18 US Air Force Culture, 1947 - 2017: Robert Farley
18 US Air Force Culture, 1947 - 2017: Robert Farley
18 US Air Force Culture, 1947 - 2017: Robert Farley
Robert Farley
The US Air Force (USAF) came into existence in 1947, birthed from the US
Army Air Forces (USAAF). The USAAF had waged war against Germany and
Japan in the air, and against the US Army and the US Navy in the halls of
government. This chapter argues that both of these wars structured and defined
the organizational culture of the USAF, laying down foundational attitudes that
have characterized how the organization has fought wars across its existence.
These themes, primarily involving organizational concentrations on precision,
technology, and decisive effect, developed out of the air force’s quest for
autonomy, and have subsequently structured how the USAF understands its
purpose.
This chapter traces the prehistory of the US Air Force, beginning in the years
before World War I. It examines how military aviators’ quest for autonomy
from the army coincided with and influenced the work of a transnational
epistemic community of airpower theorists. The argument then turns to specific
cultural attitudes that emerged during the prehistory, explaining why they
emerged and what impact they had on the nature of the organization once it
became independent. This includes a discussion of how the air force propa-
gated, enforced, and reinforced these tropes across its history, taking into
account that culture has shifted over time, and that the USAF consists of
multiple internally coherent communities. Finally, the argument examines the
impact of these tropes on the political, strategic, operational, and tactical
effectiveness of the air force as a military organization.1
426
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Newcastle Library, on 20 Oct 2019 at 05:18:34, subject to the Cambridge Core
terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108622752.019
US Air Force Culture, 1947–2017 427
3
Charles J. Gross, American Military Aviation: The Indispensable Arm (College Station, TX,
2002), 16.
4
Jeffrey S. Underwood, “Presidential Statesmen and U.S. Airpower,” in Robin Higham and Mark
Parillo, eds., The Influence of Airpower upon History: Statesmanship, Diplomacy, and Foreign
Policy since 1916 (Lexington, TX, 2013), 177–208, 178.
5
Thomas Wildenberg, Billy Mitchell’s War with the Navy: The Interwar Rivalry over Air Power
(Annapolis, MD, 2013), Kindle, loc. 387.
6
Maurer Maurer, Aviation in the U.S. Army 1919–1939 (Washington, DC, 1987), xxi.
7
Brian D. Laslie, Architect of Air Power: General Laurence S. Kuter and the Birth of the US Air
Force (Lexington, KY, 2017), 31–32.
8
National Archive. “Note by the Air Staff on the Reasons for the Formation of the Royal Air
Force, citing Curzon report of 1916,” 4. AIR 9/5: Plans Archives, vol. 47, “Separate Air Force
Controversy 1917–1936.”
9
Gross, American Military Aviation, 54.
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Newcastle Library, on 20 Oct 2019 at 05:18:34, subject to the Cambridge Core
terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108622752.019
428 Robert Farley
designation that lasted until 1941, when it became the US Army Air Forces
(USAAF).10 American military aviators conceptualized the optimal mission of
their organization in ways that would maximize the potential for independence
from the army and (less so) the navy. By the early 1920s, evangelists of
airpower in and around the US military had begun to argue for both the
independence of an air force and the primacy of airpower.11 Of these evange-
lists, General William “Billy” Mitchell had the highest profile.12 As part of a
series of tests designed to evaluate the effect of air bombardment on naval
vessels, Mitchell engineered the sinking of the former German battleship
Ostfriesland with bombers off the Virginia Capes in July 1921.13
Tensions between Mitchell’s perspective and the more traditional compo-
nents of the army and navy quickly became apparent. It is easy to caricature the
debates between aviators and the older parts of the army, but they boiled down
to questions over the autonomy that aircraft would have from the traditional
arms such as infantry, cavalry, and artillery.14 Many senior soldiers envisioned
aircraft playing roles that committed them to direct and indirect support of
ground forces. This included ground support (light artillery), interdiction
(longer-range artillery), and reconnaissance. Aviators argued that these roles
failed to recognize the revolutionary potential of the airplane.15 Mitchell’s
arguments also challenged the existence of the navy; he and many other army
aviators believed that carrier aviation would inevitably, and fatally, trail behind
land-based aviation. That said, aviators in the United States had both the space
and the resources to develop independent airpower doctrine.16
The primary institutional structure for developing and propagating a doctrine
of decisive victory was the Air Service School, established in 1920 at Langley
Field in Virginia, and subsequently moved to Maxwell, Alabama in 1931.17
Renamed the Air Corps Tactical School (ACTS) in 1926, the school took as its
mission the education of air service (and eventually other) officers in the
operational and tactical methods for improving the effectiveness of army air
10
Ibid., 16. 11 Maurer, Aviation in the US Army, 44.
