Grounded: The Case for Abolishing the United States Air Force

1. American Airpowerand the Military Services

9 1 American Airpower and the Military Services Bureaucracy may be boring, but it matters for policy. The modern state has grown into a vast collection of bureaucratic institutions, each tasked with certain critical jobs.1 Inside and outside the state, individuals, interest groups, and bureaucratic organizations strive against one another for influence and resources. In the united States, Congress, the White House, the State department, the Pentagon, the various organs of the intelligence community, and each of the military services contribute to national security policy. The arrangement of these organizations matters for how the policymaking process plays out. While the fundamental purpose of foreign policy and military organizations is to disarm enemies, deter aggressors, safeguard commerce, pierce the fog of war, and defend whatever other interests are deemed crucial to national survival and prosperity, each organization sees the world in a particular way, and each tends to seek to maximize its own influence and autonomy.2 The importance of specific organizations for policy often depends on the personality and background of the executive as well as the relationships between major policymakers. However, the simple fact of an organization’s existence can grant it a “seat at the table,” through which it can have an impact on policy. Institutional design thus privileges certain foreign policies and forms of war at the expense of others. organizations working together suffer from what Clausewitz terms “friction,” the inability of the component parts to function together seamlessly.3 The themes of organizational conflict and airpower culture have played out in the recent history of u.S. airpower cooperation. While air- 10 Grounded power parochialism may seem a theme of the distant past (dead arguments by dead men), the organizational structure of the u.S. military continues to support a vision of airpower that creates substantial problems for u.S. war fighting, procurement, and international influence. This chapter introduces the institutions of American airpower, their assets, and their missions. It reviews the logics of air force independence and ends with a discussion of interservice conflict. American Airpower Airpower provides the foundation for modern American military strength. The national security services of the united States currently operate at least six distinct air forces, with roughly 16,000 aircraft between them. These air forces offer platforms, bases, weapons, and training procedures. nevertheless, each air force exists within the cultural milieu of its own service, subject to the preferences and priorities of its parent organization. The present distribution of airpower across military institutions was produced by the national Security Act of 1947, passed in response to postwar changes in the international system and to a revised vision of the role that the united States could play on the international stage.4 Congress revised this system on several occasions during the Cold War (most notably in 1986, with the Goldwater-nichols Act), but the basic institutional framework of the u.S. military remains as established in 1947. The u.S. Air Force formally came into being in the national Security Act of 1947, which also created the national Military establishment (nMe, including both the army and the navy). In 1949, the nMe became the department of defense. The 1947 act also created the national Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency. The u.S. Army operates roughly 180 fixed-wing aircraft (mostly dedicated to training and transport), and nearly 5,000 helicopters. These aircraft undertake transport, reconnaissance, close air support, and some interdiction missions. Agreements with the u.S. Air Force limit the bulk of army aviation missions to helicopters, with a few allowances made for fixed-wing service aircraft. The u.S. navy (uSn) operates over 3,700 aircraft, including 3,000 American Airpower and the Military Services 11 fixed wing and more than 600 helicopters. uSn aviation operates from ships (aircraft carriers and other vessels) and from land bases, and conducts virtually every airpower mission, including air superiority, countersea , interdiction, reconnaissance, counterland, and air transport. The u.S. Marine Corps (uSMC), although formally part of the u.S. navy, operates its own air force consisting of nearly 600 fixed-wing aircraft and another 600 helicopters. Marine aviation has developed expertise in missions that support fielded infantry, including reconnaissance, air transport, close air support, and battlefield interdiction. The Marine Air Ground Task Force (MAGTF) provides the foundation of uSMC aviation capability. The u.S. Coast Guard, although not part of the department of defense , operates about...