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.Since 1989, the Army has fared poorly in the name of transformation.Onlyrecently (2003) has the Army begun to abandon major-war thinking and adaptto the small wars of the interwar period.And that work began only when anArmy general with a strong special operations background was brought backfrom retirement to be Army chief of staff.62Senior officers in the Army are acutely aware of the price of unprepared-ness, but the Army remains at the mercy of Congress.The words TaskForce Smith summarize the institutional Army s fear of giving up its major-war orientation in favor of constabulary duties and small-wars capabilities.But holding on to major-war forces, and thus failing the relevancy test forthe small wars of the interwar period, brings increased pressure from Con-gress and reinforces the downward spiral.Establishing a small-wars forcewill come at the expense of major-war forces.The major-war army simplycannot stomach transformation from the Cold War force to the small-warsforce.The movement from a heavy mechanized force toward a lighter infantryforce would be regarded by WWII architects and their successors as a move-ment backward in time.It might be regarded by the Vietnam generation asachieving the balance necessary to operate across the full spectrum of conflictthat the nation might demand of it.Those officers whose combat experiencewas forged in 100 hours of combat in the Persian Gulf would likely alignthemselves with the view that a modern army is a mechanized army.The WWII generation is long gone, but there were giants among them,and their legacy survives in history, doctrine, and training.The last of theVietnam War generation still dominates Army higher leadership, but thissoon will pass.Combat, regardless of its duration, is an intense experience andlessons learned are indelible and immutable.The Gulf War generation is ris-ing to power, and their views will be felt.The Gulf War experience will clashwith the experience of Somalia (1992 1993), Haiti (1994 1995), Afghanistan(2002 ), and Iraq (2003 ), just as the WWII experience clashed with theVietnam experience. CHAPTER 4Air Forceto fly and fightindependent and indivisible airpowerairpower uber alisvictory through airpower slow sucks 1Unlike the other services, the Air Force is a modern occurrence.The technologyof flight and its phenomenal advances in the interwar years of the 1920s and1930s were of equal interest to the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps, but the AirForce was born of the Army.Navy and Marine Corps aviators were naval offi-cers first and airmen second.The renegade Army aviators first loyalty was toflight and to the promise of airpower.The Air Force was founded in 1947 after irreconcilable differences betweenthe Army s aviators and its mud soldiers culminated in their separation.Beingindependent of the Army meant the freedom to prosecute an air war separatefrom the ground war, with a separate mission and a separate budget.Theobverse is also true.An air war separate from the ground war justifies anair force autonomous from the Army.Autonomy of mission is still a drivingforce.The airplane entered military service as a scout vehicle.A lone pilot couldreconnoiter over a battlefield and provide information to the ground com-mander, or he could fly beyond the battle area and identify troop movementsand strongholds.Quickly, small bombs were carried.Machine guns were addedand aerial duels began.But the aircraft capable of bombardment became theprincipal aircraft with the air-to-air fighter taking a secondary role. 96 Shaping U.S.Military ForcesThe bomber pilot dominated the Air Force during WWII, at the AirForce s birth, during its formative years, and through the Vietnam conflict.During WWII, only the large bomber had the range and payload to inflictdamage deep inside the enemy homeland.The smaller, tactical aircraft thepursuit aircraft was relegated to bomber escort, defending allied bombersand attacking enemy bombers.Eventually, the pursuit moniker gave way tothe term fighter escort or simply fighter.The atomic bomb made its delivery vehicle the long-range, strate-gic bomber the most potent weapon system in the nation s arsenal.TheSoviet Union s ability to deliver atomic ordnance to the continental UnitedStates in like aircraft dictated the need for the interceptor, an aircraft thatcould launch from the United States and fly at supersonic speeds to inter-cept the invading bomber formation before it came within range with itslethal payload.After rendezvous with the enemy bomber and its escort,the interceptor had to defeat both.Rather than dogfights, the intercep-tor would fire missiles with atomic warheads into the formation.Advancesin aircraft technology and aerial refueling continually extended the rangeof tactical aircraft until they were competing with bombers in range andwere vastly superior in air-to-air combat.Giving the fighter the supersonicspeed of the interceptor and the strategic range of the bomber altered theequation.Advances in munitions technology from heavy gravity bombs to precision-guided munitions further shifted the balance to the fighter.But in the earlydays of the Air Force, the long distances and heavy payload associated withstrategic bombardment required a bomber.Through much of the Cold War,institutional thinking associated with nuclear conflagration overshadowedthought about precision munitions
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