12
Alfred F. Hurley, Billy Mitchell: Crusader for Air Power (Bloomington, IN, 2006), 75.
13
Robert O’Connel, Sacred Vessels (Oxford, 1993), 257.
14
For interesting commentary on this discussion, see Capt. Laurence S. Kuter, “Memorandum:
Bombing Accuracy in Spain and in China,” in Phil Haun, ed., Lectures of the Air Corps Tactical
School and American Strategic Bombing in World War II (Lexington, KY, 2019), 133.
15
Peter R. Faber, “Interwar US Army Aviation and the Air Corps Tactical School: Incubators of
American Airpower,” in Philip Meilinger, ed., The Paths of Heaven: The Evolution of Airpower
Theory (Maxwell, AL, 1997), 183–238, 186.
16
Williamson Murray, “Strategic Bombing: The British, German, and American Experiences,” in
Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett, eds., Military Innovation in the Interwar Period
(Cambridge, 1996), 96–143, 107.
17
Laslie, Architect of Air Power, 32. See also Robert T. Finney, History of the Air Corps Tactical
School 1920–1940 (Washington, DC, 1998); Peter Faber, “Paradigm Lost: Airpower Theory
and Its Historical Struggles,” in John Andreas Olsen, ed., Airpower Reborn: The Strategic
Concepts of John Warden and John Boyd (Annapolis, MD, 2015), 11–47, Kindle, loc. 625.Hi.
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Newcastle Library, on 20 Oct 2019 at 05:18:34, subject to the Cambridge Core
terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108622752.019
US Air Force Culture, 1947–2017 429
assets.18 Although the school was initially ecumenical with regard to mission
and aircraft type, over time, it increasingly came to adopt and promulgate the
idea that long-range strategic bombing, conducted primarily by heavy bom-
bers, could provide decisive victory in war.19 The instructors at the ACTS
argued this position with such enthusiasm that some aviators, including espe-
cially fighter (pursuit) pilots, believed that their concerns were intentionally
sidelined in service of long-range strategic bombing.20 However, the offensive
orientation of bomber doctrine eventually enabled such innovations as the
development of long-range escort fighters, which allowed the organization to
bring the fight directly to the Luftwaffe.21
Despite strong advocacy for independence, the USAAF would remain part of
the US Army through the Second World War. During that conflict, it undertook a
variety of tactical and strategic roles, including support of army ground forces in
Asia, Africa, and Europe, as well as strategic bombing campaigns against
Germany and Japan. These last, the former waged in concert with the Royal
Air Force under the aegis of the Combined Bomber Offensive, represented the
primary wartime effort of the USAAF in terms of resources, preparation, and
expected impact. Some commentators have seen the July 1943 publication of FM
100–20, Command and Employment of Air Power, as a “declaration of indepen-
dence,” although views differ on its effect.22 However, the strategic bombing
campaigns, in combination with an idiosyncratic interpretation of the
Mediterranean campaign, provided the justification for the detachment of the
USAAF from the army. As part of a general reorganization of the US national
security state in 1947, the air force became independent from the army, and the
Departments of War and the Navy were subsumed, along with a new Department
of the Air Force, under the Department of Defense.
18
Laslie, Architect of Air Power, 33. 19 Ibid., 34.
20
Perry McCoy Smith, The Air Force Plans for Peace, 1943–1945 (Baltimore, MD, 1970), 33–34.
21
David Stubbs, “A Blind Spot? The Royal Air Force (RAF) and Long-Range Fighters, 1936–
1944,” Journal of Military History 78(2) (2014), 673–702, 689; Laslie, Architect of Air
Power, 97.
22
Laslie, Architect of Air Power, 90–91. 23 See Chapter 1.
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Newcastle Library, on 20 Oct 2019 at 05:18:34, subject to the Cambridge Core
terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108622752.019
430 Robert Farley
24
Capt. L. S. Kuter, “Practical Bombing Probabilities: Conclusion,” in Haun, The Book of
ACTS, 179.
25
Maj. Muir S. Fairchild, “National Economic Structure,” in Haun, The Book of ACTS, 238.
26
Philip Meilinger, “Trenchard, Slessor, and Royal Air Force Doctrine before World War II,” in
Philip Meilinger, ed., The Paths of Heaven: The Evolution of Airpower Theory (Maxwell, AL,
1997), 41–78, 50.
