KC-X: The Inevitable

Well, this post is only for the purposes of closing the loop (finally/hopefully/perhaps?) on the long drawn-out saga of the KC-X contract, in which we conclude that alas, Crony Capitalism wins another 'big one'. Sad.
The only good news is that the Boeing aircraft is tiny enough to almost make the KC-Y competition mandatory down the road. Of course that still sucks for the taxpayer.

Update: All I did was change my links to Will Collier's site instead. His quote from memory pretty much captures the entire saga within a paragraph. If you want the long story, click on my "Boeing BS Watch" link under 'Themes on this Site" to the right.

AF Chief of Staff?...or Just another 'Suit'?

(H/T In From the Cold)
General Schwartz, in the latest of a long string of events highlighting the AF's 'buisiness ethos' is either actively subverting attempts by a non-profit historical group from gettng their hands on an F-105 thunderchief and enough parts to get one flying again. The historical significance of the F-105's combat history, including the sacrifices and efforts of the men who flew them and kept them flying cannot be denied, and their memory should be kept alive. Bringing what is now commonly referred to as 'Heritage Flights' to the masses at airshows and in silent display makes these beasts a reality to those who've forgotten or never knew them.
I was stationed at Hill AFB for many years, including the time when the ANG's 419thFW transitioned from being the last F-105 Wing to the first Guard unit to fly the F-16.
My home was a couple of miles off the end of the runway, and you always knew when a "Thud" flight was taking off. The Thud sure went out with a bang that I'll never forget: the 'Thudout' was a sight that would never be seen again.
Come to think of it, the AF is also missing a pretty good opportunity to remind those who would complain* about the F-35 noise footprint, what used to be flying overhead when rarely a complaint was heard.

* Attention Boise! You used to have freakin' F-4s stationed there! Now suck it up and slap on your "Jet Noise - The Sound of Freedom" bumper stickers. (In the comments section at the link, I'd say most of the locals are telling the fearful ninnies just about the same thing.)

AF Side of the KC-45 Story Disappears

At Leeham News And Comment, someone was asking me about a reference showing the AF's position on the lamented late "KC-X Competition of '08". I went looking for such documentation that I had referenced earlier in several places and found that all refernces to it appear to have disappeared on the web. Thus the dead are buried. But unlike John Kerry, I have proof it did exist.

Who knows? Someday it may come in handy.

Update: Ahhhh, cripes. I've let this now dead argument stay waaaay too far under my skin and it is getting to the point that I get 'mean' on it too quickly. I'm swearing off tilting at windmills in the past, at least over at Leeham.

Sigh~The Bomber Flies Back Into the Wilderness

Punting Long Range StrikeThere's a lot of decisions in the FY2010 defense budget, announced today, that are problematic, but one thing in SecDef Gate's announcement leaps out as farce:

We will not pursue a development program for a follow-on Air Force bomber until we have a better understanding of the need, the requirement, and the technology (emphasis mine).

This statement is pure political Bulls***. It is a statement that provides cover for an organizational blindspot whereby unpopular answers to tough questions can be avoided.


As I illustrated only a short while ago, the long-range strike question is one of the most thoroughly examined and best understood issues in defense. Let me provide a translation of the above; one that I assure you is FAR more accurate than the drivel shoved into the SecDef's announcement:

We will not pursue a development program for a follow-on Air Force bomber until we have an answer that will NOT threaten the Fighter Establishment and its aquisition strategies. We have grand hopes that we can develop promising technologies that will greatly improve the small and fast-mover capabilities while magically be of no benefit to long-range subsonic platforms.
With these magic technologies, our Fighter Mafiosi expect to be able to FINALLY get rid of all pesky non-fighter strike aircraft.

There. Much better.

The most staggering thing in all this (to me) is that so many in the Fighter Establishment really and truly believe in their steeds and the nobility of their Crusade.

Looks like Return of the Bomber is set back, once again, by the Long-Range Blind Spot.

One Bright Spot
The recent creation of the Global Strike Command should re-establish a virile constituency for the LRS mission and mission needs. Its first 'provisional' Commander, BGen James M. Kowalski, is both an airpower theorist (see my earlier post where he is cited) AND a veteran practitioner of LRS. I only hope his selection is part of a process to groom him to take over the permanent job (or ACC) someday (It is at this time a three-star position). A competent advocacy for LRS could do much to turn the DoD's officially stated position against the entrenched parochial interests.

B-52 Nuke Story: A Tale of Two Chiefs

'Former Spook' at In From the Cold has an excellent post with one AF Chief's view of what went wrong (is still going wrong) in the Minot B-52 "Nuke" flight last week. He even has a skeptic in the form of another 'Chief' in the comments.

Hmmm. Both 'Chiefs' would be of about the same vintage, so both would have been a little past mid-career when Aspin's Bottom Up Review gutted the Air Force (my take on Aspin and the BUR was here): when all the structure provided by solid mentors who didn't want to suffer through the Clinton years bailed as fast as we could. The Chief in the main post makes the most sense though, and what he writes jives with what my 'little birds' have been telling me over the years. So the other 'Chief' might either be a fraud (low probability) or one of those Dufii (plural for Dufus) who never would have made MSgt much less CMSgt in my Air Force.

Continued 'Apologies to All' for not finding much time to post lately. Work (unfortunately) finds me writing, reviewing and editing several hundred pages of test plans, procedures, and operating instructions right now. I don't know how 'everyone' else does it.

Air Force Readiness? (AF Reshaping BS Point of Interest)

I REALLY AM still trying to close out the AF Reshaping BS series -- Honest!

The hard part is getting the answer nobody wants to hear into a form that somebody will at least attempt to read. IN the meantime, I just found a piece about how AF readiness is down at www.noangst.blogspot.com (could not get link to work for some reason, but the link is still the title of this post if you want to try it).
I intend to start visiting there regularly myself.

Enjoy.

BTW: Here's a hint on where I'm going with this series. I had a discussion with an awfully darned smart O-6 yesterday, and we agreed:

The problem is rooted in trying to do a Superpower's job on less than a Superpower Sidekick budget.

3.9% (or less) of GDP (Source: slide 25) for defense and that's WITH a war on? Gimme a break!

Air Force "Reshaping" Index

AKA: Air Force 'Gutting'

To make it easier to locate posts on this topic, this is now the 'collector' for all Air Force Reshaping posts. I'm still reconstructing work from the computer dump a few weeks ago, so Part 5 is still coming, and more!

AF Force Reshaping B.S.

