Abolish the Air Force

[Norfolk]

Tater's Guide to Airpower Remember I am just the messenger.

http://www.maxwell.af.mil/au/aunews/...ide_2003V2.pdf

And the Air Force makes it publicly available on-line at Maxwell...hmmm. Well, I guess all it needs is an authorization letter attached, and it's official Air Force Doctrine...hehe

[120mm]

Much agreed 120mm. Six months or more of on-the-ground pain, suffering, fighting, losses, and slowly achieving an understanding with the local population by the Army or the Marines, and one bad Air Force CAS strike undoes it all in an instant. A great way to conduct COIN.

I very much hold to the view that CAS is a necessary function for the Army (just as it is for the Marines), and therefore its should devolve in its entirety from the Air Force to the Army. Let the Air Force concentrate on what it does better than anyone else - Air Superiority, Strategic Aerospace Defence, Strategic and Tactical Bombing, etc.

Strategic Airlift is debatable, and may be better off with the Army than the Air Force. Unless of course, the Air Force discerns a Navy-like requirement for ground forces of its own to seize and hold bases (as well as a strategic/operational role for the Airborne - as it has with the Army, just as the Marines have with amphibious operations), in which case the Airborne theoretically might be better suited to Air Force rather than Army requirements, and then Strategic Airlift may be better off with the Air Force.

I'm not in favour of abolishing the Air Force, but I do think that if the functions and roles of the Air Force were not substantially revised along the lines of what I have written here, it would have been better for the Air Force to have remained a part of the Army in the first place.

I am very much opposed to allowing the Army to control StratAirLift. As a Terminal Ops Officer, I've had to expend enormous amount of energy talking Army GOs out of trying to "take control" of StratAirLift assets, rather than accepting the Air Force's asset availability schedules.

The Army's corporate culture which "control assets" conflicts directly with the Air Forces corporate culture which "services customers". And the Air Force is absolutely correct in this particular issue.

[carl]

The primary purpose of our Air Force is to keep the other guys air force off our backs. The best way to do this is to destroy the other guys air force (profound, ain't I). The Air Force is best suited for this because it is human nature to oppose your opposite number. To very broadly generalize, the Army thinks about destroying opposing armies, as do the Marines and the Navy thinks about destroying other Navies. These services would tend to think about destroying opposing air forces only to the point where they wouldn't hinder their eliminating the opposing navy or army.

Our Air Force is the only service that thinks about destroying the opposing air force more than anything else. Since they think about it more than anybody else they will probably be better at it and will develop equipment better suited to the task. Now this can be a disadvantage at times when there is no opposing air force. But that disadvantage, in my view, is outweighed by the advantage of having an Air Force that can expediently destroy its opposition when and if the time comes.

But sometimes the USAF is its own worst enemy; consider this story from Stars and Stripes.


U.S. forces destroy targets near base in Iraq

By Erik Slavin, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Wednesday, November 14, 2007

COMBAT OUTPOST CAHILL, Iraq — A barrage of heavy bombs and rockets obliterated five homes and targets as close as 500 yards from Combat Outpost Cahill shortly after midnight Monday.

A B-1 bomber dropped 2,000-pound bombs on some structures and four 500-pound bombs on another, 3rd Infantry Division soldiers said. A Multiple Launch Rocket System took out other targets, they added.

The abandoned homes and an observation tower were being used to stage attacks and watch Cahill, say soldiers from Company B, 1st Battalion, 15th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade.

“In three months, we had three complex attacks … and they were getting progressively longer,” said Sgt. Paul Bates, a forward observer from Knoxville, Tenn.

The last such attack on the outpost came Nov. 6. Another attack came a month ago, when insurgent fire put a hole through an Apache helicopter rotor and forced an emergency landing, said the Company B commander, Capt. Richard Thompson.

Soldiers searched houses in the nearby area along the Tigris River and found shell casings, personal effects and other evidence of activity, but not permanent residence, Bates said.

They also used surveillance from unmanned aerial vehicles and Iraqi sources to choose targets before seeking mission approval, he said.

