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From: plains!umn-cs!LOCAL!thornley@uunet.UU.NET (David H. Thornley)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Command of Airpower
Message-ID: <1990Nov30.021629.8207@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 30 Nov 90 02:16:29 GMT
References: <1990Nov29.002331.18628@cbnews.att.com>
Sender: military@cbnews.att.com (William B. Thacker)
Organization: University of Minnesota, Minneapolis - CSCI Dept.
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From: plains!umn-cs!LOCAL!thornley@uunet.UU.NET (David H. Thornley)
In article <1990Nov29.002331.18628@cbnews.att.com> crowl@cs.rochester.edu (Lawrence Crowl) writes:
>
>
>From: crowl@cs.rochester.edu (Lawrence Crowl)
>[Arguments in favor of concentrating all aircraft, including helicopters,
> under the USAF.]
>
>With this approach you get naval air power by attaching naval-qualified air
>force units to various ships, just as the air force attaches units to land
>bases.
>
To the best of my knowledge, this has never worked.  The air force
concentrates on land-based planes and the carriers get screwed.
Consider the Fleet Air Arm approach tried by the British between the
wars, where the Royal Air Force was responsible for developing the
Royal Navy's aircraft.  The main result of this was that the Royal
Navy was heavily dependent on U.S. naval aircraft designs for most of
the war.

The only navies with dominant carrier forces have been the USN and the
Japanese navy (before 1945, of course).  Each of these controlled their
own aircraft.

I would be very hesitant to change a system that largely works to one
that has been unsuccessfully tried based on arguments from principle.

In fact, it might be nice to try a system where the Army gets to run its
own ground-support fixed-wing aircraft.  This would at least end the
current system where helicopters are asked to do things that fixed-wing
aircraft are much better at.  Whether it would ensure that the Army got
decent support is another matter.  (Historical note:  For the invasion
of Sicily in WWII, Patton asked the Navy for carrier support, despite
the fact that Sicily was well within the range of airbases in Tunisia
and Pantelleria.  Patton claimed that the Army Air Corps was out to win
the war its way, and paid no attention to the ground troops, while the
Navy pilots would do anything the soldiers asked them to.)  The Marines
seem to like the system, although they fly Navy planes.  To take the
Marine example to an extreme:

1.  The Air Force retains ICBMs, strategic bombers, and air defense fighters.
2.  The Navy is responsible for all other aircraft design.
3.  The Army gets to use whatever it wants for its own purposes, and perhaps
can get a few aircraft designed for its own use.

DHT