Is it time to abolish the Air Force?

Interesting article in Smithsonian. http://www.airspacemag.com/flight-to...

Basically boils down to the idea that the prevailing philosophy of air power (pretty much unchanged since Italian general Douet) that air power in isolation can win conflicts is inherently false. Therefore, an entire military branch which prepares for and lobbies on behalf of this failed military philosophy is fruit of the poison tree.

This would go a LONG way to explaining the F-35 Flying Maginot Line.

I find the article to be insightful, but somewhat short sighted. The Air Force, in my opinion, developed as a separate branch largely on the strategic necessities of the nuclear cold war era. From that perspective, air power could certainly win a conflict (of course it would be the ultimate form of Pyrrhic victory) but I agree that in a conventional war boots on the ground are the deciding factor.

A specialized Air Force still supplies a variety of roles and services to the other branches that if distributed out would lead to too much duplication (such as large scale air transport operations). The USAF is also the branch entrusted with space combat including NORAD and satellites.

While the Navy, Marines, and Army have their own aerial operations and are very capable, the existence of the Air Force allows those branches to focus on aspects of air power suited to their primary plane of combat.

The F-35 is a clusterfrak that all services have equal blame for. I was surprised that the Army did not show much interest in taking over the A-10 if it ends up being phased out by the USAF.

erichoya wrote:

I was surprised that the Army did not show much interest in taking over the A-10 if it ends up being phased out by the USAF.

Because the Air Force convinced the Army top brass that F-16s, F-15s, and other air craft would be able to adequately provide close air support for ground troops.

That and the Army wouldn't be getting the nearly $1 billion a year required to field the A-10. Those funds would either stay with the Air Force or, more likely, simply go away as the DoD looks for anyway to cut $500 billion in spending over the next decade.

erichoya said it better than I could.

So really, it would really just be giving the Army an air arm, beefing up the Marines, and maybe giving the Navy more funding. That is a way you could do it. That is how it was in the past.

I think it comes down to what is the US military designed to do. Is it designed to be involved in low intensity military conflicts like what we have been doing in the Middle East for the last decade or is it designed to fight the big bad Russians/Chinese. In the low intensity fighting the air power is almost entirely shackled to the ground troops because there isn't an enemy air force. In a conflict where there is a large number of enemy craft I could see many situations where the air combat on each side is its own beast with its own goals and confrontations completely separate from Army/Ground concerns.

Tough call. I think that the first real air shooting war of the modern / future era will be one of those conflicts where technologies rapidly ascend or get sh*t-canned quickly.

My fear is that we'll have scores of F-22's and F-35's taken out by drone swarms equipped with high speed image recognition software.

Of course, we're unlikely to get to that point as most conflicts continue to be asymmetric.

Reaper81 wrote:

Tough call. I think that the first real air shooting war of the modern / future era will be one of those conflicts where technologies rapidly ascend or get sh*t-canned quickly.

My fear is that we'll have scores of F-22's and F-35's taken out by drone swarms equipped with high speed image recognition software.

Of course, we're unlikely to get to that point as most conflicts continue to be asymmetric.

As an established power, we should seek through foreign policy and economic leverage to make conflict with other powers unthinkable (I'm a big Bismarck/Disraeli/Kissinger fan).
As such any conflict we are likely to enter into is an asymmetric conflict where close air support thru manned or unmanned craft is more useful (not to mention in terms of SIGINT).

If we end up in a fight with another comparable Nation state lots of things will change rapidly IMO and attempting to predict that thru equipping large standing forces seems costly and ineffective (e.g. maginot line, all of WW1).

Reaper81 wrote:

Tough call. I think that the first real air shooting war of the modern / future era will be one of those conflicts where technologies rapidly ascend or get sh*t-canned quickly.

My fear is that we'll have scores of F-22's and F-35's taken out by drone swarms equipped with high speed image recognition software.

Of course, we're unlikely to get to that point as we're likely to be the ones with the drone swarms.

Fixed that for you .

Jonman wrote:
Reaper81 wrote:

Tough call. I think that the first real air shooting war of the modern / future era will be one of those conflicts where technologies rapidly ascend or get sh*t-canned quickly.

My fear is that we'll have scores of F-22's and F-35's taken out by drone swarms equipped with high speed image recognition software.

Of course, we're unlikely to get to that point as we're likely to be the ones with the drone swarms.

Fixed that for you .

Except that Air Force culture can't quite accept a future where brave and dashing pilots are replaced by kids in trailers with Xbox controllers or, worse, software.

boogle wrote:
Reaper81 wrote:

Tough call. I think that the first real air shooting war of the modern / future era will be one of those conflicts where technologies rapidly ascend or get sh*t-canned quickly.