Before the bombing, soldiers checked the homes and nearby area to make sure no one was in the blast zone, Bates said.

The attacks destroyed both abandoned homes and a lookout tower at five target locations. A sixth target was dropped because it was within 15 feet of a $12,000 pumping station providing water to nearby Salman Pak, a city of roughly 25,000 people.

The bombing’s proximity to the base shook walls at Combat Outpost Cahill, but did no damage to the base.

Following the bombing, Cahill’s soldiers said they hoped the big bomb drop sent a message.

“It should have a significant effect on the bad guys when they see something like that,” Thompson said.


There may be a very valid military reason a B-1 was used to demolish some abandoned buildings instead of a bulldozer, but to a civilian like me it looks like very expensive make work. And that makes the Air Force look sort of pathetic, silly even. That makes it hard for people to spend the money that will be needed to enable the Air Force to do its job in the next war comin'.

[Rob Thornton]

There may be a very valid military reason a B-1 was used to demolish some abandoned buildings instead of a bulldozer, but to a civilian like me it looks like very expensive make work. And that makes the Air Force look sort of pathetic, silly even. That makes it hard for people to spend the money that will be needed to enable the Air Force to do its job in the next war comin'.

I can agree that having some big D9 dozers are real handy at reducing built up terrain are real handy, but they are often hard to come by because they are elsewhere in theater, cannot be transported out to site, or the environment is non-permissive and forces cannot be spared to secure them or their movement- having been on the wanting end of heavy equipment to do things for me - you might end up at the back of a long line. Contracting locals might be an option - provided they will come to your neighborhood - even if the money is good, it may not be enough to convince them their will be no reprisals.

I suppose sappers might be employed - but then your going to get allot of rubble that might be just as well used as the original structures - but you'll have some happy sappers

On the use of air and rocket delivered munitions - I think there are some benefits that go beyond straight justification of support:

1) You demonstrate a capability that nobody else possesses to your enemies, friends and uncommitted neighbors that hopefully provides a perception that with little coordination or risk to the good guys or civilians, you can reach out and deny the enemy cover and concealment and make another attack on the COP/FOB a much riskier venture.

2) Air ground coordination takes practice for when you may really need it - if we were not doing under those conditions, we'd still need to drop real bombs (or inert blue ones) somewhere to maintain that proficiency for when we do need it.

I think in this case we got a two-fer.

I agree with your rational as to why we need an Air Force, but as a typical knuckle dragger I'd like to expand it -

Nobody will think about "Air Superiority" quite like an Air Force - so not just about destroying the other guy's AF, but denying the other guy air superiority, and providing the CDR (be they a Regional COCOM, JTF, sub-unified command type, etc.) the advantages and options that gaining and retaining air superiority can provide. The trick is to get everybody to understand the problem and conditions at hand in order to make the most of resources available.

Best Regards, Rob

[slapout9]

In general I think the terms Army,Navy,Air Force are obsolete. I think it was CavGuy that said it best or rather our Constitution said it. We need a National guard with air,land,coastal and space branches deigned to work together. And we need an International guard again with an air,land,sea,space branches designed to work together. Systems designed to accomplish a purpose not organizations dedicated to operate in one of the specific elements of our earth. For human life to exist we need air, land and sea and that is how nature works. Wouldn't we be better off if this was our model?? Nature is pretty smart and so were the guys that wrote the Constitution.

[VMI_Marine]

Our nation's very survival depends on the existence of the Corps (if you don't know what I am talking about ask a Marine, they will tell you) so I guess they are in too...

OK, I'll bite. How do you justify this statement? Because I see absolutely no factual basis for it.

You know, I just finished LTC Nagl's book, and although one of the main thrusts is that the British military's historical legacy made them better able to adapt to COIN in Malaya, there was something near the end of the book that could be easily overlooked. LTC Nagl also pointed out that the British were decidedly not as successful as the United States at the large scale conventional warfare of the two world wars. I'm not just talking from a matter of pure logistics, but tactically they did not perform as well as the US Army in conventional ground combat, for some of the same reasons that they later performed well in Malaya.

