Air Force firings reveal culture clash

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.

"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.

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.

The cuts in personnel, which were supposed to be covered by new technologies that are failing miserably or have yet to be funded to pay for weapon systems is rapidly breaking the force. I have watched my current Squadron (I work for as a simple servant after 25 years in uniform) go from 240 souls down to 148 with a scheduled loss of another 18 this fiscal year. All support career fields are being cut to the point where every Officer, NCO, or Airman in each career field are forced to become an expert on pay entitlements and personal issues while working in facilities badly in need of replacement or upgrade. Although the single room barracks sharing a latrine are much better than the facilities I lived in as a young Airman in 1975. Don’t even get me started on how Medical/Dental facilities and services have been cut.

Having served as a SAC aircrew member (KC-135A & KC-10A) I have to agree with Secretary Gates on how the Air Force is a shadow of what it used to be. As soon as SAC was broken up with its bombers and recon aircraft going to the fighter pilot mafia of ACC, the tanker force going to the T-tail mafia of AMC, and the missile force going to AFSC (as I call it lost in space command) we no longer thought like a military service. The Air Staff started pushing Total Quality Management and Covey training changed regulations to instructions restructured the Air Force Special Codes changed uniforms and redesigned enlisted rank were force upon us instead of working and thinking like a military organization. Some how we still manage to accomplish the mission, but with the constant cuts in personnel, longer and more frequent deployments, and 5% to 15% in discretionary budget cuts forecast up through Fiscal Year 2011 it is just a matter of time before we hit a point of mission failure. There are also some very serious concerns about the Democrats taking power in November and you will begin to see many of our folks start to vote with their feet and leave the service should the Obamination win (not that the grumpy old man is any better). We really need to purge the leadership and start thinking and operating like we did back in the 60s – 80s or we risk being merged with the Army again (another concern of many of the kids I talk too on a daily basis).

The ranting of a retired Senior Master Sergeant for what every it’s worth.

>>has been referred to a “diluting the gene pool.”<<

LOL. . .

True story: Many years ago, working with the South African Air Force, they offered to bring me on-board as their first USAF exchange officer to attend their SAAF Air Warfare College.

When this offer was presented to Fogleman, he rightfully referred it to AF/DP (HQ Air Force personnel). They staffed it to a Col (non-rated) who called me and said, and I am not kidding, remember it to this day, “No, we won't send you because you aren't on the schools list, and if we send you, you will be impeaching the process, YOU WILL BE PEEING IN THE GENE POOL.” (Regs ya’know, and it was up to this personnel Col to approve the waiver my Col div chief submitted).

LOL. . .some non-rated personnel geek making the call. . .so I really have a problem when people say pilots run the Air Force, when we all know Personnel does.

Not a slam against non-rated, but just a funny story and one that goes to show that petty non-wing-wearing control freaks add to their part of the problem.

You make some great points Hulka. Yes, the F-22 is a revolutionary change. It is a great aircraft. I have sat in them on the ground at Langley and talked to the pilots (who almost all F-15 guys as you know).

Is the F-15 falling apart and getting old.

You bet.

But here is the fundamental problem.

OSD and the White House would only back the Air Force for 183, with 119 currently delivered. Congress followed OSDs and the President's Budget lead. Without White House backing or SECDEF approval, the AF ain't gonna get more. The SECDEF doesn't buy the AF cherry picked studies. He has his own J-5 plans shop in the Joint Staff, and many of those studies contradict what the AF has been trying to sell.

Game over - or at least it should have been.

This is where my old boss Gen Bruce Carlson got himself in incredible hot water with the SECDEF saying it "bordered on insubordination."

The studies you refer to have to host China and the Soviet Union as the enemy, not small regional conflicts. Why did the AF pick the former? It doesn't take a genius to figure out that it was those scenarios that justify the F-22 in numbers of 381.

Even some of the AF CheckMate studies won't support the 381 number. It all depends on what picture you paint, and what war plan you want to play with.

Gates knows this too.

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.

Absolutely. Home run - and you hit it out of the park. Here is the problem though - Congress still won't give us the money. The Army is getting the majority of the pie, because they are doing the majority of the dying right now. They have that trump card, and they use it (nothing wrong with that either).

All of the personnel cuts "savings" the AF did were immediately snatched off the table by the Army and higher fuel costs.

Even Secretary Wynne said his previous strategy was "in error." The AF got nothing for that bill it paid, and still Gen Mosley chose to rape every program in the AF to try and still pay for more F-22s and modernization.

The made Gates furious. He knows about fighting the next war too - they guy isn't stupid. Sure, we have to plan for that and not plan on fighting the last war. But (huge BUT), Gates saw the AF as not caring enough to fight these two wars right now. That infuriated him - and he gave Mosley and Wynne every hint in the book.

The bottom line is the AF didn't get the funding it needed for fighters, and rather than say "OK, we'll keep charging ahead and try and convince you" - it said "Well then, we'll just cut everything else so I can get the F-22 anyway."

When they have closed testimony in Congress, those members will launch on the service chiefs like you would not believe. They get letters from this Guard or Reserve base, or a constituent who was kicked out of the Air Force after they wanted to serve. The AF was tone deaf to these pleas.

All it could see was "F-22, F-22, F-22...."

Meanwhile, we have these AFSO 21 cuts (basically the old "Do More With Less") argument that touts efficiency and civilian company best practices. It is a load of horse manure. Slogans like "Work Smarter, Not Harder!" are back in vogue. Why? Whole numbered Air Forces have seen their budgets slashed. Wings are getting their O&M budgets destroyed. Even last week, the Air Force proposed cutting the Guard and Reserve by 12.5% each!

U.S. Air Force Guard and Reserves Are Force Multipliers that Deserve Support

This is lunacy.

Gates saw Mosley and Wynne as going off the deep end.

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

You could be 100% brother. I hear you. In fact, you may be prophetic.

The problem is, the AF just doesn't have the money - and Congress won't give it. When that happens, you can either accept the decision and march on, or, you can do what Gen Mosley decided to do, and that was burn down the Air Force village in order to save it.

It will be interesting to see what the acting Chief, Gen Duncan McNabb will do. We used to fly together in the C-141. I don't think he will be the selected Chief, and I don't know how quickly Gates will pick a successor. But McNabb is a smart guy, and a helluva charmer.

I think he will try and take the AF in an incredibly new direction - and fast to send a signal to Gates.

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Nuclear arms mistakes were reason for dismissals, but deeper divide over service's mission was at play, officers and analysts say.