My Air Force careerist father must be rolling over in his grave at Arlington. But there’s some new sense in the old idea:
"Does the United States Air Force (USAF) fit into the post–September 11 world, a world in which the military mission of U.S. forces focuses more on counterterrorism and counterinsurgency? Not very well. Even the new counterinsurgency manual authored in part by Gen. David H. Petraeus, specifically notes that the excessive use of airpower in counterinsurgency conflict can lead to disaster."
I still remember calling in an F-4 one afternoon in Viet Nam and watching it lob a 250-pounder a trifle off-target. Which, with 250 pounds of high explosive, is not really a trifle. More like a disaster.
Via War Is Boring
UPDATE: A good, if perhaps unnecessarily complicated, analysis, tending to disagree. More on AF arrogance at Op-For, which notes that the price of one F-22 Raptor would buy twenty A-10s to support COIN ground troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 
I wonder whether it is really a cool-headed approach. If you remember the recent Lebanon story of IAF clearly overdoing it and lack of preparedness and focus of ground troops, it is more or less the same tendency of the air force to take it all.
There was even a talk about abolition of tanks due to their vulnerability to missile defense.
At the end of the day, it is the skill of the overall command that should know to use every element to the best. And eventually it is the low-tech grunts that put up the flag where it is supposed to go and check the corners and nooks and crannies.
Nothing much changed in the last ten thousand years, only the toys get more sophisticated…
I wonder whether it is really a cool-headed approach. If you remember the recent Lebanon story of IAF clearly overdoing it and lack of preparedness and focus of ground troops, it is more or less the same tendency of the air force to take it all.
There was even a talk about abolition of tanks due to their vulnerability to missile defense.
At the end of the day, it is the skill of the overall command that should know to use every element to the best. And eventually it is the low-tech grunts that put up the flag where it is supposed to go and check the corners and nooks and crannies.
Nothing much changed in the last ten thousand years, only the toys get more sophisticated…
They need more “dirt divers” and, as you say, flexibility. At the moment they seem to be stuck on stupid–World War II, and all that.
They need more “dirt divers” and, as you say, flexibility. At the moment they seem to be stuck on stupid–World War II, and all that.