My buddy John, who used to blog here before he became cooler than all of us, writes over at the Weekly Standard blog:
Bottom line, the Air Force still can’t be bothered with counter-insurgency ops. If they do stand up a wing of COIN birds, it will be to create a logistics infrastructure around the new airframe so that other nations will buy it, employ it, and do the icky ground attack mission so that the Air Force doesn’t have to.
I’m starting think that only way to get Blue-suiters serious about the ground attack role is to offer fixed-wing combat aircraft to the Army.
First off, there are people in the Army who still aren’t onboard with COIN, and its implications for the troops and the future structure of the Army. I can’t tell you how many infantry officers I’ve served with that complain about not being able to synchronize combat power on a linear battlefield against a uniformed enemy, and how anything else is not true “war.”
I’m not, nor do I claim to be, an Air Force guy (thank the Lord). However I can speak to my experience with the Air Force personnel I have served near, and some of the problems that I, an outside observer, see:
1. SWO’s and TACCPS are a great example of AF integration into ground units. Yeah, they don’t fly, but they are subject matter experts in functional areas that serve the ground forces very well.
2. The AF has cut its troops in Europe by “25,500 personnel over the last two years. It will cut another 17,000 personnel over the next two years to reach a self-imposed strength target of 316,500 by October 2009.”
Holy Crap, why not just re-structure a couple of smaller, modular, expeditionary Air Force wings to support missions across the globe, missions in the Horn of Africa, Philippines, Southern Command, EUCOM, and the new AFRICOM? I think the AF is definitely relevant to the war on terror, which is global in scale last time I checked. Why haven’t they considered a scaled-back support mission instead of simply firing people?
3. They keep trying to take our stuff: keep UAVs at the lowest level possible, and have them organic to the unit using them!
Air Force officials have been pressuring Congress for the past year to give them control over unmanned aerial systems that operate above 5,000 feet. That would include the bulk of the five major unmanned aerial systems managed at Redstone Arsenal for the Army.
U.S. Rep. Bud Cramer, D-Huntsville, said moving control of the majority of the military’s unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, would be disruptive and possibly dangerous to soldiers fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.
“Every few years the Air Force makes a grab for Army aircraft, and I don’t really know that it helps anything in the long run,” Cramer said last week. “The Army already uses these vehicles, is adept at using them and managing them, and I see no reason to change that. Any decision would have to be carefully reviewed.”
John concludes:
Today’s Air Force is overtasked and underfunded. Budget cuts have forced them to close base after base, and trim manpower by a whopping 40,000 Airmen. They have to remain strong against a resurgent Russia and occasionally hostile China, while fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, maintaining dominance in space, proficiency in global mobility, combat search and rescue, close air support, and dozens of other secondary missions….as long as the Air Force is forced to choose between fighting a hypothetical war against the Chinese or Russians and the actual wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, COIN ops should be their number one priority.
Sure, but the Army also has similar missions. Last time I checked, we were still in Germany and South Korea, and have developing missions in Africa and Romania, and the US Army is still on-call for a variety of security emergencies across the globe. The point is that the entire military is being presented with mission requirements and budget constraints that are mutually exclusive. Eventually, the military will have to either expand its size and percentage of the GDP, or contract globally and take on less. That’s the bottom line, policy-makers, good luck with the decision!
Or we could just have Navy-Marine Corps Air take all the missions and disband the Air Force…
Expand it’s size and increase it’s perccentage of GDP? That should have started September 12, 2001. What are we waiting for?
As an Air Force officer who has just returned from Iraq, I was working as an LNO to the 1st CAV in Baghdad, I think I may have an appropriate perspective on this issue.
For starters, the Air Force is NOT just pilots and A-10s. So before you start condeming the Air Force for not joining the COIN fight, lets keep in mind all of the Air Force EOD types who are operating on the roads of Iraq and Afghanistan. Additionally, the WIT teams that are doing alot of the exploitation of the devices are also Air Force blue with both AF EOD troops and AF intel analysts. More than a few of my troops have spent their deployments developing target folders on IED personnalities (bomb builders, financiers, and leadership).
Possibly even more predominant, is our ISR role in this fight. Yes, we take a lot of hits for the UAV fiasco (I’ll address that later) but we are providing a considerable amount of ISR support in the form of U-2, GLOBAL HAWK, JSTARS, etc. To a greater extent, most of our guys our doing reach back operations at our DGS and Ground Stations so our physical presence may not be as noticeable as our over all contribution. And our physical contribution is increasing with the addition of ISR LNOs at each Divsion (and eventually below that as well).
As far as the airpower role itselt, a lot of it is non-kinetic (a lot of specialized jamming assets). Kinetically, admittedly (and much to my own frustrations during my recent tour) we were slow to accept the realities of the fight. Part of this is linked to the ground commanders’ concern about using weapons that may create headaches for him in the form of very public collateral damage but also because until recently, we really did bring the right weapons to the fight. Recently, however, our efforts have increased to get more appropriate weapons deployed to include low collateral weapons and weapons designed more specifically for high speed vehicles.
Of course, the Air Force cannot go out and buy new aircraft on short notice. We do still maintain a very realistic commitment to deterring more advance adversary forces as well as to back up that deterrent with technology on par with countries who are significantly increasing their own capabilities (I’m looking at you China and Venezuela). So we go to war with the jets we have and we trust our talented folks to figure out how to employ them in the best tactical fashion.
