Quote Originally Posted by Stevely View Post
Of all the services, ISTM that it is the Air Force and only it whose existence as an independent service is not self-evident. People live on the ground; ships can stay at sea for months, even years. But an airplane can stay aloft for a day at most, usually a span of hours? It is entirely logical then to view airpower as an adjunct to the service that controls where it is based: the Navy at sea (and they kept their air force) and the Army on the land. The Air Force's aggressive budgetary behavior and its attempts to poach broad competencies from other services (air and missile defense; UAVs) could be seen as behavior driven by a sense of existential insecurity.
Let me see if I'm tracking here: the Army is land based and the Navy is sea based, so they should control the airspace above them because airplanes can only stay aloft for short periods of time? Is that the argument? How about a slightly different twist? The air and space (don't forget about that) covers the entire earth, land and sea, and Air Force space assets can stay aloft and functioning indefinitely. So therefore the Army and Navy should be folded into the Air Force! Absurd? Exactly. Just as absurd as the previous argument.

Contrary to the thoughts of your AF major, this isn't something that has any traction. One simply has to read AF doctrine and the musing of its leaders to know this. But let's assume for a moment that this actually occurs. What will become of lethal non-CAS airpower? Surely the Army would focus its budgetary efforts on airpower that supports ground forces. Is it possible that capabilities such as strategic attack and SEAD would take a backseat to such an extent that these capabilities would degrade? Of course there are some that subscribe to the thought that strategic attack is now unnecessary. In the near future, perhaps this argument holds water. However, unless someone has a crystal ball I don't want to take any chances. What if the AF party line is correct that China is actually a threat and we do go to war over Tiawan at some point? Do we really think we're going to land ground troops on the mainland? I have over a billion reasons that say this is a bad idea. So what happens? We use airpower to fight and we simply do not have enough ships to support the forces needed. Moreover, we need centralized control and decentralized execution to be effective if such a scenario does occur.

The Air Force's aggressive budgetary behavior and its attempts to poach broad competencies from other services (air and missile defense; UAVs) could be seen as behavior driven by a sense of existential insecurity.
Of course only the AF pursues its budgetary agenda aggressively! Seriously though, I fail to understand how the UAV issue is "poaching" a broad Army competency. The UAV is essentially a fixed-wing, pilotless, land-based airplane. Doesn't the AF control fixed-wing, piloted, land-based airplanes? Why should the fact that we've removed a pilot matter? It's still an airplane. I didn't really follow this whole fight closely, but I thought the AF only wanted UAV's over a certain height which would still allow infantry units to deploy the smaller UAVs for recon purposes? Maybe I missed something.

Oh, another thought. Instead of arguing like children over who should get what, maybe we should be talking about how we (the AF) can better serve you (the Army). I've never understood the parochial nature of our armed services; maybe its because I'm a retread. Or maybe I'm just a dreamer...