Air Force Reshaping BS: A Milestone

Air Force 'Force Reshaping' Sales Pitch: Part 1

Air Force 'Force Reshaping' Sales Pitch: Part 2

Air Force 'Force Reshaping' Sales Pitch: Part 3

Air Force 'Force Reshaping' Sales Pitch: Part 4

Status on AF Reshaping: Part 5

Force Reshaping: Mid-Career Gutting Behind Schedule

Force Reshaping: Mid-Career Gutting Behind Schedule

Just got the word yesterday on how it goes with the AF's 'reshaping' scheme relative to the 'mid career' folks. I'll save my comments for my Part 5, but here is 'The Word' almost verbatim:

1. Force Shaping. On 26 Jul 06, the Force Shaping program was initiated with the release of Force Shaping Message #1.

This message announced the implementation of VSP for officers with between 6 and 12 years of service. Since the window opened, we have received more than 2,400 applications leading to just over 1,800 approved separations (only 57% of our 3,200 goal).

These results aren't entirely surprising since there haven't been any previous involuntary programs for the VSP eligible population. That has now changed with the recently approved NDAA that gives the services the authority to conduct a Reduction in Force (RIF) board.

2. Message #3. The attached message extends the application window for VSP until 31 Mar 07. It was originally scheduled to end on 31 Jan 07. It also expands eligibility to officers whose TFCSD is between 30 Sep 95 and 31 Dec 01. Most notably, the message announces a RIF board scheduled for 11-29 Jun 07.

The RIF board will convene to evaluate officers in overage career fields (as defined by the matrix located on AFPC's Force Shaping website) with between 6 and 12 years of active commissioned service for continued retention in the Air Force. Specifically, the board will consider year groups 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2000, and 2001.

The 1999 year group will be excluded as they will be in-the-promotion zone during this timeframe and historically, the Air Force hasn't considered officers for competitive promotion and involuntary separation during the same year. The RIF process is expected to achieve a reduction of approximately 1,000 officers. Additional VSP losses are also expected after announcement of the RIF.

This release is certain to cause many questions and consternation since this is the first use of RIF since the early 1990's. Hopefully we'll see an increase in VSP which reduce the numbers needed for the RIF board. Our goal remains voluntary over nonvoluntary actions.

"Our goal remains voluntary over nonvoluntary actions"? -- I do not think 'voluntary' means what whoever wrote this thinks it means.

Status on AF Reshaping: Part 5

I haven't dropped the ball: I'm taking some time here to wrap up my summary on the Air Force's 'Reshaping' B.S. effort.

Coming up through the NCO ranks, you learn that it is never enough to just have a criticism -- and sniping from the sidelines is nothing special IF you don't also have some constructive ideas as to how to make the problem go away, make things better, or sometimes just survive a bad situation with everybody's ass and career intact.

So I will be closing my 'Fisking' of the AF's plans with some clear (not neccesarily what anyone at the top will want to hear however - sometimes asses and careers don't get to stay intact) actions to take to get clear of the mess the AF is in, and asking for suggestions from the field.

Air Force 'Force Reshaping' Sales Pitch. Part 4

For the story so far, see Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3

As mentioned earlier, Part 4 is where we will examine the part of the AF brief where they inadvertently highlight the US military’s slide into ‘superpower-lite’ status”. Since this turned into a particularly long piece, we will now defer the AF’s delusional ‘vision’ of the ‘better, cheaper, faster’ mantra as a follow-on in Part 5.

And now.... Part 4

Slide 13 is a 'marvel'.

Hmmmm, There is Something Missing….

What makes this slide extremely interesting is as much about what not shown as anything else, so we will give it special attention. While this slide is used as a simple attention-getter in preparation to the AF’s next point, it gives hints about so much of what has happened to the AF since 1989, while it avoids giving any information that would take the audience ‘off-message’. Indeed, the missing information must surely be considered ‘counter-message’ by HQAF.

As presented, this slide is little more than factoids on a timeline. To be useful as anything more, one needs to have a good grasp of the ‘whys’ behind the numbers. But an understanding of the ‘whys’ would also tend to subvert the AF’s message. Remember: The ‘message’ the AF is trying to sell is that 'force reshaping’ -- AKA force(d) reductions -- are necessary”!

There is a major intermediate ‘conceptual’ step that occurred between 1989 and 2006. Although a pure cynic might think it was skipped over only because it would be ‘counter message’, it was most likely not mentioned due to a combination of slide space considerations and the fact that in implementation, the intermediate step became little more than a whistle stop on the way to current force constructs, which would have made it harder to couch comparable numbers for that step on this slide. Therefore, I will generously chalk the omission up as due to chartsmanship and sloth instead of intent. As the AF suffered a major purge in 1993-7 (discussed below) it is also entirely possible that the 'functionary' that built the slide is a ‘newbie’ and has little or no awareness of what is missing.

Fact: Today’s ‘2006’ force construct is largely an outcome of Les Aspin’s (Clinton’s first SecDef) efforts to gut the military.

It is quite remarkable how much of our current perspectives on defense spending can be traced all the way back to Clinton, Aspin, and a Democrat-controlled Congress that was salivating at the thought of meting out the ‘Peace Dividend’ to their various pet projects and constituencies. If anything, the current force posture and the predicament the military is in are more than anything a clear statement about how disastrous and lasting the impact of an incompetent ideologue such as Aspin can be. This is what happens when a twit is given free reign over the DoD for even a short tenure (9 months!) by a feckless ‘party boy’ in the Oval Office.

Now: On to the missing piece!
The ‘step’ that is missing was ‘The Base Force’ (previously mentioned here, and for Lorna Jaffe’s definitive paper on the topic see here. What became "The Base Force" can be largely credited to then-JCS Chairman Colin Powell, and a few visionaries who picked up early on the decline of the Soviet Union and the impacts of President Reagan’s direct confrontation with the Evil Empire. Gen. Powell may not have been the originator, but he sure recognized the need and provided the horsepower that developed the Base Force concept.

The ‘Base Force’ construct was conceived as a rational way forward to draw down the size and composition of the post-Cold War military in a way that also allowed for future defense need uncertainties that the U.S would face as the sole remaining ‘superpower’. It wasn’t perfect of course, but it was at least based upon reasonable assumptions and prudence. At the time, Aspin was HASC Chairman---or rather I should say “was a HASC Chairman who envisioned that he alone understood what kind of military that was needed in the future”. Powell’s run-ins with Aspin on the subject were public and loud. I dare say it was one of the main reasons Aspin got the SecDef job, much to the chagrin of too many troopers in Somalia a short time later.

Overshadowing even his 'Blackhawk Down' moment in lasting impact, Aspin implemented what he called the ‘Bottom Up Review’ (BUR) which gamed all the analyses to arrive at the (his) predetermined conclusions. If Aspin got information he didn’t want, he ignored it: nothing would stop him from slashing the military to well below the levels required for the US to fulfill its superpower responsibilities and commitments.

