The Future of Air Power?

Military technology is driven quite a bit by the "last war" and tradition, particularly when we aren't fighting a "hot war". Actual combat has a tendency to make the military face brutal realities.

For many decades, we've had the luxury of being able to control the air - a significant strategic advantage. Today's reality is that unmanned aircraft are cheaper in both dollars and political consequences (no downed pilots to recover).

The use of UAVs or RPVs is unrewarding & emotionally difficult for the pilots, but if we're to maintain our advantage, we'll be doing much more of it. Manned aircraft won't be phased out for a long time, but unmanned aircraft are going to become much more common - we better get used to it.

Fighter Pilots Face A Dismal Future
"Many people, including some generals in the air force, believe that its next generation fighter will not have a pilot on board. Many air force generals admit that the F-35 is probably the last manned fighter. But some believe that the F-35 will be facing stiff competition from pilotless fighters before F-35 production is scheduled to end in 2034.

UAV (unmanned aerial vehicles) are not particularly popular with many U.S. Air Force leaders, but that is not the case in many other countries. Air force generals around the world see the unpiloted jet fighter as a way to break the monopoly the U.S. Air Force has had on air supremacy for the last sixty years.

Most Americans don't even think of this long domination of the air, but potential enemies of the United States are well aware of it, and that domination has a profound effect on how those nations do their military planning. In effect, if you think about going to war with the United States in the immediate future, you take for granted that American aircraft will control the skies above. Robotic jet fighters could change that. And this is forcing American air force generals to confront a very unsavory prospect; a sixth generation fighter that is flown by software, not a pilot.

It's not just that most of the those American air force generals began their careers as fighter pilots. No, the reason is more practical. American air superiority has largely been the result of superior pilots. The U.S. didn't always have the best aircraft, but they always had the most talented and resourceful pilots. And that's what gave the U.S. its edge. Will that translate to software piloted fighters? Research to date seems to indicate it will."

Eliminate the Air Force? I think not

I know I should ignore editorials in Big City newspapers, but this one gets under my skin:

Op-Ed Contributor - Up, Up and Out - NYTimes.com:
". . . there are three major changes Mr. Gates should add to his agenda, and they deserve President Obama’s support.

First, the Air Force should be eliminated, and its personnel and equipment integrated into the Army, Navy and Marine Corps. Second, the archaic “up or out” military promotion system should be scrapped in favor of a plan that treats service members as real assets. Third, the United States needs a national service program for all young men and women, without any deferments, to increase the quality and size of the pool from which troops are drawn."

Our current volunteer service is the best performing military we've ever had. Conscription may be needed if we face another world war situation, but we're better off without it now. If the federal government wants to create a new volunteer service and force our young people into government service, they can do that without disrupting our military. Young people performing charitable or other benevolent service under government guidance would learn a great deal about the waste, fraud, abuse, and inefficiency of government programs - knowledge that will serve them well as voters.

"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."

Ridiculous - the Air Force is involved via flying UAV missions, ferrying troops and cargo, and involved in direct combat in both theaters. If the Air Force can manage it's workload without stressing it's staff, they should be congratulated for that. We certainly don't need to dismantle a strategic asset at a time when Russia among others is rebuilding strategic assets that only missiles and bombers can attack if needed.

"The result is an “up or out” system that demands service members move up the ladder simply to stay in the military. Any soldier passed over for promotion twice must leave or retire.

Treating service members like so many widgets — in particular, the enlisted men and women who make up 85 percent of the ranks — is arbitrary and bad management. I have seen many fit, experienced officers and enlisted Marines arbitrarily forced out because there were only so many slots into which they could be promoted."

This is one of the reasons our military is doing so well - the tendency to create intractable bureaucracies is damped by this promotion policy. In a society where we celebrate companies that fire the bottom 10% of their performers, we certainly shouldn't complain about a military that seeks excellence within it's ranks.

". . . would New Orleans reconstruction have lagged so long if we had had a national service program in natural-disaster recovery?"

Once again the excellent response by our Coast Guard gets overlooked. In the New Orleans tragedy, the entire US government reacted more quickly, with more supplies and more people than at any time in US history. Within just the last few decades, such a disaster was primarily the responsibility of those on the scene, the city and state leaders. The tragedy in News Orleans is that the city & state leaders felt no obligation to do their jobs and just sat back waiting for the federal government to save them.

Satellites Collide Scattering Debris In Space

The clutter in near-Earth orbit is becoming a business liability. I expect the next decade will see attempts at garbage collection in space for a fee, probably paid by communications companies or their insurers. Unmanned remotely piloted vehicles (RPVs) would likely be used to de-orbit big chunks so they burn up on reentry. As the technology evolves, we'll probably see large collections of smaller bits in nets or bags. If some company can inexpensivly return this debris to Earth, there will be a big market for it as souvenirs.

U.S.-Russian Satellite Collision Sends Debris Flying - NYTimes.com:
"For decades, space experts have warned of orbits around the planet growing so crowded that two satellites might one day slam into one another, producing swarms of treacherous debris.

It happened Tuesday. And the whirling fragments could pose a threat to the International Space Station, orbiting 215 miles up with three astronauts on board, though officials said the risk was now small.

“This is a first, unfortunately,” Nicholas L. Johnson, chief scientist for orbital debris at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, said of the collision.

It happened some 490 miles above northern Siberia, at around noon Eastern time. Two communications satellites — one Russian, one American — cracked up in silent destruction. In the aftermath, military radars on the ground tracked large amounts of debris going into higher and lower orbits.

. . .
The American satellite was an Iridium, one of a constellation of 66 spacecraft. Liz DeCastro, corporate communications director of Iridium Satellite, based in Bethesda, Md., said that the satellite weighed about 1,200 pounds and that its body was more than 12 feet long, not including large solar arrays.

. . .
“There are actually debris from this event which we believe are going through space station altitude already,” he said. The risk to the station, Mr. Johnson added, “is going to be very, very small.” In the worst case, he said, “We’ll just dodge them if we have to. It’s the small things you can’t see that are the ones that can do you harm.”

In Houston, International Space Station controllers have often adjusted its orbit to get out of the way of speeding space debris, which can move so incredibly fast that even small pieces pack a destructive wallop."