Posted on 03/17/2014 12:37:23 PM PDT by xzins
Robert Farley, a political science professor at the University of Kentucky, wants to ground the U.S. Air Force, for good.
In his book, Grounded: The Case for Abolishing the US Air Force, Farley argues the United States does not need an independent Air Force in order to effectively wield military air power. Farley, an assistant professor at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce, came to his conclusion after studying the conflict between the Army and the Air Force over which military branch was primarily responsible for winning the first Gulf War.
“I slowly became more aware that these arguments between the Army and the Air Force have broken out along virtually identical lines after every conflict we’ve fought since World War II,” Farley said. “Each service, each capability, claims its own decisive role.”
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Farley argues that inter-service rivalries and different interpretations of combat effectiveness have had such a negative effect on both doctrine and weapons system acquisition over the decades that the Army and the Air Force are unprepared to cooperate with each other next time America goes to war.
“That got me thinking, why not just re-marry these organizations rather than maintain their distinction?” he said.
The U.S. Air Force, originally the Army Air Corps, was established as an independent military service in 1947. Over the next four decades, as conflicts over Army and Air Force roles and missions emerged, Congress stepped in and passed the Goldwater-Nichols DoD Reorganization Act of 1986, the most far-reaching legislation affecting the U.S. military since the National Security Act of 1947. By vesting operational command of U.S. forces with a joint commander, Goldwater-Nichols sought to mitigate much of the inter-service rivalry.
But, according to Farley, Goldwater-Nichols failed to solve the dual problems of procurement and training. By law, the services have their own budgets for acquiring weapons and recruiting and training personnel.
“The primary responsibility of an Air Force aviator still lies with the … parochial interests of the Air Force and for a soldier with [those] of the Army,” Farley said. “And that’s a position that I think inevitably creates friction during wartime, which we’ve seen even in conflicts that come after the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols reform.”
Piecemeal approaches to transferring missions and capabilities from the Air Force to the Army have been proposed before, particularly with close-air support aircraft like drones, and the A-10, which the Air Force wants to retire.
“It would seem to be a fabulous idea to take away these capabilities that the Air Force is unenthusiastic about,” Farley said. But the Air Force routinely opposes giving them up. “There’s a general Air Force lack of enthusiasm about drones unless there’s a prospect of the Army having them,” he said.
The best solution to such problems—and the proverbial “elephant in the room”—is to rejoin the Air Force with the Army, Farley said. Although not likely in the short term, Farley thinks it might eventually become a reality.
“I’m trying to reopen the question of whether the reform we did in 1947 was really the appropriate reform and whether we should return to it and rethink it,” he said.
Well I guess FR does stand for Free Republic.
As pointed out in post #81, sort of / not really - the 3 service departments continue to have separate existences, subject to the control of the Secretary of Defense. So they are not independent and they are not totally on their own but there is real meaning to their being separate departments.
What about the golf courses?
Meld it all into one size fits all, take their guns away and let the homos run it. That’s the Obama way.
LOL
The Army did all that through two World wars.
I think xzins remark about ground support describes what is left to the Army and what it needs from the air, but the great Strategic bombings, the carrier use for heavy bombers, the first nuclear war, missile development, the great wars fought by our air forces, was done when they were Army.
Absolutely disagree. The Soviets did fight HARD in the skies, and beat the Luftwaffe at their own game. The Luftwaffe in the East was many close air support, Stukas (Junkers Ju 87), etc. You really should read up on the air war in the East. It was real, and just as bloody as the rest of that front!
Oh, I understand what he was saying, I just disagree. The Army Air Corps/Forces that existed in WWII were actually very independent already. They were NOTHING like the Army Air Service of 1917-18. Not even close. They were for all intents and purposes, a separate service in all but name.
Don’t disagree with you.
But without control of the sky, the grunt on the ground doesn’t get a chance to secure anything.
I realize the article and discussions are about the Air Force, but the same argument could be used to say the Marines are no longer needed. You could put them in the Army and let the Army have a division that was “first on the beach” and was transported via ship. That would be especially true now that it seems our special forces folks are actually the first on shore with black ops. Just saying.
“...the USAF has always been rather lukewarm to the idea of close air support...”
I spent my time in the Army as a multi-engine, fixed wing mechanic. (67K20 to you Army guys). We had the DHC CV-2 Caribou, designed by the Army and de Havilland as a light troop transport/cargo plane. The Air Force threw a fit about troop carrying being their job and stole it from us; they really didn’t need it, the C-123 worked fine for them. They just didn’t want us to be independent in moving troops.
We also had the OV-1 Mohawk, a sweet little recon turboprop which was also capable of having rocket pods mounted on the wings for ground support. Again, the Air Force pouted and we had to remove all
armament effectively limiting its role and making it only half as useful. What was the point if they didn’t like the close support role?
As a result, I ended up wasting five months of school only to end up cross-training to helicopters. I was not very happy.
The Army ran them fine, and still could.
The Air force has earned it’s reputation of being a pampered money pit, sucking money from war preparedness.
The Air Force insisted that pilots fly drones, not just pilots, but they had to be on flight status, a twisted ankle made them unable to sit at their desk and fly drones, it took a huge amount of pressure to force them to quit playing that flight status game.
That is the nonsense that the Air Force is famous for, it is more a pilots club, than a gritty combat force focused on war.
Huh?
I knew that you knew better, and fist fighting has nothing to do with his overlooking the Army’s very large and diverse Special Operations capabilities.
As far as SEALs, try living in Coronado and banging the girlfriends of the SEALs that drink with you, they are good guys, but sure, I would speak openly on military matters.
Colonel O’Neil of SGC ?
.................I do like the idea of giving the A-10 to the Army instead of retiring the A-10...............
The wart-hog has been the most effective weapon in air to ground operations for more than two decades!
Just stupid to retire it!
Yet, maybe they could make the A-10 into a trainer for the new trannies, “the Trannie Trainer, Warts’and All!!!
The only part of the military that is necessary now are the Navy Seals. Not a day goes by that the media does tell us of another operation operation by Navy Seals. So just do away with all other specialties and make every everyone a Seal. Problem solved.
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