Posted on 04/28/2005 3:23:19 PM PDT by SwinneySwitch
WASHINGTON — Army Lt. Gen. David Barno, the commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, had the task of covering that huge country with just 18,000 troops.
It was possible to do so, he observed, because "airpower from all the services ... have given ground forces ... the ability to operate in smaller units and respond quicker, with more accurate weaponry, than at any other point in history."
Over the last 15 years, many have come to regard airpower as the key to victory, in war zones ranging from the gulf to the Balkans, from Afghanistan to Iraq. Fighter forces, in particular, have proved to be effective, destroying defended targets, supporting fast-moving land forces and dominating the sky.
Yet serious questions keep cropping up. Is the size of the tactical fighter fleet about right or is it "excessive"? The USAF fighter force has fallen from 37 to 20 wings. Navy and Marine Corps aviation arms have shrunk, too.
Top Pentagon leaders claim the armed services invest too much in fighters. They see air dominance as one area in which the U.S. has "excessive overmatch." The new National Defense Strategy, released March 1, suggests cutting some of the overmatch so as to better fund new capabilities and expand ground forces.
According to "Inside the Navy," a newsletter, Deputy Defense Secretary-designate Gordon England recently told reporters he sees great potential in "integrating" Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps and Army aviation. England left no doubt about the basic objective: "If you can gain efficiencies in tactical forces," he said, "what else can you do with the money?"
Any such move now could pit the Air Force, the Navy/Marine team, and, to a degree, the Army against each other, conceivably igniting a dustup over roles.
The last such tussle came in the mid-1990s. It was sparked by Sen. Sam Nunn, D-Ga., the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who lamented, among other things, that America's was "the only military in the world with four air forces." A blue-ribbon Commission on Roles and Missions, or CORM, spent more than a year pondering the subject.
The commission found the supposed "problem" proved to be largely illusory. CORM in 1995 reported, "Inefficiencies attributed to the so-called 'four air forces' were mostly in the infrastructure, not on the battlefield."
Second, CORM concluded that a little redundancy isn't a bad thing. A recent case in point: the pivotal role played by naval air in the first weeks of war in Afghanistan — a remote, landlocked nation far outside the Navy's usual mission focus.
Third, overlap fosters interservice competition, often resulting in better systems or concepts of operations, whether they concern close air support, long-range strike or something else.
The Air Force doesn't now nor has it ever claimed a right to monopolize military aviation.
Even so, there are sound reasons to make the Air Force the "keeper" of the tactical aviation art. The air arms of the other services are limited; their primary purpose is to perform missions tied directly to their basic land power, sea power or amphibious roles.
Yet, Pentagon officials should be cautious before tampering too much with the current size and structure of the services' tactical air forces.
They would do well to heed the admonition of Gen. Gregory Martin, who has commanded U.S. Air Forces in Europe and the Air Force Materiel Command and who recently warned:
"Nothing works without air and space dominance. Nothing. We don't want to assume that we will always have it. We want to always understand what it takes to get it, and we want to make sure we are building the systems that will give it to us."
Pound sand, puke. I'm sure that even a ring knocker knows what that means.
You don't understand any of this. The Missions are not the same. The regular United States Air Force does the primary Mission and the other services do what applies to them. Wake up!
How nice it was to come home from Praha and find your greeting. I had a great time by the way. You on the other hand, may want to take a course in comprehensive reading, as I never claimed to be a graduate of the Naval Academy. I implied nothing, but you inferred much. I'm now inferring that this isn't uncommon for you. I'll decline to acquiesce to your request concerning the pounding of sand, but in closing let me compliment the eloquence of your wit, a primitive, bitter intellect wouldn't have been able to muster such a fine piece of word smithing. Some coarser types just pound out a droll one line insult. Dobre den.
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