Analyst: Disband the US Air Force??????

[GAP]

Well, that article will sure stir up a hornet's(think insect) nest.

The AF in the  US is big, bloated and has many, many bases that reside in many, many districts, thus the political powers are going to flatten any President that trys to get rid of it....

 

[a_majoor]

Article speaks for itself:

New York Times

Up, Up and Out By PAUL KANE
Silver Spring, Md.

ROBERT GATES, the secretary of defense, has proposed a budget overhaul that will go a long way toward improving our national security, but more can be done to meet his long-term goal: creating the right military for the 21st century.

Not since Henry Stimson’s tenure from 1940 to ’45 has a defense secretary been faced to the same degree with simultaneously fighting a war and carrying out far-reaching reforms. Yet there are three major changes Mr. Gates should add to his agenda, and they deserve President Obama’s support.

First, the Air Force should be eliminated, and its personnel and equipment integrated into the Army, Navy and Marine Corps. Second, the archaic “up or out” military promotion system should be scrapped in favor of a plan that treats service members as real assets. Third, the United States needs a national service program for all young men and women, without any deferments, to increase the quality and size of the pool from which troops are drawn.

At the moment, the Army, Navy and Marine Corps are at war, but the Air Force is not. This is not the fault of the Air Force: it is simply not structured to be in the fights in Iraq and Afghanistan. While Army, Marine and Navy personnel have borne the brunt of deployments, commonly serving multiple tours, the Air Force’s operational tempo remains comparatively comfortable. In 2007, only about 5 percent of the troops in Iraq were airmen.

Yes, air power is a critical component of America’s arsenal. But the Army, Navy and Marines already maintain air wings within their expeditionary units. The Air Force is increasingly a redundancy in structure and spending.

War is no longer made up of set-piece battles between huge armies confronting each other with tanks and airplanes. As we move toward a greater emphasis on rapid-response troops, the Army has tightened its physical fitness regime and the Marine Corps has introduced a physically grueling Combat Fitness Test for all members. Yet an Air Force study last year found that more than half of airmen and women were overweight and 12 percent were obese.

The Air Force is not structured for the current battlefield, but they do many jobs that do not fall under the remit of the Army, Navy or Marines. The Air Force can be restructured, and air assets are going to become increasingly important in all elements to take advantage of the benefitrs of three dimensional thinking (see for example "Task Force Odin" as using air assets exclusively fof the benefit of the Army), so air elements will become more common, and the Air Force "can" be a valuable asset in instructing the other services in how to think in three dimensions and provide "bridges" between the various systems and arms. The final lines about fitness are diversions from the main argument, and simply indicate a cultural shake up is needed inside the Air Force.

Last, Mr. Gates should urge President Obama to confer with Congress and introduce national service at age 18 for all Americans. Under such a system, young people from all classes and backgrounds would either serve in the military or do other essential work like intelligence assessment, conservation, antipoverty projects, educational tutoring, firefighting, policing, border security, disaster relief or care for the elderly. The best qualified would be assigned to the military.

Who is deciding what is "essential work" or where it is going to be done? Conscription is immoral, but this is really going beyond the classic models of conscription and is essentially promoting serfdom. Why compete for labour in the Free Market when you can just arbitrarily assign people to low paying jobs that some politician or political rent seeker deems "essential". Think about the corrupt "earmark" system now dealing in human beings rather than dollars.

The 1.6 million Americans who have served in the current wars represent less than one percent of all citizens. We need to spread the risk and burden of fighting our wars. If more of our national leaders had been in uniform, or knew they might have children at risk in war, their decisions during military confrontations might be better. And this is not just about the struggle against terrorism: would New Orleans reconstruction have lagged so long if we had had a national service program in natural-disaster recovery?

These arguments are non starters; the historical record does not support the idea that national leaders with military experience are better or worse than those without. New Orleans is also a diversion from the argument; the disaster happened because the mayor of New Orleans and then Governor of Louisiana failed to do their jobs when the crisis happened, while the reconstruction has been politicised beyond belief. 

