The Next War

People tend to want to fight the war they were trained for as lieutenants. What we need is people who can visualize what the next war will be and be ready for that.

The first and most important thing to remember is airpower and seapower win NOTHING. Wars are won when the Marine or soldier with a rifle stands on a piece of ground and holds it for our country. The rest of the services are merely support units, they win nothing. Yet that young fellow cannot get there without help.

Right now there is no creditable threat that the F-15E(enhanced) cannot deal with fairly expeditiously. It will sustain more casualties than the F-22 would, but the cost of the F-22 would be better spent on airlift. The F-22 is a very capable air to air machine, we just currently have no real air to air adversaries. If we did, there will not be enough of them.

With the reduced numbers of aircraft, we must build one fighter type and build a lot of them. Thus the fighter must be multi-role like the F-4 was and the F-15E is. The F-22, if it is bought, should change to a two seat stretched multi-role version, otherwise it is useless.

There was an internal Boeing proposal to make a C-17 derivative the next manned bomber. Not a joke. It would out perform the B-52, which is apparently good enough, and cost almost nothing.

We need more sealift, much quicker than airlift when you get beyond brigade sized units, more long range airlift and more intra theather airlift.

Read Tommy Franks' book and "Boyd". It becomes clear that the first thing to do is retire everyone above O-5 and their GS/ES equivalents. While there are a few people who progress above that level on real merit, most get there because they agree with the current Chief of Staff. We have had enough of that. Yes, we have won wars, but we have not done as well as we should have. Look at all the problems Tommy Franks had getting people onboard with winning for the country instead of their rice bowl.