There’s been quite a lot of discussion about abolishing the U S AirForce. I see no reason we can’t run the carrier-type stuff (fighters, recon, etc) from the Navy, and the large land based bombers, etc. from the Army. The actual division would be decided by those more stratigically astute than I am.
We’d save a lot of money at the command level.
Peace,
mangeorge
Bring back the Army Air Force eh?
You are assuming that there is some sort of duplication of effort going on at the “command level” between the Army and the Air Force.
I imagine that the organizational, operational and logistical structure between the Army and the Air Force is very different as are their missions. Which is why they are separate branches.
The carrier-type stuff is already run by the Navy. If there’s any duplication of effort, it’s that some pilots come from the Marines.
The only problem with the Air Force is that they hate actually doing their blody job and supporting the Army (and others, on occaision). They love nothing more than having a high-flying pentillion-dollar superjets loaded with avionics, and maybel one small bomb). And yes, one smart bomb in the right place at the right time is sweet. But it doesn’t win battles or wars, and the Air Force has never admitted this.
The real killers are flexible fighter-bombers, or dedicated ground-support craft like the A-10 Warthog. Fighters, bombers, and other craft are awesome, but idealy we’d have flying support craft covering every inch of every minute of an attack. If anything hppened, then maybe that’s what shold be taken out of the Air Force and handed to the Army.
Excuse me? The Air Force does its job and does it as well as it can. The only animosity comes from when people say that there is a genuine interservice rivalry rather than a jocular one.
The Navy could, and does, have land bases.
Yes, but they could do that job more efficiently as part of the Army. A lot of what the Air Force does is at the behest of the Army, isn’t it? They never actually take over a target, they just “soften it up” for the Army.
Is this based on any sort of actual analysis of the organization structure, costs, and effort expended in having three major service branches, comparisons with the force structure of other countries, plans for combining the Air Force and Army with a full accounting of all opportunity costs, and relating all these things to a complete and honest assessment of the total force needs of the United States now and in the foreseeable future, or do you just like A-10s?
You would’nt save a dime, you would just be shifting the airforces budget to the navy and army.
Also you would be kicking force morale in the balls and end up losing a lot of talented people for no good reason.
What’s going to happen is that the airforce will lose certain missions to space command when its invested into a new service, but that’s also going to dip into the navy pool as well. But that’s at least several generations off.
declan
Isn’t that the role of Army aviation like Apache helicopters?
Do you mean that Air Force people would be insulted and quit if they became Army?
Why on Earth?
Corporations save tons of money by merging. Why not military? Seems to me. And they’d eventually save tons on enlisted quarters. Barracks, not coins. 
But if they got rid of all that last century airplane stuff, they could just rename themselves Star Fleet.
Does the Air Force schlep the Army’s Apaches around for them? Same for other heavy stuff, eh?
I would wonder why you think that corparations save money by merging , most of the time its by divesting exess people and facilitys.
Whats being advocated seems like a return to the policies of Robert McNamara.
But really , the people who would advocate this ,I am not sure that they are aware of just what the airforce encompasses. The airplanes are just the tip of the iceberg.
Declan
The Air Force’s primary mission is control of the air. Shooting guys on the ground that don’t have SAMs is secondary to that role. I’d think that the ground guys rather like not have hostile aircraft, armed or otherwise, above them.
The other services have their own missions, and like the Air Force, they are very good at accomplishing those missions. Each service has its own culture which has grown up around that mission. The Army’s culture is one of getting things done via endurance, the Air Force’s culture is one of getting things done via precision. The Army’s good at offence, and proactive measures, the Air Force is good at defense and reactive measures. The Army’s good at killing people, the Air Force is good at breaking things. There’s overlap, sure, but they’re both huge organizations, and they both need certain things (lawyers, police, cooks, etc.).
I don’t think the Army’s bureaucracy is going to foster the technical skill needed to accomplish the Air Force’s mission. I don’t that the Air Force’s bureaucracy would be able to foster the slog through the shit endurance to accomplish the Army’s mission.
Don’t the Air Force and the Army very often work on the very same mission? The AF goes over and “breaks things”, then the A comes in and “kills people”. I dunno. Seems like a good match to me.
Does the Air Force use fighters for anything other that escort for bombers?
BTW; I just checked the forum name. Oops!
The airforce has seen the future-and it doesn’t include bombers and manned figters! The future of the Airforce:
-Remotely piloted drones 9cheaper and no danger to the pilot)
-USAF Cyber warfare command: wars of the future will be fought on the internet
The USAF was once part of the Army-but broke away when the Strategic air command was established. There is no need for a traditional Airforce now-the army has its own (ground support) airforce, as does the marines, and the Navy has its own airforce as well.
It looks as if there’s a genuine rivalry; it’s just happening way above your pay and grade.
But apparently no matter how the demands on our armed forces change, each service manages to get almost exactly 1/3 of the total defense budget.
Yes, quite a bit, actually. Fighters are there to control the airspace over a contested region. Their role is to keep the other side from being able to fly planes. Not just to protect the bombers, or the ground pounders, but to eliminate air transport, air reconnaissance, and air travel.
Again, the Air Force’s first job is control of the air. Period, full stop. The USAF is at this point in history so good at its job that no one else can compete, but that doesn’t mean that it should be rolled into another branch; especially when that branch has a completely different mission, and vastly different requirements to complete that mission.
The Air Force, just a few years ago, tried to scrap the entire A-10 fleet lock, stock, and barrel just a few years ago. I love the AF, Airman, but your brass tried to replace the A-10 with a frickin’ F-16, which is almost, if not quite, the worst idea to ever hit miliary aviation, ever, period.
[For those of you not familiar with military aviation, that’s roughly the equivalent of someone trying to replace a vehicle fleet of huge diesel-powered dump trucks with some Ferrarris with a small waste bucket in back.]
More to the point, I said nothing about a rivalry. What I’m saying is that the AF doesn’t like carrying anyone else’s water. Your command wants most of all to be out flying billion-dollar super-jets high above and away from everything, and the plain fact is that it ain’t how military operations are handled. Troops on the ground need a sturdy, high-operations-time support plane with a metric buttload of every munition conceivable. Right now, we can’t build hovertanks and heavy bombers which can do this task are possible but rare and more limited. The A-10 (now a Thunderbolt) is basically perfect for this role. It can operate very far forward, gets ready to go in a heartbeat, can reach troops quickly, can stay with them for extended periods, and then dump holy hell upon anything it wants. That’s not a role any other craft can fully embrace, but the Air Force doesn’t seem to enjoy it, and it’s pretty obvious why.
As to the question of helos: 'copters do some of the same jobs, but they have their own issues. They are better for very close support, and many odd jobs like air-sniping, but the can’t redeploy and refocus like close-support planes can. They don’t carry as much or as grossly over-powered weaponry, and they can’t zoom out, blow the stuffing out of the enemy, and then come back for round two in anything like the same time. And, freakishly, helos are not nearly as bloody tough as the A-10. Seriously, A-10 pilots can afford to get shot to hell and back and still walk home. They sit in a titanium bathtub cockpit in one fo the toughest planes ever made.
I once thought about joining the Air Force, but with my eyes I’d never get to fly, and I wanted to fly an A-10. If the AF ever offered me the chance, I’d consider selling an organ to pay for it.