failed.
"That American Prospect article basically claims that from now on, we'll be threatened mainly with terrorism and counterinsurgency. Which sounds reasonable...except seriously, how do we know that?"
I don't know much about this issue except what I've been reading in the last few days, but it does seem to me that putting all our eggs into the counterinsurgency basket isn't wise. It's an especially odd argument coming from progressives like TAP who undoubtedly don't want us fighting counterinsurgency wars. I certainly would prefer that we avoid counterinsurgency situations as much as possible.
And although I very much prefer a foreign policy that cultivates stronger ties with the large economies that could conceivably threaten us with a strategic war, it seems to me that we have to continue to prepare for that possibility and, perhaps, continue to maintain a military machine that strongly discourages that threat. Russia is a ghost of its former self, but they're so insecure and yearning for global importance, so nostalgic for their former superpower military might, that I consider them a major threat strategically in the near-future until they decide to throttle down the rhetoric. But I don't see that happening. Granted, they'd make fools of themselves in any strategic—or for that matter, smaller scale—engagement, but I'm not confident that some strange turn of events couldn't see that come to pass. Right now, Russia makes me much more nervous than Iran or even North Korea.
Anyway, there's no doubt that the Air Force has institutionally failed in its mission to integrate with the other branches in ground support ops. It should be heavily punished by being stripped of almost all—or even all—unmanned drone aircraft operations[1]. Give all the smaller drones to the Army, the larger ones to the Navy for their pilots. Pare the Air Force down to strategic bombing and air superiority ops.
1. How the Air Force is failing is dramatically illustrated by the
differing approaches of the Air Force and Army to unmanned drones.
The Air Force is unconstitutional, if you're a textualist. If you're the type that believes in constitutional penumbras, then maybe the express grant of power to Congress to establish an army and navy somehow implies an Air Force as well.
I think what we should really do is avoid the jerk theory of running the military-- this is letting a bunch of jerks run everything-- in our society, to put it very bluntly, people who are more like Beavis and Butthead tend to be the ones who grow to adulthood with enough of an abiding interest in the military to join up, and what we get are Beavis and Butthead-like results. I'm exagerating for effect, of course-- running and designing a modern, First-World military is a very complicated job, and of course our people do it well enough at least most of the time. But the point is that it's better to not have Beavis and Butthead making all the decisions, or to have a decision put in hands where it might end up being decided by a Beavis and Butthead tendency.
The story like the Stryker and C-130 story is an example of just what I'm concerned about. For starters, appoint a civilian commission of very smart people to examine the military for problems, and then either empower them to give orders to fix things, or the president and congress should make their recommendations orders to the military. I'm not talking about having too-green outsiders, or people who don't take the project seriously, start meddling. I'm talking about having public-spirited, versatile people study the military for years, and offer a fresh perspective that is not in any way motivated by institutional tradition, gratitude, or trying to cultivate professional favors. As a second idea, try to create a track for people like those who would make up such a commission to become high-ranking military commanders (i.e., without having to learn how to shoot a .45 or run through any obstacle courses). If somebody is capable of understanding the military and its needs better than the typical ambitious dumb jock who is making the decisions but can't maneuver around bullshit successfully and who can't foresee something like the C-130 problem, then they should be able to end up making real decisions for the military even if they never have the fun of getting shaving cream put in their boots (or maybe even of wearing boots) or being brainwashed in basic training.
I realize that the kind of high-ranking organization, procurement and command problems I was talking about in my 11:31 comments aren't the only kinds of command problems the military faces. I am sure there are and have been many grunts and low-ranking officers who have been in combat and have felt like the officers who were designing their missions weren't smart enough, didn't understand the nature of combat, or didn't have enough of a battlefield-perspective to do their job properly. Research actually shows that soldiers with above-average intelligence / IQ are more successful in actual combat. In that case, the answer to the problem is giving more decision-making power or influence to the enlisted men and non-commmissioned officers- the guys who many of us may have thought of as the dumb jocks in high school- and taking some of it away from the West Point, ROTC, or Officer Training School jokers.
But my broad point in the 11:31 comment was that our conception of military service and our own military has become too static and tradition-bound. We may be able to do a lot better by shaking up how we look at things like how military leaders should be chosen and how decisions made- so, I'm not talking about implementing a nerd-corps to replace all the commanders, but rather just having the flexibility to consider doing something like getting some more intelligent people a piece of the action when it comes to issuing orders.
