Comments on: America’s Defense Meltdown

By: Rheann

Rheann — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 22:14:46 +0000

Excuse me. Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘Press On’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race. Help me! Looking for sites on: Hair thinning shears sissors. I found only this — female thinning hair. Hair thinning pics, general females yet applied in the face can be complemented eventually. Cures for thinning hair: at the ointment of foliage, and thinning from damage, he was a mullet to only one. Waiting for a reply :cool:, Rheann from Papua.

By: Bolton

Bolton — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 12:47:37 +0000

Greeting. Fresh clean sheets are one of life’s small joys.
I am from Central and also am speaking English, give please true I wrote the following sentence: “More than 16,000 graphics and more than 60 card girls banked in the system defence, easyhome prepaid mastercard.“
Thanks :). Bolton.

By: SMSgt Mac

SMSgt Mac — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 18:33:33 +0000

Housekeeping post:
That ‘Kowalski guy’ I was using too much has since been made provisional commander of the new Global Strike Command, a three star billet. If he doesn’t disappoint, expect him to pin on his second star, and be made permanent deputy first to groom him for the lead role later.

By: SMSgt Mac

SMSgt Mac — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 23:41:51 +0000

RE: bowling alley. No, not calling anyone a whiner in this case. If you objective is to move from 'a' to 'b' you have to care about the 'c's in front of you. Desert Storm and airpower results are still being debated, a good part of the controversey comes because of different peolpe looking at different sources. The Christians In Action always took the pessimistic view and the AF took the optimistic view. I'll re-read my Gulf War Airpower survey volumes soon when I have the time, but that %success you cite seems awfully low. I believe the survey had tanks at 35+% or so and APCs, artillery and others at somewhat higher numbers. In any case, the numbers weren't as important as the effectiveness of the units. Schwarzkoph switched away from counting games fairly early in the Air Campaign to gauging what the effectiveness of the units were. Strategic targetting and interdiction disrupted/stopped so much comm and logistics, the front line Iraqis were in general disarray and the RG was befuddled. The Iraqi army shrank through attrition and desertion (by far mostly the latter) between the kickoff of the air war and G-day that the ground forces faced an army that was 2/3 the size of the army that Saddam had when the first bombs started dropping. Everybody contributed, but the powers that be at the time declared that Airpower was the decisive instrument, not me. As much as I loved "The General's War", I think Gordon lead Trainor down a partisan path with Cobra II. Cobra II works from a conclusion and makes the story fit the end. I did an in-depth multi-part dismemberment of it at my place a while back because I thought it was beyond the pale. Its so bad I'm wondering if I have to rethink what they wrote in their first book.

By: TB

TB — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 21:12:59 +0000

SMSGT Mac & Andy:
Fair enough regarding deep attack on tactical targets. I will admit the Air Force has gotten better at it over the years. And yes, I own a copy of Cobra II, great book.
My rant about strategic bombing not living up was more directed at the Air Force’s performance in Desert Storm. The General’s War is a great one to read about Desert Storm. It takes Powell, Norman, and the component commanders to task for their performance. The Air Force back then said they could knock out 50% of the Iraqi army and more or less win the war on their own. In the 6 week war the final tally was something closer to 15% and they had enough C2 left standing for the entire Republican Guard corps to retreat at the same time.
Kosovo lasted 70 something days. I imagine that was 60 something days longer than everyone planned. Was that an Air Force, NATO, or White House screw up?
As far as the “bowling alley” comment, I hope you’re not calling me a whiner. I don’t expect the air force to destroy everything along my attack route, but I hate watching them miss. I’m in a joint staff school right now where everyone (even Marines) keeps defaulting to “air will take care of that” and not using any imagination in the ground plan.
I’ve noticed working alongside Marines at this school that the Army isn’t anywhere close to providing its own CAS like the Corps does. We treat apache battalions as another maneuver element often with their own missions. They’re great in the permissive urban fight, but I don’t think I could count on them full time in a full blown force on force.

