Ok, I gotta get into this fray…
So yesterday Gates dressed down the Air Force during an address at its war college in Alabama. He said getting the service to deploy enough drones to Iraq and Afghanistan was like “pulling teeth” and he cited the struggle as an example of services refusing to adapt to the new era of warfare.
His criticism was greeted with quiet applause by many in the analyst/journalist/military world who are mainly concerned that the Air Force is focusing too much of its efforts on legacy platforms like the F-22. Don’t get me wrong, I like it when a defense secretary shows a little backbone and acts like he’s leading the services rather than being led by them (or Congress).
But I think we should inject some perspective into his undiplomatic attacks. I’ll get this one out of the way first: Can you imagine the outcry if it had been Rumsfeld who delivered this critique? When the former secretary slapped the Army upside the head, he was slammed for being too wedded to an outmoded “revolution in military affairs” mentality and that he favored technology over manpower. Army generals initiated a whisper campaign to discredit him. And after a while it worked. Wonder if the powerful Air Force brass will start the same thing? Only time will tell.
I also think it’s a bit unfair to say the Air Force is stuck in the old ways of doing business:
In my view we can do and we should do more to meet the needs of men and women fighting in the current conflicts while their outcome may still be in doubt,” he said. “My concern is that our services are still not moving aggressively in wartime to provide resources needed now on the battlefield.”
He cited the example of drone aircraft that can watch, hunt and sometimes kill insurgents without risking the life of a pilot. He said the number of such aircraft has grown 25-fold since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to a total of 5,000.
Gates has been trying for months to get the Air Force to send more surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft, like the Predator drone that provides real-time surveillance video, to the battlefield.
“Because people were stuck in old ways of doing business, it’s been like pulling teeth,” Gates said. “While we’ve doubled this capability in recent months, it is still not good enough.“
If you really think about it, the Air Force has been pretty agile in this fight. They’ve deployed Airmen as provisional convoy security teams, sent over explosive ordnance disposal teams to augment Army, Navy and Marine IED hunters, scattered hundreds of tactical air controllers around the globe to help the ground pounders in close air support missions, their planes fly constantly over Iraq and Afghanistan helping spot IEDs, killing senior insurgent and al Qaeda leaders and tracking bad guy mortar teams. The service has done a lot of filling in on missions it’s not traditionally done before and stepped up to the plate with little complaint.
Maybe complaining about the number of UAVs the Air Force has deployed is reasonable. A colleague in one of my email loops put it this way:
Gates apparently does not know about the real issues involved in deploying more Predators, and is paving the way to the inevitable day when an Army Warrior crewed by 19-year-old NCOs has a midair with a loaded C-130, directs a barrage of guided artillery on to a school bus or puts Hellfires through a group of allied vehicles.
The Air Force argues the delay in deploying UAV squadrons is due to training needs back home. My colleague above might be going a little far in his analogy — I don’t think we need winged aviators necessarily to fly UAVs on all missions — but his point brings up a larger issue that Gates ignores in his UAV critique.
The bottom line is ALL the services need to adapt to a new way of fighting, and in large part they have. Now the Air Force’s obsession with the F-22 is an easy mark for critique. But at least someone’s thinking about air-to-air while everyone else is handing out soccer balls and building insurgent network wire diagrams.
– Christian
I think Sec. Gates’ comments to the USAF are an overall mentality that he is trying to have them address. Case in point: F-22’s. It appears that seeing that the USAF was getting much traction with their arguments about 5th gen fighters, they resorted to saying the F-22 would be great at IED jamming. Perfect example of not thinking out of the box.
He’s essentially telling them that there is a real fight going on now, lives are being lost, it’s of STRATEGIC importance and don’t rely on the silver plated option that’s overly expensive when a more reasonable one will do. To quote him directly: “Unmanned systems cost much less and offer greater loiter times than their manned counterparts, making them ideal for many of today’s tasks.” Or look at coin aircraft, we use to operate the OV-10 Bronco, but don’t have anything similar today. I think this is what Gates is referring to here: “For those missions that still require manned missions, we need to think hard about whether we have the right platforms — whether, for example, low-cost, low-tech alternatives exist to do basic reconnaissance and close air support in an environment where we have total control of the skies — aircraft that our partners also can afford.“
Look at how the “fighter mafia” culture has long denigrated the A-10 in favor of the “sexier” F-16’s or now F-22’s. It’s akin to driving the Benz as opposed to the Honda. Which is more expensive to maintain? And considering the lengthy battles, can we always expect to use such high gas guzzling aircraft? The loiter times are affected too.
Another example can be seen with the USAF’s lukewarm embrace of UCAV’s. Remember the Boeing X-45 and when it seemed to be working, boom the Air Force pulled the plug. It’s really a mindset and a sense of parochialism that caused that I believe.