The Ancient Athenians actually ran their military democratically. They didn't go to war unless he soldiers wanted to-- and proved it by voting. This is ironic because warfare was one of the things the Athenians did better, despite the hoopla surrounding the Spartans (if you think of the Athenians as the cradle of science and cultivated civilization, remember, these are the same people who killed Socrates)- yet today the idea of rank-and-file men having control over what they do is all but unthinkable to us. Instead, our military actually tries to keep the men ignorant, and to control what they think (i.e., only Rush Limbaugh on Armed Forces Radio, not Air America or something as well).
But why should it be this way? People have been tinkering with how they run and organize the military for eons. Ad our experience should teach us that it's not time to stop tinkering-- learning and growing-- yet.
This argument is as old as the boulders that have been pounded into sand by HE dumped by the Air Force. But I would be betraying my fellow troopers [Army] if I didn't join the pissing contest. Fixed wing, bombing, strategic, tactical, supply, extraction, blah, blah. There is absolutely no reason to have a separate branch of military service called Air Farce, except extravagant budgets and more generals. I don't care what anyone in the AF says about their mission: it is all a load of BS.
I was in Vietnam and when we got back to a base camp we slept in hot stinking sand-bagged rat holes, showered outside under a big barrel with holes punched in the bottom to let the unheated water drip through, and crapped on boards with a round hole cut out that sat above a 55 gallon drum cut in half. Once I went to the nearby AF base [nearby=3 klicks]. The airmen slept in sand-bagged HOUSE TRAILERS, that had their own bathrooms, were air conditioned, and had TEEVEES! So that's just one reason matthewcc's [above] dad is not a fan of the AF.
Marines, SEALS, Navy [they exist solely to give the Marines a ride], DELTA Force, Special Forces, Rangers, UDT, Force Recon, LRRPs, AirCav, Army, any member of any unit thinks they are better than any other: baddest, meanest, toughest, weirdest. But we would **all** agree that the Air Force is Angel Food Cake Lite and worth nothing. Why else would the Army, Navy and Marines have jets, or cargo planes, or helos, an a host of things that fly?
Be real. Look around.
Who benefits from having another military service?
Calipyghan - A separate Air Force is NOT a fundamentally misguided idea. The Army should be allowed to fly fixed wing air support, while the Air Force should be responsible for strategic bombing, air transport and air superiority.
Dead on. Add that the Army should manage it's own "Predator" Gen and next gen recon and selective attack drones.
The reason that almost every civilization has separated it's Navy from land forces, then air from sea and ground is that they are entirely different combat environments. The Navies have sensibly said that blue water dominance also involves airspace over the oceans, undersea sub warfare, and command over the near-ocean littoral, and Marines, SEALs, Spetsnaz, Imp Nippon Special Landing Forces relying mainly on sea logistics.
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Convict Hack seems to think that just having nukes makes one invulnerable to ChiCom attacks on US forces in Korea, Chechnya waging a war of liberation against the nuclear Russians, the falklands, and the mech army assault on nuclear armed Israel.
The moron also says that the "risk" of one pilot lost in strategic war is "too high" thus the only attack "to be perfectly safe" must come from a cruise missile from a sub in the dead of night rather than a B-52 or B-1A with 50 times the lethality.
We ARE talking about a bank robber who thought his mighty firearm immunized him from repercussions...
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Anal Retentative Left Asshole Rhea sez - The Air Force is unconstitutional, if you're a textualist. If you're the type that believes in constitutional penumbras, then maybe the express grant of power to Congress to establish an army and navy somehow implies an Air Force as well,
And the men in powder wigs 230 years ago never evisoned NASA, the FAA, FCC. Highway Administration, Electric Utility and Railroad Commissions - making those agencies also "unconstitutional" because the Holy Founders wh drew up the Sacred Parchment were not prescient on technology two centuries later?
Don't be an ignoroid.
Matt, I know you're a professional pundit and all, but you really don't have to have an opinion about absolutely everything. Are you really qualified to express an opinion about whether a separate Air Force ought to exist? Does your research on the question consist of anything beyond having read, or maybe skimmed, the article you link to?
Do you really think the grunts couldn't have taken Iwo? The grunts would have taken Iwo just as the Jugheads did. The Jugheads should have landed at Omaha instead of the Big Red One. I woulda traded that one for sure.
