The Honest Airman

Military Review,  Nov-Dec, 2007  

Tags: Air Force, Manufacturing

• E-mail
• Print
• Link

Major Eric C. Larson, USAF--I will never apologize for being an Airman.... In reading Major General Dunlap Jr's "Understanding Airmen: A Primer for Soldiers," I came away with the distinct impression that General Dunlap is not presenting the whole story of who we are as U.S. Air Force Airmen, and does us a disrespect by not coming clean about our part in "the service" of our country.... We as Airmen should be proud of our accomplishments, in the air and on the ground, and be confident of our service's contributions [but] a little humility and self-sacrifice would go a long way to gain the respect of our sister services.

There are many areas in which I take issue with the general, but space limits me to two. First, he should acknowledge that the Air Force is probably the most politically savvy when it comes to manipulating the U.S. Government bureaucracy. The Air Force has learned that winning funding for a multi-billion dollar weapons system is as much about the system's value to Congressional districts and defense contractors as about its value as a weapon.

... If you want a real reason why our Army brothers and sisters are frustrated with the Air Force, it is because they can do the math. The $840,000 cost of one MRAP is a little under one quarter of one percent of the $257 million total per plane price tag for just one F/A-22.

The average grunt knows how the MRAP is going to help him survive the streets of Baghdad today, so he doesn't really care about how the Raptor at 40,000 feet will help him in some future conflict. When Air Force skill at politics is perceived as more important than our skill on the battlefield, it does little to help our cause.

Airpower does have roles to play in COIN, and five well-considered pages in FM 3-24 just about covers them all. Simply arguing that page count trumps actual substance [as the general seems to] is ridiculous ... "Airpower in the Strike Role" is a short, well-written two paragraphs within Annex E whose main point is to warn against its indiscriminant use ... and relegate it to its proper role in support of COIN efforts on the ground.... FM 3-24 makes it abundantly clear that the USAF's major contribution to "winning" in COIN is through USAF Airmen helping the host nation develop its own sustainable airpower expertise, not by buying and using more USAF F/A-22s.

My second objection to the article is its failure to advance positions that ... justify spending the nation's limited treasure on Air Force platforms, which could include buying the full run of F/A-22s ... though carefully considered prioritization means buying additional Global Reach in the form of C-17s and a new tanker fleet. General Dunlap writes that "honest disagreements as to how to address the greatest threats of the 21st century are the premise for some of the contentiousness," but he doesn't address the threats we face [right now].... which are likely to be some combination of global Islamic insurgency and internal separatist movements.... The F/A-22 does not directly address these threats in any meaningful way, but the C-17 and KC-X (whatever the next tanker will be) do. Connecting the F/A-22 to ongoing COIN ops in Iraq or Afghanistan is politically expedient, but ultimately misrepresents airpower's proper role in that fight.

The Airmen's hardest fight is the idea of shared sacrifice. Yes, airpower's reliance on technology to exploit its advantages is costly and does require good political salesmanship, [but] it would only be good politics for USAF leaders to "take one for the team" on pie-in-the-sky projects for the uncertain future and concentrate on beating today's known threat.

... Airmen don't need to be better ambassadors or advocates for our service or specific airframes; we need to be ideologues of airpower in general and true promoters of "service above service above self." Here's how we do that: be proud of our strengths, honest about our weaknesses, acknowledge we can't do it alone, recognize the honor in "playing well with others," sacrifice for the good of the entire team, and ignore those that would pit us against each other. The rest will take care of itself.

COPYRIGHT 2007 U.S. Army CGSC
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning