Ousted Air Force chief cites dissension in Pentagon

[wm]

It would be good to remind everybody, I think, that 5 of the 6 examples of tactical excellence listed above were displayed by the side that eventually lost the war. And even Hannibal's defeat at Zama came at the end of a long and desperate war that left him bereft of any meaningful tactical, operational, or strategic choices.

More important, the point is that combined arms wins battles. I don't believe in the ultimate demise of the manned air superiority fighter any more than I believe in the obsolescence of the tank, which has been on its death-bed since at least 1973. Cheap, man-packed AT missles were supposed to make it go the way of the buffalo, but it hasn't happened yet. Just as the Israelis learned (very quickly) in 1973, proper use of the supporting arms restored the utility of armor. I believe that similar intelligent development of technology and tactics will allow the fighter to retain a useful - if not dominant - place on the battlefield.

I'm no air historian, but haven't folks been predicitng the end of the fighter for four decades or so? Or has it been longer? I seem to remember the old mantra "the bomber will always get through". And didn't we have to re-install machine guns on fighters in the early days of Vietnam when we discovered that air-to-air missles hadn't actually ended the dogfight?

I would not disagree with anything said above. However, it is instructive to ask why the Carthaginians, English, Germans, and Egyptians ended up losing. Part of my point was that we are making a mistake to look for a silver bullet from technology. Another part was that having great machines is not much use without having well-trained people to use them and quality leaders to direct their use. And, finally, the logistics support for any military must be robust enough to meet the demands of combat in a timely manner. Without all of the above, one may view any armed force and ask Pinkley's great question from The Dirty Dozen: "Very pretty Colonel, but can they fight?"

[Ron Humphrey]

I would not disagree with anything said above. However, it is instructive to ask why the Carthaginians, English, Germans, and Egyptians ended up losing. Part of my point was that we are making a mistake to look for a silver bullet from technology. Another part was that having great machines is not much use without having well-trained people to use them and quality leaders to direct their use. And, finally, the logidstics support for any military must be robust enough to meet the demands of combat in a timely manner. Without all of the above, one may view any armed force and ask Pinkley's great question from The Dirty Dozen: "Very pretty Colonel, but can they fight?"

The more High tech you get the more the enemy will focus on how to unplug, unload, undo what youve done. Their not gonna try to compete, their focused on trying to win (no matter what). We do seem unbelievably able to forget all about that whenever we get on a WOW tech trip.

We all have those assigned to work on our vehicles, the better the tools we provide them with the more effective they can be. The problem is too often it seems that one side with less tools is at least using mechanics while the other side with all the newest gadgetry is asking its cooks to fix the truck.

(By the way not a slam on cooks just a somewhat screwy analogy. )