Question: Why does the Air Force seem to harbor more liberals than other military branches?

Second, I thank all members of our military for their service, regardless of their political points of view.

Here is what I have observed...and admittedly, I have known only a FEW Air Force veterans. So perhaps my experience isn't the best judge.

Seems to me, though, that of the friends and acquaintences I've had, the folks who have served or are serving in the AIR FORCE are much more prone to be liberals in their politics than others I've known who are in the Army, Navy, or Marines.

One particular encounter with an old close friend, who I've come back into contact with, seems to have really gone off the deep end...

I don't know, perhaps I'm wrong and just have had "bad luck" in meeting up with the libs.

Is this a fair judgement--are there more liberals in the Air Force? And if so, why?

I was in the Coast Guard from 73 to 82. We were all volunteers and it showed. We did more with less money than you might think was possible. And I would say that most of the men I served with were very conservative.

A lot of that I thought came from the job we did. Going out in mostly lousy to horrible weather to do Search and Rescue tends to make a person very conservative with their decisions. Especially if you make a wrong one or take a chance you should not have. People tend to get hurt at the least and die at the worst.

On the other hand I worked as a contractor for over 25 years on a Air Force Contract. The amount of petty bullshit grew yearly and contributed greatly to leaving that line of work. And yes, I met a LOT of Liberals and “Progressives” there. Conservatives were hard to come by.

That’s good to hear. Being directly responsible for lives in dangerous circumstances you would think naturally breeds respect for conservatism. My impressions, admittedly prone to subjective errors, were influenced by the known liberalism of schoolmates who enlisted in the Coast Guard, rather than contact with the Coast Guard on the job. It does make a person wonder how often former schoolmates with a liberal attitude going into military service develop a conservative attitude after being in military service?

As a side note, I think that Conservative values also come from knowing how much money you have to work with in your budget to do your assigned mission.

In the Coast Guard my budget was usually less than 100K per quarter and I had to provide electronic maintenance and repair services for 9 lifeboat stations and a bunch of lighthouses. My biggest quarterly expense was vehicle rental from the GSA after that came parts.

With the Air Force, well it was a different world. Each mission was in the millions with a few that were close to a billion. The emphasis on keeping costs down and managing the resources wasn’t the same.

Also one of my biggest gripes was that the Air Force would routinely spend huge amounts of money to renovate a building and then abandon it or tear it down within a couple of years of finishing the renovation.

I always thought that if they had to live within a VERY tight budget that most of the BS and wasteful spending would disappear.

Yes, the appropriations for the Air Force were a different world than the Coast Guard, and the budgetary restraints varied hugely within the Air Force depending upon mission and time.

There was a time when we were relying heavily upon antiquated teletype machines which dated back to World War Two and the Korean Conflict. The cost of maintenance for equipment that old was counterproductive at times. Our computer communications were not too much better until they finally got around to deploying our first CRT terminals. You would have thought the cutting edge of missile technology would have seen the latest in super-expensive computer technology, but some of the the range support systems were still reliant upon an ancient vacumn tube mainframe requiring an arcane refrigeration system long after integrated circuitry had become commonplace.

Some part of the profligacy with the budget you witnessed in the Air Force I suspect was due to the political situation of the time. The Democrats in Congress had been gutting the military services ever since 1968-1980. The Carter Administration in particular accelerated the disbandment of military units, closures of military bases, and starved the logistics. When the Reagan Administration set out to rebuild and refurbish the military services, the changes in missions from eliminating assets to gaining new assets naturally had to result in some rather spectacular and wasteful changes. Since the Coast Guard is usually going to be at the bottom of the Congressional budgetary priority lists, it is not surprising to see such big differences in funding and attitudes at the time.

Consider this as well. We have pilots currently flying a B-52 Stratofortress that is so old, their grandfather could have flown the very same aircraft around fifty years ago. Given the dangers and limitations of metal fatigue in aircraft, it is rather a remarkable feat that these and other aircraft types in the Air Force inventories are still earning their keep. We should be especially concerned about the aging air tanker fleet. They should have been replaced for safety and operational reasons some 16 years ago. The failure to replacce the F-14 Tomcat and F-15 Eagle fighters in adequate numbers is a scandal.

Yep, you make some good points. Now on the subject of aircraft. I have a very radical point of view.

If the damn thing works and does it’s mission to near perfection build more of them. The Air Force had/has this mindset that only the newest will do.

