Air Power: Where’s the Love?
I enjoyed your August 2009 editorial. It certainly conveys the whining tone of many air power advocates. I suspect that tone will continue at even higher amplitude and pitch as the QDR progresses.
The secretary of defense is trying to rebalance the department to better deal with the continuous force employment of stability and support operations. This rebalancing must come at the expense of expeditionary operations. Expeditionary warfare capabilities are used once a decade but must be responsive and of high quality. The basic issue is balance. A careful review of the potential expeditionary warfare employment opportunities will reveal only about 30 to 35 percent of the force structure needs to be dedicated to this employment mode over the next two decades. Prior to 9/11, 95 percent of the U.S. conventional capability was so dedicated and the Pentagon’s acquisition planning reflected this bias until fiscal 2010.
In a real sense, the tac-air advocates are the victims of their own success in broadly propagating precision strike capability. These initiatives deserve the praise of a grateful nation. At this point, the Air Force will see some real programmatic blows because the extension of some programs is simply unjustified.
The F-35A program will probably be reduced from 1,600 to about 1,200 aircraft. The C-17 program will probably be ended. Given the C-5A/B legacy, this decision would seem to be less justified
The fact that the Air Force has reluctantly but effectively embraced UAVs for reconnaissance, surveillance, and attack missions means that the complexion of the tac-air culture will change substantially over the two decades. The heart of the change is that 250 flight hours per PAA aircraft per year will no longer be necessary to maintain pilot proficiency. The force will eventually fly much less, training will become even more synthetic, and cockpits will be on the ground half-way around the world. Large-scale complex training exercises such as Red Flag will still be necessary and perhaps may grow in frequency and complexity.
The joint force aviation component will continue to provide air superiority in contested air space, persistent surveillance and precision attack throughout the battle space, and air transport within and between theaters. The love is there but the infatuation with precision strike as the major leg upon which the stool of transformation stood has passed. Dominant battle space knowledge met counterinsurgency. In this world, excess precision strike and air superiority capability has become an unaffordable luxury. But we must retain and maintain enough.
Jim O’Brasky
Sent via e-mail
Thank you for your article, “Air Power: Where’s the Love?” I believe many more people need to read it and be informed of the air power issues in the Middle East. It worries me that air support is being blamed for mistakes, and it worries me more that the secretary of defense thinks it is a “vulnerability.”
It seems that the government is concerned more about its own image than our soldiers’ lives.
Isherwood is right in saying that the adverse affects of not having air power would be evident in as little as six months, but it shouldn’t have to come to that. My father is serving in Afghanistan for the next six months. I can’t help but wonder what less air power will mean to him and his men. Will he be one of the lives lost to prove to our government air power is needed? Why must it come to that?
It is all well and good for many people to use the consequences of less air support in Iraq and Afghanistan to prove we do need it. However, I believe the soldiers on the ground and their families left helplessly at home would beg to differ. Who is going to stand up for them and make sure they receive the protection they need, if their own government won’t?
Lauren Nichols
Sent via e-mail
In reference to Defense Watch, “Air Power: Where is the Love?” it sure looks like another war front is being micro managed in Washington again. Those powers-to-be in Washington have little to fear since they can go home at the end of a six-hour day to hot dinner and a warm bed. Those who are doing the dying are dying for nothing but to prop up a shaky government that seldom leaves the capital city.
Civilians die in war. Women and children will be used as shields because Americans will in most cases not fire into a building even if they are taking fire. Americans will be killed in far higher numbers from now on since Americans will not be able to call in air strikes.
Richard Cornell
Des Plaines, Illinois
I retired from the Air Force as a lieutenant colonel in 1988. I am a World War I history buff and follow the Air Force performance in the war on terrorism as well as the F-22 debate.
The Air Force doesn’t deserve any love because its entrenched fighter pilot Mafia just doesn’t get it. The reason that UAVs are preferred is their prolonged loiter at low altitudes provides real-time intel, as well as real time strike. Putting Hellfire missiles on a UAV was brilliant. The Air Force won’t loiter at low altitudes. God forbid, they might get shot at, so UAVs do it for them.
The Air Force is viewed by the Army and Marines as Archers were by Knights in the 15th Century, which is to say fighting out of harms way isn’t manly and doesn’t give you a seat at the table for real war-fighters.
The Air Force continues to marginalize itself by advocating and employing weapons ill-suited for the ongoing war, i.e. fighter jets.
I calculated that diverting the money from 20 F-22s can pay for a large fleet of small war-on-terrorism focused airplanes that can make a difference and dramatically reduce the “adverse effects” of air power, lower the Air Force footprint, reduce the log tail, and bring other unforeseen benefits. And with enlisted piloting, no need for air conditioning, officer’s clubs and golf courses.
My traditional Air Force is first and foremost air superiority; second, strategic bombing; third, ICBMs; fourth, strategic airlift and aerial refueling; fifth, space operations. Everything else — AFSOC and close air support — goes to the Army.
Greg W MoyleSent via e-mail
Army’s Future Combat VehicleRegarding your August 2009 article, “Army’s Next Combat Vehicle: New Beginning or FCS Sequel?” my compliments to Sandra Erwin for exposing the mindset of the various Army leaders and agencies trying to desperately put together the “new combat vehicle” to replace the recently canceled predecessor “Future Combat Systems.” This effort, as FCS before it, is utter foolishness.