On Omaha I heard Col. George Taylor, commander of the 16th Infantry Regt., scream at us men, "Two kinds of people are staying on this beach! The dead and those who are going to die! Now, let's get the f*** out of here!" And we did. The Navy help us or we'd all have been killed. Nothing from the air except German Me's on strafing runs.
We coulda used the jugheds in the freezing cold at the Bulge. We did what we had to do. There ain't no heroes unless you get killed. Then it will be considered. All this talk of war and military services is crazy. War is killing people, blowing up everything, and living in filth. No fun, no glory. Always cold, or hot, dirty,hungry, thirsty, and sick of mind and soul.
My grandson is writing this as tell him what I think. I'm 85 and won't be around for 86. But if you remember anything from an old soldier who did his best and gave up his body for a war: don't go to war unless it's the ONLY thing left to do. Vietnam and Iraq, all we did was send young boys away never to come back. They will always be young and never fall apart as an old man. But they were robbed of everything by presidents who didn't know what war looked like. Good luck. Goodbye. Frank, I was there.
Interesting arguments all around.
If the Joint Chiefs and all the other inter-branch stuff actually worked, this wouldn't be such a big deal.
The main problem with the AF IMO is that it is a cash cow ripe for corruption (more so than the other services). They really haven't had a well enough defined core mission since the ICBM came along. Worse still, they have basically no peacetime role (since they aren't interested in logistics).
The Navy, Marines, and Army all do an ok job of working together, because they all need each other. Subsume the AF core missions (air-supremacy, bombing, battle-space intel management, refueling, ect) into the Navy. The Army should get heavily back into the logistics business (screw contractors, this is a core ability we really do need). Also let the Army take some close air support and escort (though multi-role aircraft and carries based operations will mean the Navy will continue in this role too.)
The Marines should depend on the Army and the Navy for their 'ride' and for support. The Marines think they are the most bad-ass, which is ok since they kindof are... but they shouldn't delude themselves that they can stay the 'first in' badasses if they try to do everything else themselves too.
One final tidbit...
It is interesting how the Navy is discovering a long forgotten peacetime role: anti-piracy. Since the Soviet Navy has been so greatly diminished, piracy is no longer kept at bay by the sheer number of military vessels plying the waves. Peacetime and/or emergency response roles are very good things IMO.
Another more general thing...
When did the US stop having confidence in its ability to build stuff? The F22 is a good thing IMO, we don't know what military threats we may face in the next 20 or 30 years. But we don't need to build a whole bunch of them to sit in hangers.
This goes for a lot of the cutting edge military systems. Please do spend money on the R&D. Put some into service. But we don't need a huge standing force available at a moment's notice. If the world shifts and we are drawn into a big war, then we can make more quickly.
I've been a loyal (and liberal) reader of this blog for a long time, but I have to say that seeing a twenty-something who has never served making broad - and stupid - proclamations on things they know nothing about is embarrassing.
Matt, I'm a marine. I hate the Air Force more than you could possibly know, not just from things I once read on the fucking Prospect, but from things I've seen and experienced. And I think 1) the air force needs to exist 2) the Air Force needs to be a separate branch, and 3) this post makes you sound like a complete blowhard dumbfuck soft-handed Ivy League liberal caricature straight out of Hannity's most fevered dreams. What are you thinking?
I don't mean to blogclog, but I have to say one more thing after reading all the comments to the Prospect article.
How come so many presumably knowledgeable people can't understand that folding the Air Force into the Army and Navy would add capability to those other services?
Lines like "the Army can't do bombing" and "the Navy isn't interested in manning land based ICBM silos" are a bit stupid. If you put the bomber fleet (including the people and bases) under Army control then the Army could do bombing just as well as the Air Force. Same thing ICBMs.
I think the idea of putting space, strategic, and air-supremacy AF assets and missions under Navy control makes a lot of sense. It would mean that the Navy isn't just about stuff on the water... but how hard is that to imagine? The rest of the missions involve coordinating with the Army or Marines, so why not put those under the Army or Marines control?
To the servicemen and vets... it may seem like non-military folks discussing this is somehow wrong, but we are talking about the top level bureaucratic structure and the roles the military services should play. With all due respect, this isn't exactly a topic that military experience necessarily gives one more insight into, unless you were a high ranking officer.
Finally, does anyone else find the 'competition between the services' aspect absurd. The fact that some people talk favorably about it is quite frankly disgusting to me. The military is a place where that sort of free-market-uberals inspired thinking does not belong!