I believe that some of his conclusions could be applied, after a fashion, to the differences between the Marine Corps and the Air Force. The Marine Corps has a history of being intellectually agile, and well suited to small wars and expeditionary operations. However, if the Red Army had ever stormed the Fulda Gap, our utility would have been decidedly limited. The Air Force would have been essential to winning that one. There are still plenty of scenarios that call for a strong Air Force, enough that throwing them away because of their lack of relevance to a COIN fight would be extremely short-sighted.

[Ender]

There is a great deal that has been added over the last few days that has "formed" my thinking a bit more (which is great). I have to admit a number of these more recent posts have given me a great deal to think about. I will abate my seeming assault on all things Blue and concede that there are any number of things official and unofficial that the USAF brings to the fight (here we go) that no one else can. (Give me a sec...)

I have lived in a pretty Air Force centric part of the world for awhile now and it has not been hard of late, to find an airman (of any rank or rate) around here who has had any difficulty telling me why I (we) need them. I have to admit most of what they have said and what has been posted here re: strategic deterrent, evils of force parity, ICBM's, space, the "long bomb" etc... is pretty convincing. But what is most convincing for me and what has sealed it over the last couple days is not so much what I have been told, but what I haven't. Ask a senior air force person questions about popular subjects long enough and there is just a certain point where the conversation has to end because they really can't talk about the very basics of what they do. I now loosely understand that the USAF has their hands in many (important and vital) pies that are not fit for public (or my specific) consumption and just because I don't either like, understand or appreciate the importance of those "pies" does not mean we should take an axe to one of our own.

Slapout, your most recent post and the one before it "Tater's Guide" really clarified the issue for me, Carl you had a major impact as well. We are really all in this together, no one of us wants to win this (ALL) more than the other. The debate for me intellectually when distilled, is not whether I think the USAF should really be abolished (I don't) but much deeper than that, whether or not our entire force structure is aligned in a manner that is oriented towards flexible, efficient lethality. Are the branches, all of them, defunct? By that I mean do we really need to divide here and there, on every little nickel and dime, issue, program and initiative? We have enough enemies on the outside without creating them on the inside and a Divided We Stand, United We Fall DoD just does not make sense to me. What does make sense though is to have a completely functional, completely flexible unified fighting force...standardize all of the gear, (AND I MEAN EVERYTHING) so that any one single fighting component is interchangeable with any other comparable platform anywhere across the spectrum. I am thinking of a model "parallel" to the US Army's Stryker vehicle concept but only on a macro scale an not just with gear and guns but also and more importantly with applications and capabilities. Make our systems stackable and train everyone to a common standard under a unified banner. Sit everyone down and make them sing the same music. Make sure no one other team member is playing a tune that any other team member can not either play himself or appreciate and there will be a serious decline in not only our blue on blue but also our collateral damage as well. Team A vs Team B bull#### sucks and I know it as well as anyone.

All of my studies outside of martial academia end up revolving around two "roles," domestic and foreign policies. In essence we ideally (try to) handle those outside differently than we do those inside (neither better nor worse, just differently.) The questions a National Defense Force (of sorts) with separate foreign and domestic arms and applications raise a few questions for me:
-How would we strip our separate identities without actually stripping our separate identities?
-How would we reconfigure everything to a semi standardized model, divide the wealth so to speak to one mouth and still maintain that capitalist competitive edge while not looking like the socialist bastards we just beat? If any bunch is the anti individualist it is the DoD and that is okay...
-Slapout is right, nature is pretty friggin infinitely smart, and elegantly simple too. Why can't we combine the basics (martial nature) with technology (martial nurture) and simplify everything? My junior read on the favored passtime of the typically elderly, experienced and powerful, warfare- with most of us serving pawn to the General participant, is one that holds strategy, operations and tactics, at their core have remained relatively unchanged over the centuries.

