There appears to be a surge in interest in a counterinsurgency (COIN) aircraft as evidenced by these posts by Stephen Trimble at both Defensetech.org here and at his blog here. The site flyingsquadron.com’s has some commentary here and they have been sending some good traffic to Excalibur and our proposal for an armed AT-6 here. Time for me to weigh in again. There are a lot of passionate well meaning folks that really want the USAF or anyone for that matter, to rebuild a COIN aircraft capability. Folks, the bottom line is that the USAF leadership has no interest in doing this.
Now…might a Combatant Commander be interested? That’s the only way this is going to happen. It will require the CENTCOM, PACOM, or SOCOM Commander (and staff of course) to raise this issue at the JROC, levy a requirement and weigh in with enough horsepower to displace something else. The fact is that the services have been slowly moving to an organize, train, and equip role, and away from the decide “what to buy” role, this is critical as our military evolves. The services should not be in the business of deciding what they get, that should come from the Combatant Commands to the JROC with JFCOM in the lead.
This brings up another issue. We’ve seen the USAF make a play for UAV dominance only to see that rejected and the Army double down on their UAV bet. Earlier, the USAF tried to convince the OSD staff that they would handle the Joint Cargo Aircraft alone only to be told…not so fast with the Army still on track to receive about half the buy. Now comes this piece of writing from the editor in Chief of Air Force Magazine. Robert Dudney writes in this month’s edition all about the struggles the USAF is having with the other services and this is his final commentary:
- Still, if Washington decision-makers are wise, they will move expeditiously to resolve these questions in the Air Force’s favor. It is unseemly to pretend the other services aren’t pushing beyond their traditional roles and missions. Agreement on this point surely is fundamental to any true advances in military jointness.
Actually Mr. Dudney…if Washington decision-makers are wise, they will resolve these questions in America’s favor. The unseemliness of his argument is that so many people forget the services are force providers, not war fighters. This brings me to a new topic and a new move the USAF is making: cyberspace and cyberwarfare. There are numerous stories about the Air Force standing up a new cyber capability and states and cities trying to woo the headquarters for these new commands and units. I applaud the USAF leadership for pushing forward for the creation of a cyber capability but put simply, this capability needs to reside in a Joint Command (perhaps as currently STRATCOM) or even a new interagency mechanism.
The idea that some Major sitting in a computer operations center is going to conduct a denial of service attack against a web site, and that this decision will be made within a single command is to put simply, not sound. What happens if a CIA analyst or someone else within the Intel Community is using a site to track the traffic, to run probes back into the site to determine who runs it? That a single entity should decide to attack or hinder without consultation could wreak serious unintended consequences. What about the FBI doing an investigation and the site goes away? what next? It could be years of investigation down the drain.
Just last month, I was at a retirement party for a friend who is an FBI agent and I was talking with a Special Agent in Charge of a region of the country. I asked him that same question; is there any mechanism by which he can deconflict with someone else and he was unaware of any. This needs to be a priority within our government, fully vetted and monitored by select committees in Congress. I don’t have the answers to this, but at the very first step the Inter-agency, probably led by the NSC or Homeland Security Council needs to put this problem on the table and start working it. What is the proper mechanism to conduct cyber operations and how can we properly deconflict our actions for maximum effect? The Air Force is rightly concerned about cyber operations and warfare, but not sure they are the final answer, perhaps an intermediate one.