Should the Air Force Retire the A-10?
A Seminar on a Seminal Question
Recently, Chuck Spinney posed the question above to the readership of “The Blaster,” and later it was picked up at the Small Wars Journal blog. The question is fair and reasonable, and I applaud Spinney for using his influence to gather people for a fruitful discussion:
The purpose of the posting is to announce a seminar in Washington D.C. where experts will address some of the issues raised by this controversial decision. The seminar is sponsored by the Strauss Military Reform Project will take place at 0930 on November 22 at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. It will be open to the public and interested readers can find the RSVP details and the agenda at this link. Readers are cordially invited to attend a public (and free) seminar discussing some of the issues raised by this decision. A listing with links to relevant background reading material can be found here.
I am extremely pleased to see considerable critical thinkers involved in this discussion, which in addition to Spinney and other distinguished discussants, includes: Winslow Wheeler, Pierre Sprey, Bill Sweetman, Chuck Myers, Mark Gunzinger, and Tom Christie.
But I do have some concerns…
First, the discussion is seemingly focused on the mores of Close Air Support (CAS). While there is absolutely nothing wrong with discussing the importance of joint interdependency and support, the agenda suggests the root cause of possible divestment of the A-10 is because there is not enough knowledge or understanding of the CAS mission. I find this extremely peculiar, especially after the U.S. Air Force has spent a decade of dedicated support to the ground mission in both Iraq and Afghanistan. While not entirely certain of the Project on Government Oversight’s (POGO) intentions here, they seemed to have shaped this discussion towards increased interservice strife for want of an airplane (or in Spinney’s case a cannon).
Second, and related to the above, Spinney offers a first-rate reading list for CAS (see here), but he does not include anything for background that prepares the discussants on the real topics that should be considered at the seminar: sequestration, joint high-end acquisitions, the extreme dangers of concurrency, and the matter of defense strategies with their resultant priorities for capability development. Ultimately, I’ve enjoyed my share of the CAS reading list provided by POGO, but I would suggest the seminar consider the following for background instead (but especially the last reading):
- Bruce Gudmundsson’s “Learning About Defense”
- Winslow Wheeler’s “Decoding the Defense Budget”
- Pierre Sprey’s “Evaluating Weapons: Sorting the Good from
the Bad” - Thomas Christie’s “Developing, Buying and Fielding Superior
Weapon Systems” - Joint Publication 3-09.3, Close Air Support, “Responsibilities,” see: “The Joint Force Commander” (re: Apportionment Decision)
- Joint Publication 3-30, Command & Control for Joint Air Operations, “Tasking Component Forces” (see: Apportionment Decision)
- Joint Publication 3-60, Joint Targeting, “Commander’s Decision and Force Assignment,” (see: Apportionment Guidance for Dual-Role or Multi-Role Platforms)
- The Manual for the Operation of the Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System (JCIDS)
Third, building upon my suggested reading list, the importance of CAS is best understood from a joint perspective rather than a service perspective. And while I’ll admit that I think POGO is attempting to convince the public of this through the seminar, they’re missing the greater point: in warfighting, it is the Joint Force Commander (JFC) that determines the operational apportionment of airpower, including how much CAS the joint land component is provided by the joint air component. To say it a different way: it is the Commander, not the Airman, who decides. In a similar fashion, during planning, it is the Combatant Commanders who identify the capabilities they need to accomplish their tasks outlined in strategic guidance. The U.S. Air Force’s role in this is very important as the force provider, but in turn, it must answer to the Geographic Combatant Commander’s demands for capabilities based upon the strategic direction they’ve been provided by the same political masters. This emphasizes my point above that this question about the A-10 is not about some misperceived service culture of malice, but rather about strategic priorities. Although it is much easier to fall into the fallacy of the former, rather than drive through the dredge work of the latter. If the single-role nature (but multi-mission capacity) of the A-10 is the suitable capability for the risk that worries the Combatant Commanders,then the A-10 will be retained. But this risk might also mean multi-role stealth fighters, or next-generation exotic-skinned bombers… your culprit is the strategy.
Finally, while considering defense strategies and their second-order effects in defense priorities, it is best to keep things on an even-keel. Spinney provides POGO and the rest of the reformers the kind of negative example that should be avoided in the seminar when he says: “…the AF hates the A-10 with passions rooted deeply in its founding culture precision strategic bombardment (my emphasis added).” In light of the above, this insinuation and others like it within his blog post trend towards the absurd. Nor is this insinuation, in light of significant rational pressures from strategy, really all that helpful for increasing the sacred trust required in joint interdependency. On the topic of strategic bombardment, the Air Force will always have to wrestle with its Douhetian beginnings, much like the Army may always have to remember Major General John Knowles Herr on the eve World War II. But after over a 100 years of airpower doctrine development resultant from testing theory in practice, it might be prudently time to stop “turning that grindstone.” Lastly, it also might be instructive for Spinney (or any Airmen who prefers the abruptness of the appeal to emotion) to recall this: it was Hap Arnold who garnered the U.S. Air Force its independence as a service, not Billy Mitchell.
My sense of the question of the A-10 is less about an absurd idea that the U.S. Air Force or the joint force does not understand CAS, or the even more absurd notion that the “Air Force hates CAS.” Instead, the seminal A-10 question is rather a political debate of priorities related to the rational and deliberate actions taken as result of strategies, pivots, capabilities, and the like. And because the question of the A-10 is really a policy-related problem, like sequestration and high-end acquisitions tend to be, more candid discussion is highly desirable. Writing or calling your Congressmember is better. Lastly, one is well served by considering how or why the U.S. Air Force went down the “5th Generation Fighter” path in the first place, as Ray O’Mara briefly touches upon in “What do you call an Air Force with no airplanes?”
I hope the seminar on the seminal question is insightful, rather than debasing to digging up dinosaurs.