My fear is that we'll have scores of F-22's and F-35's taken out by drone swarms equipped with high speed image recognition software.

Of course, we're unlikely to get to that point as most conflicts continue to be asymmetric.

As an established power, we should seek through foreign policy and economic leverage to make conflict with other powers unthinkable (I'm a big Bismarck/Disraeli/Kissinger fan).
As such any conflict we are likely to enter into is an asymmetric conflict where close air support thru manned or unmanned craft is more useful (not to mention in terms of SIGINT).

If we end up in a fight with another comparable Nation state lots of things will change rapidly IMO and attempting to predict that thru equipping large standing forces seems costly and ineffective (e.g. maginot line, all of WW1).

Hence my insistence on calling the F 35 the Flying Maginot Line.

OG_slinger wrote:

Except that Air Force culture can't quite accept a future where brave and dashing pilots are replaced by kids in trailers with Xbox controllers or, worse, software.

Air Force culture ain't holding the purse-strings.

The pilot is one the most expensive components in a modern military plane, and if he can be replaced for fractions of pennies on the dollar, he will be.

Jonman wrote:

Air Force culture ain't holding the purse-strings.

No, but assembling those planes provides a lot of pork for Congress to send home.

Drones are inevitably going to replace fighter planes given enough time or if an actual air superiority war starts. The cost differential and lower manpower risk is too extreme of a difference, given that for the same price as a plane you can field at least ten drones right now and the cost is only going down.

Plus, we'll eventually get to the point where you can field infantry units that can deploy their own small close air support drones. Quadcopters are just about there already.

Gremlin wrote:

Plus, we'll eventually get to the point where you can field infantry units that can deploy their own small close air support drones. Quadcopters are just about there already.

We are already pretty close

Paleocon wrote:

Hence my insistence on calling the F 35 the Flying Maginot Line.

I'm trying to back you up on the sly here.
Disseminate the cover story.

Jonman wrote:

Air Force culture ain't holding the purse-strings.

The pilot is one the most expensive components in a modern military plane, and if he can be replaced for fractions of pennies on the dollar, he will be.

You mean the same purse-string holders who forced the Army to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on main battle tanks it didn't want this year?

Congress has never been the champion of reserved and prudent military spending. Hell, Congress doesn't even know how tax dollars are actually spent in the DoD because the DoD can't even produce an accurate financial statement (an issue that stems directly from each branch of the military doing their own thing).

And who do you think the purse-string holders talk to to figure out what to spend money on? The same generals that spent their entire career in the thick of Air Force culture. What they say is needed is what gets the budget. And as long as that spending results in some jobs in their district, Congressional representatives don't actually care what it's spent on.

Large organizations do not fundamentally change their culture unless they are forced to. Nothing short of a war that would destroy most of the Air Force's existing high-tech (and cripplingly expensive) piloted vehicles or a dramatic decrease in military spending would cause the Air Force to switch to pilotless vehicles.

OG_slinger wrote:

Except that Air Force culture can't quite accept a future where brave and dashing pilots are replaced by kids in trailers with Xbox controllers or, worse, software.

This lack of acceptance is not unfounded. Current generation drones excel in a low-intensity combat environment where air superiority is complete and they can loiter unopposed. They are slow, quiet, lack maneuverability, have limited payloads, and are subject to severe control lag (think about how long it takes to transmit a signal to the drone and back via satellite).

In a high-intensity conflict where the satellite network is likely to be degraded/destroyed and enemy forces are deploying jamming, modern manned fighter aircraft, and modern air-defense capabilities, the current generation of drones are essentially sitting ducks.

That's not to say that someone couldn't make a drone that's a decent fighter, but a hostile signals environment is very tough to beat. The drones would have to be largely autonomous to leverage their advantages of smaller size, higher speed, and better turn capabilities.

Reaper81 wrote:

Of course, we're unlikely to get to that point as most conflicts continue to be asymmetric.

This is because everyone but the United States and a few other rich countries have internalized that asymmetric warfare is far more cost-effective.

boogle wrote:

If we end up in a fight with another comparable Nation state lots of things will change rapidly IMO and attempting to predict that thru equipping large standing forces seems costly and ineffective (e.g. maginot line, all of WW1).

It is - but the US military is no longer designed to fight and win a large-scale high-intensity conflict. It's designed to maintain the empire by rapidly deploying troops around the globe to wherever they are deemed necessary - and for that, a large standing force is required.

