The Air Force Needs To Aim Higher

Ralph Peters has an interesting take on the Air Force's performance in the Iraq War. I won't address his position here, just his recommendations:

A revitalized transport fleet: We rely on the workhorse C-130 for tactical lift, but the design is nearly a half-century old. The Army and Marines are told to make tomorrow’s combat vehicles fit into the C- 130’s tight hold. That’s backward. Nextgeneration combat vehicles will be so systemsrich that no amount of miniaturization will let them fit in a C-130. We need to design the fighting systems we need, then build planes to lift them.

This is very true, and a glaring weakness in the U.S. military's ability to quickly deploy globally. The Gulf War buildup took a solid six months to get everything in place, and the vast majority of those supplies arrived via ship, not aircraft.

The new C-17 is a good start, but the bottom line is the U.S. military could save a ton of money by getting rid of standing bases overseas (which frankly upset the locals, at least until we announce we're shutting them down). The problem is that the Air Force is run by fighter pilots (thanks, Tony McPeak) and transports are dead last on the list of aircraft fighter jocks would ever opt to fly. Given a choice between funding fighters or transports, we know where the money's going.

An affordable replacement for the great, but aging B-52 bomber: Those magnificent craft continue to outperform later, platinum-priced bombers, such as the Rube-Goldberg B-1 and the fragile B-2. We need a new, cost-efficient and robust bomber to replace B-52s nearly twice as old as their crews.

I'm not so sure about this one. The B-52 has been threatened with replacement many, many times over the years, but it remains a terrific weapons platform. Systems have been replaced many times over within the airframe, so what would be the advantages of modifying the airframe itself? Why mess with success?

A no-nonsense ground-attack aircraft to replace that splendid killing machine, the A-10. Ground-attack operations — especially in urban environments — are the wave of the future. The Air Force needs to stop dreaming of the missions it wants and face the missions we’ve got.

I love the Warthogs, and I think it's a sin that these wonderful aircraft the Soviets used to call "The Devil's Cross" fell victim to Army-Air Force squabbling in the budget battles. Let's face it---the A-10 has proven it's more survivable, more reliabile, and more lethal than any of the attack helicopters which were supposed to fill its close air support role on the battlefield. Why not just bring them back? Why mess with success, and another run in with the type of consensus-based mediocrity that almost invariably emerge from R&D efforts these days?

A multi-role-fighter fleet that rejects Cold-War-era designs and starts afresh. Billions already spent are no reason to waste billions more on yesterday’s concepts. Don’t throw good money after bad. Our Air Force needs fresh thinking, adequate funding and an increase in the numbers of airplanes we can launch. Instead, we get old thinking, massive waste and a shrinking fleet.

Here's the problem---you can't assume American air superiority.

Do you recall who had the best aircraft coming out of WWI?

Probably the Americans, perhaps the Brits.

There's no doubt about who had it when WWII broke out (the Germans and the Japanese), and the reason for this was largely because the respective defense departments of the United States and Great Britain refused to modernize their air forces in areas they felt they were ahead. Each incurred large losses until new designs could be fielded.

Is that a price we want to pay?

The Air Force hasn't done a bad job of planning ahead. The primary purpose of the F-22 is not bombing weak foes in the desert. It is first to outfight anything in the air, and then to employ precision bombing techniques to destroy hardened facilities well-protected by air defense. Facilities like the ones in which Iran and North Korea's nuclear programs reside.

Say what you will about the Air Force, but do you really think the Army can take out a rogue nation's nuclear weapons before they deploy them?

If I had my wish, I'd encourage the Air Force to get a lot more into space-based weapons systems, drones, and logistics. Given that will not be embraced by fighter pilots (the same folks who managed to convince NASA to put useless flight controls in space capsules), I doubt it will happen.