Aw, Jeez...here we go again.

In response, the Air Force has gone on the defensive. In September 2006, Maj. Gen. Charles Dunlap Jr. published a long article in Armed Forces Journal denouncing "boots on the ground zealots," and insisting that airpower can solve the most important problems associated with counterinsurgency. The Air Force also recently published its own counterinsurgency manual elaborating on these claims. A recent op-ed by Maj. Gen. Dunlap called on the United States to "think creatively" about airpower and counterinsurgency -- and proposed striking Iranian oil facilities. Well, if you’re a general officer of one of the three main military services and you think there’s an effort afoot to marginalize your organization, you respond. The Army does it. The Navy does it. The Marine Corps (although technically a subset of the maritime service) has raised it to an art form. It’s what people do when they think they need to respond to a threat. It’s a kind of “policy wonk” behavior that all of us display, to one degree or another, in what is a constant tension among the Top Three generated by an environment where resources are scarce and the competition for them is fierce.
Surely, this is not the way the United States Air Force had planned to celebrate its 60th anniversary. On Sept. 18, 1947, Congress granted independence to the United States Army Air Force (USAAF), the branch of the U.S. Army that had coordinated the air campaigns against Germany and Japan. Point of order, professor. We didn’t “coordinate” the air campaigns…we developed and conducted them. How effective they were, especially the strategic bombing campaign, has been subject of much debate. However, there was no question the tactical employment of airpower in support of the overall campaign was crucial to success and in reducing friendly casualties by hastening the favorable outcome of the battles in which they were employed. Of extreme importance was a critical lesson learned in the early days of the war (Kesserine was a good example) that, to be truly decisive, air power had to be employed where it was most needed across the battle front. This could only be accomplished by central control that allowed limited assets to be employed across a large area where different ground commanders, had they controlled these assets piecemeal, would have attenuated their effectiveness.
But it's time to revisit the 1947 decision to separate the Air Force from the Army. While everyone agrees that the United States military requires air capability, it's less obvious that we need a bureaucratic entity called the United States Air Force. The independent Air Force privileges airpower to a degree unsupported by the historical record. I’m not sure what he means by “privileges” airpower. Land war is prosecuted by land war specialists—Soldiers. Maritime warfare is pursued by naval war specialists—Sailors and Marines. Air war is prosecuted by the people who have professionally grown up in an air war specialist cohort—Airmen. In fact, there is a lively debate going on right now as to whether or not a new Space Force should be formed…a discussion for another day. In any event, the good professor is about to erect his strawman: the dreaded “bureaucratic structure.” It’s not about bureaucracy, sir, it’s about experts in a medium of war concentrating their professional education, training and experience on that medium and thereby giving the Commander-in-Chief and the Legislature the best advice on what to buy, how to prepare and ultimately employ American military power in a three-dimensional medium. This bureaucratic structure has proven to be a continual problem in war fighting, in procurement, and in estimates of the costs of armed conflict. Indeed, it would be wrong to say that the USAF is an idea whose time has passed. Rather, it's a mistake that never should have been made.
Before 1947, aviation existed as a branch (if a large and privileged one) of the Army, alongside the infantry, artillery, and armor branches. To win autonomy, the Air Force needed to demonstrate that it could make a significant independent contribution to victory.
At the beginning of the U.S. involvement in World War II, Gen. Henry "Hap" Arnold, commander of the Army Air Force, decided that the Air Force would join Britain's Royal Air Force in the Combined Bomber Offensive against Germany. Over the next three years, American and British airmen would suffer appalling losses against German air defenses in a strategic bombing campaign designed to destroy German civilian morale and industrial capacity. The campaign expanded to Japan after Pacific bases became available. The USAAF also conducted a number of other missions, but its chiefs believed that strategic bombing would win the war for the Allies -- and independence for the Air Force.