I mean, think about it. If all the US military wanted to do was defend the United States, our force composition would be completely different. We'd be focused on ocean control missions with a mix of short-range coastal patrol submarines, long-range nuclear submarines, and surface-to-surface missiles. Air defense would be a higher priority than aircraft, and we'd be heavily invested in protecting our space assets and defending against nuclear missile attacks (notwithstanding various agreements). Ground forces would be way smaller and would be focused on dispersed deployment and missions to prevent infiltration and low-intensity conflict.

The only reason we have the military we have is to use it as a club against erstwhile allies or neutrals like Panama, Iraq, and Afghanistan in order to bully them around. The Air Force fits right in with that mission.

Paleocon wrote:
boogle wrote:

If we end up in a fight with another comparable Nation state lots of things will change rapidly IMO and attempting to predict that thru equipping large standing forces seems costly and ineffective (e.g. maginot line, all of WW1).

Hence my insistence on calling the F 35 the Flying Maginot Line.

The Maginot Line -> F-35 comparison gets even more apt when the biggest folly wasn't just putting a bunch of money and time into a military "thing" trying to prepare for the next war. The biggest folly was willfully ignoring the later lessons of WW1 where the armies in a lot of ways solved the problem of getting through static defenses. The Maginot Line was designed for WW1 circa 1916, not WW1 circa 1918.

That same sort of thing could be said for the F-35.

Aetius wrote:

This lack of acceptance is not unfounded. Current generation drones excel in a low-intensity combat environment where air superiority is complete and they can loiter unopposed. They are slow, quiet, lack maneuverability, have limited payloads, and are subject to severe control lag (think about how long it takes to transmit a signal to the drone and back via satellite).

In a high-intensity conflict where the satellite network is likely to be degraded/destroyed and enemy forces are deploying jamming, modern manned fighter aircraft, and modern air-defense capabilities, the current generation of drones are essentially sitting ducks.

That's not to say that someone couldn't make a drone that's a decent fighter, but a hostile signals environment is very tough to beat. The drones would have to be largely autonomous to leverage their advantages of smaller size, higher speed, and better turn capabilities.

We're going to spend $420 billion on the F-35 program (likely much, much more given military contracts). I think it would be reasonable to say that we could develop the next generation of air combat drones that we need with that money.

As it stands now, we're going to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on aircraft that are going to be slightly worse than what we currently have (though a *lot* more expensive) and we'll have a lot fewer of them because of their expense.

Then at some point in the near future we'll still have to spend large sums of money to develop the pilotless vehicles everyone knows is going to be the way we fight.

And if we ever get into a conflict where our satellites are getting fragged this discussion is moot. Because that conflict will be WW III and anything will go.

OG_slinger wrote:
Jonman wrote:

Air Force culture ain't holding the purse-strings.

The pilot is one the most expensive components in a modern military plane, and if he can be replaced for fractions of pennies on the dollar, he will be.

You mean the same purse-string holders who forced the Army to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on main battle tanks it didn't want this year?

Congress has never been the champion of reserved and prudent military spending.

Guess who makes drones? Boeing and Lockheed.

Second question for bonus points: guess who has an army of lobbyists?

Pork barrel spending and a drone fleet are not mutually exclusive. Far from. Given the choice between a fleet of 100 manned aircraft and 1000 unmanned aircraft for the same amount of money, it's a no brainer.

OG slinger wrote:

Then at some point in the near future we'll still have to spend large sums of money to develop the pilotless vehicles everyone knows is going to be the way we fight.

Make no mistake, those companies have been developing those technologies for decades, and continue to do so, because they know that's where the future money lies. The future you're talking about is the 2000's.

EDIT - If the market was there, my suspicion is that there could be autonomous fast jets for sale within the decade. It's largely a solved problem.

Jonman wrote:

Guess who makes drones? Boeing and Lockheed.

Second question for bonus points: guess who has an army of lobbyists?

Pork barrel spending and a drone fleet are not mutually exclusive. Far from. Given the choice between a fleet of 100 manned aircraft and 1000 unmanned aircraft for the same amount of money, it's a no brainer.

Wait. I thought you said it was Congress who was making the calls. Now you're saying it's lobbyists.

Why don't we circle all the way around and simply admit that the reason why the DoD signed the mother of all contracts to develop the F-35 is because that's what the Air Force brass wanted and both Lockheed and Congressional representatives were happy to go along with it because they both benefited.

And, no, the DoD doesn't have the money to get both the F-35 and the next generation of air combat drones.

Jonman wrote:

Make no mistake, those companies have been developing those technologies for decades, and continue to do so, because they know that's where the future money lies. The future you're talking about is the 2000's.

