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Modesty refuses to allow me to say which one...
Posted on 06/21/2008 5:13:52 PM PDT by The_Republican
SLOWLY AND painfully, the U.S. Army has adapted itself to the unconventional wars the country has faced since Sept. 11, 2001. Following a reorganization of forces, a rewrite of doctrine and the emergence of new commanders such as Gen. David H. Petraeus, American ground troops are winning counterinsurgency wars in Iraq and eastern Afghanistan -- and are recognized as state-of-the-art by NATO allies. In contrast, the U.S. Air Force, which dominated the 1990s with its smart bombs and stealth planes, has lost its way in the new century. Its top leaders have remained stubbornly focused on the production of advanced tactical aircraft such as the F-22 Raptor, which has not flown a single mission in Iraq, while failing to provide adequate numbers of the unmanned aircraft that are crucial to American success in the new wars. Air Force commanders allowed two inexcusable breaches of nuclear security, in which warheads were flown across the country by mistake and bomb fuses were mistakenly shipped to Taiwan.
Now the Government Accountability Office has found that the Air Force bungled one of its largest and most important procurement contracts, for the second time. A GAO report issued Wednesday said that officials "made a number of significant errors" that could have skewed the outcome of a competition between Boeing and Northrop Grumman to build tanker planes used for aerial refueling. We haven't had much sympathy for the public relations campaign Boeing has waged since losing the $40 billion contract award in February, a campaign that has focused in part on rallying protectionist and nationalist sentiment against Northrop Grumman's partner, the European parent of Airbus. Yet the GAO found that Boeing was correct in arguing that the Air Force failed to judge the tanker competition according to the criteria it had established.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Anything to slam to doers. The talkers can eat shi#
Modesty refuses to allow me to say which one...
I agree that the AF is dragging their feet on using drones to fight the terrorist in Afghanistan and Iraq, but the F22 is needed.
We have to be prepared not only for the war we are waging but the next war we might wage.
History has proved that owning the air wins wars. Having the best fighters makes owning the air over the battlefield much easier.
Sure. Lets get rid of all our fighters and bombers. Satellites, UAVs, Airlift, and Tankers is all we need. Then when we lose Air Supremacy in a future war, these clowns will be the first to finger point.
And just who was it that forced the changes at DoD after 9/11?
Now the AF wants only pilot qualified officers ‘flying’ UAVs. Period. Everybody else gets enlisted to sit in front of consoles. The Army like the Marines should get it's own ground support and transport aircraft. Let the AF plan for China, Mars invasion, whatever.
We are not going to deal successfull with Iran when the time comes, and it will come, with counterinsurgency weapons and tactics. The longer we put off the confrontation the more the big stuff will be necessary.
Don’t be modest. I started my military life as an enlisted Marine and retired as an AF officer. The Marines have always been more adaptable but the big difference is that in the early 90s the Marines didn’t allow a bunch of adolescent-minded fighter pilots to take over the majority of it’s operations like the AF did.
In case you don’t know, we Marines have our own air power.
It may be true that the F22 has not flown a mission in Iraq but then the F22 entered service long after the active war in Iraq was over. So why send an air combat superiority fighter to Iraq.
But the air force has hardly been missing in action in Iraq. Here are a few articles that say as much. The anti-war crowd is much more verbose and I am not above using them to make my point so a few of the articles are by them.
Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, led to a 40 day war in 1991 between Iraq and a coalition of 39 nations, led by the United States. The U.S. and allies, including a coalition of Arab nations, flew 120,000 sorties over Iraq, dropped over one million bombs in Iraqi territory and initiated a speedy land attack, which directly led to Iraq’s surrender.
Between the wars
The Pentagon says that nearly 280,000 sorties have been flown over the areas by American and British planes in the almost decade-long period of enforcing the no-fly order.
Before the war insiders argued that sooner or later it would be necessary to attack, because the U.S. Air Force was being "strained" by its daily sorties over Iraq's no-fly zones.