This desire for independence drove the behavior of the USAAF during the war. The implication here is that the drive for independence was the sole driver of USAAF behavior during the Second World War. That does the Army Air Corps a disservice. Volumes have been written on the relative effectiveness—or ineffectiveness—of the strategic bombing campaigns in both major theaters. But the point is somewhat moot today. One must put how the architects of the WW II air campaigns conducted them in the context of the times. Air power thought was still in its relative infancy and the technology used to employ it was equally primitive. What they thought airpower could do and what it actually could do was still being worked out. To be fair, they worked out quite a bit (like Close Air Support as exercised by Generals Patton and Quesada—the ground and tactical fighter commanders, respectively, in the American sector in Germany. By late 1944, a submarine blockade had stymied Japanese war production. Because of the ineffectiveness of attacks on industry, and the flammability of Japanese cities, Gen. Curtis LeMay, mastermind of the strategic bombing campaign against Japan, decided that civilian areas would be the objective of his B-29s. Roughly 1 million Japanese civilians died from the fire-bombing of Japanese cities, though it was the incineration of so many square miles of Japanese city that the Army Air Force pointed to as it adduced clear, quantitative results in its fight for independence. LeMay would later head the Strategic Air Command, and serve as chief of staff of the Air Force during the Cuban Missile Crisis, in which he argued for a full set of airstrikes against Cuban targets. And therefore…what? The most famous bomber guy of WW II wanted to drop bombs on the enemy. How gauche.
During World War II, the USAAF also engaged in tactical air support and anti-submarine warfare missions, but these involved tight integration with either the Army or the Navy, and thus couldn't justify an independent service; only strategic bombing could do that. To use a technical attack pilot term, this is utter BS. In fact, the success of centralized control under a for-all-intents-and-purposes independent air commander and decentralized execution by the fighter flight leads at the front line was recognized by both George Patton and Dwight Eisenhower as the best argument for an independence of that air in fact…something that happened, and was supported by Eisenhower himself in the late Forties. In the immediate postwar years, the USAAF fought bitter battles with the Army, the Navy, and the Royal Air Force over the evaluation of the strategic bombing campaign. The campaigns had plainly failed to destroy German or Japanese morale, so the arguments turned to an assessment of Axis industrial output. Although academic disputes continue, the historical consensus is that the campaign inflicted damage on the Axis powers, but not to the degree expected prior to the conflict. Nevertheless, by emphasizing its strategic bombing mission, the Army Air Force managed to win independence from the Army and become the third military service. Actually, no. It was part of the argument but the core point was, and I paraphrase, “Why not put airmen in charge of air warfighting.” Novel concept, I know, but it’s seemed to work pretty well over the years…and even the adults in the Army, admit that.
After 1947, the USAF believed that strategic airpower could decide wars, whether global or local. This was a natural outgrowth of the advent of nukes—the Holy Grail of war is a quick, decisive strike that decides the contest with minimum cost in blood and treasure. No military man likes fighting wars, especially long ones, any more than firemen like fighting 4-alarm fires. But when they do, they want it over quickly. Back then, nukes seemed like the answer, especially to guys who had just fought a long, bloody and hugely destructive global contest. Nukes were sexy back then and the only delivery vehicles we had at the time were long-range bombers. Destruction of enemy will and industrial capacity through conventional or nuclear means would result in victory. Control over nuclear weapons passed to the Air Force because of the connection of such weapons with the concept of strategic bombing.
Ground support also fell under the purview of the new Air Force. However, the Air Force did not take to this mission with the same enthusiasm it exhibited for strategic bombing. This is true—back then, the bomber guys were supreme. However, in the ensuing years, the fighter guys have risen to prominence and CAS has regained some of the importance it lost in the early days following WW II. I will say that I think the Marines still take CAS more seriously than many USAF guys, but if strategic bombing is so central to USAF thinking, why do we have so many F-15s, F-16s, A-10s, and F-22s? Ground support inherently involved collaboration with the Army and consequently subjection to Army aims. Autonomy and the glory of victory would go to the Army, rather than to the Air Force. This attitude makes me completely nuts. To this civilian, it’s all about zero-sum games. Granted, there are service partisans in every service who chafe at “doing the bidding” of another branch but they’re (thankfully) rare. Supporting an Army on the ground is hardly “subjection,” it’s contributing to the fight for an overall aim—victory. I’m an A-10 guy. I’m happiest when I’m talking to a guy on the ground and putting steel on target so he doesn’t have to. As the senior commander of all Tactical Air Control Parties in the European theater…and having participated in an air campaign as such, thankyouverymuch, I swear to God, my #1 objective was making sure my Service masters knew what the Army needed, where they needed it and when. I was NEVER EVER, EVER told to go pound sand. In fact, as the subsequent Director of Staff to the commander of Air Combat Command, I watched the senior four-star general in charge of educating, training, equipping all combat air forces—fighters and bombers (not to mention UAVs, and all the other toys employed against the enemy)—pump buckets of money into the TACP career field. I also saw one of my successors in the field be promoted to general officer rank in a direct acknowledgement of the importance of USAF personnel aggressively supporting US ground forces in the field. Still, the Air Force ensured that it would have a role in ground support operations through the 1947 Key West Agreement, which mandated that fixed-wing aircraft would remain under Air Force, rather than Army, control. Less sinister than you might think…the Air Force wanted its turf better defined (horror of horros!) and didn’t want monies sucked out of the USAF budget to build a mini Army Air Corps that would have been a step backward, given the lessons learned in WW II.
