Posted on 06/06/2008 10:58:17 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
By Bob Deans
WASHINGTON BUREAU
Saturday, June 07, 2008
WASHINGTON — In April, Defense Secretary Robert Gates traveled to Maxwell Air Force Base near Montgomery, Ala., to address an elite group of majors and colonels attending the Air War College in preparation for promotions to command positions.
For months, Gates had been at odds with Secretary of the Air Force Michael Wynne and Gen. Michael Moseley, the Air Force chief of staff, over how to increase the use of unmanned aerial vehicles to spy on insurgents and monitor roadside bomb sites in Iraq.
The Air Force brass, Gates confided, had been dragging its feet.
"I've been wrestling for months to get more intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets into the theater," Gates told the war college students. "Because people were stuck in old ways of doing business, it's been like pulling teeth."
On Thursday, Gates fired Wynne and Moseley, saying that inspections after two embarrassing nuclear arms mistakes in the past year revealed systemic weaknesses in how the Air Force takes care of the country's most dangerous weapons.
Behind the firings, however, lay a more fundamental battle over the future of the Air Force, service officers and analysts said, and a broader divide between a service set up to defend the country against a Cold War threat and a White House bent on defeating terror groups.
"There was a deep cultural rift between the U.S. Air Force and the office of the secretary of defense throughout the Bush presidency," said Loren Thompson, a defense analyst with the Lexington Institute, a security policy think tank in Arlington, Va.
"The Bush administration was determined to transform the military into an information-age military, and it defined that goal in terms that didn't have much to do with the goals of the U.S. Air Force," Thompson said. "As a result, year after year there were arguments."
Moseley and Wynne, by some lights, represented an old guard that fought for expensive manned aircraft like the $142 million F-22 fighter jet. Some officials said the two leaders were perceived to be slow to make the transformational changes Gates envisioned to create an Air Force that would rely less on pilots and more on technology to fulfill a mission centered on intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.
"It wasn't just the nuke issue," said a senior Air Force officer.
Gates is likely to recommend to President Bush that he nominate a former Air Force executive, Michael Donley, to the service's top civilian post, a senior defense official said Friday. Donley, who was acting secretary of the Air Force for seven months in 1993 and served as the service's top financial officer from 1989 to 1993, would replace Wynne.
Additional material from The Associated Press.
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When Clinton and Gore came along, they cashed in on the "peace dividend" even more, and through Gore's "reinventing government" campaign, military infrastructure diminished even further as more and more civilian managers took over critical command billets, which was then exasperated by the Clinton Administration's insistence that the military try to operate exactly like a business, counting widgets, implementing TQL, and treating combat forces like "customers" rather than combat forces.
The Air Force is now reaping what it helped sow when it enthusiastically embraced the new DOD way of doing business in the 1990s.
I believe that we have the best troops and junior leaders in the services that we had for generations and they really shone during these latest wars. Their leadership and the service cultures are miserably out of sync with them and the future needs of our country.
So now the question is, how do we get the services - all of them - back on track?
More bang for the buck is good. However automated systems are not as flexible as a manned aircraft. UAVs take a lot of development and time.
“So now the question is, how do we get the services - all of them - back on track? “
IMO what we are seeing now is a result of the cuts Clinton made. We lost a tremendous amount of institutional knowledge during the draw down.
“And when all this comes to pass... when “fighter planes” are nothing but robots serviced by teenaged kids, probably able to take off and land vertically from any dirt strip... what need will their be for a separate Air Force?”
Spoken like a bitter jealous Army grunt. :)
IMO all the services are going to eventually merge. But the airforce is a lot more than a few fighters. They are busily expanding their presence into space.
Now THERE’s a reason to fire Moseley and Wynne.
Ping
The liberal think that wars in the future will be fought, not by men on the ground or in the air or on the seas, but from a computer terminal somewhere at someone’s house and men and women will not personally be involved. To GAIN AND HOLD GROUND, you HAVE to have BOOTS ON THE DAMNED GROUND! No damned computer can take and hold territory. It ain’t gonna happen. You can invent all the computers you want. But, to dig the bad guys out of their holes, you have to get into the ground with a shovel and dig. No damned computer is going to do that. The “Bill Gates” fighting of a war is not going to be a war. It is going to be a science fiction movie.
We have had air supremacy for so long, we now take it for granted. Big mistake. Without the best aircraft and pilots we will not keep it. Drones are great for some missions (like ISR), but are nearly useless in air to air combat or heavy bombing. The Russians, Chinese, and even the Europeans (who sell abroad) are not sitten on their laurels here. The danger is that we come to consider low intensity warfare as the standard and then a big conflict comes along and bites us in the a$$. And it will take us far longer to add air wings than it will take us to add Army divisions.
Other comment:
I was an AF officer from 1983 to 2005. My take is that too much that was once done in house in now outsourced. As a result, too many officers are now managers who have never gotten their hands dirty. They just turn to civilian contractors and say “do it”. Also, at too many units, civilians run the show. They look at blue suiters as transitory problems who will go away in 3 years if ignored.
OR lunatic libs supporting ObamaNATION OF ISLAM!!!
You ought to see what Raytheon is working on. Within fifty years the air force weapons will be managed by people with the best hand-eye coordination — and that could be the fat kid who once was devoted to arcade games.
Drop down and give me 20 mouse clicks!
We’ll have to raise Curtis LeMay from the dead and put Strategic Air Command back in operation...then fire 1,000 fighter pilot jock leaders who can’t manage but they can fly.
This will very rapidly change.