By: SMSgt Mac

SMSgt Mac — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 06:55:18 +0000

TB,
Without getting bogged down in philosopht TOO much, here are some comments and replies to your
post.
RE: If a headquarters or bridge ahead of me needs to be bombed, sure an F-16 works. When I need CAS against a moving target, I need a plane that can stick around for awhile, has lots of missiles, rockets, and guns, can see me and the enemy, and isn’t afraid to take a few hits.
I’m with you until the last sentence. If I may, what you NEED is a persistent and lethal air support presence. In a perfect world every close combat warrior would carry an ‘Easy’ button that would rain deliverance from evil when pushed. Since it is not a perfect world, the ‘Easy’ button has call waiting. The A-10 is popular with the ground guys because they can see it, hear it, and always know when one is around. A B-1 orbiting at 25-30K ft is invisible to the foot soldier until it makes its presence known. The biggest difference between the two forms of air support is that while the A-10 is like a security blanket and makes those under it feel better, a platform like the B-1 can be overhead far longer, and support far more taskings from different groups of those on the ground. Yes, there are still many situations where one might want an A-10, but they do not obviate the fact that there are many times a better weapons systems for a job. As the sensor-to-shooter chain gets more rapid and robust, the need to fly in the dirt to find the bad guys becomes less likely.
The references to ‘what is in front of me’ tells me you are probably a real deal Army man. The best description I ever read of how the army views the battlefield was a John Warden quote where Warden said the Army tends to view the battlefield as a ‘bowling alley’ where a commander has to go from here to there. This quote was part of a discussion about how airpower was decimating the Iraqis in depth leading up to the ground combat phase and all the Army commanders were whining about what was right in front of them. There are several accounts of how the field commanders wanted to divvy up airpower to make sure their AOR got what they wanted and Schwarzkopf had to remind them that it was HIS airpower.
RE: I’m curious how you define a permissive environment. A-10s in Desert Storm got shot up plenty, did their jobs, and flew back to base.
A permissive environment for an A-10 is:
1. No air threat with a look-down shoot-down capability.
2. Paucity of MANPADS
3. Paucity of heavy-caliber ballistic weapons.
4. Boots on the ground. Just like Armor-Infantry, CAS with a nap-of-the-dirt plane is a combined arms operation.
RE: The F-35 has a gun with almost no ammo, and in order to mount enough weapons to provide any kind of CAS it has to mount them externally and lose its expensive stealth.
The F-35 gun, on variants with an internal weapon, is there to meet a specification. The spec is for a certain lethality under certain conditions. Carrying external guns on the F-35 makes certain people in certain quarters to feel better and alay their fears about not having a gun. More likely, the preferred external stores on an F-35 would be drop or launch weapons that would be used from outside the envelope of cheap, low-tech threats and that would be after the Day One (or Two or Three) threats have been rendered relatively impotent. More importantly, when discussing the F-35, you have to talk about it as part of a larger networked system.
RE: As far as the Army being clueless about airpower– we know what we want out of airpower.
True, the Army wants a fast “support arms” capability. they could care less if it flew, crawled or tunneled. the AF is concerned about exploiting the aerospace medium in projecting force and national will. CAS is only a part of that bigger picture.
RE: The Air Force keeps trying to perpetuate the myth that bombers alone can win wars. When has that ever happened?
AF WIN: 1999 Kosovo/Serbia.
The funniest thing about that whole operation was watching the Army try to come to terms with the fact that airpower (AF and NAVAIR and some NATO) stopped the Serbs cold. It would have been accomplished faster if Weasely Clark had let Gen Short bomb what needed to be bombed and the French and Russians played the game straight but that is another story. Now there is no doubt that the threat of a land operation was always present, but the fact remains the Serbs ran all over Kosovo until we started hurting them where it hurt the most with big bombs coming out of big bombers.
Of course, if owning the dirt is an imprtant objective you will ALWAYS need boots on the ground — filled by robots someday maybe but I doubt it.
And not pick nits, but the AF has never claimed airpower alone can win wars, it is however that airpower can be the DECISIVE element in winning them. The Army is still trying to wrap their heads around the fact that sometimes THEY are a supporting force.
RE: For that matter, when has the Air Force ever delivered what it has advertised?
1991, 1999, 2001, 2002-.
RE: “shock and awe” being disinformation — its pretty bad when the Air Force’s theory of mass bombing is only useful as a psyops tool since it can’t actually deliver the goods.
pffft. “Shock and Awe” never happened. to bad it was a cool soundbite that was perpetuated in the media. It never happened because Saddam and Co provided a target of opportunity before it could be launched and the opening gambit was changed.

By: TB

TB — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 04:51:37 +0000

I read the entire book cover to cover and got to meet all the authors last night. Some of their ideas are out of left field, but they know their business and care deeply about what they write. I don’t agree with everything Sprey proposed (such as thousands of manned planes) but he brought up good points that deserve attention. For his age he’s sharp as a tack too. He was a protege of John Boyd, did testing of aircraft and rifles in the 1960s and 1970s, and seems to know his stuff when it comes to the theory and science of flying. Much of it went over my head, but the Harrier pilots sitting next to me were entranced.

By: TB

TB — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 04:34:29 +0000

If a headquarters or bridge ahead of me needs to be bombed, sure an F-16 works. When I need CAS against a moving target, I need a plane that can stick around for awhile, has lots of missiles, rockets, and guns, can see me and the enemy, and isn’t afraid to take a few hits. The A-10 fits the bill almost perfectly. The F-35 does not. I can’t rely solely on Apaches for CAS since a) the Army really doesn’t train for it, and b) Apaches are rugged, but not nearly enough.
“A-10s are fodder in anything other than a permissive environment“
Mac, I’m curious how you define a permissive environment. A-10s in Desert Storm got shot up plenty, did their jobs, and flew back to base. Name another fixed-wing aircraft that can get shot a hundred times and continue to fly. The A-10 strafes for a living with devastating and accurate fire. The F-16 strafes and the pilot flys too fast and crashes.
The F-35 has a gun with almost no ammo, and in order to mount enough weapons to provide any kind of CAS it has to mount them externally and lose its expensive stealth.
As far as the Army being clueless about airpower — we know what we want out of airpower. The Air Force keeps trying to perpetuate the myth that bombers alone can win wars. When has that ever happened? For that matter, when has the Air Force ever delivered what it has advertised? As for Andy’s comment about “shock and awe” being disinformation — its pretty bad when the Air Force’s theory of mass bombing is only useful as a psyops tool since it can’t actually deliver the goods.

By: Andy

Andy — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 21:21:45 +0000

Ok, links, quoting and italics don’t work in comments. All but the first two paragraphs of my last comment are quoted from this report:
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/special/iraq/ipp.pdf
beginning on page 125.

By: Wes

Wes — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 16:45:06 +0000

For those who think Sprey and the other “are not up on currect aircraft”; well, I don’t think the man is infallible, but give him some credit here. He is prolly more “up” on things than you are, or do you all work in the Defence industry full-time? Or are you just part-time tyros and hobbyists like me? I don’t agree with all his conclusions either, but at least he is idea-driven, not profit– or career– driven, like those currently in charge of military aquisitions.