27
Timothy Moy, “Transforming Technology in the Army Air Corps 1920–1940: Technology,
Politics, and Culture for Strategic Bombing,” in Dominick A. Pisano, ed., The Airplane in
American Culture (Ann Arbor, MI, 2003), 299–332, 324.
28
Michael J. Eula, “Giulio Douhet and Strategic Air Force Operations: A Study in the Limitations
of Theoretical Warfare,” Air University Review (September–October 1986), 1-5, www.air
power.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1986/sep-oct/eula.html; Gian Gentile, How
Effective Is Strategic Bombing? (New York, 2001), Kindle, loc. 2993.
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Newcastle Library, on 20 Oct 2019 at 05:18:34, subject to the Cambridge Core
terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108622752.019
US Air Force Culture, 1947–2017 431
Technology
Technology constitutes one of the foundations of the fighting power of military
organizations. Doctrine and technology interact with one another; doctrine can
provide the logic for technological innovation, while new technologies can
overturn existing doctrinal and organizational structures. A focus on technol-
ogy is hardly specific to air forces in general, or to the US Air Force in
particular. As one airpower historian argues in his Ten Propositions
Regarding Airpower, “technology and airpower are integrally and synergisti-
cally related.”29 This has resulted from fundamentally structural causes. The
core technologies associated with aviation are newer than those associated with
naval or land warfare, even granting the remarkable advances over the past 150
years in both of those fields.
Nevertheless, the pursuit of technological innovation has played an
unusually large role in the culture of the USAF for the course of its
history and prehistory. In the early days of American military aviation,
army aviators were criticized for concentrating on technology at the
expense of doctrine and of personnel development.30 Progress in aircraft
technology advanced at a rapid pace after the invention of the aircraft,
only slowing in the decades after World War II, when jet aircraft began to
reach maturity.31 Between 1944 and 1957, for example, three successive
generations of fighter aircraft superseded one another, rendering earlier
aircraft virtually obsolete.32
The concentration of the USAF on technology may also have specific
societal sources. As numerous analysts have argued, American defense circles
have historically evinced an unusually large degree of fascination with tech-
nology, sometimes at the expense of other components of military power.33 The
source of fascination with technology, which extends beyond the air force
29
Phillip S. Meilinger, “Ten Propositions Regarding Airpower,” Air and Space Power Journal
(Spring 1996), www.airpower.au.af.mil/airchronicles/cc/meil.html.
30
James P. Tate, The Army and Its Air Corps: Army Policy toward Aviation, 1919–1941 (Maxwell,
AL, 1998), 5; Moy, “Transforming Technology in the Army Air Corps,” 308.
31
Murray, “Strategic Bombing,” 98.
32
John A. Tirpak, “The Sixth Generation Fighter,” Air Force Magazine, October 2009. www.air
forcemag.com/MagazineArchive/Pages/2009/October%202009/1009fighter.aspx.
33
Colin S. Gray, Weapons Don’t Make War: Policy, Strategy, and Military Technology (Lawrence,
KS, 1993).
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Newcastle Library, on 20 Oct 2019 at 05:18:34, subject to the Cambridge Core
terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108622752.019
432 Robert Farley
specifically and the American military generally, may lie in certain long-
standing cultural tropes peculiar to American social and economic realities.34
Decisive Effect
In the interwar period, US Army Air Corps officers worked extensively on the
concept of daylight precision bombing, the full realization of which would
enable a force of strategic bombers to target and destroy critical nodes of
production, bringing a modern industrial economy to its knees.35 At its core,
“strategic” bombing theory is the idea that long-range bombing can disrupt
enemy state, societal, and military organizations sufficiently to win decisive
victories in war.36 Historically, airpower theorists have linked this concept to
the need for organizationally independent air forces. One historian concludes
that “airpower is an inherently strategic force” in his “Ten Propositions
Regarding Airpower,” along with the assertion that “airpower’s unique char-
acteristics necessitate that it be centrally controlled by airmen.”37
To be sure, the advocates of particular military organizations have long
focused on the unique contributions that their service can make to the security
of a nation. But since the second half of World War I, airpower advocates have
argued that air forces can, when autonomous and sufficiently supplied with
resources, have independent decisive effect.38 This is to say that air forces can
win wars without, or with only trivial, support from land and sea services.39
These guiding concepts combined to provide the logical underpinnings of the
USAAF’s great strategic offensives during World War II, and its plans for a
strategic air offensive against the Soviet Union in the early Cold War.
Autonomy
All US services make use of the air in some fashion, and it is unsurprising that
questions about the control of air assets often lead to interservice conflict.
