But such rhetoric has certainly stirred anxiety among retired generals, corporate executives from top defense contractors and pundits who see this shift in posture as a dangerous sign that the United States is giving up on air-warfare dominance.You know what? I'm tired of the Air Force. Since the end of WW2 they've basically ran the DoD and got there way. And now they are no longer the spoiled favorate child of the DoD they are throwing a fit. They don't realized that they are becoming marginalized because they haven't came through as promised. And they never will because they are stuck in the past.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates — cast as the villain who is robbing the Air Force to pay the Army — has repeatedly dismissed criticism that he is undermining U.S. air power. What he is doing, Gates said, is rebalancing resources to bolster ground-warfare capabilities that for a long time have been neglected.
The air power crowd is not buying it, though. The Air Force’s recently retired deputy chief for intelligence Lt. Gen. David Deptula has forewarned that the United States has a “geriatric Air Force” and is losing its air power edge vis-à-vis China and Russia. “For the first time, our claim to air supremacy is in jeopardy,” Deptula said at the Air Force Association’s convention.
Retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Charles J. Dunlap, Jr., former deputy Judge Advocate General, also has echoed Deptula’s concerns and has publicly slammed the news media’s glowing portraits of Gates as a reformer who has not specifically explained why the Air Force "bugs" him so much. “On his watch the service has declined markedly in size, reputation, and combat power,” Dunlap wrote in The First Defense blog.
Deptula and others also have been fretting about how the Air Force will fare in the Pentagon’s budget wars. Although the Air Force has seen a rising budget in recent years, they worry that in a zero-sum funding environment, combat aviation will be vulnerable. As proof, critics cite the Air Force leadership dithering on how to go about developing new “long-range strike” systems to replace aging bombers.
They are stuck in World War One, where ground combat is totally futile, naval arms races are cost-prohibitive and and mass firepower is the first, best way to win. This was only fueled by the atomic bombing of Hirshima and Nagasaki rather than invading the Japanese home islands. They honestly believe it was them and them alone that won the war.
They have never been team-players, always off runinng there own, seperate 'air war' not caring if what they want to do is want needs to be done to actually win the conflict. Their hubris is such that they honestly believe they and they alone can win any and every conflict all by themselves. And they continue believing that no matter how many times they fail. And they've done everything they can to hamstring, undercut and outright backstab the other services for far too long.
Its true, airpower can never win a war on its own, unless Nuclear weapons are used, although even this point is skeptical to whether it is valid in the wake of anti-nuclear systems.
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