Is the Air Force essential or outdated?

[unhappycamper]

Retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey, left, thinks the Air Force should take a more central role. Robert Farley, however, thinks it should be folded into other services.


Is the Air Force essential or outdated?
By Erik Holmes - Staff writer
Posted : Saturday Nov 3, 2007 8:58:55 EDT

In the midst of an ongoing identity crisis that has the Air Force struggling to justify its existence to the lawmakers, public officials and scholars on whom its fate depends comes an obscure academic with a radical proposal for the future of the force.

It might easily have been ignored at just about any other time in the service’s history.

Robert Farley, a national security and military scholar at the University of Kentucky’s Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce, wants to do away with the Air Force.

In an article in the Oct. 21 issue of The American Prospect magazine, Farley argues that the Air Force’s reason for existing as an independent service — to conduct strategic bombing campaigns such as those against the German industrial base in World War II — is overrated and could be absorbed by the Navy. He also argues that the Air Force’s most successful contribution to modern warfare — tactical close-air support of ground troops — would be better served by putting air and ground forces under a unified Army command.

But not even a week before publication of Farley’s article, retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey — a widely respected thinker on national security issues — released a memo making just the opposite argument and one almost as radical: that the deterrence capabilities of the Air Force, along with the Navy, should form the centerpiece of American national security policy, and to accomplish that the Air Force needs to be bigger. Bigger even than the most ambitious Air Force general has suggested.

Timing aside, the stark contrast between these two positions underscores the Air Force’s identity crisis as it begins its seventh decade as an independent service. It comes at a time when overstretched ground forces in Iraq and Afghanistan are doing most of the bleeding and getting most of the headlines — and funding.


Rest of article at: http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2007/11/airforce_radical_plans_071103w/



uhc comment: McCaffrey advocates spending some big $$$$ on the Air Force - 600 C-17s (at $202,000,000 a pop in 1998 dollars) and at least 350 F-22s (at $329,000,000 a pop).

[RC]

1. Our armed forces are already too big and well armed.

We, the U.S. are the main reason for most of the unrest in the world today, either directly or indirectly.

Bring our troops home and regroup and down size them as defenders for this country, not the self imposed police force of the world that we are now.

[EST]

2. It pains me to even partially agree with McCaffery, not a "thinker"

but a republican reactionary, a "knee-jerk" neocon, but I must disagree that the functions of the Air Force should be absorbed by the other services.
There is simply too much strategic thinking differences between ground pounder command and air forces. The services are dependent enough on centralized thinking at the JCS and stupid c-i-c and no further melding is necessary.

[Captain Hilts]

3. McCaffrey is the one who's been out there saying the admin. is lying about casualties, etc. nt

[midlife_mo_Jo]

4. I believe they're lying

And the U.S. has so many privatized groups over there that the official military deaths are kept artificially "low" regardless whether they're officially reported or not.

[EST]

6. He does get it right, sometimes, I agree.

I can't, without doing a bit of research, point out a specific occasion, but I do know he's gotten me to my feet, occasionally, mouthing blasphemies and demanding how in the hell can a man who is obviously intelligent reach such unfathomable conclusions.
I think I may be more liberal than I thought I was. The man and his ideas seem so totally at odds with what I view as workable, human-based policies.

[Bonhomme Richard]

5. I believe outdated which makes them very dangerous.

My instincts tell me that the leadership in the Air Force is willing to go along with anything as long as they have a mission.

[Captain Hilts]

7. Too officer-heavy. Former pilots with Masters degrees lobbying in DC. NOT good. nt