34
For an empirical (and somewhat skeptical) take, see Jon D. Miller and Rafael Pardo, “Civic Scientific
Literacy and Attitude to Science and Technology: A Comparative Analysis of the European Union,
the United States, Japan, and Canada,” in Meinolf Dierkes and Claudia von Grote, eds., Between
Understanding and Trust: The Public, Science and Technology (New York, 2000), 54–88.
35
Haywood Hansell, “The Aim in War,” in Haun, The Book of ACTS, 108; Gentile, How Effective
Is Strategic Bombing? 264–308.
36
David E. Johnson, Learning Large Lessons: The Evolving Roles of Ground Power and Air
Power in the Post–Cold War Era (Santa Monica, CA, 2007), 182.
37
Meilinger, “Ten Propositions Regarding Airpower.”
38
Giulio Douhet, The Command of the Air (Washington, DC, 1998); Mark Clodfelter, Beneficial
Bombing: The Progressive Foundations of American Air Power, 1917–1945 (Lincoln, NE,
2010), 44.
39
Carl Builder, The Masks of War: American Military Styles in Strategy and Analysis (Baltimore,
MD, 1989), 67, 71.
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Newcastle Library, on 20 Oct 2019 at 05:18:34, subject to the Cambridge Core
terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108622752.019
US Air Force Culture, 1947–2017 433
40
Douglas N. Campbell, The Warthog and the Close Air Support Debate (Annapolis, MD,
2003), 65.
41
Smith, Air Force Plans for Peace, 32.
42
J. A. Chamier and Wing-Commander Gossage, “The Use of the Air Force for Replacing
Military Garrisons,” RUSI Journal 66(462) (1921), 205–216; Christopher M. Rein, The North
African Air Campaign: US Army Air Forces from El Alamein to Salerno (Lawrence, KS, 2012).
43
Richard R. Muller, “Close Air Support: The German, British, and American Experiences 1918–
1941,” in Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett, eds., Military Innovation in the Interwar
Period (Cambridge, 1996), 144–190, 185.
44
Rein, The North African Air Campaign, 195–198.
45
For a modern perspective. see Rebecca Grant, “Penny Packets, Then and Now,” Air Force
Magazine, June 2010. www.airforcemag.com/MagazineArchive/Pages/2010/June%202010/0
610penny.aspx.
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Newcastle Library, on 20 Oct 2019 at 05:18:34, subject to the Cambridge Core
terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108622752.019
434 Robert Farley
several senior officers their careers and delayed construction of the navy’s first
supercarriers.46 The army and the air force came into conflict at several points
in the 1950s over development and ownership of ballistic missiles, even as the
navy pursued its own ballistic missile program.47
46
Steven L. Rearden, History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense: The Formative Years 1947–
1950 (Washington, DC, 1984), 410.
47
Richard M. Leighton, History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, vol. 3: Strategy, Money,
and the New Look 1953–1956 (Washington, DC, 2001), 16.
48
Clodfelter, Beneficial Bombing, 238–240.
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Newcastle Library, on 20 Oct 2019 at 05:18:34, subject to the Cambridge Core
terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108622752.019
US Air Force Culture, 1947–2017 435
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Newcastle Library, on 20 Oct 2019 at 05:18:34, subject to the Cambridge Core
terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108622752.019
436 Robert Farley
51
Williamson Murray, “Does Military Culture Matter?” Orbis 43(1) (1999), 27–42.
52
See, for example, Elizabeth Kier, Imagining War: French and British Military Doctrine between
the Wars (Princeton, NJ, 1997), 27–28.
53
Smith, Air Force Plans for Peace, 15. 54 Ibid., 33.
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Newcastle Library, on 20 Oct 2019 at 05:18:34, subject to the Cambridge Core
terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108622752.019
US Air Force Culture, 1947–2017 437
The second problem facing the air force was the transition to jet technology,
which effectively required the replacement of virtually the entire USAF fleet in
a short period of time. The expensive B-29 had a front-line shelf life of about
six years.55 In 1949, the air force began to replace the B-29 with the B-36
Peacemaker, which could attack the USSR from bases in the United States.56
However, the big, slow B-36 was also vulnerable to Soviet interceptors.
Introduced in 1951 and designed to operate from bases around the Soviet
periphery, jet-powered B-47 medium bombers could deliver both tactical and
strategic nuclear weapons against Soviet targets.57 In 1955, the air force would
introduce the B-52 Stratofortress, which replaced most of the previous
bombers.