While the objective of saving the almighty dollar was the most 'popular' excuse for this endeavor, in my opinion Aspin was determined to ‘demilitarize’ the US at any cost to our security and safety—and I stand on his voting record in Congress to say it.

Here’s a cheerful thought: The next Congress looks like it is going to be run by all the 60’s retreads who now have seniority, so expect ‘Aspinesque’ idiocy to be issuing forth soon. As far as National Defense needs go, we are entering another dark age. Remember, President George H. Bush lost re-election on the heels of fighting and winning exactly the kind of war the Base Force was designed to handle. But sometime between 1991 and the election in 1992 the winning political battle cry would become: “It’s the ‘The Economy Stupid”.

And so this chart rushes past any mention of “Why” we are continuing what might one day be acknowledged as our largest and longest running defense misstep in the 20th and possibly the 21st century: the gutting of the DoD (and the Air Force as a subset thereof).

There are a couple of gems here as well…

Force Sizing Basis
First, note the particular differences in ‘strategy’ as it is addressed in each column. This is a pretty ‘interesting’ summary of the decline in our national defense objectives over the last 15 years.

Reading across the top we can see that we are expected to believe we have gone from planning against an overarching known threat (threat-based), to a ‘capabilities-based’ planning approach, to a ‘capabilities-based & budget-constrained’ planning approach. If this wasn’t such a serious topic, this little twist on reality would be hilarious. Why? It is because even when we were using ‘threat-based’ planning, we were ‘budget-constrained’ --- as we (properly) have been since the end of WWII. Paul Kennedy’s fantasies aside, as a nation we have not had to choose between guns and butter since 1945.

What the ‘strategy’ line on the slide really tells us is that the AF 'leadership':
1. Cannot or is unwilling to make the case to expand the budget,
2. Cannot or is unwilling to even recognize the need to expand the budget, or
3. There are leadership 'factions' guilty of one or the other.

Basing Concept
I just LOVE this part. Now the AF is telling its Airmen that the ‘expeditionary’ concept so prominently employed today is only ‘semi-expeditionary’! So I suppose things are really going to be ‘expeditionary’ in the future?!

The ‘expeditionary’ idea was conceived as an option to deal with the reduced force structure and projected associated reduced overseas basing footprint (but didn’t have the neat shades-of-Black-Jack-Pershing moniker at the time). It became absolutely necessary in the wake of Aspin’s BUR debacle, and now AF management is calling today’s concept ‘semi-expeditionary’? If the current situation is ‘semi-expeditionary’ then ‘future expeditionary’ has to translate into English as: ‘permanently deployed’. Yep, I can see a lot of people wanting to spend 20-30 years forward-deployed. Good luck with that!

And so now HQAF sets up the audience for the bloody details by first spreading a little pablum:

Oh, tell us! Please!

Whoah!

This slide is…is…-- Well I’ll just hit each point they try to make and you can come to your own conclusions. The second row will be dealt with last because that is the ‘money shot’ as far as I’m concerned.

First Row: Environments

The 20th Century was 'predictable'? Outside of two world wars that were telegraphed to us from a long way off before we got involved, what exactly was predictable about it? The 20th Century was about ‘conventional’ threats? Again, outside the two world wars, what was ‘conventional’ about them?

The only thing that makes the 20th Century 'predictable' is that it is now ‘history’.

Asymmetric threats are a new problem? For reference, here are some asymmetrical threat situations that the US has had to deal with in the 20th Century:

• 1910-1916 Mexican Expedition
• 1909-1933 Intervention in Nicaragua and,
• Most of the rest of these as well as,
• The entire Vietnam War involved dealing with asymmetric threats.

Third Row: “Force vs. Effects Focus”

This line looks like a ‘slide filler’. Either that or a ‘Butter Bar’ with no prior enlisted experience wrote it. We were never ‘geographically focused’ except in the respect that we set our butts in geographic regions necessary to address whatever the national defense needs required. We had forces forward-deployed because the threat they faced was forward deployed AND leaning forward, and we had unilaterally decided to give them the initiative (lest we be thought of as "provacative"!) in any combat scenario: hence the term ‘tripwire’ to describe our (NATO’s) posture. We would give up too much too fast if we hadn’t also been ‘forward deployed’. My fighter squadron wasn’t in Iceland because of the beaches, fiords, or volcanoes. It was there because the Soviets were very keen on sending submarines, Bear bombers, and other players down the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom Gap so they could operate off the coast of the United States (frequently at a surprisingly high tempo), and pull good duty in the Worker’s Paradise. Somebody thought it would be a good idea to keep an eye on them as they came by.

“Effects Focus”?

We have always been an “effects-focused” force. We bomb = they die. This is just recognizing that the desired effects we’re looking for are somewhat different than before, or to put it another way: “We bomb = they die but also some other ‘they’ is ALSO terribly inconvenienced”. This is actually still an awfully abstract concept to be touting as a solution to anything. This concept has very vocal defenders and opponents in DoD, and what an “effects-based” air campaign looks like is still evolving. But it IS a really cool sounding concept so the term gets bandied about quite a bit.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for ‘effects based’: the better we define the desired effects we wish to achieve, the better we can execute the mission to meet our objectives. But this represents less a paradigm shift than a six-sigma quality effort in force employment. Structuring one’s forces so that they are perpetually stressed by the "ops tempo" hardly promotes the ability to ‘adjust’ the force employment and deployment patterns in pursuit of the current desired ‘effect’, much less address new needs that can and will pop up.

‘Garrison Based’?

Operationally, the only advantage of forward deploying over forward basing is the cost savings from not having to move households and other infrastructure overhead, but even that isn’t a one-for-one-savings. Everything pretty much just changes ‘cost buckets’. For example, we can either pay to store bombs where we will operate or we pay extra to store them on pre-positioning ships or pay extra to ship them where we need them, when we need them.

We can pay to put the infrastructure in place where we need it, or pay a lot more to put less in
place when and where we need it. We could also pay more dearly in other ways when we don’t get it in place in time or at all. Again, don’t get me wrong, I’m actually for the US basing and forward deployment scheme as long as there is ‘enough’ Air Force to do the job over the long haul. The current path is only a good one as long as the world behaves in a way that is known and ‘hoped for’.

Fourth Row: “Trim the Fat”

This almost made the top of the list for reasons I will go into covering another slide later in the brief. At this time, just let us observe that for this aspect of the AF, the ‘20th Century’ ended about a decade earlier. Also please ask yourself the question: “If forward forces are ‘reaching back for support’, who are they reaching back to, if AF management is also gutting the home stations?”

The punch line at the bottom of the slide is good as far as it goes, but it is incomplete. It
should read:

This is a different Air Force we’re building…not “the same, but smaller”, and also a heck of a lot less capable and not nearly good enough to use as a
deterrent.

