First, thank you for obviously taking a lot of time and thought to formulate and post your extensive comments. It is really appreciated.

I am fortunate that I came back to check—usually after a couple of days our posts vanish “below the blogosphere fold” and we miss out on late comments, unless we make a conscious effort to go into the files and check for them.

I would like to take a little more time to digest your comments, but I must say that I agree with many of your thoughts, and the ones I may disagree with, I still find them well-reasoned.

I am thinking of using your comments–of course giving credit to you—to post a response to my original post.

Please let me know if you would like me to share with the readers any more info on yourself, in addition to your “screen name.”

Thanks again

Dorian

Allow me to share with you some very, very random thoughts that this piece raises in my mind.

Perhaps the main concern is that the article reflects that we have lost the public 'narrative' on some important concepts, so stereotypes and misconceptions flourish.

Kaplan – like many others – likes to point out that fighter pilots dominated the CSAF position in the last decade. Well, if one looks at the Navy, I suspect its leadership has been largely surface warfare officers, and the Army has been led largely by infantry/armor officers. Yet our sister services are never harangued as we are about this illusory “fighter mafia” canard. The fact is that all the CSAFs have been vastly less 'tribal' than is popularly supposed.

What is particularly distasteful is Kaplan's suggestion that the so-called “fighter mafia” who allegedly controlled the Air Force promoted fighter aircraft simply because of the “glamour” of the single-seat airplane.
Incredibly, what began as a joke, seems to be taken seriously. In truth, it is really an insult to the patriotism and martial qualities of our Airmen, and we should say so.

Wouldn't people say something if we denigrated Special Forces with the notion that they do it only because they are seeking Rambo-like “glamour”?
Is that why Pat Tillman joined up, so he could have the “glamour” of serving in an “elite” unit? Should we take the discussion of “Yellow Fruit” in books like “Killer Elite” to define the values of Special Operators as thieves?

Furthermore, why isn't the “you-are-keeping-it-just-for-the-glamour”
narrative applicable to our sister services? Consider that the Army, for example, continues to waste billions on training and maintaining airborne forces even though there is no military reason to train tens of thousands of soldiers to be paratroopers. Sure, a small, niche capability but not an airborne Corps. The same can be said of the Marine Corps' amphibious mission; that is, there is no reasonable scenario in which a large numbers of troops will attempt an opposed, over-the-beach landing.

The reality is – and we need to be saying this – is that air superiority is “the” prerequisite to any kind of military operation. Period. No armed force can function if subjected to modern air attack. Consider how the IED threat nearly unglued both the Army and the Marine Corps. The psychological effect of IEDs – their randomness, mechanistic cruelty, and our seeming impotence to stop them – almost unhinged our ground forces, and IEDs remain their worst fear.

What everyone seems to miss is the fact that the entire IED experience US forces have suffered since 9/11 does not begin to match what a modern air force can do in a matter of weeks to a ground force. The Iraqi Army got a sampling, and that's why they gave up virtually without a fight. US troops
- not to mention defense decision makers – have no idea the trauma they would face under air attack. The key effect of modern American airpower is its ability to inflict helplessness on the minds of its targets.

As is the fashion today, Kaplan is infatuated by UAS. Frankly, I'm becoming seriously concerned about the public fixation on unmanned (or, more accurately, “remotely manned”) capabilities. And the ground forces are hopelessly addicted to this kind of ISR much because they think it is a solution to the IED problem.

I believe it is urgent that we begin to talk loudly and repeatedly about the fact that UAS is, essentially, a capability that wholly depends not only upon an almost completely benign airspace environment, but an equally sanguine cyberspace setting. In addition, can we doubt that adversaries are actively working to challenge both? And I am not just talking about a peer competitor. Consider the effect on UAS of the inevitable spread of MANPADs among insurgent forces.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/l…

We will not likely see affordable technological solutions that would permit the use of these systems in even moderately contested air or cyber environments anytime soon. In truth, they are more of a “niche” capability applicable principally to the lower end of the conflict spectrum, essentially in situations where the enemy can't fight back. Mark my words:
however true that may have been in Iraq and Afghanistan to date, that will not persist in the future – even in IW scenarios.

The alternative is fully autonomous systems. Here's the problem: the world will not accept fully autonomous weapons systems. We already have them today – mines and cluster munitions – and they are loathed around the world. In short, we should not expect acceptance of an armed UAS autonomously proceeding on with its mission after, for example, a data link break.

Again, it is imperative, absolutely imperative, that the profound political, legal, and technological limitations of UAS systems be fully understood.

Ditto for the limitations of the F-35. For example, I don't believe Kaplan's statement that the F-35 is “much better at destroying surface-to-air missile batteries” than the F-22 (and, of course, this begs the question as to whether the best way to neutralize an air defense system is to destroy missile batteries).

Yes, the decision has been made re: F-22s, but we ought not pretend that the F-35 is just as good, or feed the perception that the small cadre of F-22s will be able to take on the vast numbers of opposing aircraft some adversaries will be able to field. What is more is that the key to the
F-22 is its ability to penetrate airspace protected by advanced SAM systems. It is the proliferation to many countries of triple-digit SAMs, not fifth generation aircraft, that will most threaten our ability to gain and maintain air superiority when and where we need to have it.

