Understanding Airmen

[Van]

In the article, GEN Dunlap says

Airmen shamelessly seek to destroy adversaries with as little risk to themselves... as possible.

All the way back to the Iliad, close combat is considered valient and couragous, and stand-off weapon users (then archers, now airmen) were considered lacking in martial virtue. Note that 'couragous' literally means 'having heart' and 'virtue' comes from vir, Latin for man so means manliness. So, stand-off weapons make the user heartless and unmanly...

Pretty archaic attitude from folks whose basic weapon has a maximum effective range of 500m against point targets and 800m against area targets (M16A2).

I think the central, unspoken issue is that most air force folks do not display the degree of respect for folks who go into close combat that ground forces feel is their due. And possibly, the air force folks are doing this to compensate for their own questions about their virtue when compared to us knuckle-dragging ground pounders.

In the current conflict, we are seeing a similar pattern to early Viet Nam. If the enemy has no strategic infrastructure to bomb, strategic bombing can continue 24-7 without effect. I would argue (as an Army guy) that precision munitions were one of the two things missing from the Douhet/Mitchell vision of air power (the other being information operations) to minimize collateral damage that turns into an IO victory for the opponent. In other words, were are closer now to the capabilities required for strat air to carry the day than ever before, but strat air requires an opponent who has an infrastructure that can be targeted with bombs. The bad guys in Iraq don't have big IED factories, they have dozens of home workshops, they don't have electric power plants discrete from the friendly power plants, their comm system might be a guy on a scooter who looks just like every other scooter in the city from 30,000 ft. In this circumstance, airpower is the big fire base in the sky, with someone on the ground as the forward observer, not an independant, autonomous fleet of airmachines envisioned by Douhet.