The Army has a fleet of 16,000 combat vehicles (Abrams tanks, Bradley and Stryker fighting vehicles, personnel carriers, self propelled artillery). Through modifications, technology upgrades, and selective replacement, it intends to keep this fleet throughout the foreseeable future, perhaps 50 years. It has always been the intent to keep this combat vehicle fleet not only survivable but current with the latest communications and information technology architecture, and it would have remained fully compatible and interoperable with the then-emerging FCS.
The Army also has 12,000 MRAPs and perhaps 400,000 tactical vehicles, from small utility vehicles and cargo trucks to heavy equipment transporters and so on. These also require constant survivability and communications upgrades.
The Army also has aviation assets; a fleet of attack, utility transport, and cargo helicopters that is larger than the air forces of most nations. This fleet has survivability and communications upgrade requirements that are no less than those of the ground combat vehicle fleet.
The Army also has its overall command, control and communications architecture, from the individual soldier to the national command HQ. This architecture ties in all echelons of combat, combat support, combat service support, logistics and transport in general.
Finally, using evolutionary and revolutionary procedures and technology of an ever-expanding and sophisticated communications architecture, the Army ties all of the above to interoperate, seamlessly, with other services and allies.
Now, where did the late FCS fit in? It was a small fleet of combat vehicles that would have, at best, operated alongside the existing combat vehicle fleet but never replacing it. It would have only added to the diversity of systems and the endless list of repair parts and logistical support requirements of units and formations getting stuck with it.
Yet the Army wants a new combat vehicle. What is it, anyway? Is it a tank? A personnel carrier?
Long before the Army started drafting up an operational and organizational plan for this new acquisition, it should have determined specific battlefield deficiencies and shortcomings. Such an analysis might have determined, for example, that we need a lighter or more survivable tank or a faster fighting vehicle or a more accurate artillery system; whatever. That would then lead to a determination of possible remedies; changes in doctrine and training, tactics and techniques, product improvement of existing systems, or perhaps a new system altogether.
Since the Army fully intends to maintain the current fleet, as mentioned earlier, it is evident that the analysis was completed long ago and there is no need for yet another, and in this case, undefined new combat vehicle.
Chester A. Kojro
Rolla, MO
Climate ChangeIn the July 2009 article, “Greener Military Defense Department’s energy strategy debated,” I did not find much debate. This article implies without question the negative nature of climate change is occurring because of humankind’s energy use. Using Sudan as the example of this change only raises my suspicion that the Defense Department is blindly following one-sided evidence of climate change, when if fact Sudan’s problems are much deeper than just resource sharing, but a religious based conflict. The author should consider climate change’s counterpoints such as the earth’s natural cycle between cooling and heating throughout the millennia and spirited journalism’s reports on impending ice ages and heat waves as reported over the past 100 years.
No one can predict future temperature and weather patterns of a hundred years with such a certainty that would warrant the federal government to enact strict regulations on industries and individuals. Therefore, to blanket any article attributing climate change’s effects as solely humankind’s fault should reconsider the accusation and focus adapting energy efficiencies on more firmly grounded reasons such as the benefits of advancing technology and reducing energy use-costs.
Michael A. DeCicco
Springfield, VA
Pentagon at CrossroadsI was disappointed by the article “Future of War” (August 2009). You went to great lengths quoting military experts on strategic issues and then quoted a “military reporter” and a “military analyst” with no military background whatsoever to conclude that we are at a worst “point” in American history. Why not conclude on a positive note by quoting Gen. Mattis or Gen. Petraeus on counterinsurgency victory in Anbar Province or victory in the many thousands more instances when aircraft bombs have hit their intended military targets without killing civilians? By “this point” in your conclusion, didn’t you mean to suggest a point where we have the most technologically-advanced, superbly-trained, adaptable, envied and lethal but humane military in the world? Shouldn’t you also report on how many more victories we have achieved than “limited gains” and failures since 2001?
Richard G. Erickson
Phoenix, AZ
I was stunned by Gen. Mattis’ assertion in the August 2009 article “Future of War” that technological superiority is “overrated.” While agreeing that technological superiority by itself does not guarantee victory, I know of no warrior who would prefer to be technologically inferior.
Ask any American tanker in 1944, whose odds of surviving an encounter with German armor were slim, or any American fighter pilot early in the Pacific — including Marines such as Maj. Lofton Henderson, shot down and killed by a technologically superior Japanese Zero fighter at Midway — whether they thought technological superiority was “overrated.” Ask Iraqi tankers who were slaughtered by American armor they couldn’t even see in 1991 — or who were “plinked” off, one by one, by Air Force planes dropping precision guided bombs on them in the middle of the night — if they thought technological superiority was “overrated.”
It’s like air superiority: easy to take for granted but galling and deadly to deal with the results when you don’t have it. I don’t subscribe to a view that technology will “solve” war or guarantee victory, but the opposite view — that it’s overrated — is equally erroneous.
Dr. Dan Kuehl
National Defense University