What is being proposed isn't really new, authoritarian governments and ideologies have always lusted after the ability to seize human, financial and physical capital. Obamanism seems most closely related to Mussolini's Corporatism, which was also a big inspiration for FDR's "New Deal", and the history books have a lot to say about the outcomes of those experiments.

edit to add:

The Founding Fathers didn't think of this, but after the Civil War the Congress did address the issue:

http://randommusingsofatormentedmind.blogspot.com/2009/04/are-you-ready-for-involuntary.html

Are You Ready for Involuntary Volunteering?
Re: The President's address, going on right now. Maybe he forgot to read this first:

The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution makes involuntary servitude illegal under any U.S. jurisdiction whether at the hands of the U.S. government or in the private sphere, except as punishment for a crime: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

 

[Greymatters]

Oh, how quickly they forget the importance of air power - and the importance of having standardized practices applied to all persons who fly through the air, repair the machines or support the operations...

 

[OldSolduer]

My tiny itsy bitsy yellow polka dot infantry brain tells me scrapping the Air Force is not a good idea. We still have at least two major powers to worry about to our East, and dragons and bears ain't all that friendly....

 

[CougarKing]

Mr. BadenGuy,

This topic already been discussed to death more than once in threads like the one below.

US analyst: disband the Air Force?

It may be a new article, but perhaps a thread merge should be in order.


--------------------

EDIT: Thanks to the Mods for the merge.

 

[observor 69]

Yes thanks for the merge mods.
It never occurred to me that this was an old topic.
Sheltered life I guess. 

That was a good discussion held in 2007, quite informative.

Now that's the reason I keep coming back to Army,ca.

 

[observor 69]

Some good thoughts on   Break Up the Air Force? A Fight Is On   here:

LettersBreak Up the Air Force? A Fight Is On To the Editor:

“Up, Up and Out,” by Paul Kane (Op-Ed, April 21), recommends disbanding the Air Force because of vague claims that ours is a redundant service and apparently not at war.

Mr. Kane’s conclusion dismisses more than 71 percent of the 330,000 active-duty airmen who, along with their Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve teammates, have deployed since 2001. These warriors directly execute and support combat operations, including in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In that period, 45 airmen have been killed in combat and more than 500 wounded. The Air Force routinely responds rapidly to urgent calls from ground forces in dire circumstances — with the unrivaled combat precision and reliability airmen routinely bring to bear.

Our airmen prove their worth and commitment in distinctive service that prevents war and reduces the cost of conflict in American blood and treasure. We have done so faithfully in every conflict since our inception.

Today’s Air Force brings specific capabilities to the joint fight to defend the homeland, deter aggression, help those in need and defend the freedoms we all enjoy. This resonates with the American people because they recognize the vital importance of Air Force global vigilance, reach and power.

We proudly secure our nation’s skies and our sister services from attack, any time and any place. Airmen will be there when America needs them, and every serving member of the Army, the Navy and the Marines knows it.

(Gen.) Norton A. Schwartz
Air Force Chief of Staff
Washington, April 21, 2009

To the Editor:

The point that Paul Kane makes in advocating disbanding the Air Force and allocating the responsibility to the Army, the Navy and the Marine Corps certainly makes sense in the world we live in at this minute.

Yet the missions of these three services in their air arms is totally tactical. If our only threat in the future is from enemies like the Taliban, all we need is a tactical air arm to deal with terrorists, basically in caves.

But China and Russia would be delighted to have us abandon our strategic air capacity in the form of the F-22 fighters and the aging B-52 strategic bomber force.

In World War II, we had the luxury of time to build the Eighth Air Force to deal with the strategic threat in Europe, and the 20th Air Force to deal with the threat in Japan.

It is unlikely that the luxury of this much time will ever be available again.

William Stephenson
Princeton, N.J., April 21, 2009

•

 

[MarkOttawa]

The debate continues--excerpts from a lengthy Washington Post article (usual copyrigh disclaimer):

Combat Generation: Drone operators climb on winds of change in the Air Force
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/27/AR2010022703754.html?sid=ST2010022801204

The question, scrawled on a Pentagon whiteboard last fall, captured the strange and difficult moment facing the Air Force.

"Why does the country need an independent Air Force?" the senior civilian assistant to Gen. Norton A. Schwartz, the service's chief of staff, had written. For the first time in the 62-year history of the Air Force, the answer isn't entirely clear.

