Re: Abolish AF ?
- From: Peter Stickney <p_stickney@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 09 May 2009 20:10:01 GMT
Sorry for chiming in late - but I've been away.
A few observtions:
MajorOz wrote:
On Apr 22, 7:37 pm, Orval Fairbairn <o_r_fairbairn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
In articlenews:04adc734-01c5-49b9-bb62-105c0c64e411@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
<e1491ce5-025e-4228-b202-badb59b50...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
MajorOz <Majo...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Apr 22, 3:18 pm, "Hal Hanig" <halha...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"MajorOz" <Majo...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
I don't know if it is gauche to cut and paste this kind of thing. If
so, I apologize, but thought it was ripe for comment here'bouts.
***************************************
Everybody's entitled to their own opinions. If you share Mr. Kane's,
I'd advise you not to hold your breath waiting for it to happen. For
one thing, the aerospace industry, which has invested hundreds of
millions of dollars in their USAF procurement contacts, will not
docilely surrender them without a serious fight.
?
The hardware, support, contracts, etc. will still be there. Only
ownership would change.
For another, if you want to adopt one of former Sec/Def
Rumsfeld's pithy sayings about fighting a war with what you have, it
might be a lot more prudent to be able to fight an old fashioned kind
of air war with somebody who wants to put it on that level than to
have to fight an old fashioned war with stuff you no longer have.
Again: ?
We will still have it, just different ownership.
I think what we have here is a failure to communicate.
Yeah! Put the ground pounder in charge of air operations again! NOT!
If you have time, could you expand on why you think that way?
It was realized in the U.S. in the late 1930s that that concept really
didn't work.
In 1940, the U.S. Army was split into 3 separate and distinct forces:
the Army Air Forces, Army Ground Forces, and the Army Service Forces.
The three forces were separate organizations, with their own Chiefs of
Staff, reporting to the Army Chief of staff.
While the uniforms were pretty much identical, the Air Forces and Ground
Forces were separate, with separate organizations, personnel, training, and
logistics channels.
An interesting point that runs along with this was the introduction, during
the Louisiana Maneuvers in early 1941, of Army Ground Forces Aviation,
separate from the Army Air Forces. During the Maneuvers, Piper,
Taylorcraft, and Stinson provided light airplanes (Piper J-3s, T-Carts, and
Stinson 105s) and pilots for use as artillery observation, liason,
evacuation, and other "flying jeep" duties. (George Patton was already
using his personal Stinson 105 as his flying Command Car.) This provided
the ground commanders with close-in low performance aviation that was not
possible with the dedicated Obervation/Army Co-Operation types developed
to "traditional" requirements, like the O-46, O-47, and O-52. The effect
was so positive that the AGF immediately organized an Aviation Section of 2
light aircraft for each Field Artillery Battalion, and set up its own
Aviation Schools (Pilot and Mechanic) at Ft. Sill, separate from the Army
Air Forces. Every U.S. Army Division dispatched from the United States
went to war with its own squadron of light airplanes, which proved vital
for Artillery Observation, Route Recon, Security, Communicaton, and
Casualty Evacuation. This was the genesis of today's Army Aviation.
If nothing else, it points up the divergence in requirements and outlook
that had occurred even at that early date - the Army Air Forces, even when
they were the Army Air Corps, subordinate to the Ground Pounders, had to
look far beyond the FEBA (Forward Edge of the Battle Area), while an Army
Ground Force Commander's responsibilities are whatever is right around him
at the time. This hasn't changed. The Army's organic needs are for small,
reactive platforms that can live with the troops, acting as another support
weapon, providing "Army Type" observation, and bringing automatic weapon.
light, direct fire artillery, and anti-vehicle fire on targets directly
engaged or observed by the ground forces.
The current helicopters are perfect for this - they can hide behind terrain,
using natural cover in the same manner as a tank, carry useful IR and short
range radar sensors to find targets for themselves and the Field Artillery,
and enfilade any engaged enemy, striking from unpredictable directions.
