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Eliminate the Air Force?!


Guest Vern Edwards

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Guest Vern Edwards

In case you missed it, an op-ed in yesterday's New York Times recommended the elimination of the Air Force. According to Paul Kane:

[T]he 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.

Oh, boy. Stand by for the letters to the editor from the Secretary of the Air Force and the Chief of Staff.

See "Up, Up and Out." http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/21/opinion/21kane.html.

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Vern: thanks for bringing this ?article? to our attention. Another situation that provides insight to the unknowing. While we are at it, why not just have an Army and Navy. Gee, why not just have one force. One size fits all, right?

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Heck, using the logic of some of the management guru's writings I have seen lately, all of the services should be combined into one single service, reducing redundancy, wasteful competition and improving interoperability.

If that logic follows through, what does that mean for competition in contracting? Or the concept of a diverse supplier base?

And over all of this, the NY Times editor is probably as short sighted as the people running newspapers in general. They did not adapt to the internet challenge very well, nor does he see how a dedicated Air Force can be a deterence from threats that may not exist right this instant, but could very well challenge us in the future.

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Guest Vern Edwards
Vern: While we are at it, why not just have an Army and Navy.

America will never, and I mean never, give up its Marine Corps. You might as well just put that out of your mind. That is SO off the table.

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I can tell you one way they are fighting and that's contracting. Currently the AF has over 70% of all contracting spots and are on a 1:1 rotation, 6 months on, 6 months off. So if you look at the number of contractors over here, most of those are because of, or administered by the AF.

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I think the fundamental distinction in this has to be between those who are willing to get their feet wet and possibly muddy [Army], and those who aren't [Navy]. The Marines clearly fit into the first category.

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