Seriously, this is eerily reminiscent of the early 90’s when we were looking at the post Cold War environment and were told something to the effect of:

In the past, it was ‘do more with less’, this time we’re going to ‘do less with
less’.

At least in the 90’s, AF ‘Leadership’ openly acknowledged the impact of the course we were taking. What a stark contrast to today’s AF ‘Management Team’.

And finally…..The Second Row: “Force Structure”

This is the most frightening bit in the whole brief, as it is an explicit admission that the AF on its current path will in the very near future NOT have the essential element of ‘mass’, and are consciously choosing to dispense with it. I’ve been on the bleeding-edge of operations research and have performed a ton of force employment studies. The number one question that is always asked is:

How many aimpoints can we service in X amount of time and how long can we keep it up?

To do well with either half of that question, the AF needs to be able to bring ‘Mass’ against it’s foes. Now the concept itself has changed somewhat in the sense we no longer need (for now) hundreds of platforms going against an industrial center in the hopes of hitting a couple of factories. But we still need the capability to strike many places at once, and do many missions at once, and do it over long distances. For all the above you need to have "mass".

To get the most out of any aerospace force, you need flexibility, precision, lethality, speed (airspeed, a subset of speed is only better to a point), and survivability/sustainability. If you want to be able to operate over a sustained period of time, or really press an advantage quickly, you need sufficient ‘numbers’ ladies! This slide tells me the AF is only planning on fighting wars against greatly inferior forces, which of course will only encourage undesirable behaviors in near-peer competitors, (or petty despots when they see us occupied elsewhere).

This line on the slide tells me that the 'leadership' either thinks we do not need mass anymore, and/or they really don’t understand the modern definition, or (most likely) is betting they can keep the hardware costs at bay until they can ‘afford it’ in the future. Any of these three beliefs should be completely unacceptable to any real commander of warfighters.

As Vegitus asserted "Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum." (loosely translated: “if you want peace, prepare for war”). It appears AF 'leadership’ has decided they want a ‘little peace’, so they’re only preparing for ‘little wars’.

Part 5 will be the last substantial post on the subject. If this had been an ‘external’ brief, instead of a sales pitch to the thousands of service men and women affected, most of the slides after this would have been ‘backup’ slides, but I will present those without a lot of comment to keep the full impact and thrust of this briefing in full view for posterity.

Check Six!

Air Force 'Force Reshaping' Sales Pitch. Part 3

What we’ve covered so far:

Part 1: “OK people, listen up. We’re going to fight this War on Terrorism and win, OK? That’s a given. And we’re going to do as much as we can to take care of everyone that will be affected by some changes we need to make to ensure our future. But what this is really about is making sure we have the tools and resources we’ve planned for so we can accomplish our mission in the future.” (and everything before the “but” is bulls***)

Part 2: “Let’s ignore the fact that when you stop reducing numbers of people the impact of pay raises on total personnel costs becomes apparent over time. This net cost growth per person was hidden in the aggregate cost as long as the forces size was being reduced. Also, don’t talk about how when you start moving your people around, use them in combat, and personnel costs increase. DO talk about personnel costs in an as abstract as possible way.” Thus, the AF’s ‘big idea’ amounts to this: “If we can reduce rising personnel costs (that Congress had intentionally increased over time) by ‘laying off’ the very people Congress was trying to take of in the first place, then Congress will give us more money for hardware.”

And now…..Part 3
The AF, having misrepresented (hell – Ignored!) the drivers behind a apparent [update: corrected sentence to how it should have read in the first place] rise in personnel costs, continues to mischaracterize “Today’s Fiscal Environment” through oversimplification and studious avoidance of identifying other root cost drivers. It seems as if they believe that if they oversimplify for the audience (the same people most in the know AND affected by this ‘reshaping’) the troops won’t notice two things:

1. The course the AF has chosen wouldn’t be ‘necessary’ if someone had headed off the budget train wreck when they saw it coming and…
2. This course of action is hardly the best one. It is just the easiest and most politically expedient one that a myopic leadership is willing to employ.

Caution!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Unless you are a “bean counter”, comprehend the nuances of acquisition, and/or grasp the importance of logistics, your eyes may glaze over in this session

Beginning with the next two slides (8 & 9) in the ‘Fiscal Reality’ section of the brief…..



We see the briefing now attempts to illustrate a relationship between increased operating costs and age of the aircraft.

It is true there is a relationship, but these charts do not show it. How can we tell? Simple: Chart 9 merely shows the cost to operate aircraft in average ‘millions of dollars per aircraft’ over a very diverse aircraft fleet being used in very different ways and at varying operational tempos.

Assuming the AF chart makers still have integrity (not a stretch…yet), let us also assume (without any evidence to support the assumption) the charts are normalized to factor out the increased cost of consumables such as fuels and lubricants (you may have heard about the rise in cost of petroleum products pacing the cost of living these days). Let us then assume the costs shown represent only those costs incurred to keep the aircraft in a Mission Capable state reflected by the Mission Capable Rate (MCR) shown. The really big thing missing from Slide 8 is that you do NOT see is any indication as to how much the USE RATE (flying hours/year) is affecting total operating costs.

If the chart did reflect the impact of the use rate, the ‘Costs’ would be expressed in terms of average cost per aircraft flight hour. It is entirely possible that the chart makers specifically avoided showing that statistic because it could actually be dropping, because it costs X amount of dollars to fix malfunctions whether you operate the aircraft or not. If a plane is flying longer or more sorties than usual (common in wartime scenarios), the failures & fixes per flight hour and the repair costs can go up or down for several reasons, including dependence on where the aircraft is in its lifecycle. Towards the end of the lifecycle is where the age of hardware comes into play as an increasing cost driver.

Physical age in years doesn’t necessarily mean much to failure rates, while the amount of use (flying hours) during those years is meaningful. Physical age is more relevant to the costs of repair, because part obsolescence, economic order quantities, and supplier business models all play a role. This is now a particularly acute problem with electronic parts. Weapons system acquisition programs now have to make many more decisions at the start of a program as to whether to:

1. pay for the continued production overhead of an existing part,
2. forecast a lifetime buy quantity to purchase and warehouse for future needs or,
3. implement a preplanned system redesign program to keep the technology fresh.

These questions were once a major concern more towards the middle or end of a weapon’s lifecycle, but now contractors must demonstrate a robust approach to deal with obsolescence just to be awarded the contract in the first place.

So now we know what the relevance of age is to cost. Why didn’t the AF brass direct the chart makers to show what parts of the fleet are the problem instead of presenting a broad-brush and meaningless fleet average? Is the whole fleet the problem? Is the Air Force throwing away manpower so they can afford to buy a “totally new Air Force”? Aren’t some types are older than others?

