… the Air Force should be eliminated, and its personnel and equipment integrated into the Army, Navy and Marine Corps …

At the moment, the Army, Navy and Marine Corps are at war, but the Air Force is not. This is not the fault of the Air Force: it is simply not structured to be in the fights in Iraq and Afghanistan. While Army, Marine and Navy personnel have borne the brunt of deployments, commonly serving multiple tours, the Air Force’s operational tempo remains comparatively comfortable. In 2007, only about 5 percent of the troops in Iraq were airmen.

Yes, air power is a critical component of America’s arsenal. But the Army, Navy and Marines already maintain air wings within their expeditionary units. The Air Force is increasingly a redundancy in structure and spending.

War is no longer made up of set-piece battles between huge armies confronting each other with tanks and airplanes. As we move toward a greater emphasis on rapid-response troops, the Army has tightened its physical fitness regime and the Marine Corps has introduced a physically grueling Combat Fitness Test for all members. Yet an Air Force study last year found that more than half of airmen and women were overweight and 12 percent were obese.

The Air Force is a Cold War legacy, the power-lust child of Curtis LeMay. It flies planes we don’t use, and is so poorly integrated with the rest of our military that it is a leading cause of friendly-fire casualties. It’s time to move forward with a more rational – and cost-effective – military that better serves the needs of the present century.

Kevin Drum, seeing this whole thing as the potential to Be Obama’s Vietnam, writes, “at a gut level something about this whole plan makes my blood run cold. It’s so McNamara-ish I can practically see him making the announcement in my mind’s eye.”

When pressed about the comparisons to the USSR’s decade-long effort to control Afghanistan, a Pentagon spokesperson said (via The Plank):

And I would just further add that there’s absolutely no valid comparison between the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, which was an occupation to control a country, repress a population, install their own sort of puppet leadership. We are there to, first and foremost, combat terrorism and protect our own interests and our own people from attack. But we’re also there to help the Afghan people and enable them to reclaim their country. There is absolutely no comparison that’s valid between the two.

That’s all well and true, but the real reason that the U.S. has a shot at pacifying Afghanistan is that there’s no global superpower arming the resistance, as we did with the mujahedeen in the 1980s (or as the Russians and Chinese did in Vietnam).

Unless, of course, that’s not true, and there is a country providing Taliban insurgents with funding and arms and making the war unwinnable. A nuclear-armed state, say, that shares a large, porous border with Afganistan.

Which brings us to the real rub: what to do about Pakistan. Joe Klein rounds up the “Af-Pak” strategy and finds the President’s approach acceptable on that score.

Wait and see, I guess.

The Afghan chieftain looked older than his 60-odd years, and his bearded face bore the creases of a man burdened with duties as tribal patriarch and husband to four younger women. His visitor, a CIA officer, saw an opportunity, and reached into his bag for a small gift.

Four blue pills. Viagra.

“Take one of these. You’ll love it,” the officer said. Compliments of Uncle Sam.

The enticement worked. The officer, who described the encounter, returned four days later to an enthusiastic reception. The grinning chief offered up a bonanza of information about Taliban movements and supply routes — followed by a request for more pills.

For U.S. intelligence officials, this is how some crucial battles in Afghanistan are fought and won. While the CIA has a long history of buying information with cash, the growing Taliban insurgency has prompted the use of novel incentives and creative bargaining to gain support in some of the country’s roughest neighborhoods, according to officials directly involved in such operations.

Great. Now nationalized health care is screwed.

[via.]

What a difference a year makes.

With neocon nutcases angling for WW3 with Russia over the disputed provinces in Georgia, the Military-Industrial Complex has shaken off the GWOT like a bad cold and found a new raison d’etre:

When Russia’s invading forces choked roads into Georgia with columns of armored vehicles and struck targets from the air, it instantly bolstered the case being made by some that the Defense Department isn’t taking the threat from Russia and China seriously enough. If the conflict in Georgia continues and intensifies, it could make it easier for defense companies to ensure the long-term funding of their big-ticket items.