Boeing and Lockheed aren't in the business of developing military technologies on their own in the hopes that Uncle Sam might pay for it sometime down the road. They work in a world where nothing gets developed until Uncle Sam cracks open the checkbook and tells them to develop something.

And, no, I'm not talking about the 2000s. I'm talking about the 2020s, 2030s, and beyond where unmanned aircraft actually fight other aircraft by themselves. And that will require loads of new technology to make happen.

The closest thing to that right now is the Navy's Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike program which is supposed to provide some very limited air combat capabilities. The only problem is that program hasn't even gotten out of the RFP phase (and that's after years of delays and continually changing requirements) and it has less than $4 billion allocated to both R&D and production.

Wait. I thought you said it was Congress who was making the calls. Now you're saying it's lobbyists.

You're... you're saying that like they're not the same thing effectively at this point.

Stepping aside from current geopolitics the air force I believe is a relic of the cold war where it had a clear strategic role.

Splitting the air force into a separate strategic weapons force (i.e. nukes) and move the battlefield portions back into the army makes more sense in a low to mid intensity conflict future.

OG_slinger wrote:

Wait. I thought you said it was Congress who was making the calls. Now you're saying it's lobbyists.

Why don't we circle all the way around and simply admit that the reason why the DoD signed the mother of all contracts to develop the F-35 is because that's what the Air Force brass wanted and both Lockheed and Congressional representatives were happy to go along with it because they both benefited.

And, no, the DoD doesn't have the money to get both the F-35 and the next generation of air combat drones.

I didn't say who was making the calls. All I said is that it wasn't Air Force culture. You said it was Congress, and I pointed out that Congress doesn't operate in a vacuum.

If you want to get down to the nitty gritty, the reason the DoD signed off contracts to develop the F-35 is that the airplane that they ended up getting was not the airplane that they thought they were getting. For myriad reasons, most notably because they thought that it would be cheaper to develop one airplane that could do three jobs than it would be to develop three airplanes.

They may well have been right, but it also means that they get an airplane that is mediocre at all 3 jobs, instead of three airplanes that excel at their own job.

Engineering trade-offs are a helluva drug.

OC slinger wrote:

Boeing and Lockheed aren't in the business of developing military technologies on their own in the hopes that Uncle Sam might pay for it sometime down the road. They work in a world where nothing gets developed until Uncle Sam cracks open the checkbook and tells them to develop something.

You couldn't be more wrong. That is exactly the business they are in.

Companies like that are throwing R&D spaghetti at the wall, 24/7, in the hope that some of it sticks in the form of a lucrative product they can sell. That applies to the commercial market as much as the military one. You don't get those tasty federal dollars if you don't have a technological edge over the competition.

You guys are all missing the most important point. If you abolish the Air Force, who is going to manage the Stargate?

It's a Fargate.

Infyrnos wrote:

You guys are all missing the most important point. If you abolish the Air Force, who is going to manage the Stargate?

IASA:

IMAGE(https://www.yourprops.com/movieprops/default/yp54083e9c726137.58826710/Farscape-IASA-Patch-2.jpg)

Garrcia wrote:

Stepping aside from current geopolitics the air force I believe is a relic of the cold war where it had a clear strategic role.

Splitting the air force into a separate strategic weapons force (i.e. nukes) and move the battlefield portions back into the army makes more sense in a low to mid intensity conflict future.

Yep.

And if we did end up, in some crazy scenario, in a high intensity conflict, I think the precise organization of our pyramid of armed forces is going to be the least of the concerns.

Jonman wrote:

If you want to get down to the nitty gritty, the reason the DoD signed off contracts to develop the F-35 is that the airplane that they ended up getting was not the airplane that they thought they were getting. For myriad reasons, most notably because they thought that it would be cheaper to develop one airplane that could do three jobs than it would be to develop three airplanes.

I think this is something that gets forgotten when the F-35 gets taken to task so harshly.

It is NOT like the Air Force/DoD/Congress all sat down and said "Hey lets spend billions of dollars on a crappy plane." If they could have actually achieved the goal of making an airframe that would have been 90% as capable in the roles it was replacing, for a little bit more than an F-16 (which if I remember correctly was the goal), it would have been a giant win for both the US and its allies.

It seems a bit obvious that we may not get that, but that is sort of how it is in new technology, this is just a very very very large example of it.

Jonman wrote:

I didn't say who was making the calls. All I said is that it wasn't Air Force culture. You said it was Congress, and I pointed out that Congress doesn't operate in a vacuum.

You said it was Congress. Why else would you say that Air Force culture didn't control the purse strings?