Ku Klux Klan member Chris Ford bloviates as follows:
"Convict Hack seems to think that just having nukes makes one invulnerable to ChiCom attacks on US forces in Korea, Chechnya waging a war of liberation against the nuclear Russians, the falklands, and the mech army assault on nuclear armed Israel."
None of which has anything to do with what I said. The US had nukes - the Chinese didn't. All we had to do was tell the Chinese "Remember Hiroshima? Now imagine Beijing" - and the Korean war would have been over. McArthur wanted to do it - but the Truman wouldn't let him. That wasn't the problem - the problem was that Truman wouldn't threaten the Chinese with doing it.
Chechnya is irrelevant - they know damn well the Russians aren't going to nuke them. That has nothing to do with what I said, since Chechnya is not Russia or China.
What I said was that Russia and China are not going to go against us in a conventional war, because that would escalate to a nuclear war and neither side wants that.
The Falklands? What the hell does that have to do with anything? That was a minor conflict between two second rate powers. England was not going to nuke Argentina over some sheep. Ford as usual is a moron.
"the mech army assault on nuclear armed Israel." WTF? Does he even know what he's typing?
"The moron also says that the "risk" of one pilot lost in strategic war is "too high" thus the only attack "to be perfectly safe" must come from a cruise missile from a sub in the dead of night rather than a B-52 or B-1A with 50 times the lethality."
I said nothing of the kind. As usual, Ford makes up his own straw men so he can rant. The simple fact is that "strategic bombing" as an objective no longer exists. There isn't anything to bomb except civilians when you're dealing with an insurgency. What you need is the sort of pinpoint strike that cruise missiles can give you. No matter how lousy their results have been in Pakistan, they're better than carpet-bombing.
A stealth bomber is also good because it's stealthy - but it also costs far more than the cruise missiles. The loss of one in Yugoslavia was a bit of a problem.
And I said nothing about "rusk being too high" - I said the risk is LESS to pilots if you use cruise missiles from subs. Care to prove otherwise - MORON?
"We ARE talking about a bank robber who thought his mighty firearm immunized him from repercussions..."
No - we're talking about a moron who is a member of the Ku Klux Klan and burns crosses on Jewish lawns every Fourth of July. This jerk thinks he can criticize me? It is to laugh.
Danceswithgoats: Wrong. Cruise missiles have a perfectly adequate payload for what they need to do. And they can carry tactical nukes if they need to bust something really big. And they don't miss their targets any more than some B-52 from 50,000 feet (not that they're all that accurate, as the Pakistani failures demonstrate.)
Strategic bombing is a non-existent function or a war crime, one or the other. Take your pick.
Beastmaster: Absolutely correct. Saw the same thing at Cam Ranh Bay. Dusty, dirty barracks while the Air Force had air conditioned barracks. Watched out movies on sheets tacked on plywood frames, while the Air Force had indoor movie theaters. Their PX was twice the size of the Army's. Paved roads vs dirt roads on base.
"And they don't miss their targets any more than some B-52 from 50,000 feet (not that they're all that accurate, as the Pakistani failures demonstrate.)"
heads up chief
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JDAM
As far as risk goes, I think the sheer number of losses per platform that a dedicated missile frigate/SSN fleet for doing something like bombing Iraq on a scale that would replace the airforce actually represents, as far as dollars/platform lost and lives/platform lost, that is probably prohibitive. The airforce is good for operating things like diego garcia that let the US bomb the shit out of anything it wants with about 12-24 hr notice, long before you could get close with a decently sized fleet, depending on theater. Personally I'd rather see more F-16s for dropping JDAMs in Iraq than F-22s, 10th of the unit cost for 2x the payload. Hell give em to the army if the AF doesnt want to fly them
> I've been a loyal (and liberal) reader of
> this blog for a long time, but I have to say that
> seeing a twenty-something who has never served
> making broad - and stupid - proclamations on
> things they know nothing about is embarrassing.
Yet you are willing to listen to and be led by Dick Cheney and Newt Gingich, among other bloodthirsty-Republicans-who-didn't-serve, without "embarrassment". Odd that.
Cranky
Military nerdfight!
Travc - I think the idea of putting space, strategic, and air-supremacy AF assets and missions under Navy control makes a lot of sense......Lines like "the Army can't do bombing" and "the Navy isn't interested in manning land based ICBM silos" are a bit stupid. If you put the bomber fleet (including the people and bases) under Army control then the Army could do bombing just as well as the Air Force. Same thing ICBMs.
