The US Air Force today has 92percent
fewer airplanes and 91 percent fewer pilots than it did in World War
II. Yet which air force would you rather have? The obvious answer speaks
volumes about what has happened to airpower in the
last 50 years.
By any measure you can imagine-speed, range, striking power, or the
effects it can produce-the present Air Force would be the choice by far.
The difference is not courage or airmanship. It's technology.
In times past, it was necessary to send dozens, sometimes hundreds,
of airplanes to ensure that a critical target was struck.
By contrast, in the air campaign in the Balkans in 1999, the B-2, carrying
the latest "smart" bombs, hit an average of 15 separate aim
points per sortie. A few years from now, a single bomber will take on
80 different targets per sortie. Aircraft of the future will be able
to do even better.
This is only one example of the changes now sweeping the Air Force.
Over the next 20 years, they will make it a much different force than
the one we have known in the past.
Air Force planners in the Pentagon see three major dimensions of change:
- Unmanned aircraft will increase.
- Manned aircraft will decrease.
- Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance
will move to space.
In many respects, these projections are the extension of the existing
trend. In the 1950s, more than 40 percent of all Air Force officers were
pilots. Today, pilots account for only 17 percent of the officer force.
Pilot and aircraft totals have diminished.
One reason is that airpower keeps getting better. As recently as the
Vietnam War, the F-4D Phantom had to expend, on average, 200 tons of
gravity bombs to drop a bridge span. Current aircraft can do it with
four tons of ordnance, and they can do it in all kinds of weather. As
aircraft become more capable, they grow fewer in number.
"Some may see this as an adverse 'tooth-to-tail' ratio," says
Maj. Gen. Charles D. Link, USAF (Ret)., who has been studying Air Force
leadership development patterns for the past year. "It is important
to point out that the Air Force's large 'tail' produces a numerically
small but militarily large 'tooth.' This is good. Fewer young Americans
are at risk, while we leverage aerospace superiority to achieve policy
goals."
Technology is opening new vistas for unmanned aircraft and spacecraft.
In April, the Air Force's Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle flew nonstop
from California to a precision landing in Adelaide, Australia. The 8,600-mile
trip was about two-thirds of Global Hawk's range.
Unmanned aircraft will inherit such missions as flying into the teeth
of advanced enemy defenses to take out surface-to-air missile sites.
Sen. John Warner, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, believes
that within 10 years, a third of all deep strike aircraft could be unmanned,
reducing the number of airmen who must fly into high risk areas.
Other missions will follow Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance
into space. Space is taking on unprecedented importance in the national
security strategy, and the Air Force has been designated to lead the
way.
There will be plenty of traditional airpower in aerospace operations
of the foreseeable future. In theater conflict, the first substantial
force to engage the enemy will be advanced stealthy aircraft that open
the door for other land, sea, and air forces to follow. It will be of
continuing advantage to the nation that we can put a military airplane
above any point on Earth in a matter of hours.
However, cultural change is coming for the Air Force, perhaps at a rate
that will cause discomfort. But as Carl Builder, author of The Icarus
Syndrome, and others have reminded us, the Air Force is not just about
aviation; it's about airpower, evolving to aerospace power.
The Air Force mission is not only (to recall the fighter pilot's ringing
credo from the 1960s) "to fly and fight." It is to support
and defend the United States through the control and exploitation of
air and space.
The Air Force was born of technology, specifically the technology of
powered flight. Aerospace technology now points to greater range, accuracy,
perspective, knowledge, and accuracy. Evolving aerospace power fits the
evolving needs of the nation.
Air Staff planners believe the event that will usher in the greatest
change over the next 20 years will not be the fielding of new bombers
or fighters, but rather deployment of the space based radar, which will
allow us to scan entire continents and to home in instantly on any point
of interest or concern. Our perspective, now regional, will become global.
Historical note: In 1941, the Army Air Forces flight-tested an unmanned
aircraft called the "Bug." Its sponsor was none other than
Gen. H. H. "Hap" Arnold, the founding father of the Air Force,
who deliberated on whether it might be as useful in bombardment as the
B-17 while endangering fewer lives in combat.
It was eventually canceled, not for doctrinal reasons, but because it
lacked the range from England to strike targets in Germany.
Arnold's enthusiasm for the Bug was based on his remembrance of two
pilotless aircraft, built for the fledgling Army Air Service and successfully
tested in 1918.
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