I don’t want to disparage the air force cause they definitely help to keep us on top, however I think too many times they are TOO WEDDED to the military industrial complex and always seek the most gold plated items when other solutions would work. Granted other services suffer from this to a degree, but I believe the USAF suffers the most from this and that may be part of the message that Gates wants them to hear.
Wasn’t he at Maxwell AFB in Alabama where the AU is? If I were a Commander in Chief, I would ask him to clarify his statements and if I didn’t like the explanation, I would ask for his resignation. By ‘didn’t like’ I mean if made me believe he was looking too much at the here and now and he was not fully considering all sides to the arguments concerning AF and UAVs.
The AF really P’s me off on a lot of things they’re doing, but the Army whining about not enough UAV support is just that: whining. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, the Army sees a problem because they’re looking for one. They will never complain up the chain about the unavailability of an organic asset but will always complain about a missing unorganic one.
I see this as absolute proof, the other services STILL don’t get one of the, if not THE basic tenet of Airpower: centralized control, decentralized employment. If Sec’y Gates wants more AF critical thinking, I suggest the AF editors of the Aerospace Power Journal (or whatver the name of it is these days) start publishing some papers on the downside of looking at the ‘here and now’ instead of ‘now and in the future’.
Gee, we always hear about ‘fighting the last war’, but it seems like it usually comes from the same people who want to ‘plan’ for the current one. Maybe the former springs from the latter?
Gates “attack” was neither undiplomatic nor unjustified.
Let the positive attacks continue if that will grab the military’s attention to change from the old, outdated ways! Glad to see that he is tell what is morally correct rather than necessarily politically correct. (PC is for the birds.)
Well said, atacms and SMSgt!
A significant amount of his “attack” was an emphasis on Col John Boyd’s legacy with the Air Force…
Who shoved the F16, and helped shove the A10, down the generals’ throats (and was also strongly involved in what became the F18), nearly killed the B1, tried pretty hard to limit the F15, etc, in the name of doing what was right for the Air Force, not what was politically acceptable to the generals.
Especially invoking Boyd’s “Be Somebody or Do Something” speechlet.
Also, “Fighter Mafia” is a term which became corrupted over the years. The original fighter mafia was Boyd, Sprey, Ricconi, etc, who shoved the F16 and A10 down the Air Force’s throat. The members of the original fighter mafia look at the F22 and F35 and groan in pain.
Hogwash! Gates was out of line in publicly chastising the Air Force. The move lacked the style or grace we should expect from our politicians. He might as well have told our over worked and stressed out UAV drivers they suck at their job and they’re going to have to work harder. As the SECDEF he could have just as easily ordered more UAV’s into theater (it’s good to be king).
I don’t want mire this conversation in doctrine, but I think we can all agree that without air superiority, you can’t do squat on the ground. Like it or not, for the next decade or two the F-22 and F-35’s are the future of the Air Force. With the F-117 fleet retired, the F-15 fleet falling out of the sky and the F-16 fleet getting really tired, what are you going to field? God help us if we ever have to fight a real military in that state.
Christian — with the first squadron of F-22’s, just now reaching operational status, I’d hardly call them a legacy platform.
The fact is, the Air Force, and aerospace industry, have done a great job of getting UAV’s to this point. The idea of fielding UAV’s capable of out-performing our current manned platforms is still decades away (I’d estimate 30 to 40 years).
I don’t pretend to know what Gates’ is dealing with, but I do know that airing your dirty laundry in public never ends well (at some point someone’s going to see your SpongeBob underwear) it’s not good for moral and is never diplomatic.
What happened to my ‘rant’ tags? You can ignore the second two stanzas below…they are just me ranting.
this idea that the air force wants it should be the gatekeeper of all things CAS is insane. i know as a grunt i dont want to have to radio my toc and then have the toc radio battalion and have the battlation radio regiment and the regiment radio division and division hand over the info to the air force chain of command and work their way down their chain of command all the while im getting shot at just to get some CAS? CAS should be organic to the ground units. over and over we see the air generals obssesed with expensive overprices sky in the pie tech. that i have to rely on some guy that doesnt even have the same culture of serivice and doesnt share our own mission objectives and he is going to rush to help me when i need it the most? the air force handles the air superiority and the new “cyber command” ‚bombing, space, nuclear deterent and air lift. CAS is just a small mission that they dont even want give it back to the army where it belongs.