To get the answers, let us now dig into the details behind the AF’s aircraft age chart. Using publicly available numbers (pdf file) , here’s what the average age of Air Force aircraft looks like broken down by type:

Anyone familiar with the Air Force would see no surprises as to which aircraft types are oldest. However the average age by type doesn’t reflect the impact of each type on the fleet average, because each type has a different impact based on the percentage of the fleet the type represents. More airplanes = more impact. This could be a positive impact by many young systems or a negative impact from many old systems. ‘Racking and Stacking’ by relative weights (average age of type times the percentage of fleet the type represents) we can demonstrate which aircraft types have the most impact (for better or worse) on the ‘fleet average’ number as shown here:

By just looking at the plot above, you will observe that by an overwhelming margin, a relative few aircraft types have the most impact on the total fleet average age. Looking at the top ten “age drivers” we see that they represent over five and a half times the impact the remaining 31 aircraft types combined have on the overall fleet average age.


The Top Ten ‘Impacters’ are mostly what I would have expected. The only surprise to me is the T-1 ‘Jayhawk’. Since that type isn’t very ‘old’ the AF must have bought more of them than I recalled. Clearly though, the ratio of ‘old’ to ‘new’ can be claimed to be 9 to 1. Note: The F-15 and F-16 fleets may be approaching ‘middle-age’ compared to the B-52, but with a ‘yank and bank’ history and a requirement to survive in the most hostile environments, fighters can be considered to age ‘faster’. Also, the secret to the long life of the B-52, (aside from the powers of nostalgia) has been its adaptation to roles that remove it from the highest threat operating environments; an option not available to fighters.
This list is a good stepping stone to introduce a few more detailed observations:

1. The T-1 fleet is relatively young and represents the 8th most numerous type. These aircraft drive the age curve to skew to the left, but are more than counterbalanced by all the old planes whose age skews the ‘average’ (such a meaningless term by itself) to the right.

2. A conscious decision to keep aging T-38 (Talon) and T-37 (Tweet) trainers has been made several times. The AF finds it cost-effective to perform ‘SLEP’(service life extension program) upgrades to them and fiddle with their flight envelopes to squeeze more life out of them than replace them. ‘Age’ as far as the Air Force is concerned is 'taken care of' with these aircraft

3. C-130s have been the workhorses since they’ve been fielded, they’re not getting any younger, the C-130Js aren’t being bought in the numbers they probably should be given the airframe service life they’re consuming, and the avionics upgrade program for the older models is experiencing ‘problems’.

4. B-52s. B-52s. Their true fleet mission-capable rates and maintenance costs over the last 20 or so years was/is hidden behind a little Congressionally-mandated requirement that co-located the attrition reserve fleet with the combat-coded aircraft. This allowed some operating units to rotate aircraft in and out of the CC pool and incur costs and downtime away from the O&M accounts. There’s not a lot of them (anymore) so their advanced age skews the average age higher, but their cost impact is (relatively) trivial. If they could survive in a high-threat environment, we could keep them almost forever. The AF is considering new Long Range Strike (LRS) options at this time, but whatever is decided, the LRS solution won’t be to replace the Buffs (Standoff Attack), it will be replacing the Bones (B-1s, Direct Attack)

As long as the AF decides to upgrade instead of buy new, we have to assume it is because it is cheaper to keep these systems than replace them, or the fight to get the money to replace them isn’t worth it.

This leaves us with just the REALLY big age/cost drivers to discuss:

1. The F-16 fleet is relatively young and is the most numerous type. The major reason the average age of the F-16 fleet isn’t higher is because many older models have been retired or ‘surplused’. The average age still includes a lot of old (for fighters) airframes with older avionics and other systems though. Future survivability concerns have to factor into the obsolescence equation, but the AF doesn’t really talk about that as much as they should. It is much easier to talk about ‘old’ vs. ‘new and improved’ than to explain radar cross-section and detectability.

2. The F-15 fleet is chronologically 30%+ older than the F-16 and probably much older average flying hours-wise. And there’s A LOT of them. On some of them, the systems on board are another half to full-generation behind the latest F-16s, so the F-22 (partial) replacement is sorely needed.

3. We really DO need a tanker replacement….BAD. They are old, the oldest are really old, and newer engines or not, we’ve flown the wings off them keeping the rest (especially the short-legged fighters and the big airlifters) of the Air Force flying. [We would have had one on the way too, if McCain hadn’t decided to get all pissy on the acquisition strategy. Never underestimate the power of ‘manhood’ issues with self-important Congress-people who want to be something more. The Darlene Druyun flameout didn’t help either.]

So we see the ‘problem’ really isn’t fleet age, but the age of a relatively few aircraft types that make up a large proportion of the fleet. Why are these so ‘old’? Because the AF has failed to get several major acquisition program buy-in from Congress in the first place, or proper support of programs once launched (the AF has been particularly inept in keeping the F-22 sold). This has not been ALL the AF’s fault of course. Les Aspin (spit!) and the Clinton administration would be my number one villains in the complete disappearance of rationality from balancing need and cost in the budget process of the 90’s, with a complicit Congress squeezing every last dime from a non-existent ‘Peace Dividend’ coming in a close second. (we won’t talk here about how the departure from saneness actually began under Carter in the 1970’s – that was another travesty) This superpower-on-a-shoestring mentality only delayed ‘paying the piper, and the ‘piper’ charges interest.

The REAL Problem
If the AF insists that fleet age is the problem, then the problem reaches all the way back to 1973 where, according to chart 9 of the pitch, the fleet average age was only 9 years! I fault the current and prior AF leadership most for not making their case for more money to properly fund their slice of the defense responsibility. It seems either an odd form of cowardice, or complete lack of leadership has paralyzed the AF as an institution.

That an AF leadership would choose to throw a large portion of the force on the street instead of calling attention to the mismanagement of the past even if it meant falling on their own swords is, in a word: disgusting.

Speaking of AF leadership making their case, here’s the next slide (slide 10) of the brief.

Powerpoint Warriors Attack!
“Budget Growth is Slowing”? Now Ladies and Gentlemen, THIS is “professional grade” shtick in powerpoint! The uninitiated may not appreciate the subtle elegance of it, so a short tour is in order.

1. Note the use of a non-zero baseline that accentuates the ‘10% Growth’ side of the slide. Starting where it does just about doubles the apparent steepness of the ‘growth’ slope.

2. Note the slope of the two arrows and how closely the left arrow matches the growth to-date. What is with the slope of the arrow on the ‘projected’ side? A cynical mind might think the slide creator was attempting an optical illusion. If one matched the arrows slope on the right as closely as the one on the left, it would look like almost the same slope with a little saw-tooth dip at FY07.