Ho baby! Where’s Tom Clancy when we need him?! Listen to the whining of the former fighter jocks at the “Air Force Association”:

Mr. Dunn, a retired Air Force lieutenant general, said that if U.S. F-16 and F-18 fighters were carrying out combat missions over Georgia, they would be in grave danger from highly advanced Russian surface-to-air missiles on the border that a newer plane like the F-22 can evade. “The debate has got to shift as a result of this war,” said Mr. Dunn.

Look, if F-16 and F-18 fighters were carrying out combat missions over Georgia, it would mean that World War III was underway, and that New York, DC, and Moscow were days away from being obliterated in a nuclear holocaust. You’ll excuse me if, under those circumstances, my utmost concern is not the air superiority of our F-16s.

She’s certainly qualified, having served on the Senate Armed Services committee. But more than that, it would be a real ballsy choice (sorry for the poor choice of words), one that would go along way to ameliorating Clinton’s supporters’ charges of sexism during the campaign.

Finally, it would be a neat taunt at the GOP: “I dare you to attack her for being a woman in charge of the military.”

I dunno, maybe it’s just nuts.

In 1990, Congress enacted legislation requiring all federal agencies to pass independent audits. Every year, the Defense inspector general dispatched dozens of auditors to the military’s financial and accounting centers. Every year, they reported back that the job couldn’t be done. Defense Department records were in such disarray and were so lacking in documentation that any attempt would be futile. In 2000, the inspector general told Congress that his auditors stopped counting after finding $2.3 trillion in unsupported entries made to force financial data to agree.

The Pentagon budget, larger than the GDP of most of the world’s nations and roughly one quarter of the entire U.S. Government budget, is unaudited and unaccountable. But because each of the branches — Air Force, Army, Navy, etc. — want to keep their independence, there’s no way to bring them all together. And since defense spending exists in a parallel universe to all other government spending (a universe where Republicans support big government, where projects don’t really have to justify their budgets, and where overspending is par for the course).

So, in honor of Tax Day, here’s a chart, courtesy of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:

Thompson and others say Boeing’s commercial airplane division was too focused on the 787 to pay much attention to the tankers.

“The tanker was not as high a priority for Boeing as it was for Northrop-EADS,” Thompson said.

Richard Aboulafia, an analyst for the Teal Group, a Fairfax, Va., firm that tracks trends in the aerospace industry, said Boeing’s commercial division was also focused on ramping up production of the 777, increasing production of the 737 and launching the 747-8.

“Tankers were a very distant fifth priority for them,” Aboulafia said. “EADS’ highest priority was to crack the U.S. military market.”

My evidence is strictly circumstantial, but I regard the Air Force slogan’s similarity to the results of a Youtube search for the phrase as…probably more than coincidental. Really, how much less subtle could this be?

To paraphrase Mitt Romney, who let the dog whistle out?

Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months. Obama will make it clear that we will not build any permanent bases in Iraq. He will keep some troops in Iraq to protect our embassy and diplomats; if al Qaeda attempts to build a base within Iraq, he will keep troops in Iraq or elsewhere in the region to carry out targeted strikes on al Qaeda.

But isn’t the U.S. Embassy there one of the largest in the Middle East and can’t “protecting” it amount to having a base in Iraq? Is this his wiggle room?

Also, if the U.S. supposedly “leaves” Iraq and then Al Qaeda sets up shop, we can simply reestablish a base in Iraq and/or carry out a targeted strike on AQ in what would be a sovereign nation?

When it comes to Iraq, the isssue of permanent bases will be the most significant difference between Obama and McCain. I just wonder if Obama’s being squirrely here.