People who haven't served fail to understand that it takes many, many years to understand a unique environment and the military tactics and strategy that environment entails. That is why from time immemorial, the Navy has had an officer corps and certain specialists entirely separate from what Armies indoctrinate and train their troops to. Given human limitations, you could make an excellent sea officer that understood all about that environment and limitations, an excellent Army officer, but you could not make the same man both things.
While certain militaries, notably the Soviets and their China "ape'rs" kept Air and Strategic rocket forces under Army, most militaries recognized that air created a new, unique environment. The Brits recognized this as early as 1918 when they created the RAF. The Americans and Soviets had a different doctrine which held that air power was only for Army recon, Army artillery spotting, dogfights to protect the Army.
During WWII, the US recognized that the doctrine had massive limits in officers and men trained "The Army Way" who knew all about enfilade and drill with a Springfield '03 and leading a squad of grunts over the hill - but little about effective strategic bombing, deep recon, gaining air supremacy, air requiring a whole different basing and logistics doctrine than Army theory. That they had stupidly court-martialled strategic air visionary Billy Mitchell and stunted the careers of airmen over the traditional Army line officers West Point agenda..
(The Navy had had it's own closed-mindness with old school battleship captains and admirals sabotaging air and sub factions until the Navy came to it's senses through FDR getting sick of the squabbling and ending it)
Thus, we told the Brits, after WWII, "you guys were right".
(While we dumbly allowed Army close air support to wither with intraservice rivalries and AF and Army not being on the same page in Korea, Vietnam, the infamous hostage rescue mission where the rivalry had led to the two factions using incompatable equipment and different electronic frequencies and bands...)
The need for a separate AF is even greater with high space and cyber environments added to the unique air environment.
If anything, besides close air support and overhead battlefield recon - we need to strip out functions now largely under civilian agencies related to soft power - civil affairs, strategic communications, insurgency and counter-insurgent ops, prosecution of Islamoid terrorists, Border Control in war zones, in-country diplomacy & intel gathering between factions - and give that to the Army. (Certain major revisions to established law, terrorist "rights", and posse commitatus thinking would be required, of course)
Fortunately, there is no Islamoid terrorist Navy or AF. Just a little shit on the margins about
ground Islamoid terrorist combat teams hijacking planes and doing some sorry-ass 3rd World piracy and arms smuggling.
Here's the rational for the air force: there are those who, for whatever reason, have to go into the military but want their experience to be most like having a 9-5 job. For them, we have created the (ch)air force.
None of which has anything to do with what I said. The US had nukes - the Chinese didn't. All we had to do was tell the Chinese "Remember Hiroshima? Now imagine Beijing" - and the Korean war would have been over. McArthur wanted to do it - but the Truman wouldn't let him. That wasn't the problem - the problem was that Truman wouldn't threaten the Chinese with doing it.
Actually, Mao and his advisors discussed this matter at length. Mao shrugged off the possiblity of losing a few cities to atomic blasts. He'd defeated the Nationalists without controlling cities, and he figured a few million more dead would be a small price to pay to restore China to what he saw as its rightful borders and rightful place in the world.
The failure of jingo foreign policy always runs along those lines. The jingos see the world from the playground bully's perspective: you slap the other kids around and they'll back down. If they don't, slap then again. But they don't allow for the other guy fighting back, tooth and nail.
A nation run by a sociopath, or just a nation run by someone with his own viewpoint, who doesn't see the situation the way we do, is beyond them.
I have a hard time evaluating the argument for getting rid of the Air Force as a separate branch without a general argument as to why there should be different branches at all.
Commenter Chris Ford suggests one reason, namely the challenges and skills particular to a given war-fighting environment and weaponry (air/planes, sea/ships, land/tanks.). But then you look at the Navy with its ships and planes and Marines, and the Army with its tanks and helicopters, and the Air Force with its planes and ICBM's, and you see that different platforms are being integrated in a single branch. So there is a tension between specialized branches and integrated fighting forces. What we have now looks like a hodge-podge and raises my original question: why not a single branch (The US Military) with a few broad specialities (air, sea, land, infantry) and sub-specialties (e.g. long-range bombers, fighters, ground support, ships, subs, tanks, artillery, amphibious troops, mountain troops, etc.)