The assumptions undergirding strategic bombing have changed since 1947. The Air Force no longer advocates firebombing enemy cities. Its strategic focus has shifted away from attacking the enemy's civilian morale and toward attacking industrial capacity and infrastructure. Most recently, the Air Force has embraced "Effects Based Operations," or military operations designed to produce political consequences.
Unfortunately, the Air Force has had a poor strategic record. In the Korean War, heavy strategic attacks on North Korean cities failed to reduce Communist capabilities. Operation Rolling Thunder -- the campaign designed to destroy North Vietnamese will, transport capacity, and industry -- went on for three years and had little noticeable effect on the course of that war. This is a sleight of hand. At that point, the course of the war was determined by the US will to fight to achieve victory—something that went away under Lyndon Johnson (if in fact it ever even existed in the minds of American political leaders). Rolling Thunder had significant effect on enemy morale and compelled them to at least return to the peace talk table. Once we started relaxing the ROE (a little…not nearly enough) to go after their warmaking capacity and the ability to defend their city, their minds focused a little better and they started talking again. Quite frankly, if you want to get an Air Force guy REALLY spun up, just tell him air power wasn’t effective in North Viet Nam. Watch the veins pop out as he talks about what was probably the most irresponsible, restricted and stupid application of airpower since the invention of the hot air balloon. The strategic air component of Operation Desert Storm failed to topple Saddam Hussein or dislodge him from Kuwait. Oi. That wasn’t their job, sir. It never was. It was to prepare the battlefield and assist in the ground campaign. One funny aside—the Corps commanders were livid that Schwarzkopf wasn’t “dedicating enough air” to their impending attack. He was (trust me) but they couldn’t see it. Thus, B-52s conducted large and visually impressive bombing runs close enough to the friendlies to convince them we were out there kicking butt. It helped fight our own internal psychological war. Even the 2003 "Shock and Awe" campaign did not destroy the Hussein regime, or reduce its capacity to communicate internally or externally. Again, this is, well, just silly. Kinetic activity will have a shock and awe effect on the enemy (that’s good, professor) but I can assure you that Air Force planners didn’t for a second think that the initial air strikes would topple the regime. Moreover, I don’t know how you come up with no reduction in capacity to communicate internally or externally. I’ll have to look it up, but if I remember correctly, Saddam’s ability to communicate with his conventional formations was in fact affected.
Arguably, airpower did succeed on its own in bringing victory in the 1999 Kosovo War. For 78 days, the NATO alliance bombed Serbian military and infrastructure targets in order to force Serbia's withdrawal from the province of Kosovo. After increasingly serious threats of a ground invasion and the end of Russian support, Serbia succumbed to the NATO occupation of Kosovo. Even acknowledging the decisiveness of the airstrikes, however, the ability of a small country to stand against the world's most powerful military alliance for almost three months does not speak well of the coercive capacity of modern airpower. Gaaaaah! I was there! Nonsense! This was not an air war run by airmen for the purposes of defeating an enemy state as much as it was political theater. The targeting process was a nightmare of legal analysis and political calculation unencumbered by strategic or tactical considerations. I’m surprised the day-to-day air campaign commander didn’t die of a stroke he was so frustrated. The senior overall military commander was an Army guy (Wes Clark) who was so clueless he tried to give tutorials about coordinating simultaneous artillery and air strikes to airmen with thirty+ years of experience doing that. (It never happened. And, yes, we knew how to do it…they just never were able to roll the Army missile batteries into the fight as it didn’t make any sense for both accuracy and collateral damage reasons.) I especially liked the idea to drop food from B-52s—get supplies to the suffering Muslims while staying out of SAM/AAA range as losing a jet would be politically unacceptable to the Administration. As we patiently explained to THE ARMY GUY, dropping Meals Ready to Eat out of a BUFF up in the stratosphere would turn food into frozen projectiles. Of course, they’d have to cull all the pork patty dinners from the pallets and pallets of MREs, but that’s another story.
