New Air Force Chief of Staff
An interesting article by Max Boot on the newly appointed Air Force Chief of Staff. Norton Schwart, a former cargo plane pilot and former deputy commander of Special Ops is the new Chief of Staff (after the previous one was fired by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates for negligence in dealing with nuclear materials per recently published and high profile gaffes).
Boot says this is a distinctive cultural shift for the Air Force. Here is how Boot puts it:
"Senior officers tend to favor the platforms they operated as junior officers. Bomber pilots like building more bombers, and fighter pilots like building more fighter aircraft. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but a good case can be made that the reign of the fighter jocks has led the Air Force to spend too much money on fighters at a time when they are growing less important. The Department of Defense is buying two expensive fighters — the F-22 and the F-35 — that were originally conceived for air-to-air combat even though the United States has not lost a single plane in traditional dogfighting since the Vietnam War....
Boot says this is a distinctive cultural shift for the Air Force. Here is how Boot puts it:
"Senior officers tend to favor the platforms they operated as junior officers. Bomber pilots like building more bombers, and fighter pilots like building more fighter aircraft. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but a good case can be made that the reign of the fighter jocks has led the Air Force to spend too much money on fighters at a time when they are growing less important. The Department of Defense is buying two expensive fighters — the F-22 and the F-35 — that were originally conceived for air-to-air combat even though the United States has not lost a single plane in traditional dogfighting since the Vietnam War....
With an officer whose background is in transportation and special operations chosen to head the entire Air Force, a cultural revolution is well under way. Fighter planes and their pilots will not loom as large in the future as they have in the recent past."
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