Information Age or not, we are not so different or developed now than our ancestors were then. Until someone can conclusively tell me how they did certain things back in the day (like build the pyramids etc..) my "We're So Cool and sooo Smart Jury" is still out. In almost every aspect the essence is still the same but our application, or all of the details have shifted over the years. An example: Our warrior forbears studied the hunting methods and techniques of falcons as well as lions (two prime predator examples that may have some bearing to this current topic) as much then as we study them now and while our specific purposes for doing so were not completely parallel, they are strikingly similar. Are we forsaking the "old" for the "new" and how do we marry those worlds without either further entrenching ourselves in an antiquated force structure model ORRRR...losing our traditions and values by forgetting where we come from, what we have been through (collectively and individually) and why all that matters and makes us right at the end of the day?

(As an aside: The only way I would be okay with realizing any of the scandalous thoughts of standardization I have in my head now would be, if by scrapping even the USMC, we were able to at least keep all of and only the Marine drill instructors and Boot Camp experiences- call everyone whatever you want after the fact but at least they would start off on the right foot! )

[Ender]

OK, I'll bite. How do you justify this statement?

I have recently been accused of indulging in pith, vinegar and general snarkiness of which I am wholly and completely guilty (mea culpa) so I am going to try to pitch softly here.

I am going to assume from your handle and first posting that you are still a Marine in the making... (if this is untrue forgive me for the ASS-U-ME sequence) If AFTER serving as a Fleet Marine you would like me to justify the statement for you I would more than happy to revisit the topic and detail, at great length and ad nauseum anything you may not have learned. If my assumption is correct and you are a future Marine you will learn the answer well enough without my help.

If I have read you wrong, and you are in fact an active duty, or prior service Marine who is posting from or around VMI my reply is: How well do you know your Marine Corps history? Wars are, in function a series of struggles and conflicts (read: BATTLES.) It is my humble opinion that it really helps (if you want to win) that you need to win these battles in order to win the war. Believe it or not, but the fate of our nation, our reality as we know it today, is really, truly, honest to God only what it is because of a couple of wars and a few decisive battles. A handful of those critical struggles were fought and solely won by U.S. Marines. Fact. Take away the Corps, and I know this is a theoretical exercise here, but I would argue the very face of the world would be different than it is now...eg: the Kaiser would have won and who knows what then would have become of young Adolph, the Jews, Israel or any other number of associated factors that derived from the just First World War setting the stage it did... Want to fast forward? Let's not forget the whole Pacific Theater thing and the Japanese, that would be what without the Marines? Beating Germany without simultaneously (or as closed to) taking the Japanese tiger out would have only been a partial beating and a war undone...

I was not saying, in that reference, that we owe our singular existence to the efforts of ONLY the USMC. The comment you bit upon was pushed with the spirit of brevity and my not wanting to (appear to be) defend(ing) that which I thought (and still think) needs no defense. If you are not satisfied, fall into another category or would like elaboration I would be happy to tell you why I think we owe our lives to the Marines in another thread or offline.

Best

[carl]

On the use of air and rocket delivered munitions - I think there are some benefits that go beyond straight justification of support:

Ahhh Soo.

Thank you for the explanation Rob. The training benefits sorta occurred to me but the rest I never would have thought of.

Stars and Stripes should add a paragraph explaining these things so those of us not fully knowledgeable (ignorant) will understand.

[Cavguy]

Ahhh Soo.

Thank you for the explanation Rob. The training benefits sorta occurred to me but the rest I never would have thought of.

Stars and Stripes should add a paragraph explaining these things so those of us not fully knowledgeable (ignorant) will understand.

Rob fleshed out my opinion somewhat, having employed ordnance to send a message as well as create a tactical effect.

That said, awfully expensive way to do it. $2 mil of ordnance for $50k of mudbrick.

We used dozers to clear the rubble around the Government Center in Ramadi. But we also cratered a dirt causeway. The first 1000lb missed, the second missed, and finally they dropped a 2000lb bomb that did the trick. They were using LGB's rather than JDAM's, though.

[Abu Suleyman]

I have said this before. With our current technology there is nothing that cannot be hit with a guided missile! Long range,medium range or short range. Once you have this capability it doesn't make any sense to send in aircraft for so called strike missions. The delivery system does not need to penetrate enemy air space only the warhead needs to do this. Missiles are cheaper and better because you never have to have a return to base capability. One way delivery is all you need.