I’ll have to disagree with you. I did a tour in Afghanistan where we (USAF) took over from the US Navy in filling US Army positions. The Navy signed up for the mission, did one rotation, then said they were all used up. The USAF is still filling that role, now starting a third rotation AFTER I left. The US Army was supposed to be up to speed by last year, but didn’t make it and the USAF is still there doing the job.
That isn’t a hit on either Army or Navy. The Army is already busting their chops on rotations. They shouldn’t HAVE to fill roles that CAN be filled by either USAF or Navy personnel. If anything, the USAF ought to be looking to aggressively volunteer to fill these positions.
That said, most problems with services depends on the level you are looking at.
The Army has great people going out on patrol. The Army staff is dedicated, but even more rapped up in meetings, briefings and sucking up to the Boss than the USAF.
The USAF has great people flying and maintaining planes. Our staffs vary - some are good, but most are manned below 50%, and only half of those manning it care. The others are killing time. Our GOs are truly awful - had a talk between us at work yesterday, with mostly O-5/O-6s and retired O-6s...consensus was the USAF would function better if we fired 50% or more of our GOs and replaced them with field grade officers. About the only dispute between those present was if the number was 50% or much higher...total agreement that the USAF had seriously declining leadership for the last 10+ years. Everyone agreed that these firings were not nearly enough to solve the problem.
The Navy has great people too - but I’ve done time in a Navy squadron, and the Navy on shore can match anyone’s inefficiency.
Yeah, I’ll believe it when I see it. I’ve been hearing for 20 years how UAVs were going to revolutionize warfare—though they are more common, it hasn’t happened yet. Again, ISR is one thing, but that is just one of MANY AF missions.
Have to disagree with you here. First, the ability to pull Gs is over-rated. It meant something when we needed rear-aspect weapons. With modern missiles, pulling Gs just means you will die all tensed up.
Artificial intelligence has a long way to go. It has promised for years and hasn’t delivered simple target recognition.
I’m also unimpressed by how UAVs are being used. Ground CCs love them because they FEEL like they are in control, but I’ve watched BDE staff spend 6+ hours staring at a drone feed without ever understanding that it had no actionable intelligence, since there was no way of telling the the people being watched were good or bad. But the BDE sure did watch it!
UAV video feeds are to the Army what data-links are to senior commanders in the USAF - feel-good SA black holes. It doesn’t HAVE to be that way, but the Army misuses video feed every bit as often as the USAF misuses data link info.
A former head of Martin-Marietta once said that the cost of a fighter/interceptor was rising so fast that the USAF would only be able to afford one of them by 2054.
See post #38
The F-22, like the F-3, is to be the future. Not an evolutionary change, but a revolutionary change, to leap ahead of our adversaries (and potential adversaries), so that whatever “they” come up with would be no where near what we have. Air dominance ensured for generations.
Fighter force structure studies reveal, as I am sure you are aware as a former E-ring kinda guy, that the fighter fleet is not only old, but falling apart. These jets were built to fly hard for a long time, and they have, and they out-lived their contracted life by many thousands of hours. The fleet is tired and the fleet needs to be replaced.
The studies that have been done, and re-done and re-done, always come back to a 381 requirement for the F-22. This number is needed to accomplish the mission, the mission defined by our national security strategy. The Air Force does not make this strategy, the NSC and the president do. F-15s wont do, neither will the F-16s. Other jets out there and many more in future will have the edge over our great Air Force.
Of course, as a former Pentagon guy, you realize how congressional meddling in the acquisition process results in enormous coast increases when they cut numbers (loss of the cost-per-unit price break), and they piece-meal a program (increased risk to the prime, with most risk to the hundreds, if not thousands, of subs). Increased risk means increased cost.
So, we have a congress that causes the costs to sky-rocket and then this same congress complains about cost.
The F-22 is to be the one that knocks down the door for the less stealthy jets. Thats its primary mission. However, the jet has much more capability than what is generally known, especially in the ISR area. Won’t go into detail, but is it a fascinating jet of huge capability—a 5th generation jet is more than stealth.
Unmanned aircraft, like Predator, is a fine platform for what it does. Slow, long time airborne, limited payload, over a small area. We certainly need more and should get more. Also, we need to let senior NCO fly as well as operate the sensors. No question.
As far as replacing fighters, no way that can happen in the near or distant future (far distant, maybe). You as a pilot should understand thins, as I am sure you do, but the technology isn’t there to allow operation of a unmanned, super-sonic, 3-dimensional working, 360-degree aware jet with judgment (the most important trait).
Maybe someday we will have a fleet of unmanned fighters, akin to Ender’s Game (Orsen Scott Card). But not anytime soon.
The problem between the Sec Def and the Air Force were many, but keep this in mind: We always hear about how we are always “fighting the last war” and never planning for the next. The Air Force, the Pentagon (the train and equip guys), they are the ones planning for the future—hence arguing for the next generation long range strike bomber, the F-22, the F-35, Prompt Global Strike, project X. . .whatever. It takes decades to conceive, design, develop test and field a new system, a system based upon future requirements. So we must be cautious and not focus purely on the “now,” but focus on the now and the future. A difficult balancing process, at best, and congressional meddling and myopic vision of OSD leadership makes things even worse.
The war we are in now is ground-centric and the Air Force can only do so much, and it is doing a lot more than most people realize, both with air assets and airmen on the ground. The Air Force is fighting to provide what is needed in future. A difficult balancing process.
Gates was right in his actions last week, of that I support him fully. But to me he is near-sighted and myopic in focusing on the “now” as opposed to the Big Picture.
In a few years when we find ourselves facing an advanced adversary, that should not be the time we look to the Air Force and ask, “Okay, Air Force, Predators are nice but can’t do the job, so why were you only focusing on the past and not the future. . . .?”
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