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Posted for fair use.....
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-b...5-defense-indifference-and-the-air-force-a-10
May 20, 2015, 06:30 am
Defense, indifference, and the Air Force A-10
By Lindsey Neas
Comments 16
The Air Force A-10 fighter, according to the Air Force Chief of Staff, Gen. Mark Welsh, is the best close-air support aircraft in the world, yet he’s determined to retire hundreds of them — the entire fleet — to the desert. Why? The A-10 controversy is actually two stories. The first deals with soldiers’ lives and competing budget priorities. The broader story — the role of the A-10 as the proverbial canary in the coal mine — should command everyone’s attention for what it tells us about the state of political leadership in Washington.
The first A-10 story is about infantrymen and Marines in combat, outnumbered, sometimes desperately in need of close-air support. The low-flying, highly maneuverable and highly survivable A-10 is the ideal aircraft to provide down-in-the-weeds support for ground forces.
A-10 pilots during Operation Desert Storm were credited with destroying an unmatched 4,000 Iraqi tanks, artillery pieces and other military vehicles.
In Afghanistan and Iraq, A-10 pilots flew tens of thousands of missions. One squadron is currently conducting strikes against Islamic State insurgents, while another recently deployed to strengthen our modest forces stationed in Europe.
In the Western Pacific, North Korea’s inventory of tanks, armored personnel carriers, artillery and rocket launchers — estimated at more than 20,000 weapon platforms overall — makes the A-10’s capabilities very much needed on the Korean peninsula.
Despite this reality, the close-air support mission — the only mission for which the A-10 was designed and the primary mission for which its pilots train — has always been of secondary importance to the Air Force leadership which views air superiority, tactical and global strike (bombing), strategic airlift and aerial refueling as more important. In the 1990s, Congress had to direct the Air Force to properly maintain the fleet. More recently, Congress was the one to mandate avionics upgrades and wing replacements where needed.
Combat record, capabilities and relevance aside, retiring all 263 aircraft, with no replacement aircraft on the horizon, would free up $4.3 billion over five years. These funds, in turn, would support the development and acquisition of the service’s three core modernization programs: the F-35A Joint Strike Fighter; the next-generation tanker, and the Long-Range Strike Bomber. The combined cost to complete development and procurement of these three aircraft is an estimated $317 billion. That’s Gen. Welsh’s thankless budget situation.
And that’s the tradeoff: close-air support to keep American soldiers alive in combat versus funding to pay for a very small portion of the development and acquisition costs of the next-generation tactical fighter, bomber and aerial refueling tanker.
This is an example of what official Washington euphemistically likes to call “hard choices.” It’s more in the nature of a moral failing. Responsible political leaders, having done no analysis before the fact, wouldn’t mandate choices of this nature.
When President Obama and congressional leaders negotiated the Budget Control Act (BCA) in mid-2011, defense was relevant for one reason: it became the sacrificial cow for all budget cuts. Not relevant: the impact of cutting nearly $1 trillion from future defense spending on training, modernization and force readiness.
When then-Secretary of Defense Gen. Colin Powell proposed downsizing our armed forces by 25 percent at the end of the Cold War, his recommendations were based on an extensive analysis conducted over several years. Defense Secretary Robert Gates immersed himself in day-long briefings throughout 2010, before proposing to cut $400 billion from the defense budget over several years. The imperative for both men was to get it right; knowing that getting it wrong would cost American blood and treasure.
The Pentagon’s leadership has made its views on the BCA unmistakably clear. Secretary Leon Panetta likened its impact on our armed forces to “shooting ourselves in the head.” His warnings, and those of Admiral Mike Mullen, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, were ignored.
The larger story — the A-10 as canary in the coal mine — is that funding reductions mandated under the BCA, of which the A-10 is only the most visible example, are compelling the joint chiefs to significantly reduce force levels, curtail training, defer maintenance, and delay or cancel modernization programs across all the services. Few elected officials in Washington are expending any political capital to correct the situation. The story gets worse.
That the BCA remains the law nearly four years after enactment is revealing. First, President Obama and various factions in the Congress — Liberals, deficit hawks, isolationists, Libertarians, and so-called pro-defense Tea Party Republicans — seem unable to grasp or unwilling to admit the extent to which the defense cuts they support are undermining American security.
Second, this bipartisan negligence concerning the self-inflicted deterioration of our armed forces means that the political foundation that sustained American defense and foreign policy throughout the Cold War — a bipartisan consensus on American strategy and the nature of the threats we face — is, at best, now on life support, kept alive by only a handful of senators and representatives who firmly and correctly believe that America security is best protected through American engagement in the world, with a coherent and principled diplomacy and a robust military.
Despite all that is happening in the world, in the Middle East, in Eastern Europe, and with China’s comprehensive military expansion, our elected officials on both sides of the aisle – each with their own competing political priorities -- continue to demonstrate an unwillingness or inability to reconcile themselves to the fact that these events directly impact American security. They must summon the political will needed to correct the mistakes they made four years ago, and return to a rational process of ensuring that America’s armed forces are well-led, well-trained, and properly equipped.
Neas is an American Enterprise Institute research fellow and former Army officer. He served for 15 years as a defense aide for several members of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees.