If anyone has read something giving general principles of organizing the military, and the justification for separate branches at all, I'd appreciate a reference or link. Thanks.
Really, Yglesias, while there may be a case to be made for abolishing the Air Force, that awful little Prospect article doesn't make it, and your credulous citation of it just reveals your ignorance of matters military. As someone else above wrote, just because your business card says "pundit" doesn't mean you need to have an opinion on everything under the sun. Sometimes it's better to stay your typing hand.
I have a hard time evaluating the argument for getting rid of the Air Force as a separate branch without a general argument as to why there should be different branches at all.
Commenter Chris Ford suggests one reason, namely the challenges and skills particular to a given war-fighting environment and weaponry (air/planes, sea/ships, land/tanks.). But then you look at the Navy with its ships and planes and Marines, and the Army with its tanks and helicopters, and the Air Force with its planes and ICBM's, and you see that different platforms are being integrated in a single branch. So there is a tension between specialized branches and integrated fighting forces. What we have now looks like a hodge-podge and raises my original question: why not a single branch (The US Military) with a few broad specialities (air, sea, land, infantry) and sub-specialties (e.g. long-range bombers, fighters, ground support, ships, subs, tanks, artillery, amphibious troops, mountain troops, etc.)
To get crazy for a second, you could create a new officer school, one year all together, another couple split out at West Point, Anapolis, Colorado Springs, another year back together...whatever works to get officers thinking first in terms of integrated use of force to a given "problem", and only then providing specialized training.
If anyone has read something giving general principles of organizing the military, and the justification for separate branches at all, I'd appreciate a reference or link. Thanks.
The main weakness of today's air force as organized is that they show no interest in doing anything to support ground forces. So take that mission away from them.
The main point of that article is that the Air Force, having little interest in the tactical aspects of their mission, have attempted to push strategic campaigns, which validate their bloated budget. If the Air Force were relegated solely to the latter, the desire to appropriate money would not go away - rather, it would be directed towards more high-tech boondoggles with little 21st century applicability.
Its similar to the Japanese economy of the 80's, where ministries would waste countless sums on garish or pointless projects, just to ensure that their budget wouldn't be cut the next year.
Either fold the Air Force into the Army and Navy, where air support would be doled out in a rational manner, or leave bad enough alone. Your solution would only exacerbate the problem.
To get crazy for a second, you could create a new officer school, one year all together, another couple split out at West Point, Anapolis, Colorado Springs, another year back together...whatever works to get officers thinking first in terms of integrated use of force to a given "problem", and only then providing specialized training.
In today's Joint Military, that is called "fucking each other purple", in ref to the fact that if you mixed the uniform colors, it would probably come out to a bland purple color.
This ought to send Chris Ford into convulsions.
Jewish general named new USAF chief
AP and JPost.com Staff , THE JERUSALEM POST Jun. 10, 2008
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates launched the US Air Force in a new direction Monday by announcing an unusual choice as the service's next uniformed chief and by declaring an immediate halt to personnel reductions that he said had put the Air Force under too much wartime strain.
Before flying to Israel to explain his moves to airmen and their commanders, Gates recommended that US President George W. Bush nominate Gen. Norton Schwartz, a Jewish 35-year-old veteran with a background in Air Force special operations, as the new Air Force chief of staff, replacing fired Gen. Michael Moseley.
In a sweeping shake up, Gates also formally sent former Air Force official Michael Donley's name to the White House to be the next secretary of the beleaguered service. Bush quickly announced he would nominate Donley, and designated him as acting secretary until he is confirmed by the Senate.
Gates said Donley and Schwartz were coming in at an important time in the history of the Air Force.
"General Schwartz's unique set of experiences and accomplishments make him the right officer at this time to lead the Air Force," Gates told an audience of several hundred servicemen and Air Force civilians.
Gates announced on Thursday that he was removing Moseley from the chief's job and Wynne as its top civilian to hold them accountable for failing to fully correct an erosion of nuclear-related performance standards, a concern linked to the cross-country flight last August of a B-52 carrying armed nuclear weapons.
Gates said he felt compelled to sweep out the current Air Force leadership to halt a long-term drift in the service's focus. But he also made a point of praising the Air Force's contributions to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"Your contributions have made a lifesaving difference to those fighting on the ground," Gates said.
He noted that the Air Force has been engaged in combat continuously for 17 years, beginning with the 1991 Gulf War and including years of flying combat missions in "no fly" zones over northern and southern Iraq.
