I spent a lot of time in the United States Air Force. Both as military and civilian at a variety of locations around the world. This allowed me to see many great things the USAF did every day along with some maybe not so good things. I have seen all communities at work in the USAF except for ICBMs and special ops.
Today, the USAF is in great stress. That cause of stress is failed 4-star leadership which appears to have no appreciation of air power. It is important to note that many parts of good air power doctrine revolve around being a good and enthusiastic servant to the needs of the Army, Navy and Marines.
Current and recent heads of the USAF have been no gift. They are destroying the USAF's reason to exist.
Piece by piece.
The current boss of the USAF wants to get rid of the A-10. An additional shocker is that this guy also wants to get rid of the KC-10. The KC-10 is a crown-jewel in tanking ability and supporting the joint mission. This is the same guy who grounded several flying units during alleged hard budget times, lowering our combat readiness.
There is money out there. It is just being spent on the wrong thing.
The guy before him helped kill the F-22. While the F-22 had some significant development flaws, it also has some significant killing power. A continued production of a B model would have helped to keep the issue of air power dominance, much less of a problem in the coming years.
The general before him, had serious ethics issues.
So for 3 USAF leaders, we have seen a top-down degrading of the USAF's combat capability. I could go back further but that is enough to show the bad trend.
Many have talked about disbanding the USAF. All of the people that I have observed with this point of view had little or no knowledge of how the USAF actually operates on a day to day basis.
I do.
USAF's senior leadership is causing so much damage that I can now consider, “How would we put USAFs missions to other services?”
First off would be to observe real live requirements that the USAF has to defend the nation.
Studies from just a few years ago indicate that there are about 20 “air sovereignty” locations needed in the U.S. to perform basic air defense. That is, to intercept a rouge or wayward civil aircraft or to monitor bomber and reconnaissance aircraft that get too close to our border.
Army Aviation Regiments fly and maintain aircraft like the complex and expensive Apache helicopter gunship.
From that proof we know that Army Aviation could fly and maintain a much easier aircraft; the Saab Gripen. It is cheap to fly, deadly enough, and has about 50 percent U.S. content in it.
20 or so Army Aviation Battalions could perform the air sovereignty mission. This includes involving the National Guard as needed. Since this is an air-to-air-only mission, full capability of the Gripen would not be needed. But, it would be there in case the DOD decides to create other missions for it.
ICBM nuclear mission. This could be handed over to the U.S. Army's Artillery Branch.
So with two solid, living, breathing requirements for the nation's defense handed over to the Army, let us press on.
Combat Search an Rescue. This is where there is a downed aviator or some other similar person in trouble. Who can do this work? The U.S. Navy and Marines. Good enough for Scott O'Grady. U.S. Army Rangers when practicable.
Long range bombing? I am an advocate that any long range bomber used today and in the future does not penetrate extreme contested air space because...it can't. That, any platform for this mission uses long range stand off weapons. So with that, anything from an X-47 or similar technology will do. Current, civil aircraft designs when militarized can carry enough intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) systems to know what is out there should be able to carry long range cruise missiles. More on anti-access below. Army Aviation and the Navy can do this as needed.
The B-52, B-1 and B-2 can be retired as there is too much money spent on these aircraft for what can be done other ways.
The nuclear strike mission for long range bombers will be ended.
Interdiction and Close Air Support. Years ago a program was created called Joint Affordable Strike Technology or “JAST”. Note that the word aircraft is nowhere in the title. This program became a feeding trough for the limited pickings available in the post Cold War world. And became the Ponzi-scheme, winner-take-all Joint Strike Fighter program.
With precision strike in the form of missiles and guns, artillery has never looked better for providing fast fire support. Things like HIMARS are great. Land mobile Tomahawk Block IV's and JDAM like capability on top of a “Pershing III” missile come to mind.
UAVs can be run by the Army, Navy and Marines with loss in combat capability.
The Marines and the United States Army can do joint unit work in standing up their own A-10 units. This should not be a technical challenge. A similar approach can be done with the Super Tucano. Both services also have VTOL day/night strike in the form of some excellent helicopters.
Navy and Marine aircraft already exist that can drop J-weapons (JDAM, JSOW, JASSM).
So far, no real deal-breakers in defending the nation.
Air-to-air refueling? Large tankers will go to the United States Navy. They are always needed to support aircraft carriers. And, can be assigned by numbered Fleet. KC-135s will be retired with the transition. We will have less tanker ability even when you count KC-10, KC-46 and KC-130.
Large airlift? A mix between the U.S. Army, Navy and Marines. There is already a joint transportation command it is not impossible to coordinate airlift as needed. As C-17 life ends, the Airbus A-400M--operated by the Army and Marines as needed--will be considered. A small number of Boeing 777-200LRFs will be used to move certain special people and special cargo, between the U.S. and the combat theater. These will be lightly loaded but will not need any air-to-air refueling. Note: land mission requirement changes will be addressed in another blog post that will make changes of the tanker/airlift mission less painful.
More C-130s will be brought up to the KC-130J Harvest Hawk standard. Besides the light-tanking capability, this provides excellent loitering, long-range strike in permissive air environments. The Army, Navy and Marines will have C-130s and C-27s as needed.
Anti-access mission. Along with JAST and the mention of long-range bombers above, F-22s would go into the black-ish world, run by the Navy, rarely seen in public again. They would be used, as needed but would have a bit more deterrent value by not knowing what mods were performed on them.
Other USAF tactical aircraft would be retired. With this, the requirement for 1763 F-35s dies. This aircraft offers no combat capability for current or future wars.
USAF Special Ops? Easily folded into the existing Joint Service special warfare command structure.
The USAF Weather mission? USN already performs some weather recon. They would take over the whole mission.
Space systems? This would be jointly run by civilian DOD agencies.
Is this all-inclusive? No. Do I want this to happen? No. However, current 4-star USAF leadership is killing the service and wasting significant talent. With $17T and climbing of federal debt, America is in deep fiscal trouble. We can only afford warfighting efforts that deliver something of real value.
The U.S. Army, U.S. Navy and USMC have their own 4-star leadership problems. Administratively purging those people can be done as part of another program.
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