Finally, the UAS debate. From the Air Force perspective, this isn’t so much about the support we provide our land based associates but actually about not colliding all of our aircraft in the skies over Baghdad. There is a lot of metal flying around up there. And right now, at least half of it, is not being flown by Air Force or Navy/Marine Corps pilots. This is not to detract from the excellent job being done by the Army’s UAS operators but to highlight the fact that as you increase the amount of steel in the air, the greater the responsibility on the Air Force to manage that airspace to keep everyone safe and to ensure that everyone is effective. Without the ability to standardize how all those aviators (officer, enlisted, warrant) do their job, the harder that job becomes. I completely agree that the Air Force doesn’t necessarily have the right attitude when it comes to how to best allocate those UAS to support the ground component, but their concerns for air safety are completely valid.
The Navy and the Marines do a great job. I have worked with them as well. But the reason the Air Force exists is because while we may not have the largest number of aircraft flying (the Army has us beat by quite a few), we have the C2 structure in place to manage all of it effectively. The Navy and the Marines have their job to do and they have their expertise. So do we and anyone who thinks that the Marines and the Navy can just assume those roles without impacting their own missions, does not really understand what any of those three services do.
BK – I was somewhat facetious in my comment. The problem with the Army/Navy/Air Force is not at the operator level. The folks in the mix make due with what they have. The problem is with the leadership and their inability to accurately project future needs, whether in funding for platforms or in terms of the proper attitude the particular service should be taking in serving the country.
Our Naval leadership has, for the last 25 years or so, been enamored with platforms that can do everything. Look at LCS, DDG1000, Seawolf. Very costly platforms, but do we need them or do we need more cost effective platforms that the commanders won’t be afraid to send into battle?
How about the Air Force and the B2 bomber or F35? While they may certainly fill a future role, is it really the best bang for the buck? I still can’t believe that the Air Force keeps trying to kill the A-10.
No, the problem exists with those who procure weapons systems and plan our country’s future warfighting capabilities. While we have always wanted quality platforms, remember that in WWII it was numbers that defeated Germany (just look at the Sherman vs. the King Tiger). We need a balance and right now, I don’t think it is there (witness Charlie’s comments about the Army and COIN).
It is my hope that they young leaders on the ground today stay in long enough (such as yourself, BK) to form our military into a balanced fighting force that can handle the country’s needs.
INCREASE INCREASE and hell yes it should have been one of the first actions taken 9-12-01!
US military is half what it was in the 90′s. A meager 4% GDP compared to a peacetime 80′s of roughly 6.5%+. And does anyone really want to even bring up GDP comparisons during would also cation the “screw the cold war systother US wars?
And did I mention this 4% GDP is supposed to not only wage two hot wars and multiple smaller ehhh actions around the world BUT also somehow reequip replace nearly all that 80′s vintage weapon systems. Did I mention that those replacements also have to cutting edge enough to hold our edge for the next 20-40 yrs?
Correction from above I don’t know or understand how what happened here?
“would also cation the “screw the cold war systother US wars?”
supposed to read;
[And does anyone really want to even bring up GDP comparisons during other US wars?]
The Army operating B52′s C117,B1,etc. Scarey ,very scarey!
And the Navy trying to land a C5 on a carrier, I vote to keep the air force the Air Force!!
Remember that once upon a time, the Navy launched AAF B-25′s from carriers to bomb Japan…
“there are people in the Army who still aren’t onboard with COIN,”
Say, how’s that oh-so-COIN-relevant FCS thing coming along? If the Army had that in Iraq and Afghanistan, would it solve all our COIN problems?
C-Low makes an excellent point with:
“also somehow reequip replace nearly all that 80′s vintage weapon systems”
As you may or may not be aware, all of the USAF’s F-15C air superiority fighters have been grounded. For the third time in a matter of months. And there is no word at this time as to when these aircraft will be released to fly again.
Which means that if the Chinese decided to reunify Taiwan in time for the Olympics, we would have a fairly significant problem. So while we may have done a good thing in upgrading the A-10C, it must be kept in mind that this airframe is still as old as the F-15Cs in most cases. So how long do we keep that aircraft (A-10) on the books before we start replacing it?
I don’t necessarily think that the F-35 is the right choice for replacing it but the system is as yet untested. It may in fact be a credible weapon system. However, I will admit that we have not always done a good job of identifying replacement aircraft before we retired other assets (the EF-111 in particular but to some extent replacing the F-4Gs with the still immature F-16).
So I won’t argue that the USAF is always right in how it acquires or replaces systems, but I do believe there is logic in how we attempt to schedule our acquisition decades in advance (these things are not easy to develop). We may have superiority right now, but that may not last for many more years if we don’t start adopting some more advanced systems.
COIN is an important aspect of warfare. And it will always be there. But to assume we are never going to enter into a conflict with another country that has achieved parity, is incredibly dangerous. Mainly because it is difficult to deter a potential COIN adversary but it is often only deterence that keeps other regional/world powers in check. And if owning a bunch of aircraft we will never use keeps us out of a fight we actually have a chance of losing, I think they are more than worth their bang for a buck.
Re: “Remember that once upon a time, the Navy launched AAF B-25′s from carriers to bomb Japan…”
None of those aircraft were recoverable. Not the most shining example of “jointness” but sadly, an early suggestion of how joint operations would work for quite some time.