Originally posted by: Red Dawn
Originally posted by: ProfJohn
Sounds like the Air Force has some serious problems.
Yeah the Douchebag who is their Commander and Chief and his hatchet man Gates.
Absolutely wrong. As is often the case, when these types of problems become well-known (such as this situation with the Air Force), most people will ignorantly take the quick and easy route by blaming one or two people... usually the president and/or the Sec of Defense. Not to say they are completely blameless, but issues like this are normally entrenched, long term problems that fester.
Stay away from the political BS and I know Bush Bashing is the latest and greatest craze, but there's a lot of good, professional stuff to read out there if you're actually serious about learning and discussing the issue. Here's an example:
http://lexingtoninstitute.org/1274.shtml
HOW THE AIR FORCE FELL SO FAR
Loren B. Thompson, Ph.D.
Issue Brief
Jun 10, 2008
The forced resignation of the Air Force's top civilian and
uniform leaders last week is the latest chapter in a chronicle of
decline that has been unfolding for decades. The political influence of
U.S. air power has gradually ebbed away since the cold war ended, and
the resulting vacuum has been filled by representatives from other
services, most notably the Navy. Air Force officers today are largely
excluded from the uppermost tier of the joint command structure, and
have grown accustomed to being out of step with the priorities of senior
political appointees running the Pentagon. Some proponents of air power
offer conspiracy theories to explain why the Air Force has fallen to the
lowest point in its sixty-year history. But an honest appraisal of what
happened suggests that the service's wounds are mostly self-inflicted.
Perhaps the greatest defect of Air Force leaders in recent times
has been their failure to adapt to the changing demands of a transformed
global security environment. The Air Force won its independence from
the Army and became first among equals in joint military counsels by
offering a theory of strategic bombing that seemed uniquely responsive
to the geopolitical rivalries of the industrial age. The promise of air
power at its inception was that it could hit the "vital centers" of
enemy power, and thus bring speedy victory that avoided the static
trench warfare of World War One. A generation later, nuclear weapons
made air power even more potent -- not so much as an agent of victory,
but as a tool of deterrence. However, U.S. defeat in Vietnam signaled
that the source of danger was shifting to elusive, unconventional
aggressors, and the Air Force failed to change as fast as the threat
did.
Resistance to change is common in large, regimented
institutions, but in the Air Force it was made worse by cultural
insularity. Unlike the Army and Navy, who have located their service
academies and war colleges close to the nation's centers of economic and
political power, the Air Force chose to site its academic institutions
in remote locales such as Colorado Springs and Montgomery, Alabama. In
these isolated places there was little opportunity for cosmopolitan
cross-currents to influence the education of airmen. Air power doctrine
was passed down as dogma rather than as a living body of ideas, and that
produced senior officers who lacked the worldliness of their Navy
counterparts.
One symptom of this cultural insularity is a widespread
political obtuseness within the Air Force that leads it to misjudge what
power brokers outside the service want or will support. For example,
during the Bush years the service has expended considerable political
capital in resisting the efforts of civilian leaders to buy more B-2
bombers, increase spending on space systems, and accelerate the
development of unmanned surveillance aircraft. If it had simply said
"yes" in each case and conserved its capital for the really hard fights
like keeping the F-22 fighter in production, the Air Force today would
have a bigger budget, better capabilities, and more goodwill among
senior policymakers. By refusing to deal with the political system on
its own terms, the Air Force has handed other services with superior
political skills control of the entire joint command structure.
A final defect has been the Air Force's inability to communicate
with outsiders in a way that makes its capabilities and needs
compelling. This is a problem for all the services, but the Navy and
Marine Corps have worked much harder to improve their outreach
abilities. Because the Air Force has lost the capacity to speak
clearly, few Americans are aware of what it is doing in the global war
on terror; fewer still realize it may be more relevant to future
conflicts than the other services. It is sad that Secretary Wynne and
General Moseley are ending their service to the nation on such a
negative note, but it would be downright tragic if this moment did not
lead air power advocates to rethink the way they do their jobs.
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