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an imbalance in service budget shares, then so be it.
Throughout the 1990s, advocates of increased defense spending
had to argue that periods of peace are, historically, merely the time
between wars. It is no longer necessary to make such arguments.
War has come, and it has found America s gallant military unpre-
pared for all of its challenges. Yet few of the challenges that are
so straining the armed forces today are new or even unusual.
Arguments for maintaining the course set in the strategic pause of
the 1990s, held to by some even during this time of conflict that
has exposed so many flawed assumptions, are sounding increas-
ingly threadbare and unconvincing. The  new think of the late
1990s has become  old think in this time of protracted land war.
It is past time to adjust America s defense priorities and defense
budget to account for the timeless realities of war.
3
Age and Indifference Erode U.S. Air Power
Loren Thompson
America s armed forces fare best in the political system when the
nation is in danger and the military is performing well. If danger
recedes or defeat looms, they can fare very poorly.
That certainly has been the experience of the Air Force during
most of its brief history. Success in World War II brought the Air
Force independence from the Army, and the primacy of the nuclear
strike mission in early Cold War years made the youngest service
first among equals in military councils. During the Vietnam War, in
contrast, public dissatisfaction with military performance translated
into budget cuts and canceled programs.
With the coming of the new millennium, though, the Air Force
has faced a different set of circumstances for which there is little
precedent. Although the nation definitely senses danger from foreign
terrorists, and the Air Force fought well in three successive air cam-
paigns (the Balkans in 1999, Afghanistan in 2001, and Iraq in 2003),
the service is not getting the money it needs to modernize. As a result,
service leaders fear their capacity to accomplish core missions is
increasingly at risk.1
It is common for military services to seek more money even when
they are thriving, because in the dangerous business of war, no
amount of capability is too much. But that is hardly the situation the
Air Force faces today. Every major category of air asset is exhibiting
signs of age-related stress, and space efforts are in such disarray that
there is a real danger the nation may lose coverage in critical missions,
such as missile warning and orbital reconnaissance.2 To make matters
52
AGE AND INDIFFERENCE ERODE U.S. AIR POWER 53
worse, even the systems that are in good shape often seem ill-
designed for dealing with the kinds of elusive enemies currently of
greatest concern.
This isn t the way Air Force leaders thought the new millennium
was going to unfold. They were exposed to the same budget cuts and
talk of  asymmetric threats as everyone else in the 1990s, but unlike
the other services they finished the decade with a crushing defeat of
U.S. enemies in the Balkans. The performance of U.S. air power in
Operation Allied Force the Balkan air war was so decisive that
it led previous skeptics of air power to speculate that the whole
character of warfare might be changing.
Partly as a result of this success and partly because it had tradi-
tionally been the most technology-intensive of the military services,
the Air Force began the third millennium as the perceived favorite of
a new crop of political appointees at the Pentagon. Since those
appointees, led by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, were pro-
claiming their intention to transform the nation s military posture
with cutting-edge technology, it seemed likely to many observers that
the Air Force was destined once again to be primus inter pares in mil-
itary deliberations.
It didn t work out that way. Although Rumsfeld s inner circle
touted the success of precision bombing and space reconnaissance in
Afghanistan and Iraq, its members didn t get along with the Air
Force s civilian and uniformed leaders. In the 2001 Quadrennial
Defense Review, the service rebuffed proposals from the Office of the
Secretary of Defense (OSD) to buy more B-2 bombers. In 2002, the
secretary of the Air Force, James Roche, threatened to resign over
OSD efforts to cut funding for the F-22 fighter. In 2003, OSD and the
Air Force secretariat engaged in a bitter dispute over whether future
tactical surveillance should be conducted from manned aircraft (as in
the past) or from unmanned vehicles and spacecraft. In 2004, the Air
Force became embroiled in a procurement scandal that dragged the
defense secretary into a confrontation with his own party s most
powerful senators. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]