if the army took cas back into it fold im sure there would be less friendly fire incidents like these.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YxDzunLGXQ
OK, let me see if I understand. SECDEF goes to Air University and West Point, challenges current and future officers to do MORE out-of-the-box” thinking and that’s supposed to put the youngest and least tradition-bound service in its place? It wasn’t that long ago when the AF was pilloried for wasting money on these high-tech unmanned programs as part of the Revolution in Military Affairs, but then that was before the Army thought it was a good idea, I guess. I suspect evern the AF brass would be among the first to acknowledge that unmanned ops could be conducted from other places than Indian Springs and Beale, but somebody’s gonna have to put big bucks into building capacity and bandwidth on forward deployed land/sea platforms if that’s what the SECDEF wants. In the meantime it’s gonna be difficult to squeeze much more efficiency out of the existing system but if wants to send more money…I’m sure they’ll take it. Cannabilizing future capabilities may work in the short-run but it always raises cost in the end and we all know it.
> He might as well have told our over worked and stressed out UAV drivers they suck at their job and they’re going to have to work harder.
hogwash
he was saying the AF should allow people besides officers to fly UAVs so more people are available to fill the slots so we can REDUCE the workload on the current UAV drivers
> As the SECDEF he could have just as easily ordered more UAV’s into theater
maybe you missed the story where he did just that?
but the limiting factor is becoming not the amount of UAVs but the amount of pilots
> but I think we can all agree that without air superiority, you can’t do squat on the ground
i don’t think anyone disagrees with you there …
> Like it or not, for the next decade or two the F-22 and F-35’s are the future of the Air Force.
they are PART of the future of the AF
as always, the right tool for the job
air superiority? ground attack against fortified positions? F-22 and F-35 all the way
COINops? UAVs and gunships all the way
Good Morning Guys,
It looks like Sec. Gates has seen the light. It looks like any more F-22 is nothing but a wet dream for the fighter jocks. Next up is to let EM’s do the flying of the UAV’s, it will save a huge amount of money.
Here is the problem the AF is way behind the cureve on UAV’s. The Navy is already planning for carriers that will carry UAV’s, te Marines are starting to field the Fire Scout as well as an assortment of fixed wing UAV’s, the Army is asking budget to bring UAV,s and there control down to the battalion level and the training of Enlisted crews, te CIA has a larger UAV force then the AF and agencies such as the Coast Guard and Customs are fully involved in fielding UAV,s under there control.
In short boys and girls the AF is running out of missions. A reduction from 350K to 250K over the next two years might not be enough. Fighter jocks will make for very expensice truck drivers in Afghanistan and Iraq.
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner
Christian,
The key passage from the first article you link to is this:
“All this may require rethinking long-standing service assumptions and priorities about which missions require certified pilots and which do not,” Gates said, referring to so-called unmanned aerial vehicles that are controlled by service members at ground stations.
Sec. Defense Gates just announced the abrogation of the “Key West agreement.” The unoffical agreement that restricted US army fixed wing aircraft to the unarmed support role while the Army was free to use armed helicopters.
Gates just told the USAF that UAV roles and missions are up for grabs and the American military service that best supports the troops in contract on the ground will get the the cash to do the mission. UAVs were not imagined then, and Gates just said that they are not covered today.
The Fighter Pilot Generals will try and wait out Sec. Defense Gates, just like they waited out past administrations with the F-22.
The problem is technology in the form of ground troop owned UAV combined with US Army artillery launched precision munitions has “humbugged” the USAF’s close air support and tactical reconnisance capabilities.
The USAF is in deep denial over this turn of events. Leadership wise, the result for the USAF is that the Fighter Pilot Generals have been acting like old men in the manufacturing industry unions waiting for thier retirement accounts to vest while younger workers get screwed.
Tough for them.
The US Army is buying its own unmanned airforce that does not use certified college educated pilots from the USAF academy or ROTC. The UAVs will instead use level headed, long term of service NCOs and warrent officers to get the job done.
And Gates also just told the USAF there is nothing that the USAF brass can do, while the US Army is fighting on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, to stop it.
My prediction is that if the US Army is still fighting in Iraq in 2010. The USAF will have lost the CAS/Recce budget wars.
> he was saying the AF should allow people besides officers to fly UAVs so more people are available to fill the slots so we can REDUCE the workload on the current UAV drivers
How is a UAV any different than a manned aircraft (short of the organic material)? Most are as large, if not larger, than many private aircraft. The skills to take-off and land are no different. If anything, flying without sensation makes things even harder…you can’t feel the aircraft slipping sideways in a crosswind. Why don’t we just put enlisted personnel in the hardware we currently have? You see where I’m going with this?
> maybe you missed the story where he did just that?
I must have missed that. I did however see him publicly chastise the Air Force for not working hard enough to supply UAV’s to war zones.