"Your families have also borne this burden, and the Air Force has its own fallen heroes - often struck down while serving on the ground alongside our soldiers and Marines," Gates said. "We know this, and we are working to ease the burden. For example, I intend immediately to stop further reductions in Air Force personnel."
In 2006 the Air Force began a multiyear reduction in its ranks, taking it from nearly 360,000 to an intended target of 316,000 by 2010. By halting further cuts, Gates would leave the Air Force with about 330,000 personnel, Air Force officials here said.
After delivering his remarks, Gates held a question-and-answer session with his audience. Before he began taking questions he asked members of the news media to leave the room "so that we can have a candid discussion inside the family."
Tony McPeak, the retired general who was Air Force chief of staff during the first Gulf War in the early 1990s, said in a telephone interview Monday that he welcomed the selections of Schwartz and Donley.
"It's not a mainstream kind of thing" to choose an officer with Schwartz's extensive background in special operations, McPeak said. But Schwartz also has a variety of other experience, including holding senior positions on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "It's good to have that" broader perspective on the Air Force, said McPeak.
In an effort to get at least part of the new team in place right away, Gates asked Bush to designate Donley as the acting secretary effective June 21 - a move that would allow him to begin work without waiting for Senate confirmation.
Schwartz had been thought to be in line for retirement, and his replacement as head of the US Transportation Command, Lt. Gen. William Fraser III, had been announced in April. But on Monday Gates recommended that Fraser be nominated as the next vice chief of the Air Force.
And he said Gen. Duncan McNabb, the current vice chief, should move to the Transportation Command job, succeeding Schwartz.
In remarks later aboard his plane en route from Langley to Peterson Air Force Base, Colo., Gates told reporters that he had a 55-minute session with the airmen at Langley. He told them that the importance of the Air Force's nuclear mission was likely to grow in the future, in part due to the threat of proliferating nuclear weapons technology but also because Russia is putting an increasing emphasis on modernizing its nuclear arsenal.
"Russia really is not investing very much in their conventional (non-nuclear) forces," Gates said. "It seems clear that the Russians are focused, as they look to the future, more on strengthening their nuclear capabilities." That contrasts with Russia's historical emphasis on a large conventional force, much of which eroded after the Cold War ended.
On Tuesday, Gates plans to make speeches at Peterson Air Force Base, Colo., home of Air Force Space Command, which has responsibility for the service's nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile force, and at Scott Air Force Base, Ill., home of Air Mobility Command, whose tanker refueling aircraft are part of the nuclear bomber mission.
When he announced he was firing Wynne and Moseley, Gates expressed disappointment that shortcomings in the Air Force's handling of its nuclear mission had been allowed to persist.
He said at the time that his decision was based mainly on the damning conclusions of an internal report on the mistaken shipment to Taiwan of four Air Force fusing devices for ballistic missile nuclear warheads. And he linked the underlying causes of that slip-up to the North Dakota-to-Louisiana flight last August of the B-52 bomber that was mistakenly armed with six nuclear-tipped cruise missiles.
The report asserted that slippage in the Air Force's nuclear standards was a "problem that has been identified but not effectively addressed for over a decade."
Gates said the Taiwan mistake did not compromise US nuclear weapons technology and did not pose a physical danger, but it "raised questions in the minds of the public as well as internationally."
Donley served as acting secretary of the Air Force for seven months in 1993 and was the service's top financial officer from 1989 to 1993. He is currently the Pentagon's director of administration and management, and has held a variety of strategy and policy positions in government, including a stint on the National Security Council from 1984 to 1989. He served in the Army from 1972 to 1975. He earned bachelors and masters degrees from the University of Southern California.
Schwartz has held several high-level assignments on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and has been commander of the U.S. Transportation Command since September 2005.
Schwartz, a pilot with more than 4,200 flying hours, served as Commander of the Special Operations Command-Pacific, as well as Alaskan Command, Alaskan North American Aerospace Defense Command Region, and the 11th Air Force. Prior to assuming his current position, Schwartz was Director, the Joint Staff, Washington, DC
He attended the Air Force Academy and the National War College, and he participated as a crew member in the 1975 airlift evacuation of Saigon. In 1991, he served as chief of staff of the Joint Special Operations Task Force for Northern Iraq in operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm.