Kaplan also illustrates why Airmen need to stop being the only ones to think joint. His whole essay begins and ends with the idea that the Air Force must accept a subservient and muted role. He has company: current defense thinking builds upon the deeply flawed and seriously “unjoint”
notion expressed by the CJCS that “the Army is the center of gravity of the US military”

http://www.ndu.edu/inss/Press/jfq_pages/edition…

This tends to feed the conclusion that all solutions to all military problems must involve ground forces. (Kosovo's air-only success is lost in the mists of time!)

Regardless, we now find ourselves flooded with counter-joint, ground-centric solutions that too often are, IMHO, unacceptable to the American people. Army commanders, perhaps because of a poverty of imagination, may think it is a perfectly legitimate tactic to use the bodies of young Americans as “Taliban magnets” (or as one Army officer put it “bullet sponges”)

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/world/asia/10…

but that's not the way America wants her sons and daughters used.

Americans want technology to substitute for the blood of her children. It is no surprise that shortly after Gen McChrystal put more restraints on airpower, US casualties in Afghanistan reached an all-time high.
Predictably, US domestic opposition to the Afghan war also reached an all-time high.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/09/01…

The American people know that the Afghanistan does not present an existential threat, and they are not prepared to duplicate the blood and treasure expended in Iraq. It really is that simple, and it calls upon thoughtful military leaders to offer options – as is currently not the case.

Airmen ought to offering an “airminded” alternative. Ironically, George Will outlines one.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/ar…

We ought to be thinking and advocating like Airmen, not meek adjuncts to the ground force.

We should be proud of the fact that our greatest quality is that we don't do things like the ground forces; to the contrary, we look to avoid the costly “close fight”, and we unapologetically relish the opportunity to create effects from afar – kinetic or nonkinetic. Unfortunately, too often we have tried to glorify our “Army-like” capabilities; in truth, this is a great mistake. Airpower basically came into being because of the revulsion Airmen found for the stagnant, human meat-grinder of World War I ground operations. We sought a better way through exploitation of the new technology of the airplane.

Airmen are mocked for our technology, yet technology is America's asymmetric advantage, and one our enemies keenly understand – and fear.
Although we have the finest ground forces in the world, the fact is that our adversaries are willing to take them on. What they truly fear, however, is the air weapon. As the LA Times put it recently, “life in the shadow of the Predator is nasty, brutish and short.”

http://articles.latimes.com/2009/may/24/world/f…

Yet I would be cautious about celebrating the idea, as Kaplan seems to do, that in the future colonels who command UAV units will predominate at promotion boards. Such commanders, ensconced in air conditioned trailers far from the battlefield, will never be considered the equivalent of those who have faced the fight.

And I'm not just talking about viz-a-viz our sister services, or even the American public – I'm talking about inside our service. For example, there may well be more JAGs and paralegals who have actually heard shots fired in anger than either UAV or manned pilots. Ditto for many other career fields. Commanders without that experience may face a complicated task.

Yes, the Air Force's culture is changing, but the direction Kaplan applauds may not be the one that best serves the country.

As I said, deficit or borrow-and-spend spending is against the Constitution. Wrong for all parties.
The buck does, indeed, stop at the President's desk….but it makes a pitstop in Congress.

Just remember one thing. The budget is a product of the executive branch. However, it takes a Congress to approve it. And which party was in control of the Congress during those times when deficit spending was authorized?

(You'll notice that I “dis” my own party frequently – that's because I'm a conservative democrat).

Spend on education? I'm with you.
Healthcare? Ditto, as long as you fix the PROBLEM and not merely wish to install a government-run bureaucracy.
Creat jobs? It's not the government's job to create jobs. It is private industry's job to do that – based upon innovation and supply and demand. The only government that “creates” jobs is a communist one.

“enemy” of the US? You're retarded. But if it makes you feel better about your socialist fantasies, go ahead. I've got big shoulders.

Half our budget is now military. We cannot sustain that without investing in our infrastructure. Half of nothing is still nothing!

If we don't invest in education, get the horendous cost of healthcare off our people's backs, and, start creating jobs then there will be no “half the budget” to support the militay with.

Beside you are the enemy of the United States from another thread. So I understand why you want to destroy the United States.

“”Generally the 'borrow and spend' republican national financial policies….”

Considering how long its been since the GOp really stuck to its fiscal conservative guns accross the board, it doesn't surprise me, its a well deserved title, even if the Democrats do it to too. I'm happy to see the GOP criticized on this, they need a kick in the pants here.

http://zfacts.com/p/318.html

All figures are from the White House (including the Reagan, Bush and Bush administrations).

You're right. Why borrow and spend for military, when we can borrow, tax, and spend to provide socialist programs?

I actually agreed with portions of your argument. Borrow and spend is wrong always, and is unconstitional to boot. BOTH parties have been guilty of that for a long, long time.

My eight-year old could be a Colonel in the AirForce by the time he's ten.