In response to such critiques, Air Force supporters have blamed the constraints placed on strategic air campaigns by U.S. civilian leadership. Despite the fact that the United States dropped over 850,000 tons of bombs on North Vietnam during Operation Rolling Thunder (some 350,000 more tons than were dropped on Japan in World War II), LeMay argued that the offensive failed because of inadequate use of force, and that the threat of an even more extensive strategic bombing campaign against North Vietnam in 1965 would have won the war. This echoed similar complaints about limiting the use of airpower in the Korean War to targets on the Korean peninsula. The same arguments were trotted out again in refuting the allegations of uncertain performance of airpower in Kosovo. At least in the cases of Vietnam and Korea, historians have not tended to back these arguments. I’ll say this slowly, so you can follow: IT’S NOT ABOUT TONNAGE, IT’S ABOUT TARGETING. If I drop 6 billion tons of bombs off the coast of Iran, I don’t think it will affect their warmaking capacity or will to fight. I have to disrupt their ability to bring power to bear against our forces (interdiction), I have to disrupt and destroy their ability to control those forces and kill their leaders (strategic attack), I have to harass, interrupt, damage and/or destroy the forces they are employing against friendlies (CAS). The best way to do that, as Patton proved was through the centralized control and decentralized execution of an air arm by airmen who have coordinated their air campaign with their ground and maritime partners. And we haven’t even talked about defensive counterair—shooting down their fighters, their SAMS, their ground-to-ground missile force, etc., etc. The Army has enough to think about…let us handle the air battle.
On the other hand, the United States Air Force has made important tactical contributions to U.S. war efforts. In the first Gulf War, American and British airpower destroyed roughly a third of deployed Iraqi vehicles prior to the advance of U.S. ground forces. In Vietnam, Operations Linebacker I and II, directed primarily against North Vietnamese military forces, helped stop their advance into South Vietnam and bring the North back to the peace table. The Air Force also performed very well in support of the Northern Alliance during the war in Afghanistan, and helped destroy much Iraqi hardware in the opening stages of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.
This has created an odd situation. The Air Force is most effective when operating in support of the Army, and least effective when carrying out its own independent campaign. Another strawman. The Air Force is most effective when it’s allowed to employ its power by those who know how to employ it. Contradictory, too. Kosovo was purely an air campaign…it worked. Not well, but it worked. Would I want to do that again? Nope. I prefer joint operations where the experts in each medium put their heads together and come up with a plan that maximizes the effectiveness of each in pursuit of political goals. However, the Air Force dislikes ground support. So does the Navy. But the Marines don’t and neither do a lot of Air Force guys. Life is hard. But its harder of you’re stupid and the Air Force isn’t so stupid as to jettison CAS…if nothing else than to make sure it isn’t completely cocked up by well-meaning but experience-limited Army generals. Its antipathy to tactical missions, for instance, is at the root of its repeated efforts to shed itself of the A-10 Warthog. So I guess the new A-10C—completely rewired to employ our most modern munitions and guidance systems and projected to be fielded for at least another 20 years—is a figment of my imagination. BTW, I have a picture of one in my files, if you’d like one, professor. The A-10 is a slow attack aircraft, extremely effective against tactical enemy targets. The Army loves the A-10, but because the aircraft contributes neither to the air superiority mission that the Air Force favors nor to the strategic mission that provides its raison d'etre, the Air Force has always been lukewarm toward the aircraft. Sorry, can’t let this one pass. The strategic mission is not our “raison d'etre,” effectively employing air power, in all its missions, to achieve our military objectives is. I think this cuts to the heart of the professor’s argument—it’s based on a flawed premise—an opinion, really, by a man who has put very little effort into examining his preconceptions. Offers on the part of the Army to take over the A-10 have been rejected, however, as this would violate the Key West Agreement. Rejected…by the Army. Heh.
