On the Air Force
I feel that this postion is both naive, and misses a good portion of the controbutions that the unified comand of the airforce brings to the table. The air force is tied to the other services too strongly to deserve its own branch has a couple major flaws. one is a strategic issue, on tactical, the other organizational.Strategy: did you just not listen in Robert Pape's class? i know we aren't fighting the Cold War anymore, but deterrence capability still has real signaling value both at home and abroad. Part of both the navy and the air force's job is to be in charge of 'covering our flanks' as R. Gates has put it.
The idea that ANY of the services would be able to fight a unilateral war in this day and age is mockable. Unless we're invading Mexico or Canada, troops are going to have to get to the field of battle and be resupplied somehow. I dont think the US navy has ever fought a war by itself (even back when the Marines were still a part of it), and i dont thing it ever will, for the relitively simple reason that generally when we fight wars we have objective, you know, on land. The marines may think they can kick anyone's ass, but in this day and age they like being able to call in CAS same as everyone else, and while they can fligh thier own, for many of the reasons I'll get into below that doesnt make a whole lot of sense.
Service interdependence is a fact of life, and while instances like the 2006 Lebanon war does show that sometimes capasity is mistaken for strategy, its not clear to me why this is any more a problem for the AF then anyone else.
Tactics: actually the air force flies several types of missions, some that are operationally tied to the other forces, but some that arent. While CAS and CSA flights could be reassigned to army and navy operations, other things would be more difficult (though i admit not impossible) to reassign. One of the most critical of these (particularly in terms of Afghanistan operations) are strategic airlifts, responsible for supplying overseas operations. While these could be taken over by contractors or divided between the services, it is incredible useful for command to have a unified, dedicated force to preform these missions. Even more problematic is satellite and missile ops, which are generally not connected to any one service.
The current system of redundency developed because of technology and operations advantages to the services having specialized units, such as carriers requiring dedicated naval aviation, but generally i think the fewer people doing the same type of missions the better. Generally I think the solution should be to try to merge as many of these under the Air Force's umbrella as possible, rather then further dividing up the air capablities of the military.
Operations and Procurement: another defense junkie friend of mine once said that "procurement is all about the services getting to upgrade their steeds"; that is the Army wants new tanks (see the much scrapped FCS), and the navy wants new boats, and part of the USAF's job is to want new planes. Sure we could divvy out bits of the Air Force and they could research and procure them in a decentralized manner, but you run the risk of expensive redundancy. Have a Air Force may not centralize all of this (I'm looking at you navy), but it helps concentrat the money for things that fly into on place.
This point also shows the weakness of the field artillery argument. Field artillery is a necessary part of the mission of ONE branch of the service. The navy and coast guard need ship to shore, and marine operations are generally focused on the ability to move quickly... none of which you want to be dragging heavy land based artillery systems. Naval, USMC and Army ops all need air support and logistics at some point or other, so rather then having one sub-section in on branch, you're looking at at least three.
To arguments claiming that having a seporate branch for planes increases thier ability to fund pet progects... well given the number of choppers the navy requests and the predator drones the army is trying te get, they aint the only ones. I agree that the number of F-22s we order is just silly, but that doesnt mean the cargo planes, choppers, and predator drone that are all currently also operated by the USAF arent mission essential. I also isnt clear to me that F-22s are any more useless then resent proposals to upgrade the nuclear sub fleet, or build robocop style armor.
While argument that the traditional leadership of the Air Force is too focused on old tactics is certainly a fair critique, I also think that its something thats being fixed under the current administration. I particularly think that the old fighter pilot mentality in the high command is antiquated, which is why i thought one of the smartest changes Gates has made was to install Gen. Norton A. Schwartz as AF Chief of Staff. A career cargo flier, his previous job was coordinating the USAF transportation mission. You know, one of those things I identiied earlier as mission essential.
On National Service
Much as I may like the idea of a national service law it is simply so practically and financially impossible to draft 4 million people that I'm not sure what the point of discussing it. the government is in I dont know how many trillion in debate so adding that many salaries is going to be just a bit tricky. While some have referred to this as a 'drop' in the federal government, running the basic math reveals just how ludicrous this is.lets say the effected population would current 18 year olds. At the time of the last census, they would have been 10. For the sake of simplicity lets assume that that population is the same size now as then, you end up with about 4.3 million new draftees. Assuming a two year stint, next year would add about that again, so lets say a total of 8.5 million people in the program.
So the starting salary of a private in the army works out to be about 15,000 a year on basic pay (which excludes benefits, the cost of training and equipping everyone, and any type of pay differential based on what it is you're doing, which actually makes the cost to the governement much much much higher). Let's use that as a model of what everyone in the program would be paid, regardless of occupation:
8,500,000 X 15,000= 1.275 trillion dollars a year
I'm pretty sure adding a (very conservatively estimated) third of the budget back on top is gonna make the Paultards a bit cranky.
Another argument used to defend the argument was that the training individuals received would aid the economy of the US. While the Keynesian multiplier effect certainly can have a real effect, it assumes that whatever the government trains you in is in any way related to what you end up doing after service. that seems like a pretty big assumption, given that people are being assigned to jobs based on some yet to be determined metric (hopefully not the one the armed forces used to use back when there was a draft).
Also one of the standing objections to drafts is that draftees generally receive a much lower quality of training then regular forces. So now lets make that a bigger section of the population, including the people who point at what we should be blowing up next. The CIA has problems enough without having analysis on the job on 2 month training.
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h/t to the commentor on Abu M, who laid out some of my arguments before i got to the fight,and who i have shamelessly cribbed off of, as well as Noha for letting me use him as a strawman
