OK, I have read this thread from end to end.

Certainly the hang-up or beef many of us have (those of us in the dirt world) is the AF crying for funding after years of watching them have facilities worlds beyond the other services. I think the other services see the Air Force as having forgotten that it is in the military and the mission, not people, come first.

The idea of a limited capability aircraft for COIN is outstanding. An aircraft along the lines of an OV-10 would be very useful. As you stand up the indigenous forces of the host nation, you could turn those aircraft over to them and buy new ones for yourself with the latest avionics/electronics, at a fraction of the cost of a new fighter jet. Wikipedia has some descriptions of what the original OV-10 design specs were to be and I think that would be an interesting aircraft. Perhaps a biplane to fit the 20 foot wingspan?

You have to wonder what we were thinking with F15/F16s providing aerial reconnaissance over Iraq and Afghanistan. We wanted the observation but the tradeoff of wear and tear on the airframes is questionable.

The Air Force likes to talk about having been on a war-time footing since Desert Storm. Well, we certainly didn't hear that back in the 1990s. Perhaps if they had mentioned it, they could have gotten new fighter aircraft (same models, just newer) through Congress. I suspect they didn't want to raise the issue too loudly because it would hurt recruiting and support for newer models of aircraft. Of course, as many here have mentioned, war-time footing for the Air Force (when not in an actual aircraft) means the danger of intermittent satellite TV...

We won WWII not by having the best stuff but having the most of pretty good stuff. Since the Air Force pilots are top notch, how about getting more 'good enough' birds, like upgraded F15/16 and having the ability to flood the airspace with more of them. The sheer numbers and their pilot's ability would outweigh the lack of technical uber-superiority.

Of course, to keep the cost of all these extra pilots down, we might have to have warrant officers flying them - not sure if AF could stomach that - institutional prejudice.

Perhaps the real beef here is the appearance (and likely just appearance) that the AF is much more interested in protecting it's sexy image of flying off in the wild blue yonder. Unmanned aircraft are not sexy. I truly think any officer could be trained to make the decision of shooting/not shooting, thus killing the AF hangup of having flight-qualified officers commanding armed UAVs. But the AF has a strange class/caste system where the flight-rated folks dominate and are treated differently. This could be a real upset to the culture. The AF will reply that the Army Chief of Staff and the key general officer commands only comes from the combat arms branches. True, but for the most part, in the Army, unless you are a commander, you really are not that special unless you have a lot of rank. In the AF, a rated officer is operating in a different sphere than his non-rated counterparts (not peers - they aren't).

I don't think the AF is going out of business. I do believe in the need for air superiority. I just think the AF doesn't have all its priorities in proper alignment and the very culture of the AF will have to change to properly affect this.

We need limited numbers of air superiority frames, and lots of drones for ISR and bombing. We might have to get by on simpler airframes, but we could use more of them. The AF might need warrants. Maybe they fly the drones.

I just hope the next administration and AF secretary take a realistic approach to this mess.

Tankersteve