Inadvertent H/t to Danger Room, I went to the link looking for information on arming Shadow UAV's and instead, got this story excerpt instead from Inside the Air Force, a subscription news service that often breaks news stories and is generally well respected and well sourced. Full tease here:
Well, don’t you say? Hmmm. I think an innovative, collaborative, new concept for a think-tank has been championing this idea for, well, a long time, link to the concept page here and link to the briefing proposing an armed AT-6 here. I’m traveling and don’t have access to my site statistics and wondering what kind of traffic has been coming in lately. But this news, if true, is certainly welcome and I wonder how much has to do with the other big changes in the Air Force set in motion by General Norty Schwartz. We may see the Strategic Air Command recreated. We have seen the Cyber command delayed if not fully shelved. General Schwartz has been making all the right moves. Mark Moyar has written a review of Colonel Peter Mansoor’s USA (Ret.) new book “Baghdad at Sunrise” a first person account by a Brigade Commander and later a member of the Council of Colonels advising General Petraeus. Colonel Mansoor is a has a Masters and PhD from my alma mater Ohio State and is currently teaching at the Mershon Center at OSU, a place I spent much of my last two years at school. Here’s a quote Mark Moyar features from Col. Mansoor’s book:
- Like Gen. Petraeus and many other veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, Col. Mansoor believes that the Army must alter its personnel policies to promote leaders with the attributes and knowledge required by counterinsurgency. Instead of rewarding technical and tactical competence, he asserts, the personnel system should reward "those who can think creatively, lead change, and understand information warfare and the asymmetric battlefield -- those who are flexible and adaptive." As for indigenous leadership, he believes that the U.S. can help the Afghans as it helped the Iraqis, by influencing command selection, mentoring leaders and partnering directly with local elites.
Finally, there’s this quote from Secretary Gates in the NY Times here on the state of play of innovative thinking from the Department he leads:
- Mr. Gates said that “apart from the Special Forces community and some dissident colonels, for decades there has been no strong, deeply rooted constituency inside the Pentagon or elsewhere for institutionalizing our capabilities to wage asymmetric or irregular conflict — and to quickly meet the ever-changing needs of our forces engaged in these conflicts.”
And at least one dissident Air Force Reserve Lieutenant Colonel I know of….