Posted for fair use.....
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-b...5-defense-indifference-and-the-air-force-a-10
May 20, 2015, 06:30 am
Defense, indifference, and the Air Force A-10
By Lindsey Neas
Comments 16
The Air Force A-10 fighter, according to the Air Force Chief of Staff, Gen. Mark Welsh, is the best close-air support aircraft in the world, yet he’s determined to retire hundreds of them — the entire fleet — to the desert. Why? The A-10 controversy is actually two stories. The first deals with soldiers’ lives and competing budget priorities. The broader story — the role of the A-10 as the proverbial canary in the coal mine — should command everyone’s attention for what it tells us about the state of political leadership in Washington.
The first A-10 story is about infantrymen and Marines in combat, outnumbered, sometimes desperately in need of close-air support. The low-flying, highly maneuverable and highly survivable A-10 is the ideal aircraft to provide down-in-the-weeds support for ground forces.
A-10 pilots during Operation Desert Storm were credited with destroying an unmatched 4,000 Iraqi tanks, artillery pieces and other military vehicles.
In Afghanistan and Iraq, A-10 pilots flew tens of thousands of missions. One squadron is currently conducting strikes against Islamic State insurgents, while another recently deployed to strengthen our modest forces stationed in Europe.
In the Western Pacific, North Korea’s inventory of tanks, armored personnel carriers, artillery and rocket launchers — estimated at more than 20,000 weapon platforms overall — makes the A-10’s capabilities very much needed on the Korean peninsula.
Despite this reality, the close-air support mission — the only mission for which the A-10 was designed and the primary mission for which its pilots train — has always been of secondary importance to the Air Force leadership which views air superiority, tactical and global strike (bombing), strategic airlift and aerial refueling as more important. In the 1990s, Congress had to direct the Air Force to properly maintain the fleet. More recently, Congress was the one to mandate avionics upgrades and wing replacements where needed.
Combat record, capabilities and relevance aside, retiring all 263 aircraft, with no replacement aircraft on the horizon, would free up $4.3 billion over five years. These funds, in turn, would support the development and acquisition of the service’s three core modernization programs: the F-35A Joint Strike Fighter; the next-generation tanker, and the Long-Range Strike Bomber. The combined cost to complete development and procurement of these three aircraft is an estimated $317 billion. That’s Gen. Welsh’s thankless budget situation.
And that’s the tradeoff: close-air support to keep American soldiers alive in combat versus funding to pay for a very small portion of the development and acquisition costs of the next-generation tactical fighter, bomber and aerial refueling tanker.
This is an example of what official Washington euphemistically likes to call “hard choices.” It’s more in the nature of a moral failing. Responsible political leaders, having done no analysis before the fact, wouldn’t mandate choices of this nature.
When President Obama and congressional leaders negotiated the Budget Control Act (BCA) in mid-2011, defense was relevant for one reason: it became the sacrificial cow for all budget cuts. Not relevant: the impact of cutting nearly $1 trillion from future defense spending on training, modernization and force readiness.
When then-Secretary of Defense Gen. Colin Powell proposed downsizing our armed forces by 25 percent at the end of the Cold War, his recommendations were based on an extensive analysis conducted over several years. Defense Secretary Robert Gates immersed himself in day-long briefings throughout 2010, before proposing to cut $400 billion from the defense budget over several years. The imperative for both men was to get it right; knowing that getting it wrong would cost American blood and treasure.
The Pentagon’s leadership has made its views on the BCA unmistakably clear. Secretary Leon Panetta likened its impact on our armed forces to “shooting ourselves in the head.” His warnings, and those of Admiral Mike Mullen, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, were ignored.
The larger story — the A-10 as canary in the coal mine — is that funding reductions mandated under the BCA, of which the A-10 is only the most visible example, are compelling the joint chiefs to significantly reduce force levels, curtail training, defer maintenance, and delay or cancel modernization programs across all the services. Few elected officials in Washington are expending any political capital to correct the situation. The story gets worse.
That the BCA remains the law nearly four years after enactment is revealing. First, President Obama and various factions in the Congress — Liberals, deficit hawks, isolationists, Libertarians, and so-called pro-defense Tea Party Republicans — seem unable to grasp or unwilling to admit the extent to which the defense cuts they support are undermining American security.
Second, this bipartisan negligence concerning the self-inflicted deterioration of our armed forces means that the political foundation that sustained American defense and foreign policy throughout the Cold War — a bipartisan consensus on American strategy and the nature of the threats we face — is, at best, now on life support, kept alive by only a handful of senators and representatives who firmly and correctly believe that America security is best protected through American engagement in the world, with a coherent and principled diplomacy and a robust military.
Despite all that is happening in the world, in the Middle East, in Eastern Europe, and with China’s comprehensive military expansion, our elected officials on both sides of the aisle – each with their own competing political priorities -- continue to demonstrate an unwillingness or inability to reconcile themselves to the fact that these events directly impact American security. They must summon the political will needed to correct the mistakes they made four years ago, and return to a rational process of ensuring that America’s armed forces are well-led, well-trained, and properly equipped.
Neas is an American Enterprise Institute research fellow and former Army officer. He served for 15 years as a defense aide for several members of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees.
