Air Force Community - Air Force Times

Leave small aircraft to the Army

The policymakers who chart the future of the Air Force appear to be fixated on two principles: 1) Smaller is better and 2) The Air Force should be indistinguishable from the Army.

Their thinking is no better exemplified than in the MC-12W Project Liberty reconnaissance aircraft, Light Armed Attack Aircraft and C-27J Spartan tactical airlifter.

The three planes are quite small, practically miniatures, compared with the B-1B Lancer, the F-15E Strike Eagle and the C-5 Galaxy. Those big and robust warplanes are what air power is about. They’re what success in any war, today or tomorrow, is all about — size and strength.

No, none of the new planes represents the kind of air power that wins wars. What they have in common addresses the visionaries’ second doctrine: the aircraft perform missions that ought to be the purview of the Army.

MC-12W airmen are doing a superb job but a job they should not be doing. Army aviators operated twin-Beechcraft RU-8, RU-21 and RC-12 reconnaissance planes for half a century. The MC-12W is simply the latest high-tech variation of an Army aircraft. Soldiers should fly it.

The LAAR is a misguided reprise of a virtually identical program during the Korean War that evaluated now-forgotten aerial flivvers such the Fletcher FD-25 Defender. No such lightweight warplane was needed then. One isn’t needed now. But if it were, it should be — like the OV-1 Mohawk of the Vietnam era — the property of the Army.

What started as an Army-only program, the C-27J, now belongs to the Air Force, even though the service doesn’t need it to perform a direct support role. The C-130J Hercules can perform that mission just fine. Yes, the Army could use a small transport. Yes, the C-27J might prove more economical at times, but not enough to justify the staggering cost of introducing a new aircraft into the inventory.

The MC-12W, the LAAR, the C-27J are a metaphor — for the nation’s misguided adventures in present-day conflicts, for short-sightedness on the next war and for a new generation of Air Force leaders who refuse to oppose the Obama administration’s dismantling of the service.

Air Force giants of the past — Gen. Henry H. “Hap” Arnold, Air Force Secretary Stuart Symington and Gen. Curtis LeMay — would have looked Defense Secretary Robert Gates in the eye and said “no.” They would have even stood up against the commander in chief if they believed it would have put the country and its people at risk.

The brass in place now is settling for small pieces of a mishmash of poorly defined missions.

The Air Force needs a new bomber, a replacement for the F-15E, a new strategic reconnaissance platform and an air refueling tanker.

Without the big stuff, the Air Force simply becomes an appendage to the Army.

Without an independent Air Force, Americans will face questions not just about the military’s prospects for success but about their chances of survival.

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Dorr is an Air Force veteran who lives in Oakton, Va. Send e-mail to Robert.f.dorr@cox.net.

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