What they can't do is locate and interdict supply lines, keep any Bad Guy
aviation from molesting your troops, carry suffiecient countermeasures to
survive in a solid Air Defense environment, and strike targets deep behind
enemy lines. (Deep Strike didn't work quite so well as expected in 2003 -
imagine how it would work against, say, a Soviet Style layered defense over
the sorts of distances that you'd encounter in a European War. (And that
will never happen again? We've essentially reset the Geopolitical Clock in
Europe to 1900 - look at what was considered unthinkable then, versus what
actually happened less than 2 decades later)
Air Forces, even in World War 2, provided capabilities to establish air
superiority, carry the war to the enemy's homeland, and destroy or disrupt
the support infrastructure that keep the front line troops in action, as
well as directly attacking Troops in Contact. In order to do that, you
need hight performance aircraft, and an Intelligence (Both in the Pictures,
Maps, and Orbat sense, and in the real time command and control sense
provided by, say, the RAF Fighter Command sectors in the Battle of Britain,
and the modern multi-sensor coordinated data fusion provided by the
AWACS/JSTARS/drone teams used today.)
This requires long range, highly sophisticated (for their period) airplanes,
which not only work beyond a ground commander's horizon, It also requires a
lot of technical specialists - not just working on the airplanes, but
supplying and maintaining the airfields - Just for fun, take a look at the
Civil Enineering organization for even a small, established Air Force Base.
Be that as it may - to keep a Squadron of 18-25 fighters in the air, you
need about 1700 Officers and EMs.
There're other issues as well - Army Types, by demonstation of past
experience, don't think they're being supported unless they've got jets
rolling in over them and going Mano-a-Mano with the Bad Guys. (Search out
earlier postings from Ed Rasimus about his days as an ALO with the 4th ID,
where perfect toss-bombing strikes by F-16s were disallowed by wargame
umpires because the airplanes didn't fly over the target, never mind that
the targets were efficiently destroyed) This is not only Number One
Stupid, if your weapons allow you to do something else, but a horrible
inefficient waste of air assets. No - I am not, repeat AM NOT saying that
close air support isn't important, or high on anyone's list.
But - like everything else, the technology has changed, and, now that with
GPS and laser rangefinders, the troops, for the first time in history, know
where they are, but also where the target is. Response times and area of
coverage are much better with, say, a B-1 carrying 60 JDAMs at 10 miles a
minute at 35,000' Not only does the airplane get to the launch paint fast,
the bombs glide a long, long way with that kind of energy available, than
an A-10 trying to dodge SAMs while motoring over the battlefield at 300kts
while trying to get within 200' of the target to use the gun. (Which, BTW,
is n inaccurate representation - an A-10 _might_ strafe after expending its
guided glide bombs, but since it doesn't fly as fast or as high as the Big
Strategic Bomb Truck, it can't cover as large an area, or respond as
quickly.
So fine, go ahead, if it makes you feel better - change the letterhead from
USAF to US Army, but all you'll do is set things back to the de facto, if
not de jure separation that existed in 1940 - 1947.
Don't knock the separation - it works. Consider, if you will, what the
Normandy Invasion would have looked like if the Allied Air Forces (USAAF
and RAF) hadn't already chased the Luftwaffe out of France, both by
attacking their airfields and forcing the relocation of their air units
back to the homeland to protect it from the Allied Bombing Offensive,
hadn't been covering every railroad, every bridge, every port, and places
where supplied could be stocked, and all the other stuff beyond direct
support of troops that went on - when the invasion occurred, the Luftwaffe
wasn't there, and the German reinforcements couldn't move. (Not a lot of
tanks got killed on the road, but their gas, beans and bullets did. A tank
without fuel, ammo, and an effective crew is only an expensive roadblock.
--
Pete Stickney
The better the Four Wheel Drive, the further out you get stuck.
.
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