3. Remember the left side is what HAS happened, the right side is somebody’s “idea” of what is GOING to happen. What did the left side look like when it was just an “idea”?

4. The chart is in “then year” dollars! To give you an idea how this inflates the number, $1 in 2005 is the same as the following in 2000 dollars

$1.13 using the Consumer Price Index
$1.21 using the nominal GDP per capita
$1.27 using the relative share of GDP

Or in layman's terms, even if there was no real growth between 2000 and 2005, the chart would still reflect between 13 to 27 percent growth over the same timeframe.
A more appropriate title of the above slide would have been: “AF Leadership 101 – Avoiding Real Budget Issues While Assuming Risk as a Long Term Conflict Resolution Strategy”. But I guess that would have been a tad too long to fit in the slide header.

And of course, NONE of this explains why the AF chooses to eliminate people instead of making the case for more money. We will examine the AF’s reasons in Part IV, but first here is ‘Question 7” where the AF chooses to start talking about the ‘bottom-line’. Not much of a segue, but hey!-It’s their spiel, and they’re sticking with it.



There’s a couple of fine points to be made here.

1. The AF’s whacking the civilian force is small yet still somewhat overstated: many if not most of the civilian reduction will be taken care of through normal attrition and retirements. They’re actually talking about having to increase hiring soon after the make their cuts. (Good luck getting anyone to come back after they’ve been jerked around.)
2. While the Guard and Reserve got a ‘pass’ the first two years, they get hit after FY07. This is after a lot of active duty folks got ‘purged’ and encouraged to go Guard and Reserve. I guess this is just the AF’s way of trying to ‘take care of people: some might get taken care of TWICE!

Note the last line at the bottom of slide 12. That will be my Pee Wee Herman (Everyone I know has a big "But") teaser for the next installment, where the AF inadvertently, yet brilliantly sums up the US military’s slide into ‘superpower-lite’ status before launching off into delusional flights of fancy about how everything will be better at the end of the yellow-brick road.

Air Force 'Force Reshaping' Sales Pitch: Part 2

See Part 1 HERE

We now continue deconstructing the AF's 'Force Reshaping' proposal.....

"People Costs" Ain't the Problem


Another good question! What is the answer?



Gee, it almost reads as if the AF contracted with Scott Adams to deliver them a “Mission Statement Generator”. And it doesn’t look like they mean to 'take care of the Airmen' in the traditional sense so far……


Now Question 8 above is a REALLY good one!



Surprise!-- It’s a Money thing. Not surprised? Me neither.

So does the AF thinks it is spending too much on people in their slice of the defense budget? Let’s look at the evidence they present……hmmmmmm. Nope, no useful data here, but it is a hell of a sales graphic as well as a great “dumbed down for management” slide. What’s wrong with this chart?

1. This represents only ‘people dollars’.
2. ‘People dollars’ have absolutely nothing to do with any other costs, in that Congress provides funds for these costs separate and distinct from other costs. Call it ‘earmarked’, but we (former) ‘acquisition officials’ see it as in different pots (or buckets) of money.
3. Congress sets the amount and DIRECTS the expenditure of these funds as ‘people dollars’.
4. If the DoD spends the money for any other purposes without an OK from Congress then somebody goes to jail.

Congress "Supports the Troops"
Is the AF being pressured by Congress to reduce manpower costs?
NO.
Not really....
Even if you could find a quote that says otherwise.

How do we know this? Because on behalf of an appreciative nation and to help combat the impact of inflation on the individual troop and employee, Congress keeps giving military and civilian DoD employees something called ‘Raises’. How big are the raises? Big enough that most of that rise in costs after 1995 could be largely accounted for by raises in base pay alone: 49+% for military personnel and 34+% for civilian employees (see charts below).


And none of what I’ve mentioned so far accounts for increases in Per Deim, Housing Allowances, Locality Pay: all of which have increased as well.

Most years, raises are generally not any bigger than before, it’s just that (for the years shown on this chart) the increases in pay until 1995 were being offset by reducing the number of people. Stop reducing numbers of people and the impact of raises on total personnel costs becomes apparent. If chart 7 above alarms you, then you are also probably sit around wondering why it is our prison population continues to grow as the crime rate drops.

A few other things jump out here. The fusion of civilian and military pay numbers is no accident. The aging Civil Service force is a ‘Senior’ force in more ways than one: The GS force is so top-heavy with the highest paid people reaching retirement age that the exodus isn’t expected to peak until around 2008-2009 (just off this chart ‘coincidentally’).

We need not go into all the other congressionally-directed changes to the compensation schemes in detail, but here’s one other to consider. Congress has also raised “pay caps” in the period of ‘concern’. While some federal employees make X amount of money according to the pay charts, the actual amount paid out is limited to a specified level (X minus Y), so that the most senior (and costly) military and civilians are actually getting more of what they are supposed to get in the first place. It is very complicated (It IS Congress we’re talking here) so if you want to know more about this quirk you can go here and here to begin your exploration of the wonderful world of government compensation.

With the exception of pay raises, much of what I’ve pointed out has to pale in comparison to the impact of a little thing called Ops Tempo. Note how Operation Allied Force (’99) doesn’t even cause a blip on the cost line, and how the slope really increases in 2001. 2001….2001…..something big started happening in 2001. (Oh yeah, now I remember!) What percentage of this perceived increase can be directly attributed to operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere?

There are some quirks to the indirect and overhead personnel cost accounting we could ponder, but you get the point. All things considered, I want to know how the AF is keeping personnel costs so low!

As you can tell from the left hand side of this slide, the presenters are leading up to the real concern that needs attention: the hardware. That someone at the SecAF level seems to think that there is any correlation between people costs and hardware costs anywhere inside the mind of the typical Joe Congressman is disturbing. That someone or someones ALSO thinks that by marketing a plan that sacrifices PEOPLE on the budgetary altar they can somehow gain direct and proportional favor from the "budgetary gods" to fulfill their future hardware needs is LUDICROUS: No bargain made with a previous Congress (or with the Devil) has ever meant a damned thing to the NEXT Congress or Congress after that.

Somebody! Please, PLEASE fire the Effin’ MBAs and Bring Us Some Leaders! --Rumor has it the Marines still have a few.

In the next installment: We get a little ‘Technical’.

Part 3 HERE

Air Force 'Force Reshaping' Sales Pitch: Part 1

"Sir, you lie to Girls, You don't lie to your troops"
(Apologies to the late Rodney Dangerfield)

This rant is going to start out slow because I don’t want to just cherry pick the offensive material and present it without the ‘total pitch’ AF management wants to sell. Most of the front end of this brief is rather vague ‘Mom and Apple Pie’-like and it closes with a ‘Gipper’ moment, but the middle is absolutely target rich: smoke, mirrors, misdirection, and the legendary chartsmanship for which our Air Force has always been the envy of the rest of the Department of Defense.

