Three reasons why USAF is under attack: 

1. The national security strategy vacuum: From 1981 through 2001, our national security strategy was deterrence and containment, with airpower playing the largest single role.  During that period, the USAF enjoyed a position of respect and support.  Since 2001, our national security strategy has been large scale engagement on the ground, with urban ops most prominent.  Under that strategy, it is no wonder that AF status is diminished, and even that its relevance is questioned by some.  This will continue until our political leaders begin to articulate some national security strategy beyond stay the course in the long GWOT. 

In the absence of any such new strategy, it is not unreasonable to assume that we will continue to be broadly engaged on the ground in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, trading the lives of young Americans for the lives of young Muslims at some “favorable” ratio, for the next twenty years.  If that is indeed our future, then the Army zealots are right: the AF should get into harness and prepare to pull the Army cart for the next two decades.  Moreover, it is pointless to argue with the Army zealots until political leaders at least suggest or propose a new national security strategy and a new vision of the next twenty years. 

It is naive to assume that we can do everything that we would like to in national defense.  If we are indeed going to slug it out with the Muslim world in a twenty-year street brawl, the economic cost alone will be crippling to our nation, and will preclude the simultaneous pursuit of any other expensive national security strategies.  Already, as a result of the cost of the war in Iraq, unpaid by taxes and fully passed on to our children as debt, we have severely constrained our other defense options.  At the beginning of ”The Pacific Century”, rightly or wrongly, we chose to spend all our chips on the Middle East.   Building a set of credible deterrent capabilities against China is probably already economically impossible, and certainly will become impossible if the GWOT continues and expands over the next several years.  Taiwan’s independence may ultimately be a major casualty of the Iraq war. 

More to the point, if we are not going to challenge China over Taiwan, whether by choice or by economic constraint, then the purpose and mission of the USAF changes profoundly, both in scope and in character.  Without China, there is no near-peer adversary, and no need for more F-22s, NGB, et al.  The prime AF mission becomes theater persistence (lots of sorties, for years on end) in a low-to-mid-level threat environment.  And the primary challenge for the AF becomes not new capabilities, not greater reach, but rather reconstitution and maintenance of current capabilities at the lowest possible cost.  Unless leaders begin to articulate a different strategic future, it is pointless to argue either for more exotic assets or for any more prominent role for airpower than it now plays in Iraq. 

2. Inept USAF Leadership: The AF has failed to recognize its position in this drama.  AF leaders have foolishly pressed issues at the worst possible time.  Demanding a decision on UAS Executive Agency at this time was as bone-headed as pissing into the wind.  Now, predictably, it’s blowing back in the form of calls, not entirely in jest, to disband the AF.  Politics matter, and timing matters.  The time for a boy to demand a decision on the new bicycle he wants is not in the middle of his brother’s birthday party.  And if he engages in a tantrum during that party, he’s likely to not only forfeit the bicycle but also receive punishment afterward.  That’s what’s happening now to the AF in the wake of their childish behavior on Executive Agency.    

KC-X, SBIRS, CSAR-X, JASSM.  These are not simply programs that have encountered technical or cost difficulties.  They are inexcusable failures of acquisition management, entirely self-inflicted by officials either incompetent or unwilling to follow simple rules.  And after repeatedly embarrassing themselves on such a scale before the world, their response is to demand DoD-wide UAS acquisition authority? 

3. The Faustian bargain between the military, the Republican Party and right-wing macho jingoism: The Party sold its soul to the right wing to get elected, embracing the South’s crudest elements, and the military sold its soul to the Party in hopes of bigger defense budgets.  Both got their wishes, but at a heavy price.  First, soccer moms were told to be afraid, very afraid, and fear was used to drown out dissent.  Then, anyone questioning the wisdom of the war was a non-patriot and a coward.  Now, that madness has simply followed its course to the point that only soldiers and Marines are real patriots.  The Air Force has only slightly better seats in Valhalla than the State Department.  Real men don’t need State Department geeks, and they only need Air Force geeks for support. 

The war has broken the Army, and the other branches are not far behind.  Not only have the fruits of higher defense budgets been consumed by the war, even the trees have been lost, leaving the services far worse off than before.  Through its own political support of this administration, the military has naively assisted in its own demise, ushering in a new era of weakness not unlike the post-Vietnam decade.  The Army, Navy and Air Force are each in crisis now, largely because of their gross misuse and abuse by the very people they helped elect.  Yet each of the services continues to see their own individual plight as if they’ve been unfairly singled out.  The Army woes are because Rummy hated them.  The Navy is broken because the shipyards are too expensive, and all the resources go to the Army and Air Force.  The Air Force feels like Rodney Dangerfield.  The truth is that all three have been sacrificed to a failed national policy based on fear and perverted patriotism.