Don’t expect too many bear hugs, but Defense Secretary Robert Gates plans to attend Friday’s retirement ceremony for the man he pushed out the door, Air Force Secretary Mike Wynne.
The Pentagon, at least so far, isn’t trumpeting Wynne’s departure. It is trumpeting the retirement of Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden — also known as the director of the CIA — who retires at 10 a.m. at Washington’s Bolling Air Force Base. The administration had come in for some criticism for nominating a military officer to head the CIA and appears to have been sensitive to this issue. Gates will spend much of the day doing retirements since Wynne’s ceremony begins at 1 p.m.
Combine Gates’ attending Wynne’s ceremony with his recent trips to the Air Force commands and it becomes very, very clear that the secretary knows he has fences to mend and is trying hard to limit the damage done by his firing of Wynne and Air Force Gen. Mike Moseley. Over the next few months we will get to see whether the new secretary (acting or confirmed by the Senate) and the new chief of staff can, as a congressional aide put it after the GAO tanker protest decision came out, be the miracle workers they must be.
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
let’s see,can’t pick a decent aerial tanker or CSAR helicopter,can’t keep track of parts for nuclear devices(do you think maybe they were shipped to Taiwan?) or can’t pay attention to whether they put nuclear weapons on B-52 bombers or not during “training flights’ over the U.S.,hmmmm,what’s right with the Air Force today? Oops,forgot to mention the F-15 fiasco.
Roy that’s not fair…
They have left a collection of the coolest toys ever!
Roy, it seems you can paint a thousand pictures and no one calls you an artist….
Nevermind that the overall DOD procurement process is a mess. And who says the AF really did not pick the best new tanker, the GAO certainly did not.
No doubt the Air Force has some work to do to redirect itself and to put the right emphisis on those things that are crucial to the current war and those things that are most important. I can’t think of another nation with an Air Force more capable than our own problems and all.
What a positive spin! You don’t suppose the USAF might interpret his presence at the ceremony not as “fence mending” but as “making sure the door doesn’t hit him in the butt on the way out”. It’s like a hit man attending a victims funeral. Not saying the hit wasn’t deserved – it was – but the message being sent is more like “I’ll attend as many of these as I have to…”
Without the air campaign that Moseley himself orchestrated, the “smaller, lighter, faster” ground campaign into Iraq (which has since spiraled into a quagmire occupation without enough boots on the ground), would’ve been next to impossible for the Army and Marines. Losing Buzz Moseley is a tragedy for the armed forces of the United States. He’s a good man, an outstanding soldier and a fine American who lost a political fight to a BUREAUCRAT with an overinflated sense of what our ground forces are capable of. Looks to me like the folks at DefenseTech have been spending a little too much time embedded with the ground pounders to maintain their objectivity. DefenseTech.org?? Looks and sounds more like ArmyTech.org to me.
Right on DerTeufel. I am becoming increasingly tired of the blatantly anti-Air Force rhetoric being espoused both in the posts and in DT articles.
Sure, its easy to dog the AF for F-35, F-22, CSAR-X and the tanker fiasco.
But I have a feeling those are going to look like cakewalks compared to the navies LCS, DDX, and CGX.
Lets not forget the marine corps own battle with EFV, it all hasn’t been roses with the armies whole FCS program. Getting the Osprey flying wasn’t exactly a cakewalk either.
The unforgivable sin, The one that killed Moseley and Wynn, was the Minot and Taiwan fiasco’s. Strat force got left out in the rain, the warriors that never leave home. The crazy aunt in the closet that everyone cares about, but no one wants to talk about. My opinion is, the strat team wasn’t getting the loving it deserved long before Mosely and Wynn took charge, but they ignored the problems, and let it get worse.
And of course Minot was the first to break. Navy boomers have a certain sex appeal. ICBM troops are pretty sexy compared to their satellite brethren in space command. The cruise missile community meanwhile gets derided by the ICBM troops (little missiles) they’re cut off from the rest of the B-52 community (Conventionals and those deploying forward to support conventional operations) Commanders are stuck between supporting the war going on, or the war that ended 20 years ago as far as most of them are concerned. Do we support the ordinance that we use, or the ordinance thats been hanging on the same pylons since the early 80s?
The unforgivable sin? Interesting. The unforgiveable sin in this life or the next is the impenitent denial of God the Holy Spirit (3rd Person in the Triune Christian God).
“denial of God the Holy Spirit (3rd Person in the Triune Christian God).”
Wait….Dude, What?
I know Mr. Wynne personally and he’s a great man. I think it is a shame he is leaving but perhaps going against the grain under this administration isn’t such a bad thing.