Here’s the first two slides after the cover slide (slides 2 & 3). There are quite a few slides in all, including cover, “question” and end slides, so most of the brief will NOT be tackled one-slide-at-a-time.
Slide #2:
Good Question!
And now Slide #3:


Bullet #1 is a good start! – They put the immediate pressing threat right at the top.

Bullet #2 is also a good follow up, because Airmen ARE the Air Force. This is apparently a last vestige of the “Take care of the People and the People Will Take Care of the Mission” legacy from the AF’s first 50 years.

But what is with Bullet #3? This is a goal, not a priority (and perhaps the first hint of the real overarching concern of the AF). A priority would have been the “ready to Fly and Fight” statement at the bottom of the page. What is in bullet #3 is simply activities that the AF believes must occur to be ready to “Fly and Fight” in the future. [A Cautionary Side Note: To those who would argue that bullets 2 & 3 are materially similar because they both deal with 'resources', is to self-identify oneself as a manager and not a leader. If you don't get the difference, you're NOT a leader -- no matter how many stars or stripes you might wear.]

Before the end of this briefing it will become apparent that this slide is (quite properly for a lead-in slide) ambitious: attempting three things at once. First, it attempts to eliminate the Global War On Terrorism as a point of possible contention and frame any debate on the AF’s plans and actions as being about future Air Force capabilities and of no concern to the here and now. Second, it attempts to both assuage the anxiety of the target audience over what changes may come and establish that those changes MUST happen as a point of fact – which is again an attempt to narrow the points of possible contention that would frame any possible debate. Having removed ongoing mission requirements and people issues from the debate, the brief sets the hook: the AF needs new hardware!......and begs the question as to where the money will come from. The stage is set. At a Commander’s Call, in oral form, this slide would be expressed as:

OK people, listen up. We’re going to fight this War on Terrorism and win, OK? That’s a given. And we’re going to do as much as we can to take care of everyone that will be affected by some changes we need to make to ensure our future. But what our plan is really about is making sure we have the tools and resources so we can accomplish our mission in the future.

A very wise LTC once told me long ago: "Always remember Sergeant, everything before the “but” is bullshit."
Part 2 Here
Part 3 Here.

I Find Your Lack of Faith Disturbing, SMSgt Mac!

Hoo boy.
I received the above graphic in response to the one I posted earlier on the stupid new AF uniforms. It must be the most important thing the AF is dealing with now right? Wrong.

If ol' Darth doesn't like what I have to say about the new Imperial Storm Trooper garb, he's really going to have a conniption fit over my next 'project'.

Remember my earlier posts (here, here) concerning AF Force 'Reshaping' BS? Well someone (apologies to all--I forget which of you sent me this in all the piles of other stuff we've been sending around) sent me a copy of the AF's internal 'pep talk' on the subject in a 'Top Ten Questions' powerpoint format. (This is the cover slide)
After viewing it, I unscrewed myself out of the ceiling, and decided bringing this pile of snake oil sales material into the public eye would be good for everyone's soul. Unlike the New York Times, I will be bringing you an unclassified brief, and it's not even marked "FOUO". I'm just sure that in the venues it's been played in so far, no one has raised the BS flag as high as I'm going to raise it here.

Each day that I find time to post,(UPDATE: that is when I get time to do the analysis and THEN post - there is a lot of research and analyses involved in this effort) I'll be presenting part of the briefing and pointing out exactly where and how this short-sighted course of action (dressed up as "visionary") avoids the real problems and sets the AF out looking for "Titanic-grade" icebergs

Air Force Changing Uniform, It Must be Wednesday

The Air Force is messing around with the uniform....AGAIN.
One of these may appear to be a USMC ripoff, but it is really a pure CARTOON of an Eddie Rickenbacker-era uniform with a modified Sam Brown Belt.
The other one appears to be the product of a forbidden act between a 1940’s uniform and a zoot-suit. Lapels are evidently the latest rage!

Honestly, how many years of therapy does senior leadership need to undergo before they get over their insecurities well enough that they stop remodeling the uniform every time you turn around?

Or is there a mysterious process by which dead fashion designers channel (Chanel Channel?) fashion diktats via clueless general officers?

There's a certain LT I know thinks they're using this as a way to lower retention and get under the manpower cap.







But a colleague at work is reminded of something else:

'allo 'allo 'allo What's all this then?

Air Force Reshaping BS: A Milestone

I'm the grandson and son of non-career military men, son-in-law to a retired military man, a retired military man myself, and a father and father-in-law to people now serving. Once upon a time, I would have heartily recommended Air Force service to anyone. Be it for a single hitch or a career, responsible individuals almost always got more out of it than they should have expected. But these days, I wouldn't recommend it to my worst enemy.

Today and tomorrow the USAF will be letting 1LTs know who survived and who didn't in this round of so-called 'Force Reshaping' Reduction-in-Force (RIF) .

The 'victims' will soon figure out where their futures will lie. The 'survivors' get to continue wondering what their future will bring, in a military service that maintains a deafness to its own self-inflicted idiocy.

After retirement, I have continued working closely with the services, and have seen what has been, and is now, going on. I have this to say to the survivors:

Take a look around at the Air Force as it is today and remember it. Although the Air Force started sliding downhill under Merrill McPeak** and is but a shadow of its pre-Bottom-Up-Review self, this bonehead manpower exercise called Force Reshaping has put an Olympic luge under the AF. Sorry boys and girls, right now active duty is as good as it is going to be...for a long, long time. So from here on out, try and enjoy the ride.

What a f*&#%&$ shame.

**For you young kids who aren't aware of the McPeak legacy click here and scroll down and read the comments from those who served with/under him. Its a hoot.

AF Force Reshaping B.S.

We Don't Need More Troops, Heck We're Cutting Back!
Some might be surprised to find one of the military services 'downsizing' in the middle of the War on Terror, but it is true.

The Air Force is trying to downsize, while faced with (according to some of the links below) extremely high retention rates. They're in the middle of Phase II of "Force Reshaping" right now, and as the widely circulated letter below indicates, all is NOT well with the morale of the force. I am told that the individual involved got the letter vetted by his commander prior to transmission, but just in case he didn't, I'm not going to be circulating what base it came from and who wrote it. All other words (with typos) were as written when I received it. (Link referenced in the letter was added by me for completeness)

22 Mar 2006

First Lieutenant
XXXX XXXXXXXX Road
XXXXX, XX

Lieutenant General Roger Brady
AF/A1
1600 HAF Pentagon
Office: 4E194
Washington, DC
20330-1040

Dear General Brady

I am writing in response to an article posted on Air Force Link which quoted your testimony to the Senate about Force Shaping. I am separating voluntarily under Force Shaping and have some comments that I feel are not accurately reported or viewed by those up the chain. I am unsure where this disconnect begins; but either someone is not passing accurate information from the ground up, or it is not being receiving in the spirit with which it is originating.

