Composite Photo of a Aerospace Power Dead End, a.k.a. A-10 N/AW
In thread over at SNAFU!, we find one commenter 'Lane" advocating the wet dream of 'Army über alles' types everywhere, i.e. the disbandment of the Air Force. I've invited him to read a couple of my older posts Space Force? and Space Coast Guard? and have posted this to give him an opportunity to make his case a little better than he did over at Solomon's.
Thoughtful arguments (beyond 'because', 'because I say so', and 'there was this one time in band camp' please) for disbanding the AF are welcome, but will be countered even more thoughtfully. I predict and forewarn that IF I get any response, my most common references in countering will involve "Goldwater-Nichols" and the words 'Train and Equip'.
Oh!.. and please leave the 'we have x number Air Forces' B.S. for use as sound bites on some space limited I-hate-AF thread. The Army has trains and it isn't a railroad, and some say it has more floating assets than the Navy and no one claims it is a 'Navy'.
If serious discussion on Airpower isn't your thing, then I refer you to a light-hearted romp on the subject of service roles and missions. See Harry Harrison's "Navy Day" ..........
The Army had a new theme song: "Anything you can do, we can do better!" And they meant anything, including up-to-date hornpipes!
It isn't too surprising that Army types don't fully appreciate the Air Force mission. There's evidence that different components of the Army don't even understand the roles of other Army elements. Case in point: read Fred Franks' book "Into the Storm" regarding conflict between his employment of VII Corps' armored forces vs. Schwarzkopf's conception of them as some sort of high-speed mechanized cavalry charge. Or even just the COIN vs. conventional heavy forces debate.
ReplyDeleteI think you've got a very good point, and that is one that really struck me in Andrew Krepenevich's "The Army in Vietnam" I've always been suspicious of Frank's account of what went down given the other views I've read though. It felt too much like an apologism, perhaps because it came out after a lot of the other accounts, and Tom Clancy's non-fiction style didn't help. Maybe it is time to revisit him though, Thanks!
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