The Pershing II missile could hit a target the size of a tractor trailer truck since the mid 1970's within it's 1500 mile range. All this without GPS satellites. But we gave it away as part of the SALT 2 treaty. But it was an Army Missile and very strong threat to the Air Force so we had to get rid of it....very bad move on our part.

This is actually a far more accurate assessment of an existential threat to the Air Force, which is unmanned vehicles. You could look at the Pershing missle as a huge unmanned Kamikaze plane. Now we have unmanned "U-2's" (I know they aren't actually U-2's). Soon we will likely have unmanned fighters.

The Air Force made a lot of sense when it took a large training and support staff to operate in the air, because people's lives were at risk. Soon a fighter or bomber may just be another piece of expendable equipment. Then less time and care will likely be taken in the training of those pilots, who are increasingly young enlisted soldiers instead of hundreds of hours of flight time Academy officers. When that happens the Air Force will face an existential threat, and it knows it. That is why it is trying to consolidate all high flying UAV's under its command, and that unsuccessfully. It wants to ensure a long term raison d'etre.

Nonetheless, this is the Small Wars Council, and not the Grand Strategy Council. We need to remember that we are currently fighting a very small war, in the scheme of things. Restructuring our entire military around a small war would be very unwise. And, as long as there are aerial threats, the Air Force remains important.

[VMI_Marine]

I have recently been accused of indulging in pith, vinegar and general snarkiness of which I am wholly and completely guilty (mea culpa) so I am going to try to pitch softly here.

Unlike an ideal professional discussion, we can't hold these over beers, so some snarkiness is needed, IMO, to keep it from getting too dry and haughty.

Believe it or not, but the fate of our nation, our reality as we know it today, is really, truly, honest to God only what it is because of a couple of wars and a few decisive battles. A handful of those critical struggles were fought and solely won by U.S. Marines. Fact.

Well, your first assumption was wrong, but no offense taken. I am an active duty Marine, on my 5th deployment to the CENTCOM AOR since 2003. I simply don't buy the line that the Marine Corps is essential to national survival. I'm as proud of my chosen branch of service as the next Marine, but I think we have a tendency to delude ourselves and exaggerate our own "greatness". We've had some great tactical and operational victories, but there have been very few instances where the Marine Corps was strategically decisive in American history. As a retired SgtMaj at the Institute once put it, "America doesn't need a Marine Corps, America wants a Marine Corps." I'd ask you to expound on your statements, but I think we've hijacked this thread enough.

[Ender]

And, as long as there are aerial threats, the Air Force remains important.

I agree and am more sure of it now than I was a week ago. The F-22/35 combo may both appear to be very pricey but what they offer in terms of apparent effectiveness far outweigh their cost.

Nonetheless, this is the Small Wars Council, and not the Grand Strategy Council. We need to remember that we are currently fighting a very small war, in the scheme of things. Restructuring our entire military around a small war would be very unwise.

Some would say Grand Strategy is but a series of Small Wars nonetheless, I agree if we were to restructure our entire force composition only on the basis of this apparent "small war, in the scheme of things," we would be very unwise. If however, this Small War were not so small, and if in the scheme of things, these things: Small Wars, Big Wars and the varying shades of strategy that float in between both, were not separate entities but in fact directly diluted with one another I would say perhaps we could (and should) armchair this one. What does theory cost here? No one loses anything with bad ideas and we stand to gain so much with fresh, good ones.

China is gonna be big and it appears as though their two new national sports are cyber warfare and reverse engineering...and where the hell is Russia going these days? These are just a few of my favorite things that make me remember Great Big Wars have started from much smaller factors than we are talking about now. (Where's the Archduke FF when you need him?)

