Quote Originally Posted by Sargent View Post
Another Marine (then LtCol Phillip Ridderhof) wrote this piece, which was quite good.
...And I thought nobody read those things. Its still LtCol USMC. Heading to MNF-I Strategy and Plans in a month. I've spent the last 3 years on the III MEF staff in Okinawa and I've been in numerous joint and combined exercises. Airpower is great, but the impression I'm getting is that the Air Force considers it a parallel campaign, not an integral part of the overall campaign. In the Tsunami Relief operation of 2005, the JFACC, which remained firmly emplaced in Hawaii, was sure it was in a better positioned to coordinate the helo sorties from a Navy carrier and the daily C-17 flight into the small airfield in Banda Aceh Indonesia--Of course all of the NGOs and other nations with their many types aircraft were doing the daily coordination in a shack at the airfield--it ended up being best run by a South African Air Force BrigGen "on loan" to the UN who wore shorts and flip-flops. Just another case where personal presence and human interaction mattered more than technical capability.
On Dunlap, he wrote a piece with similar sentiments a few months ago in Armed Forces Journal. The key thought that caught my eye was his assertion that the US shouldn't even involve itself in wars that can't be won by precision fires. As if we have the luxury...