And to be honest, if he is being squirrely, it doesn’t bother me one bit — it’s naive to assume that a) the U.S. can simply pull out of Iraq without any permanent (or Korea/Germany/Bosnia permanent) bases and besides, b) it would be foolish to lose the strategic benefit of having bases there in the first place. Why not just go with it? Pretend it’s a little good cop/bad cop . . .

There’s something charming about the Russian’s insistence on pretending they’re still a world power.

Last night, an anonymous American general broke some possibly alarming news: Over the weekend, a Russian bomber flew directly over an American aircraft carrier in the Pacific Ocean, while another came not quite that close, but still too close for comfort, about 60 miles away.

Only a matter of time before Hollywood brings back Jack Ryan, no?

[Lieutenant Colonel C.J.] Wallington, a division chief in the Army’s office of enterprise information systems, says the military is quietly working to integrate Macintosh computers into its systems to make them harder to hack. That’s because fewer attacks have been designed to infiltrate Mac computers, and adding more Macs to the military’s computer mix makes it tougher to destabilize a group of military computers with a single attack, Wallington says.

This past year was a particularly tough one for military cybersecurity. Cyberspies infiltrated a Pentagon computer system in June and stole unknown quantities of e-mail data, according to a September report by the Financial Times. Later in September, industry sources told Forbes.com that major military contractors, including Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon had also been hacked.

The Army’s push to use Macs to help protect its computing corps got its start in August 2005, when General Steve Boutelle, the Army’s chief information officer, gave a speech calling for more diversity in the Army’s computer vendors. He argued the approach would both increase competition among military contractors and strengthen its IT defenses.

Nonetheless, it bears mentioning that the Air Force is on the leading edge of alternative energy deployments, having just switched on the largest solar array in North America at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. A small nuclear plant could be next.

[Secretary of the Air Force] Wynne directly linked the need for the F-35 to the potential threat posed by China. He rejected a new CSBA study that suggests cutting back the JSF order and investing in a long-range bomber to penetrate deep into enemy airspace.

“The last time I [traded stealth fighters for a long-range bomber], I bought 21 B-2s,” said Wynne, referring to the small US force of B-2 Spirit stealth bombers. “How big do you think China is? Think about that.”

Jeesh. Good thing Bush’s inevitable coup will keep him in office long enough to pull this off. And don’t you just love Wynne’s personalization of the issue? There’s no “we” in “I”. Am I sensing a little intra-service envy? I mean, after all, looks like the Navy will get to have most of the fun in Iran.

Now, scared shitless that Congress is going to come to its senses and realize that the Air Force budget need to go on a huge diet, the bureaucrats at the USAF have ginned up a new rationale for the billions and billions of dollars we’re spending to upgrade planes that are already 2-3 generations ahead of anything ever conceived by any other nation on planet Earth.

According to Government Executive, the Air Force wants in on the “War on Terror.” Listen to how desparate they sound:

Air Force officials bristled at this passage in the new counterinsurgency manual: “Inappropriate or indiscriminate use of air strikes can erode popular support and fuel insurgent propaganda. For these reasons, commanders should consider the use of air strikes carefully during [counterinsurgency] operations.” He agrees that recent air strikes, particularly in Afghanistan, have caused civilian casualties and generated ill will.

Is it me, or does this sound exactly like the beef industry complaining that the “food pyramid” made them seem less important than their arch rivals in the wheat business? Clearly the Air Force needs some help with it’s messaging, and we here at BATP are eager to help. Below, you’ll find a pictures that will help you visualize just how effective the F-22 can be in protecting a bustling market in downtown Baghdad. Look how effortlessly it glides over the ground (at a gentle speed of, say, Mach 1), avoiding IEDs and EFPs with grace. Sure, it’ll rip the roofs off all those buildings and probably suck a few small children into its engines, but hey, that’s the price of freedom!

(PS: it’s pretty hard to find an image of a Baghdad market on the internet that hasn’t been destroyed by a bomb. Note to the war propagandists: better propaganda, please!)