The 438th Air Expeditionary Group A-10s perform 10 sorties daily providing top cover for ground forces in Iraq, with 900 sorties in this last four months.
A-10 provides top cover for troops in Iraq
With two days of sandstorms finally over, allied warplanes flew 1,500 sorties against targets in north and south Iraq yesterday, while coalition troops resumed their march north to Baghdad.
I have the utmost respect for Marines, past and present.
However, talk to any tactical commander on the ground in-theater and you’ll hear the same thing: their tactics are straight out of 1944.
The Marines have one hell of a lot of growing up to do; courage certainly isn’t their problem.
I do know of some air assets. Not enough to ensure dominance in the air. Don’t forget about AF satellites.
What on earth have you been reading?
you have no idea what you are talking about. I am a Marine with 4 tours to Iraq. Our tactics have changed several times since I have been in - hard painful lessons. And no, we don’t just walk in a skirmishers formation like they did in WWII.
Furthermore, on the 1944 tactics you speak of? The Marine Corps was set up for amphibious ops. Island Hopping Campaigns........ that sounds a lot like desert ops, counter insurgency, and Urban fighting to me. /sarc
The Marines blast initial entry, kill a bunch of people and leave; the Army does the occupying. If Marines were meant to occupy, we’d be the Army. This is the first time in history the USMC has been tasked with holding territory (Al Anbar Province, Iraq) for extended periods of time while not fighting an actual conventional military. And, you forget the Marines were on their way home in ‘03 and got called right back, because certain other branches couldn’t hold it. You’ll also notice we are back in Trashcanistan as well.
If you can do better and feel more growing up is needed - grab a rifle and follow me out the door next time because as far as our AO is concerned “All quiet on the Western Front.”
one more thing, I’ll let you look up maneuver warfare and distributive operations as compared to attrition style warfare.
You've been drinking way too much zoomie kool-aid.
“Modesty refuses “
since when were Marines ever modest?
You are full of s***, pogue.
Straight out of 1944.....
V/STOL Fighter Bombers.....
Computer designed Camouflage uniforms.....
Laser Guided weapons......
Hovercraft landing craft.....
Water jet Amtracs capable of 40 Knots.....
Tilt Rotor Aircraft.......
Hand held wire guided Missiles.......
Night Vision Googles........
FLIR equipped aircraft........
GPS.......
Intra squard individual communications gear......
real time Video from drones flown by enlisted personnel at the company level.....
Body armor.....
Swat tactics......
Yep all 1944 style tactics......
Hmm...the USAF had little role to play in Korea? Vietnam? Desert Shield/Storm? Afghanistan? The invasion of Iraq?
You would have been more accurate to say the USAF has played a critical role in all the wars fought since WW2, but takes a backseat during an occupation.
And how has the price been higher in Iraq/Afghanistan because of the USAF? Please be specific.
It’s POG, Person Other than Grunt.
Angola, Biafra, Sudan, Liberia, even Yugoslavia and Chenia.
We haven't(directly) been involved in 90% of the wars/killings/conflicts. But, that's were the killings has been.
See post 27.
You’d be surprised at the bomb stats, particularly those of the GBU variety. Those targets didn’t light themselves up.
I see you have expanded it from ‘war’ to ‘wars/killings/conflicts’. True enough - the USAF rarely gets involved in fighter combat in ‘killings/conflicts’.
Moving cargo, or ISR support? Maybe - if directed. Deployments don’t take place unless a combatant commander gives the order. But when legal, we do supply support in areas of ‘killings/conflicts’ as well - you just don’t see much news about it.
We also provide a lot of humanitarian assistance.
We are currently doing these things world-wide, regardless of whether or not the NYT covers it.
But I guess you are right - we don’t drop bombs except in a war.
Let me put it another way.
People go to wars with what they have, and not what they don't have.
Most 'wars' since WWII don't have air wars. If we are involved, there's the Air Force. But, we have been involved in a minority of wars. People don't need us to have a war amongst themselves, which they have been doing.