Force Shaping has had a significant impact on the morale of not only the members affected, but everyone around them, from airmen to squadron commanders. Lieutenants who were not vulnerable this time around wonder when their time will come. NCOs who have seen cuts in junior airmen and now officers wonder the same thing. Airmen wonder what else they have to look forward to. In light of the Chief of Staff hinting at six month deployments, and the Air Force planning on cutting tens of thousands more positions, every rank has to wonder who will fill these deployments, and how much more often they will deploy. These are not all directly related to Force Shaping, but they tie together when you consider its effect on the myth of ‘job security.’ No one is safe anymore. I know commanders who don’t believe they would have made a similar cut at that point in their careers considering their records.

Six months ago I was a career officer. I was prior enlisted in the Marine Corps and have 13 years of total service. There were other considerations in my decision to leave, but Force Shaping, and its strike against any modicum of job security was in the top three. I love this country, and I relish the idea of leading men in battle, it is almost a life obsession. I have a paper from second grade that states: ‘I want to be a Marine. I want to live on a ship. I want to help people.’ I was blessed to have the chance to do all those things, and then when I started a family, I chose to leave the Corps for the Air Force because of the quality of life and deployment length. Of course, we are now in a heightened state of war, which changes everything, but for me the trade off of more and longer deployments becomes a much bigger consideration when there is the constant chance that the Air Force will decide they no longer need my services, and that all that time will count for nothing. It is really a no-brainer. I would be willing to risk my life if I knew that the Air Force would reward me by allowing me to serve to retirement (provided I continued to serve with excellence and honor, of course). But it no longer does, so I cannot.

To imply that ‘Blue to Green’ and a guarantee of one year or 18 month deployments in the Army is a morale saver makes absolutely no sense to me. These branches are worlds apart; there are reasons people choose to join the Air Force. I venture to guess that unless an individual had already planned on going to the Army they would see it only as a last ditch option to continue in service, not as an ‘opportunity’ and that their morale would be anything but higher. As for the Guard and Reserve, when they face the same (or greater) deployment vulnerability as the active force, with fewer retirement benefits, and the strong likelihood of facing another Force Shaping cut, that option falls short as well.

Another aspect that affects morale is the way this problem has been dealt with. Everyone knew at least three years ago that the junior officer imbalance was a problem. I don’t know about the inner workings of the highest bean counters, but from the view below, it looks like these decisions are being made with out consideration of the facts, and that if someone had faced these realities head on years ago, we wouldn’t be facing this process right now. Why would anyone think that this type of decision making would change, especially when senior leadership is saying morale isn’t a problem?

My personal opinion is that the Air Force has and will force good people, with exactly the decisiveness, initiative and courage the Air Force needs, out the door; and many of the people who ‘make the cut’ will be folks who can write themselves a good OPR, but lack the courage to make the tough decision at a crisis point.

Sincerely

, First Lieutenant, USAF

CC: U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services
Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness

The General's Testimony

The General's testimony referenced in the letter included the following:

"The Air Force began 2006 with a significant force imbalance -- too many officers and too few enlisted Airmen," .........
...."To fix this problem, officers under their initial service obligation can now voluntarily separate from active duty service earlier than they would have otherwise been eligible. Some of those who don’t separate will be considered for involuntary separation by a force shaping board later in the year."

As a less cynical Public Affairs officer also noted in an article where she put on a very brave face:

The subcommittee voiced concern with the effect force shaping may have on Airmen morale and stress levels. General Brady said he doesn’t foresee any major dips in morale.

The General also stated:

“As we look forward, we have to look at our focus,” he said. “We have to look at where our skills are, and if we are using them efficiently. We’re looking at about 40,000 people (being) cut, but we’ve bounced these numbers against the war plans, and this is what is going to work.”

Pay No Attention to the Elephant in the Room

What is significant about the General's testimony?

It is what was NOT emphasized or acknowledged that is important.

First, why is a particular Officer/Enlisted balance so important? In and of itself, it is not. It is only important if you are locked into a particular force concept that requires it. Officer/Enlisted Balance is fungible. Pick a ratio and build a rationale behind it. The late, great Carl Builder, would probably have referred to this kind of process as the Naval Method of Analysis: pick your solution and build your argument around it.

Second, what is the driving force behind Air Force downsizing in the first place? Its not expressed anywhere, other than to talk about meeting top line Congressionally mandated manpower numbers. I see three driving reasons behind the move. From least to most important:

1. Offering officers a chance to 'Go Green' [besides providing the basis for a humorous powerpoint presentation made by some company grade officers that also included 'Go Brown' (UPS) 'Go Yellow' (McDonalds)] hints as to what must be part of the answer: getting more bodies for the Army.

2. Another likely driver is what has become a rather unhealthy mentality that does not fully take into consideration this caveat:
Unless your business is toppling tyrants and preserving freedom through the force of arms, the 'business' model in many respects does NOT translate to the military realm.

3. We (the AF) were locked into the Air Expeditionary Force (AEF) operational and organizational model by an unrealistic expectation of smaller post cold-war force sizing, imposed upon us by that @#$% Les Aspin and his &*%#$ Bottom-Up-Review (BUR). In short: We are reaping the unintended consequences of the 'Peace Dividend' of the Clinton Administration.

We are frozen at a force size and composition that required us to implement the AEF concept to carry out the mission even before the events of 9/11, and it is absolutely politically unacceptable in the current climate to ask for more troops so we can change our way of doing business. A suitably sized Air Force, is one where we we do not have to chronically abuse our troops to fulfill our mission. One could use up a lot of time and energy tracking down the facts (start here if you'd like) and deducing the origins of the modern AEF if one did not live through it. On the surface, it seems born out of the lessons learned in Desert Storm, but it really was born from the realization that after Aspin's BUR we couldn't pull off another Desert Storm.

There was also a huge shift in Air Force culture that began during Vietnam, but the AF could have recovered from until the BUR, and that was the rise of the Fighter Mafia* (There is another huge post lurking in that statement alone). With a 'fighter' mentality, deployability is absolutely paramount. If fighters could (in a practical manner) strike foreign countries from their home bases on a three-hour mission, the AEFs would never had materialized.

*I love fighters....as fighters: for air dominance against airborne and surface-to- air threats to airpower assets. You know, what they're good at...