If strategic bombing won independence for the Air Force, yet strategic bombing cannot win wars, it's unclear why the Air Force should retain its independence. Um, because strategic bombing is only a fraction of why the Air Force exists today. To be sure, institutional inertia works in its favor. The efforts of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to force the services to compete against one another for procurement funds in the 1960s resulted, ironically, in a deep reluctance on the part of the services to question one another. One of McNamara’s most famous faux pas was his unsuccessful attempt to get the Navy to accept the F-111. This was a classic case of trying to leverage economies of scale by an automobile company accountant in charge of the world’s most effective military. The jet was totally inappropriate for carrier ops, but that didn’t stop Sideshow Bob. I love it when academics use McNamara as a “good” example of how to do things in the DoD. This interservice collusion persists to the present day, in spite of changes in the nature of the threats the U.S. faces. This has helped lead to such absurdities as the continued procurement of the F-22 Raptor, an aircraft whose sole purpose is the destruction of advanced enemy fighter planes, during the course of two counter-insurgency conflicts against low-tech enemies. I’m glad the professor is confident we will never face advanced enemy fighters in battle, ever again. Whew.
Moreover, the presence of the Air Force in the high councils of war and peace tends to provide presidents with predictions of quick and easy military victories. Advocates of airpower have been making such cases since the run-up to World War II. Though these prophecies have been proven false time and again, they nevertheless remain attractive to civilian leaders who fear public disillusionment with casualties, and who wish to go to war while resisting the dangers of full military involvement. Airpower advocates offer military power on the cheap; the wars they lay out entail few casualties and many spectacular successes. These advocates would continue to exist in the absence of the Air Force, of course, but situating them within organizations of broader strategic views would probably reduce the force of their arguments. This paragraph is delusional. This is a classic example of the cartoonish view assistant professors at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce have of military men. Air Force generals aren’t George C. Scott, no matter what they say at the Huffington Post or Daily Kos. This guy’s watched Dr. Strangelove one too many times.
He offers absolutely no proof and maligns people who have dedicated their lives to our national defense. Do they have a special love for airplanes and what they can do? Well, yeah. But do they consciously advocate for their own parochial prejudices, lie to their leaders and actively resist cooperating with their fellow professionals? Not the ones I’ve worked with. I am one of many Air Force officers who actually did sign up to lay down my life for my Army and Marine buddies. I wish I still could, but the bastards retired me.
Besides, having an independent Air Force requires using that independent Air Force, whether or not its mode of war-making fits the particular conflict. It does? So, a land battle 400 miles into Iraq’s interior requires the 7th Fleet, then. The existence of several separate services creates a competitive need to act during war. They may not be needed, but they are willing. That’s their job. Do they want the leadership to know what they can do to contribute to America’s success? Guilty as charged! Each service wishes to demonstrate that it can contribute, thus justifying future procurement. If something works…and works well, I’d like more of it. But I don’t make that decision…Congress does. Unfortunately, this produces a situation in which force is allocated to meet bureaucratic necessity rather than strategic need. Although we won't have a complete picture until full campaign histories are written, the need to produce work for the Air Force in Iraq and Afghanistan has probably led to overuse of airpower. Well, if I had your preconceived notions, I’d be certain it did. Bureaucratic necessity doesn't fully explain excessive airstrikes, but it is likely a contributing factor.
There's a better way to use American airpower. The Army and the Navy can accomplish the jobs that the Air Force does well within their current institutional structures. Tactical airpower should belong to the Army. Although the Army and the Air Force have worked out credible systems of cooperation, reunifying the two would likely result in tighter collaboration between air and ground forces. No it wouldn’t. It would repeat the mistakes so frequently and painfully learned before the Air Force became a separate Service. Scarce assets would be parceled out to individual commanders, diluting effectiveness and prolonging battles. The airmen would be professionally advanced based on their understanding of land warfare, not air campaigns, stifling their ability to think creatively about employing a unique force in a unique medium. I have seen Army guys try to run an air campaign. They don’t know squat about it, at least not like an Airman does. And don’t get me started on Army aviation. They’re great guys, brave and true patriots who I consider national treasures (like all our military men and wpmen) but I have personally witnessed absolute buffoonery when they try to figure out campaign-level employment of air assets. Fact is, that shouldn’t have to think about it. That’s my job and I’m happy to do it. Not because I want more procurement dollars, but because I want the battle to be short, I want it to be boring for the ground guys; I want to kill the enemy so the enemy won’t kill my Soldiers. Again, Eisenhower himself thought and independent air arm was a good idea and said so.
What the Hell, let’s take this argument to its logical conclusion. Let’s put everything under Army control, including the Navy. After all, all the Navy does is protect sea lines of communication so the supplies needed to fight the land campaign can continue to flow. I’m sure the Corps Commanders can effectively deploy all the Navy assets to support their campaign plan. After all, it’s just a supporting entity, right?
