No, apparently, there are things that can stop the U. S. Air Force; namely, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and the Government Accounting Office, an oversight branch of Congress. The president, it would appear, is impotent. I was an officer in the USAF for 6 years, and a sergeant in the Army for 5+ years before that, so I have a feel for the culture of the Air Force.
The Air Force shipped live, armed nuclear weapons over
The Air Force has problems, and they need fixing. I had a great time in the AF, and I feel strongly that I left it better than I received it. But they had a lot of problems when I was in, and the problems seem to have metastasized. The source of the problem, simply put, is a severe lack of leadership at the AF. I recognized that instantaneously, upon being commissioned. Having come from the army, I had a unique perspective, and I was also a decorated enlisted soldier. The problem is not necessarily with the individual people, and a lot of my friends are still officers in the AF, by now captains and majors. Without getting too much into the culture, since it changes, there is a generational gap in the AF, between my group and those ranked Full Colonel and above. The latter are "cold warriors" and they are the ones who are the leaders, at present. The good news is my group, still up and coming, is fundamentally different than this old group, so there is still hope.
In the military, there are the Army and the Navy, and everything else is a subset of that. The Marines have a big problem with that, but they accept it. I don’t mean the Marines pretend to accept that they are not a major branch, or sometimes to – they fundamentally accept it and deal with it. They find ways around it. The AF came from the Army, and is the most recent military branch. Unlike the Marines, the AF has no history, and tradition is vital in the military. I don’t know much about the Navy; but one thing I know is that in some key ways it is like the army. There is a sharp divide between the officer and the enlisted corps. Strangely, the AF always stuck me as more like the Marines than the army in its interaction between the ranks. I reasoned that this was because the AF wanted to break from the Army, but it always struck me as bizarre to listen to ROTC cadets trying to drill like Marine troops. I’ve worked in the field with a lot of Marines, when I was a soldier, and needless to say, the AF can’t hold a candle to the Marines, so why even pretend? The AF will never be the Marine Corps – not even remotely close, so stop trying. That is my first piece of advice to the AF, but it is pithy to my point: leadership. Leaders have to recognize their strengths and weaknesses. More to the point is the fact that Close Air Support is a bastard step-child in the AF, because it deals with supporting the army. That's a problem because it's wrong -- it's an example of poor leadership.
The other problem for the AF is their officer corps itself. In the military in general, officers have their own culture. The AF is the least military branch, and this presents a problem for its officers in presenting a unified face. Their officers are the least-respected, in a military sense. In every military branch there are 2 main principles. One, those in combat are the most important part of a particular service, and consequently get the best jobs and the most attention, and make the important decisions. In the army, that means ‘combat arms’ officers are the quickest to the rank of general, and are the ones in charge. General David Petraeus is no doubt combat arms, probably infantry; I would be willing to bet. In my opinion, this is not always wise, because these officers are not always the brightest of the lot. But, the army has found a way to make it work. Secondly, those officers commissioned from military academies are more important than those who went through ROTC. Again, this can mean some good leaders are passed over for arbitrary reasons that only concern tradition that is strictly enforced. But the Army and Navy, and the Marines, can get away with this. In the case of the AF, none of it works, and is counter-productive. Complicating matters further, the pilots in the AF are the ones in combat. Even enlisted are not in combat in the AF. That presents a damn-near crisis of leadership because from what I saw in the military in general, pilots are very bad leaders. Even those pilots who were born with an inkling of leadership skills have no clue what they are doing because there is no one to show them how to be a leader. It takes training and mentorship to learn how to be a leader; it doesn’t just arrive overnight in a package. So, you can see, by letting pilots from their academy run the AF, they have little if any leadership. how do they do it, then? The answer is that AF has – by far – the most professional, excellent enlisted corps of all 5 services, far and away. There are a few bad apples; but the AF enlisted corps is something to marvel, and it runs the AF, and baby-sits the often child-like pilots and commanders.
What is the solution to the problem? The AF needs to get rid of its pilot-friendly culture, thank its enlisted corps, and look closer at ROTC officers for leaders. The AF needs to develop its own culture. That culture is not going to be a military culture, like the Army or Navy, nor even the Marines. It has to be different. It might help to realize that, really, pilots are not in all that much trouble to begin with, hard as that may be for them to accept. Barring these changes, the AF will always be a quasi-military, more civilian branch of the military, even more civilian in nature than the Coast Guard, and unlike the CG, a service with no leaders or even it's own culture.
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