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.
You didn’t read the entire post. That was a lead in question about what it DOES do.
So far you only make nasty remarks, nothing related to the topic or my posts.
Just post your sources so that we can look at them.
I also have to ask why we need to have the Air Force train an air controller to be a Ranger, and manage 1 or 2 of them to operate with Army units, wouldn’t it be easier to just send some Rangers and Special Forces to the 80 week air controller portion of their course, to do it themselves?
It all seems so..... Air Force like.
Yes they train with Army. They also train with other services and role donkeys into the mountains of Afghanistan and accompanied the Afghan army to mark targets.
Really kind of a stupid argument. You are agreeing with the blowhard who wrote this article and bad mouthing a lot of good people.
Google Global Strike Command.
The Army uses comic books for training manuals.
Some things can’t be taught with a comic book.
Do you support retiring the A-10?
I keep asking you for your source that they were the first troops in Afghanistan, you won’t post it.
They are embedded with Army teams, do you mean that they accompanied that horse riding Army team in Afghanistan?
I’m not bad mouthing anyone, but look at your post telling us that Rangers and Green Berets are too stupid to handle calling in air operations.
Really a separate issue, but no.
Do you object to letting the Army have it?
No you’ve asked one time. Go look it up yourself and stop being such a stupid punk.
You are certainly bad mouthing many good people who have given their lives for this country while wearing Air Force blues, including friends of mine. screw you
People forget that the Army used to run our missile programs.
wiki:
The Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) was formed to develop the US Army’s first large ballistic missile. The agency was established at Redstone Arsenal on 1 February 1956, and commanded by Major General John B. Medaris with Wernher von Braun as technical director.
The Redstone missile was the first major project assigned to ABMA. The Redstone was a direct descendant of the V-2 missile developed by the von Braun team in Germany during WWII. After the US Naval Research Laboratory’s Project Vanguard was chosen by the DOD Committee on Special Capabilities, over the ABMA’s proposal to use a modified Redstone ballistic missile as a satellite launch vehicle, ABMA was ordered to stop work on launchers for satellites and focus, instead, on military missiles.
Von Braun continued work on the design for what became the Jupiter-C IRBM. This was a three-stage rocket, which, by coincidence, could be used to launch a satellite in the Juno I configuration. In September 1956, the Jupiter-C was launched with a 30-lb (14-kg) dummy satellite. It was generally believed that the ABMA could have put a satellite into orbit at that time, had the US government allowed ABMA to do so. A year later, the Soviets launched Sputnik 1. When the Vanguard rocket failed, a Redstone based Jupiter-C launched America’s first satellite, Explorer 1, on 31 January 1958.[1] Redstone was later used as a launch vehicle in Project Mercury. Redstone was also deployed by the U.S. Army as the PGM-11, the first missile to carry a nuclear warhead.
Can you teach someone to fix it with a comic book?
I’m not bad mouthing anyone, bur since you can’t find your source for your claims about TACP, I can see why you switched to attack.
I don’t prove things to punks.
I’ll take that to mean you’re ok with the Army having the A-10.
If that is the case, then why not let the Army have its own air power the same as the Marines do?
Why do they need it? Seems like a duplication and a waste of money.
Evidently you make claims that you can’t support.
You made a clear claim, and I merely asked you for sources, I can’t find any that support your claim.
You insult people who have given their all to this country simply because of the color of their uniform.
Then you ask others to cure your ignorance.
Not interested
I’d suggest we should instead use carpet bombing. There really isn’t anything in that country worth giving a single American life for.
Failing that, yes horses or rather donkeys still have their uses on occasion.
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