We seem to have, up until recently, a closed loop feed back cycle of tweaking our military based upon our experience. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is doing it's own, fail to follow our manuals thing.
Who'da thought?
That's why we spend less on language/cultural than golf courses. That's why we show up four years late with mine resistant vehicles when they've been used for forty years.
Wrong. Pogue has been in use since prior to WW-II.
Ouch, that’s gonna leave a mark!
The Boy Scouts?
Probably exclusively the Washedout Post, the New York and Los Angeles Slimes -- canchatell?
A, by the way, I love your tagline.
You Beat me to it, AAC.
Get over yourself, and actually READ what I wrote this time.
FYI, we can't settle all ofthe genocides ( that you call wars) in the world.
usmcobra - When I saw your first post I thought you might be a Marine Cobra driver, but then I checked your profile and know where you got the name. I wonder, you claim the Marines are at the cutting edge of technology, yet they don’t have any AH-64 Longbows, do they?
FYI, we can't settle all ofthe genocides ( that you call wars) in the world.
Have you ever checked out the enthusiam level of Congress when it comes to budgeting R%D? It's low -- almost to the level of non-existence.
"Keep 'em at Captain, and keep them in the cockpit". One of the worst things you can do is put a fighter jock behind a desk. That's not what they're trained for. These men have special talents, and we're wasting those talents when they're pulling admin duty.
IMHO, the financial pressures are looming where the five branchs (incl. the Coast Guard) are going to be combined. The waste and inefficiency from having a logistical bureaucracy for each of the five services is costing untold billions per year.
This may be a stretch, but as an Army 2LT>1LT whose first tour was spent on AF bases as an ADA officer, I had more experience working with AF operations than most Army generals. In addition to our daily operations, I usually lived down in the Wing CP during Tac Evals (due to the security clearance required). I knew their language, their acronyms, etc.
Later on, as Supply Officer for my battalion, I became the point man for our Interservice Support Agreements.
In fact, I would have been just as happy to stay there, even if it meant never making it past Captain.
As someone who served in the Marine Corps in the 1980s, I really think that this is a case of the anti-military, left-wing media doing what it has always done: doing their best to paint a picture that is as bleak as possible.
Having dealt with reporters from the Post and the Slimes, I can assure you that no one in either organization has a clue when it comes to the Air Force.
B52s played a key role in overthrowing the Taliban regime and Saddam as well, to include wiping out so much of the Iraqi military in Desert Storm.
The F-22 may not have flown a sortie in Iraq, but we must not forget that Red China is developing modern fighter and attack aircraft at a rapid clip, with considerable help from the Russians. And some of this advanced weaponry is finding its way to countries like Iran and Venezuela.
The F-22 may not be useful in Iraq today, but it will be around for 20-30 years and who knows what the threat will be then?
I for one wish that the Navy had bought navalised F-22s instead of the Super Hornet, because the latest Sukhois are more than a match for the F/A-18E/F in air combat. Of course, the Super Hornet still has an avionics advantage and our aviators are better, but our secrets leak too often and how long can we depend on the other side to continue to be poorly trained?
I've never heard otherwise.
Gates fired the AF Secretary for exactly these reasons.
AH-1Z will do everything the Apache will for less money.
Additionally The Z or Viper will be able to do something that Apaches don't do, It will be armed with Sidewinders as well as everything you can mount on an AH-64D Long Bow except for the 30mm.
And they are fully carrier capable.
So, basicaly, the Pentagon didn't have the money to copy forty year old blown up South African and Rhodesian wrecks.
Yeah. Right.
Maybe it doesn't rise to the August heights of the Air Force, but low down, dirty and close has been the way of any ‘war’ you want to call them wars since before the Wright Brothers ever put on long pants.
I'll tell the majority of humans shot, blown up, mortared, mined that they weren't in a war. It was a dream, the US Air Force told me so.
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