> they are PART of the future of the AF
That’s like saying the Eagles, Falcons and Nighthawks were just PART of todays Air Force. If those aircraft weren’t present over Iraq and Afghanistan, we’d be short thousands more soldiers. When a soldier in country calls for help, more often than not, it’s a manned fighter providing assistance.
> as always, the right tool for the job
A luxury we don’t always have. Most of the time, the right tool is the tool you have.
I know we’re getting at the same thing here. I’m just taking exception to the way Gates handled the situation. Forty or fifty years from now I can see a mostly unmanned fleet (6th gen fighters), but that doesn’t help us in the present.
If you can’t find the enemy, you can’t kill the enemy. Not to mention most bombs are overkill for Urban warfare.
Gates is the most impressive Sec Def in a long time, and Congress kisses his ass, so he can get away with pushing the envelope and trying to steer the Pentagon and other parts of the IA into a relevant force for the most likely scenarios.
It it good to see the Big War (nation state) crowd, mainly the AF and the USN Sub community, getting slapped down publicly. I think this the second time Gates laid some wood on the AF for dragging their feet on CAS, ISR, and COIN. I watch a lot of military briefings and I don’t think I have heard any AF Generals recognize their role in Iraq, it is always “we need more money for 300 F22’s and Spacewar systems for China/Taiwan, 2030″.
Sure the A-10 and B52/B1’s are getting it done, but they are not much help in ISR. Predators are killing IED placers and mortar teams left and right in Iraq. No wonder the Army and Marines want their own fleet of UCAV’s.
Hundreds more, if not thousands more UCAV’s for Iraq/GWOT would bring some massive capability to bear on the the elusive insurgents/terrorists.
> How is a UAV any different than a manned aircraft (short of the organic material)?
they’re cheaper, in both men and material
if a plane goes down, you just lost a VERY expensive piece of material plus potentially the VERY expensive crew
if a UAV goes down, oh well
> Why don’t we just put enlisted personnel in the hardware we currently have?
level of responsibility
a 99.99% accident free rate may be acceptable for UAVs, it is not acceptable for manned planes
> You see where I’m going with this?
you know that the army currently operates some of the same UAVs as the airforce (Predator) with non-pilots?
it seems to work ok for them …
> When a soldier in country calls for help, more often than not, it’s a manned fighter providing assistance.
which is a wasteful situation that needs to be fixed
> Forty or fifty years from now I can see a mostly unmanned fleet (6th gen fighters), but that doesn’t help us in the present.
don’t confuse the issues
we aren’t talking about super UCAVs that will replace the F-22
we’re talking about what we have NOW (Predators and Reapers) and finding adequate staffing to keep them all operational
First of all we need to consider the source. Sorry but the Associated Press is misrepresenting what Defense Secretary Robert Gates said. This is what I mean when I say that if you want to know the truth you need to do your own research rather than simply getting your information for the “main stream news”.
Here is a link to the text of the speech.
http://www.defenselink.mil/speeches/speech.aspx?speechid=1231
I am sure SOME of you still won’t get it but HOPEFULLY many of you will. Keep in mind that this speech was addressed to STUDENTS at the Air War College.
The Airforce has been pretty nimble but the huge programs to by aircraft like the f-35 and f-22 that will not hold a candle in just a few years to AI controled drones that cost 1/1000th the price, has to pilot to kill, and attacks cordinated with hundreds of other drone and weapon systems on the battlefield.
Next: Why is it that the army warrior guys are more likley to run into a c-130 than the pilots that got a civilian air licence will? The Warrior guys never had to learn how to fly a plane they sit in but they never have to fly a plane they sit in. The airforce just can’t get the idea that machines run by 19 year old kids can fly a plane better than a guy in the seat without all the computers. The flyboys in the airforce command hate the idea that they would not be needed in tomorrows airforce and flight the end of that everyday.
While I may be reading a bit much into this, it seems that Sec. Gates is chastising the Air Force when the buck stops with him as their boss. If he has to pull teeth to get the AF to do what he wants to fight the war, why isn’t a general or two getting the axe? While I like Gates leaps and bounds more than I do Rumsfeld, I don’t go to the local town-hall meeting and complain that my troops won’t show up to work on time or disobey my orders.
Thanks for linking the actual speech. Yes I was reading too much into the MSM cut-up. The text of his speech seemed less accusatory than “we’re trying to change thinking patterns.” In context with the rest of his speech, they seemed like fair comments to make.
to Cenobyte:
Humans have looked up at the sky for millenia and dreamed of flight; now it’s all the rage to replace them with computers, mostly for political reasons. Yeah, flyboys may be a little outdated, but I (a nonflyer) can’t really blame ‘em for dragging their feet on the way to the chopping block.
RE Speech location: