Delete comment from: Elements Of Power
Dr. Pournelle is wrong. I have a lot of respect for him, but he's wrong on this. The infantry generals that run the Army aren't going to do the Air Force's job better than the pilots that run the Air Force. Those same pilots would probably do a pretty terrible job running infantry brigades, too.
People keep bringing this up but they forget history. There used to be a War Department and a Navy Department. Now there's only the Defense Department, with the four services subordinate to them. Everything is joint today. The Army and the Air Force work more closely now than they did during the Second World War, when they were technically under the same roof.
The entire DOD is under the same roof now.
Now, Jointness is a double-edge sword. I suspect that if the Air Force had been allowed to pursue an "F-24", that was just a replacement for the F-16, it'd be in service by now. But it was joint. It also had to be a naval strike fighter and a jump jet for the Marines.
I have a proposal. They always say, "give the A-10 the Army". I say okay. They can have the airframes and the TOs, but none of the personnel. All support contracts with the private sector have to be renegotiated. Oh, and the funding has to come out of Army Aviation's existing budget.
Think they'd be willing to sacrifice a chunk of their helo fleet for the A-10? It's real easy to wax philosophical about how cool something is when it's coming out of someone's acquisition budget.
The Air Force has a lot of problems. I experienced them first hand. I think they need to thaw out Curtis LeMay, Frankenstein his corpse bask to life at Area 51, and turn him loose to kick some asses. But thos problems aren't going to go away by merging the Air Force with the Army. That would be a trillion-dollar boondoggle that would make the F-35 look good by comparison. They'd spend billions just on new uniforms and changing the signs. In the end, this giant merged clusterfuck would be lucky if it got to the same level of capability as the Army and Air Force presently have.
Jan 29, 2015, 10:32:48 PM
Posted to Pournelle CAS Fail