A Weblog of Centrist Voices in American Politics
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A Weblog of Centrist Voices in American Politics | |
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January 14, 2008Abolish Air Force? I Go HalfwayRobert Farley wrote a post suggesting abolishing the Air Force and folding it into other organizations. It made me think - I decided that, being a moderate, I'd just get rid of half of it. IMHO, half its budget and personnel should stay Air Force, doing air superiority and strategic bombing, which is probably all we need in the post-Cold-War world. The other half should go to other services as air support. As my earlier post suggests, the USAF has little interest in and is doing its best to abandon its half of the bargain to provide that air support made early in the Air Force' existence. The Air Force is probably so unhappy about ground support because, well, would you rather be flying fast, Stealthed air superiority planes or slow, ungainly things aptly named Warthogs? If we divvied it up like I suggest, Air Force would only have the planes they think are sexy, and Army would only have the aircraft suited to their mission. I've never heard of Marine pilots wanting to bail on their aircraft types, so that existing example seems to work. Plus, the loop between troops and support air would shrink alot. Posted by Jon Kay at January 14, 2008 05:21 PMComments
I'm working my way through The Sling and the Stone. A central implied question so far is as follows: why keep growing technological armed forces to dominate conventional nation-state warfare if no one's going to engage us on these, our preferred grounds? The answer so far is that institutionally speaking, we're just not willing to get it. Not just yet. OTOH, we may need all those fancy fighter planes to be ready to try and shoot down offensive nukes when acquisition of such technology becomes more widespread. And yes, I did intentionally say when and not if. I tend to believe that more widespread acquisition is only a matter of time. Posted by: bk at January 14, 2008 05:37 PMI love the Warthog. It's an ugly masterpiece of effectiveness. Posted by: Tully at January 15, 2008 01:30 AMOh, and the AF is going to lose a lot of their mission in other ways no matter what. Unmanned craft are going to be moving into the forefront for many missions. They're MUCH cheaper, and no pilots are at risk, so stealth shrinks as an issue. Posted by: Tully at January 15, 2008 01:32 AMPlease post a comment
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