I said that both Congress and military contractors look to the Air Force generals to determine how much to spend on what. After all, Congress isn't going to push for a fleet of drones if the brass is against it and the military contractors don't give a f*ck just as long as they get the contract.

So, again, we're back to Air Force culture deciding that sub-par piloted planes were better than drones.

Jonman wrote:

You couldn't be more wrong. 3-9% of total revenue spent on R&D.

Companies like that are throwing R&D spaghetti at the wall, 24/7, in the hope that some of it sticks in the form of a lucrative product they can sell. That applies to the commercial market as much as the military one. You don't get those tasty federal dollars if you don't have a technological edge over the competition.

Virtually all of those R&D expenditures were for their commercial aircraft, not random technologies they hope the military might buy.

R&D costs also include bid and proposal efforts related to government products and services, as well as costs incurred in excess of amounts estimated to be recoverable under cost-sharing research and development agreements. Bid and proposal costs were $289 million, $285 million, $326 million, $332 million and $355 million in 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011 and 2010, respectively.

So they're spending some money on R&D that has military applications, but not much (and it's really just a way for them to recoup their sales costs). That and they're counting cost overages on R&D projects where Uncle Sam footed the bill.

OG_slinger wrote:

You said it was Congress. Why else would you say that Air Force culture didn't control the purse strings?

To counter your point that Air Force culture wouldn't accept unmanned combat aircraft. My point was that it's not their decision. At no point did I say it was Congress, because the truth is that I don't fully understand where the authority for funding the military comes from.

Insisting people said something they didn't is a dick move, dude, particularly when all you have to do is scroll up the page to see that you're making that sh*t up.

OG_slinger wrote:

So, again, we're back to Air Force culture deciding that sub-par piloted planes were better than drones.

No.

Again with the misrepresentation.

There was no unmanned option considered alongside what would eventually become the F-35. It was not on the table.

OG_slinger wrote:

Virtually all of those R&D expenditures were for their commercial aircraft, not random technologies they hope the military might buy.

Boeing Defense accounts for something like 20% of Boeing's overall revenue (with roughly 50% being Commercial Airplanes, and the rest Space and Services). So it makes sense that most of that R&D wasn't on defense projects.

Moreover, the R&D costs of the final couple of years of bringing a product to market far outweigh the R&D costs of early phase proof-of-concept, so you're missing the wood for the trees there. It should surprise no-one that it costs more to flight test a large platform over several years than it does to knock together a simulation in the lab to show that an idea is worth pursuing further.

OG_slinger wrote:

So they're spending some money on R&D that has military applications, but not much

Good to see you retract your statement that "Boeing and Lockheed aren't in the business of developing military technologies on their own in the hopes that Uncle Sam might pay for it sometime down the road."

Jonman wrote:
OG_slinger wrote:

Virtually all of those R&D expenditures were for their commercial aircraft, not random technologies they hope the military might buy.

Boeing Defense accounts for something like 20% of Boeing's overall revenue (with roughly 50% being Commercial Airplanes, and the rest Space and Services). So it makes sense that most of that R&D wasn't on defense projects.

Moreover, the R&D costs of the final couple of years of bringing a product to market far outweigh the R&D costs of early phase proof-of-concept, so you're missing the wood for the trees there. It should surprise no-one that it costs more to flight test a large platform over several years than it does to knock together a simulation in the lab to show that an idea is worth pursuing further.

Most? Read the f*cking source you provided.

Boeing only spent about $350 million a year on R&D related to the government (i.e., the military). That's not 3% to 9% of it's revenue on R&D. That's actually just 0.3% of revenues.

And that's not them going off and conducting their own R&D to discover new technologies that they can then (hopefully) sell to the government.

That's just the amount they couldn't charge Uncle Sam under cost-sharing R&D agreements when the government came to them and said "we want to pay you to discover some new technology that we think we might need." That and calling filling RFP's as R&D instead of simply chalking it up as the cost of sales like every other f*cking company does.

Jonman wrote:

Good to see you retract your statement that "Boeing and Lockheed aren't in the business of developing military technologies on their own in the hopes that Uncle Sam might pay for it sometime down the road."

I haven't retracted sh*t. Unlike what you've asserted, those companies aren't spending gobs of money on R&D for the military. What they're doing is getting paid by Uncle Sam to do R&D for him.

And which company gets the big contract has very little to do with what technologies they might have discovered and a whole sh*t-ton about their experience managing extremely large, lengthy projects with a lot of moving parts. The technology a big weapons system needs will be discovered as the program progresses and neither Boeing nor Lockheed are going to be paying for it's R&D. That's included in weapon's development cost.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

It's a Fargate.

It's different from that movie which I have never seen.