Nothing should be sacred. Nothing should be safe and nothing should be off the table as it were. Not any of our branches, doctrines, not the Air Force or the Marines, not COIN or conventional warfare...We should be mentally laying in the weeds on everything we think and do if we seriously want to poise ourselves for success in the next 100 years. The more lines we draw in the sand, the more we define, the more there is that separates this from that, only means we are the more fractured and divided and harder to unite for it. I think it is our business to make sure these wars stay small and that they are fought and won on our terms if we want to avoid (or fight?) the big ones on our terms. If the whole WWIII, Apocalypse as We Know it thingy didnt look so, I don't know, POSSIBLE these days I would say let's march on. If avoiding that reality requires (theoretically) smashing the status quo and REALLY thinking outside the box then lets do it... we live in a reality where a soldier and a sailor (for example) with the same jobs, could not talk to one another, face to face, about their jobs without the need of a translator or some serious time and patience. How does that work out on the radio when your encryption is one second off (and slipping), 50 miles away and under fire? This is not a "Blue Deck vs. Green Floor" debate...

We need to face it. This is a brand new world and the game is changing faster than we are. Not one of us has a handle on this and as a very junior member of this community who has (at least) another 40 good years to give I have to admit that when I look at the threats I am going to have to face in my distant career and then compare it to the force structure many "wiser and older" are handing me to combat those same threats I only see disaster. If it were not for the fact that we are now playing for very serious stakes (Read: ALL IN) these future conditions would make me really not wanna play. There is a great big thundercloud out there on the horizon gentlemen and you smell it as well as I do or we would not be here.

I had not posted on here for some time because I thought that more would be served (on both sides) by my listening and learning instead of talking and teaching but that does not mean I haven't been here. After months of ah... "lurking" I am convinced, more than ever of two things. The first is that SWC is one the hottest and most relevant things going and the second is it seems as though we tend to confuse massive educations, egos, or perceived age and experience with actual experience, or serious practical contribution to the discussion of "fighting small wars." I am all for sharing ideas and giving equal weight to all but certain concepts have to take precedence. I think the higher up we go, the more impressed we become with minutiae. I agree, "God is in the details" but our capacity to humanly process and rationalize even a fraction of the information we have been handed in the last 200 years or so has not increased nearly as quickly as the data has. I will say it again, we need to go back to basics. There are laws, they are written in blood and I firmly believe a great number of us, myself included have forsaken some of those basic laws for the complexly sexy. Carving a niche and becoming a specialist may ensure job/contract security but the corporate mindset has to stop when it comes to National Defense.

Not one thing is separate from the other here and there are no boxes. I would guess that there is only one degree of separation between any one of our Small War concepts and any of the Grand Strategy ah.."concepts." <-(my addition and how many can there be and if we have more than one "Grand Strategy" can we please make the G lower case or call them Grand Strategies??)

Signed,

Not On the NSC (Yet)

[Ender]

Unlike an ideal professional discussion, we can't hold these over beers, so some snarkiness is needed, IMO, to keep it from getting too dry and haughty.

Well said, top to bottom.

Well, your first assumption was wrong, but no offense taken.

I knew I was doomed as soon as "assume" hit my screen.

I'm as proud of my chosen branch of service as the next Marine, but I think we have a tendency to delude ourselves and exaggerate our own "greatness."

Boasting does not help and I agree there is a great bit more Yut with the Corps than there needs to be.

We've had some great tactical and operational victories, but there have been very few instances where the Marine Corps was strategically decisive in American history.

Agreed, but how many times does one have to be singularly, strategically decisive before you become vital?

As a retired SgtMaj at the Institute once put it, "America doesn't need a Marine Corps, America wants a Marine Corps." I'd ask you to expound on your statements, but I think we've hijacked this thread enough.

I would consider this more of an indictment on a me-centered "I want what I want, forget what I need generation" and an astute sociological compliment to the Corps than a slam on our viability. Sounds like the SMaj knew his audience... I agree on the digression and our need to come back to center but as First Digressor (er?) I would be more than willing to elaborate some of my opinions for you offline. I think I can back this one up historically and would welcome getting slapped down if I can't... I have to confess many of my opinions re: this subject center on not what happened, but what almost happened or the "near misses" so at the end of the day your conversion to my point of view would be largely dependent on accepting certain (factually based) hypotheticals and us running from there...