When the Jewish Community Centers Armed Forces and Veteran's Committee presented its Military Leadership Award to Schwartz in 2004, he said he was "Proud to be identified as Jewish as well as an American military leader."
After all, "air superiority" only exists to allow you to do "strategic bombing" and "ground support". It's a secondary objective to those more primary objectives.
This is not quite right. Air superiority missions exist not only to allow you to do the other missions, but also to prevent the other side from doing those missions to you.
Joseph: Which is precisely what I said - it's the same effect.
In both cases, you're shooting down other fighters. Whether those fighters are there to shoot you down for their ground support aircraft or shoot down your ground support planes is irrelevant. The net effect is somebody gets shot down and then you can do your strategic bombing and ground support.
I still say strategic bombing is either a waste of money or a war crime - take your pick.
In the former, it's far cheaper to knock out masses of soldiers by knocking out their command and control which is best done in a pin point manner. Only idiots would mass their troops given the US ability to use B-52's protected by masses of fighters anyway. Even Saddam didn't do that - he put them in dispersed bunkers. And in Vietnam and Yugoslavia, aerial bombing was almost worthless. So again, either you're fighting idiots or you're fighting an insurgency you can't target "strategically" anyway.
In the latter, you're bombing civilians - a no-no.
When I asked up above what the point of having Marines is, I don't think I was asking about historical incidents, I was asking about the twenty-first century. I'm flabbergasted that anybody could consider Iwo Jima remotely relevant. That was sixty-four years ago, for god's sake, and even at the time merely flagged a corrosive and unhelpful WWII army/navy split that even then gravely handicapped allied action. Today's (American) marines aren't remotely connected with amphibious operations - the seacoast of Fallujah? and insofar as they do anything other than soldier stuff it's that they give a visual cue to America's distinctive culture of Prussian militarism.
Why, now, does America have what are to all intents and purposes two separate armies?
. . . and insofar as they do anything other than soldier stuff it's that they give a visual cue to America's distinctive culture of Prussian militarism.
Hmmm . . . what alternative universe are you referring to? Americans actually have a tradition of anti-militarism, particularly that of the Prussian variety. Indeed, this was one of the primary reasons that, back in 1914-1916, Americans came to favor our traditional rivals/enemies, the British and French, over our traditional friends, the Germans. The toxic combination of Prussian militarism and German nationalism appalled most Americans, who were used to a military that cost little and could be ignored by decent folk.
America’s spasms of imperialism have always been triggered by specific civilian factions temporarily gathering enough political influence to drag the rest of the country off into some adventure or other: the western Warhawks of 1812, slavery expansionists in 1848, anti-imperial nationalists in 1898, anti-communists during the Cold War. The military, invariably under-funded and under-manned, got stuck trying to cope with the conflicts these fits of jingoism triggered.
The virulent nationalism of modern Movement Conservatives is America’s first foray into traditional militarism. Hopefully the last, as well, as their incompetence and failures should disgrace the whole concept for generations to come.
Of course, in the great American tradition, they have started their wars with an inadequate military for their ambitions. Not much of a comfort, but there it is.
Why, now, does America have what are to all intents and purposes two separate armies?
Bureaucratic inertia, really.
The tradtional navy always had its own infantry contingent for the same reason the modern army has its own aerial contingent: it needed one to do its job and didn't want to fight another branch of the service every time the need came up.
The Marines expanded in World War II because, for the first time in human history, a major power was trying to fight a continental-sized war across an ocean instead of a continent. The Marines had the training and interest to do the job correctly. The army did not, proving it at places like Omaha Beach, where inadequate training and support cost many lives.
The navy kept its oversized infantry force after WWII because it convinced the civilian government it might need to refight the Pacific war all over again. The Marines keep turning up in non-amphibious combat zones because if a military command has a large, elite infantry unit to use, it will invaribly use it. Because you never have enough infantry in any war.
The army airborne divisions have a similar history. This is why, when an entire German panzer army invaded Belgium in 1944, the army sent the 101st airborne, the division with the least anti-tank equipment of any American unit in Europe, into Bastogne, directly into the teeth of the German assault.
Comments closed June 23, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
A separate Air Force is NOT a fundamentally misguided idea. The Army should be allowed to fly fixed wing air support, while the Air Force should be responsible for strategic bombing, air transport and air superiority.
The main weakness of today's air force as organized is that they show no interest in doing anything to support ground forces. So take that mission away from them.
Posted by calipygian | June 9, 2008 7:05 PM