The Air Force's identity crisis is one of many ways that a decade of intense and unrelenting combat is reshaping the U.S. military and redefining the American way of war. The battle against insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq has created an insatiable demand for the once-lowly drone, elevating the importance of the officers who fly them.

These new earthbound aviators are redefining what it means to be a modern air warrior and forcing an emotional debate within the Air Force over the very meaning of valor in combat.

Since its founding, the Air Force has existed primarily to support its daring and chivalrous fighter and bomber pilots. Even as they are being displaced by new technology, these traditional pilots are fighting to retain control over the Air Force and its culture and traditions...

It is the job of Schwartz, the Air Force's top general and a onetime cargo pilot, to mediate between the old and new pilot tribes. In August 2008, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates tapped him to lead the service, the first chief of staff in Air Force history without a fighter or bomber pedigree, reflecting Gates's frustration with the service's old guard.

A quiet and introspective leader, Schwartz has turned his attention to dismantling the Air Force's rigid class system. At the top of the traditional hierarchy are fighter pilots. Beneath them are bomber, tanker and cargo pilots. At the bottom are the officers who keep aircraft flying and satellites orbiting in space.

Schwartz has also pushed to broaden the Air Force's definition of its core missions beyond strategic bombing and control of the skies. New on his list: providing surveillance imagery to ground troops waging counterinsurgencies. Today, the Air Force is flying 40 round-the-clock patrols each day with its Predator and Reaper unmanned planes, an eightfold increase over 2004.

"This is our year to look up and out . . . to ask big questions," Schwartz said in an interview. "Who are we? What are we doing for the nation's defense? . . . Where is this grand institution headed?"..

One answer to those questions is taking shape at Creech Air Force Base, an hour's drive from Las Vegas, where the Air Force launched a trial program to train a first-ever group of officers with no aviation background or training to fly the Predator. Before the trial program, virtually all of the Air Force's Predator and Reaper pilots began their careers flying fighter jets, bombers or cargo aircraft and were temporarily assigned to three-year tours as drone pilots.

By 2007, the Air Force started to realize that it didn't have enough traditional pilots to meet the growing demand from field commanders for Predators and Reapers. When Gates pressed for an expedited program to train officers without an aviation background to fly drones, the Air Force initially resisted. Only a fully trained pilot could be trusted to maneuver an unmanned aircraft and drop bombs, some officials maintained.

At the rate the Air Force was moving, it would have needed a decade to meet battlefield demand. Schwartz changed the policy...

After Creech, the Air Force sent Mathewson to the Pentagon, where he spent most of 2009 drafting the service's road map for developing remotely piloted aircraft through 2047.

The plan that Mathewson produced for the Air Force envisions unmanned planes not only providing surveillance and striking targets, but also hauling cargo around the world. Instead of flying just one plane, a single pilot would probably control as many as four or five planes simultaneously. "If I am doing a surveillance mission where the plane is literally just staring at the ground or at a road for eight or ten hours, I don't need a pilot actively controlling the plane," he said. "So maybe I have a squadron of 40 aircraft but I only have four or five people monitoring them." The Air Force and Mathewson have already demonstrated in training that one pilot can fly as many as four Predators.

Col. David Sullivan, who commanded a Predator squadron at Creech, describes Mathewson as one of the Air Force's "visionaries."

The next generation of unmanned planes is likely to demand even greater changes from the Air Force, Mathewson said. The craft will require new kinds of organizations, new types of bases and new kinds of officers who will never peer through a fighter-jet canopy in search of the enemy. Old notions of valor are likely to disappear...

 

More related stuff at another topic:
http://forums.milnet.ca/forums/threads/66423/post-865696.html#msg865696

Mark
Ottawa

 

[CorporalMajor]

Wasnt the USAF cited as the success factor in Iraq Part 1 and Kosovo?

I remember reading that their Combat Controllers (basically their answer to the Navy SEALs or our Pathfinders) were the first boots on the ground in Afg. 


A  friend of mine, who is Afghanistan-bound himself,  worked with the US Marines, US Army and USAF.  He said that the Airmen were by far the most professional, switched-on troops he dealt with, by far and away. 

Shutting them down doesn't seem wise to me.