I just stumbled across a New York Times op-ed from Monday, making three modest proposals for reforming the military: namely, abolishing the Air Force, introducing universal national service and changing the "up or out" personnel practices within the military.
Quick scan to the bio: Paul Kane is a Marine veteran of Iraq and a former fellow with the International Security Program at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
Why was I not surprised? NYT, here's a logic check: Having served in the military doesn't make you infallible on all matters military, and indeed does not automatically confer some extraordinary issues on matters outside your specialty. (Nor should it do: I don't expect a submarine captain to be able to explain the workings of a jet engine.)
Moreover, having been to the Ivy League doesn't automatically make you an expert on anything. But the NYT apparently was off attending a gallery opening of post-constructivist artforms by oppressed persons during last fall's financial crash, and does not realize that yet.
Kane's argument for abolishing the USAF is paper-thin. No, the USAF is not the lead service in the current campaign - but then, Aegis ships and submarines haven't been exactly pivotal either.(And neither, by the way, has anyone proposed defeating the Taliban by storming ashore in landing craft.)
But to rest one's case on the statement that "war is no longer made up of set-piece battles between huge armies confronting each other with tanks and airplanes" is idiocy, presuming supreme knowledge of what warfare will be like in the next ten, twenty or forty years.
Like others who take the anti-Air Force view, Kane simply ignores difficult issues: Whose job is space launch? Do the Navy and Army retain separate ISR forces? Which service has been responsible for virtually all the endurance UAVs in-theater, and why is that the case? For more detail on this, look here.
By the way, Kane also considers the presence of fat people in the USAF to be relevant in some way.
As for the draft, Kane misses the point: Whether or not you think it's a nice idea in theory, in political terms it is the equivalent of playing Russian roulette with a Gatling. And rightly so: if you think that improving national productivity involves making every citizen spend a couple of years filling potholes or sandbags, or marching in circles because the Army doesn't have a war going on this year, you learned economics from Sesame Street or Karl Marx.
What's actually scary is that:
- This nonsense found a home in the nation's prime op-ed real estate.
- It was taken seriously enough to draw responses from the USAF chief of staff and the president of the Air Force Association.
- It didn't merit a response from higher-up in the Pentagon.
Anyway, I have a better idea: abolish Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Now, there's a mission for a B-52.
"And neither, by the way, has anyone proposed defeating the Taliban by storming ashore in landing craft."
The Royal Marines did conduct a small amphibious operation at Kajaki during one of 3 Cdo Bde's deployments. I'm just saying... :)
When you look at close air support, interdiction, transport, etc., the air force is there to address the needs of the ground forces.
That being the case, how does one get the USAF to do this more effectively?
Certainly, Marine Air does a better job at this, because they are in the chain of command of the ground forces, and because their pilots have to do tours with ground units.
The real question is how does one fix the USAF, because it is profoundly dysfunctional, and placing it back under the Army chain of command is the best alternative I've heard this far.