AF Secretary and Chief of Staff Dismissed

[Cavguy]

From "Danger Room"

The Air Force's top civilian and uniformed leaders are being booted out of the Pentagon. Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael "Buzz" Moseley has resigned, according to Inside Defense and Air Force Times. Secretary Michael W. Wynne is next.

The move isn't exactly a shocker. The Air Force has come under fire for everything from mishandling nukes to misleading ad campaigns to missing out on the importance of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. For months, the Air Force's leadership has been on the brink of open conflict with Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England. In the halls of the Air Force's chiefs, the talk has been largely about the threats posed by China and a resurgent Russia. Gates wanted the service to actually focus on the wars at hand, in Iraq and Afghanistan. "For much of the past year I’ve been trying to concentrate the minds and energies of the defense establishment on the current needs and current conflicts," he told the Heritage Foundation. "In short, to ensure that all parts of the Defense Department are, in fact, at war."

Last fall, the Pentagon's civilian chiefs shot down an Air Force move to take over almost all of the military's big unmanned aircraft. "There has to be a better way to do this," Moseley complained at the time. Things only got more tense when Gates said that the future of conflict is in small, "asymmetric" wars -- wars in which the Air Force takes a back seat to ground forces. Then Gates noted that the Air Force's most treasured piece of gear, the F-22 stealth fighter, basically has no role in the war on terror. And when a top Air Force general said the service was planning on buying twice as many of the jets -- despite orders from Gates and the rest of the civilian leadership -- he was rebuked for "borderline insubordination."

Relations between Gates and the Air Force chiefs soured further when the Defense Secretary called for more spy drones to be put into the skies above Iraq and Afghanistan. The Air Force complained that all those extra flight hours were turning the robo-plane's remote pilots into virtual "prisoners." Gates then publicly chastised the service during the drone build-up, comparing it to "pulling teeth."

The scrapes harmed the service's image in Congress, and with the public. And so the Air Force launched an $81 million marketing effort to demonstrate its relevance in today's conflicts. Outside analysts wondered whether such a push was in violation of American anti-propaganda laws -- especially after one of the spots was found be be "misleading."

But, according to Air Force Times, "the last straw appears to be a [damning] report on nuclear weapons handling... [that] critical report convinced Gates that changes must be made."

According to the report, "the service mistakenly shipped four ballistic missile detonators -- instead of helicopter batteries -- to Taiwan," Inside Defense reports. "The incident occurred three years ago, but was discovered in March."

Last fall, the Air Force's 5th Bomb Wing lost track of six nuclear warheads. Then, in mid-May, the service flunked a nuclear surety inspection, when security personnel couldn't even be bothered to stop playing video games on their cell phones. Now, it looks like Moseley and Wynne has some serious time to play with, themselves.

More to come...

Gates is such a breath of fresh air after Rumsfeld. He did something similar after Walter Reed. Good for him. We have little need for "nice guy" leaders - we need people who engender results.