Understanding Airmen

[Van]

LawVol, re: psychological projection- oh, as long as everyone agrees that this knife cuts both ways Both sides are flawed, but... the Air Force culture is based on a premise that pilots are a precious commodity, have to treated with kid gloves, and and are above worldly matters. It goes back to the Army Air Corps decision to commission people and train them as pilots rather than take trained officers and teach them to fly. On the other hand, the Army tends to over react, forgetting or ignorant that AF pilots treat their own support officer with as little respect, and that air power is a critical edge in any operation. At the end of the day, we need to put this adolescent silliness to one side and do our jobs. And at the muddy boots level, it isn't perfect, but it is pretty good, it is just these darned GOs.

Yeah, air power saves a lot of U.S. lives (even more than are lost in air to ground fratricides), but air power has yet to go it alone successfully (and will never be able to go it alone in COIN).

Steve & WM, re: the Roman model - I find a lot of value in examples from Roman history (some things to copy, others to avoid). The absence of a open rivalry between different catagories of Roman soldier (as opposed to the levies from the provinces as mentioned earlier) might be significant. A legion commander had artillery (catapults), cavalry, infantry, and various support elements. From what I read (a while back now) I never got a sense of rivalries even between the line infantry and cavalry (pervasive since the Renaissance, but I would suspect older). They were Romans, and it was them against the world. Maybe I missed something, but this state seems desireable. Combined combat power is greater than the sum of the parts, and this petty sniping really doesn't serve U.S. interests.

Re: Medieval stand-off weapons - Did the Welsh archers in their three centuries of insurgency against the English influence antipathy between close combatants and ranged weapon users?