Time to abolish Air Force
 

http://www.boston.com/opinion/2014/0...sHO/story.html

BMT

If someone thinks it'd help to abolish the Air Force then who'll maintain air superiority in case of war?

IMO the four services-Army,USAF,USN,USMC are very important for the US to maintain its global military superiority. Special Operations and Air power are without doubt a very important asset for the US.

Another brick out of the wall. Dismantle the US military, man by man, unit by unit, base by base, and service by service. All to save money to extend benefits for those who have/will never earn a living. If you think it can't and/or won't happen, put some jelly in your pockets, you are turning into toast.

My $.02.

That requires a Boston.com registration to read. I hope that you don't mind me linking to the Foreign Affairs article that does not require an account: LINK

I would tend to agree that removing the administrative and bureaucratic (did I just repeat myself?) costs is worth merging the Air FVorce back into the Army.

In my opinion, if they were to model such a relationship as seen between marine Corps Infantry and Aviation, it would be a very powerful force.
It would take a very long time to over come the flag level egos and pride and hurty feelings, though....

I would not think that incorporation of the Air Force assets and mission into the Army would qualify as a dismantling of the service. Redundancies can be eliminated with the missions and capabilities retained.

I like the non-traditional thinking here. Folding air assets back into the 2 primary services (Army & Navy) makes sense in light of the changing nature of warfare (asymmetric). It also makes good economic sense at least on the surface. And I can see how this would make good operational sense.

IMHO, when facing intractable problems it's usually a good idea to rethink what your doing and how your doing it - start from first principles and forget what you think you know and move from that point. This article does just that. :lifter

Who needs an Airforce when you have drones......

A more interesting idea would be to go the Israeli route and merge all four services into one organization, thereby streamlining medical, intelligence, and administrative functions. A lot of duplication in other areas would be eliminated as well. There are drawbacks too, but I think it's an interesting idea.

Scooter that's an interesting idea. Could SOCOM be viewed as a pilot scale program for just that?

Lets start with all the Federal law enforcement entities first... :munchin

It's an excellent idea. There are a lot of things the Israeli military does we should emulate.

(One exception being the "rack your pistol on presentation" technique.)

We're just as screwed up as everyone else. USASOC, MARSOC, NAVSPECWARCOM, JSOC, and USAFSOC (?) all have their own training and admin functions, many of which overlap and are redundant. Now, if each unit (SF Regiment, SEALs, ect) all combined schools into a joint schoolhouse, with each pipeline cherry picking schools a-la-carte for their pipeline.... I don't know if it would work. But it could. Imagine if there was an initial gut check course for all services. SF could then go to a land nav course jointly run with JSOC for the follow on "selection" portion. Ranger School instead of SUT and the Seal's land warfare training, MOS phase, a joint SERE course, a shared MARSOC / USASOC UW phase, followed by language. Or in another order, however the folks at SWC want to run it. A shared dive program, MFF, and other stuff for advanced schools. Again, just an interesting idea. But it could work for DoD as a whole...although the Marine Corps would be the biggest loser since they would pretty much disappear into the other components of the new organization.

Something on the lines of UKSF? Like a common selection process like there is for SAS,SBS,SRR volunteers upto a certain point and then afterwards they head on to their respective units for further selection depending on their units requirement.

I am using UKSF as an example because if I recall both the SAS and SBS had entirely different selection run at Hereford and Poole respectively and now its all united under UKSF.

Makes a lot of sense and probably would result in a military force more realistically aligned with the future threats and at a lower cost without sacrificing combat readiness.

What about including the various intelligence services under the integrated military command structure? I have been critical of the CIA paramilitary ops in other posts. Field operators would come from the military and would interject a level of discipline and coordination with the military mission. Seems to me unifying the intelligence services (including NSA) under a unified military service command structure would be very beneficial on several levels and if nothing else would focus the intelligence mission and break down the barriers to sharing of intel.