If they are still flying the B-52 and it does the Job. Then by George, build some new ones each year. The A-10 is a magnificent aircraft at what it does but the Air Force Brass hate it because it ain’t “sexy” enough. Fine then give the aircraft to the Marines and Army who DO love it. And build more of them. It’s an older proven technology. Keep on building them to replace those that become “hanger Queens” or leave the service through loss in Action.

In other words don’t shut down the Lines until the Aircraft is no longer going to be in the inventory. Sure you might only build a couple a year. So what, the lines are there and ready to be ramped up if the need becomes apparent.

/rant off

The problem the brass has with the A-10 is not that it isn’t “sexy” enough, not at all. The problem they have is the restriction on the number of wings, squadrons, pilots, and budgets.

One of the major reasons why the major commands in the Air force were reorganized to more resemble the organization it had before World War Two is the inability to specialize the missions when you have so few remaining units performing such a diverse range of missions. The A-10 is a superb ground attack aircraft. It cannot, however, perform the other missions the Air Force is also tasked to perform by Congress. Under the current circumstances, the Air Force is forced to consider multi-role attack aircraft, because Congress is not going to authorize the pilots, pilot training flight hours, and other resources necessary to support squadrons or wings devoted to a single role mission. Like it or not, they have to look at using mulit-role aircraft that are usuable for the ground attack role as well as the other roles that are not appropriate for the A-10.

It is also not economically feasible to keep an aircraft production line open any longer than is absolutely necessary. Much of the cost of an aircraft is already spent before the first prototype ever flies. It costs almost as much to produce a few aircraft on a production line as it does some dozens of such aircraft. The cost of the property, plant, equipment, and many salaries remains similar no matter how few of the aircraft you build. The cost of each aircraft is lessened the more of them you produce, because the huge upfront costs can be spread across so many more aircraft. That is why decreasing the number of aircraft originally planned and budgeted tends to cause such large cost overruns for each aircraft. The more months you keep the property, plant, and equipment on a project, the more those costs accumulate to the cost of each individual aircraft.

Once you dismantle the jigs and other equipment required for production, and dissipate the personnel experienced enough to efficiently produce those aircraft, the more expensive it is to ever attempt to reconstruct the former production capability. the least expensive way of managing production is to produce the aircraft in larger serial production numbers in briefer time periods, and build a new aircraft design and airframe instead of resurrecting old production lines.

Excellent, again you have good points. I appreciate the facts int the matter.

But, I still think/feel/believe that keeping the lines open with a small crew who are familiar with the process of building a particular aircraft is important to our national security even if it is only to make one aircraft a year of a particular type.

My reasoning goes all the way back to World War I and II. America had drawn down our armed forces before both wars to the point that ammunition and weapons were scarce for training let alone combat requirements. At that time we relied upon the Atlantic and the Pacific as natural barriers to any that might harm us.

Today? No, there is no barrier to rapid movement of well prepared Army’s. So the need to be prepared to defend ourselves at any time is necessary. This applies to the manufacture of War Material also.

And again with the A-10, give it to the Army or Marines. Then the Air Force can use those pilot slots for other aircraft.

Once again, I do appreciate the informative replies you have given me.

My anecdotal evidence would surmise you are wrong. Out of the dozens or so AF officers I am friends with (0-5 and below), only 2 voted for Obama out of “solidarity” (Color of skin) and false hope. The 2 routinely get ridiculed and their arguments destroyed at “get togethers”.

Also my anecdotal experience suggest that the careerist are usually “collectivists”, kissing ass and the conservatives (Who are politically vulnerable) just do their job effectively and quietly. Unfortunately the careerists start paying off once they reach 0-6 so un-American traitors, for example, Robert Gates, can start cherry picking political animals to do their bidding.

Gates serves as an example of how cronyism can erode institutions, so thanks Bush family for propping up this fellow Fabian Socialist.

Doing so would essentially create another small air force whose redundant support seervices and aircraft costs would be astronomically higher than present costs, all of which still has to come out of the same taxpayer pockets, only much more so. In consequence, the Coast Guard, Marines, and other services would find themselves even farther down on the budgetary priorities list than they already are.

If you want ground attack squadrons, just fund them for the Air Force. It’s not like they don’tlike them or don’t know what to do with them. Just remember, however, it does you absolutely no good whatsoever for anyone to have the a-10 without the air superiority fighters necessary to to maintain an air superiority environment for the A-10 ground attack air craft to perform their missions unmolested by enemy fighter aircraft. You cannot expect the A-10 to always be in COIN operations where the enemy haas no air forces.

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