The tactical mission would also include air superiority, which is necessary to prevent enemy use of airspace and to allow freedom of action for U.S. forces. Similarly, some tactical elements of airpower would pass to the Marine Corps.
To the extent that the United States requires a capability to punish other states militarily for political purposes, the Navy can handle the job. The aircraft carriers of the Navy already represent the most powerful concentration of mobile military power in the world. Navy cruise missiles, launched from submarines and surface vessels, can strike most of the surface of the Earth within a couple of hours. Adding certain elements of the Air Force portfolio to the Navy would neither transform nor hinder the Navy's power projection mission. So I guess those bombing missions over Iraq from Whiteman AFB in Missouri were not power projection. Moreover, if this happens, your sailors will never see shore until their enlistments are up. And don’t think carriers can’t be sunk (ask Navy guys). Then there’s planning an air campaign. Navy guys are good at naval campaigns—defending the fleet, projecting power in limited areas, supporting littoral ops, etc. They do not practice melding three services’ assets to support theater objectives. They don’t have the time, the equipment or the expertise. I guess you could jam that 10 pounds of sand into that 5-pound bag, but you wouldn’t save any money, and you wouldn’t be reducing any workloads. In fact, you’d be increasing it. Navy guys end up doing a lot of other stuff on carriers besides flying airplanes…this would just make their already overtasked lives a living hell.
The strategic nuclear capability of the Air Force should also go to the Navy. The USN already operates its own strategic deterrent in the form of the Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines, armed with the Trident missile. The Navy could also operate the other two legs of the nuclear triangle (ICBMs and strategic bombers) without difficulty, especially since the latter would support the Navy's strategic mission. Wait! Wait! I thought strategic bombing was an anachronism? Then there’s this thing called the Triad. Um, that includes land-based ICBMs…another USAF mission. Sure, you could do that. But putting all your eggs in one basket increases strategic risk. It simplifies the enemy’s battle calculus.
We aren't likely to see the end of the United States Air Force anytime soon, however. The institutional structure of the Air Force would resist its absorption into the Army and the Navy; friends of the Air Force in Congress and the public would fight to prevent consolidation. Strong proponents of the "Air Force way of war" remain, and aren't convinced by "boots on the ground zealots." The Air Force would fight very hard to stay independent.
The consolidation of the services, of course, is no panacea for military difficulties. In spite of the formal unification of Israel's military forces, for instance, the Israel Defense Forces last summer embarked on a poorly planned strategic air campaign against Hezbollah and its Lebanese supporters. Israeli air attacks destroyed Lebanese infrastructure and killed Lebanese civilians without dealing serious damage to Hezbollah. That’s what you get when you put an air guy in charge of a ground war. Can you imagine what it would be like to put a ground guy in charge of an air campaign?
Nevertheless, the idea of an independent air force was not handed down on Mount Sinai. We have institutions because we've built them. Institutions are built for a reason. You may not believe this, professor, but sometimes they are built based on experience, not for procurement strategies. When these institutions outlive their usefulness or fail as experiments, we can take them apart. In a post–September 11 world, we live with threats quite different from those that the Soviet arsenal used to pose. We can and should devise uses and a bureaucratic structure for American airpower better suited to our current challenges than those set out in 1947.
Frankly, we have devised better uses for air power in only a few short years. Thanks to advancing guidance technology, traditional platforms—bombers—have already been very effectively employed in non-traditional roles—close air support. Unmanned aerial vehicles have come into their own as reconnaissance, communication and targeting platforms…even strikers themselves…in environments too hostile or politically off-limits for manned aircraft. These innovations were advanced and put into operation by airpower experts raised in an airpower culture. That can only be achieved by developing that culture in an independent and free service. A bomber pilot is still an airman, just like a fighter pilot or communications officer in the Air Force. A Soldier may be an armor officer or an artilleryman, but he’s still a Soldier and an expert in ground warfare because he’s a member of a land service. And I want him to be exactly that. In fact, I demand that he be exactly that. And I will never question his absolute dominance in a conversation about a land campaign. And if I am part of an American military campaign, my first and foremost mission is supporting the top commander—whether he be an Admiral, an Army/Marine general or an Air Force guy. I have one question in that fight: “How can I help?” And when he tells me what he needs, I’ll know exactly what I can do with my airplanes and my airmen because I’ve spent a lifetime thinking about it, preparing for it and practicing it as an independent service member. I firmly believe it’s served us much better than you think.