Once the position of Commandant of Cadets was filled by a “married” lesbian it was officially “all over”.
Shut it down and recycle it for beer cans.
A real Commandant of Cadets looks like this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Olds
Warriors are no longer wanted. Air Force officers have become vendor managers. Everyone has rank and few have responsibilities. Lots of O-4 and O-5 without any command beneath them at all, many with no direct reports. The feminization of the USAFA is complete. 1976 was a bad year for the AF.
Thanks for posting that link ! I’m AF retired and thoroughly enjoyed reading about BG Olds - great American story.
Definitely a warfighter and not a Pentagon perfumed prince.
“...A real Commandant of Cadets looks like this:” (with a reference to the wiki entry on Robin Olds) [DuncanWaring, post 14]
“Warriors are no longer wanted. Air Force officers have become vendor managers. Everyone has rank and few have responsibilities. Lots of O-4 and O-5 without any command beneath them at all, many with no direct reports...” [CodeToad, post 19]
“Definitely a warfighter and not a Pentagon perfumed prince.” [FreedomPoster, post 38]
If forum members believe that any of the federal service academies have always been changeless bastions of American values and traditions, or repositories of rock-solid conservative values & morals, they ought to delve a bit deeper into the historical record.
The armed services are the servants of the American public, not a foolproof source of “real leaders,” and certainly not rightful masters of society. The Founders were wise enough to insist on civilian control.
In actuality, the academies have always reflected the tenor of the times and policies of political officials. Thomas Jefferson did sign the legislation creating the US Military Academy, but soon after he instituted the requirement that cadets obtain a Congressional appointment: because he feared his political opposition (already well-represented in the nascent officer corps) would gain too much power. Times changed, of course; by the 20th century political favoritism in appointments was perceived to be a problem.
The curriculum at USMA was altered in various ways at varying times; in the 1850s it was lengthened from four years to five to respond to complaints that graduates hadn’t learned enough about foreign affairs.
After its founding in 1954, the Air Force Academy was required to accept Congressional appointees, but found the situation problematic. Some of its leaders led the way in creating formal appointment boards, which (in theory) screened applicants and ranked them, lending an element at least of rationality to the process. Many Congressional Representatives thought it a good idea.
USAFA also led the way in educational specialization and vetting of faculty, pioneering creation of academic majors. USMA and USNA had long resisted those moves, and by the late 1960s found themselves at serious risk of going out. But they grudgingly followed suit.
The emphasis on “warfighting” by the USAFA leadership was not a distillation of modern military wisdom, but an anomaly of the politics of the moment: in the early 1970s, most of the military establishment was desperate to forestall the admission of women and resorted to ever more strenuous measures to keep them out. Graduates found themselves permitted to enter only an ever-shrinking number of career fields - ostensibly oriented toward actual conduct of operations. All the efforts led to a diminution of USAFA’s reputation as an engineering school. Since then, most of the nonsense has gone by the board, and the reputation has been rising again.
I attended USAFA in the early 1970s, arriving a couple months after Robin Olds left his position as Commandant. I used to worship him, as did many cadets, but now I’d have to rate him as a net negative.
I did spend just over 24-1/2 years on active duty, but came away with a dim view of senior leaders: focused on operations to the exclusion of all else, more interested in building an empire of acolytes and in giving cronies a leg up than in understanding the rest of the force. All were pilots, and fighter pilots ruled all of them. They were made successful, and kept that way, by people who were better than they were. Their only true qualification to lead was overweening ego.
Robin Olds may have inspired cadets for a little while, but he was a borderline alcoholic all his life, unruly and frequently a pain in the neck. His career spanned many years but his successes were more limited than his reputation. He tried to keep aircrew who weren’t fighter pilots from getting credit for exploits in Southeast Asia.
After leaving active duty, he refused consistently to pay taxes on income earned from his writings and speeches. And near the very end of his life, he became a public safety hazard on the streets of Steamboat Springs, driving drunk.
Not exactly the epitome of a role model.
During most of my time as a cadet, Hoyt S Vandenberg Jr was the Commandant. His tenure flirted with disaster; for reasons he never made clear, he was deeply suspicious of upperclassmen who weren’t his chosen lackeys, visiting stern discipline on violators of regs and and anybody suspected of rambunctiousness, treating them as subversives forever but one short step from overthrowing his “established order.” He flouted regs and safety rules himself; not a guy who took the slightest effort to lead from the front.
If USAF succeeds at all, I judge that it happens because of the enlisted ranks, and the mid- to lower-ranked officers. Senior officers often gave lip service to notions about taking care of people, but I cannot recall an instance where they walked the talk.
After accumulating experience on bomber aircrews, and at low to middle levels of supervision of technical support organizations, I’m in not impressed with L Todd Wood. He spent a few years breezing around as a pilot, then made a pile on Wall Street, and now eases his conscience by poormouthing service academies and writing fiction. What gives him the notion that spit-and-polish, obsequiousness, and tufthunting turns youngsters into Real Men? It’s quite evident that he never had the slightest notion about the technical support structure that made his privileged life possible. Less than surprising.