American Mercenary is a fellow blogger that I've been following religiously for a couple of months now. Like few others, he's able to boil important facts into a paragraph or two and end debate with his sound logic. His thoughts on the USAF decision to scrap the A-10 follows...
Right now the USAF has more personnel assigned to it than the US Army. Right now the USAF is talking about downsizing their fleet of tactical aircraft. Proven tactical aircraft. We let the USAF hog the budget, buy nifty toys, then declare them "strategic" and never deploy those toys. The F-35 has been sold as a "silver bullet solution" to people, and they are convinced that this one system will solve all problems. This is ignoring a basic tennet of warfare, you don't need one system, you need the right mix of systems and capabilities.Extremely well said (told ya so).
Cavalry sucks on its own. Armored Brigade Combat Teams don't have the dismounts for effective urban operations. Stryker Brigades lack the heavy punch needed for effective spearhead operations. Infantry Brigade Combat Teams don't travel fast or hit hard in open terrain. Take the strengths of each, and use it to cover the weaknesses of the others, and now you have an effective fighting force.
The USAF is literally ignoring this rule with their "high, fast, and stealthy" mentality of aircraft. We need low and slow to support the ground. The "lets cut the C-27 and A-10 to keep the F-35" is just one more reason to let the Army have fixed wing assets again, because we really do care about low and slow.
The irony is this. If by some miracle the US Army is able to get A-10s and C-27s you can bet Marine units will be asking for support. We're betting the farm on the F-35 to the exclusion of everything else too. Hell, if my thoughts on boat spaces are correct we might even need to have a few Stryker platoons on float with us.