The air force’s technological fixation and its predilection toward decisive
strategic warfare helped it win the political battles necessary to the develop-
ment of a fleet of strategic jet bombers. Air force culture enabled it to foster the
development of jet technology in the defense industrial base, integrate that
technology into its existing doctrine, and make a political case for the resources
necessary to recapitalize the fleet. Most notably, the air force prevailed in the
aforementioned “Revolt of the Admirals,” which pitted strategic bomber advo-
cates against aircraft carrier advocates.
Although the focus on nuclear weapons rendered some of the problems of
precision-targeting irrelevant, the air force remained interested in the avoid-
ance of uncertainty. From 1947 on, its work on airpower theory advanced in
conjunction with associated organizations, such as the RAND Corporation.58
RAND received the task of developing the theoretical foundation for the
USAF’s postwar force structure. RAND’s work fit easily into the air force’s
vision of warfare, especially in its use of advanced analytical techniques to
pierce the fog of war.59 Researchers at RAND included Albert Wohlstetter,
Bernard Brodie, and others associated with the world of strategic theory in the
1950s and 1960s.60
The development of missile technology posed a more difficult problem for
the air force. On one hand, fast, high-altitude antiaircraft missiles (fired from
either interceptors or ground batteries) forced a rethinking of strategic bomber
doctrine.61 Bombers were repurposed for low-altitude penetration missions, or
cancelled altogether, a process that extended into the early 1960s.62 On the
55
Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York, 1986), 605.
56
L. Douglas Keeney, 15 Minutes: General Curtis LeMay and the Countdown to Nuclear
Annihilation (New York, 2011), 45–46.
57
Ibid., 47.
58
Alex Abella, Soldiers of Reason: The RAND Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire
(New York, 2008), 14.
59
Ibid., 18. 60 Ibid., 44, 68. 61 Keeney, 15 Minutes, 221.
62
Carl Builder, The Icarus Syndrome: The Role of Air Power Theory in the Evolution and Fate of
the U.S. Air Force (London, 1994), 151; Gross, American Military Aviation, 189.
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Newcastle Library, on 20 Oct 2019 at 05:18:34, subject to the Cambridge Core
terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108622752.019
438 Robert Farley
Vietnam
As the United States gradually became embroiled in the Vietnam War, the
impact of concentration on the strategic bombing mission had palpably nega-
tive effects on the ability of the air force to wage the conflict. In 1964, in
response to civilian interest in more assertive responses to North Vietnamese
aggression, the USAF offered a series of relatively optimistic assessments of
the potential for a coercive air campaign against North Vietnam.67 Designed to
force Hanoi to end its support for South Vietnamese rebels, the Rolling
63
Builder, The Icarus Syndrome, 33.
64
Jim Cunningham, “Rediscovering Air Superiority: Vietnam, the F-X, and the ‘Fighter Mafia,’”
Air and Space Power Journal (August 25, 2011), www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/
cc/jim.html.
65
Robert Frank Futrell, Ideas, Concepts, Doctrine: Basic Thinking in the United States Air Force:
1907–1960 (Maxwell, AL, 1989), 529–531.
66
Gross, American Military Aviation, 173.
67
Mark Clodfelter, The Limits of Air Power: The American Bombing of North Vietnam (New
York, 1989), 73.
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Newcastle Library, on 20 Oct 2019 at 05:18:34, subject to the Cambridge Core
terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108622752.019
US Air Force Culture, 1947–2017 439
Thunder campaign drew on concepts in accord with the air force’s cultural
priors. The campaign plan expected that gradually escalating attacks against
North Vietnamese infrastructure and logistics could raise the cost of aggression
to a point at which the Communist leadership would conclude that the costs of
war outweighed the benefits.68 The campaign began in March 1965, and lasted
(with some interruptions) into late 1968.
Given its bureaucratic and cultural convictions, it was almost impossible for
the air force not to offer a solution to the Vietnam conflict that involved
coercive attacks against North Vietnamese targets. The USAF was politically
effective in foregrounding itself among US military efforts in the region, but is
almost universally regarded to have failed at the strategic level. Despite
significant damage to military and economic infrastructure, North Vietnam
did not waver in its commitment to overthrow the Saigon government, and
the attacks did not substantially reduce its capability to do so.69 The USAF’s
strategic plan (granting some interference from civilian authorities) was insuf-
ficient to solving the political problem posed by North Vietnamese
intransigence.
Operationally the USAF record was mixed. Over time, North Vietnam
developed a complex, interlocked set of air defenses that made strikes difficult
and costly. Prewar procurement training, geared toward meeting the Soviet
threat with nuclear weapons, was not well designed to penetrate North
Vietnamese defenses.70 American losses against an undercapitalized foe were
high. However, the air force adapted well to the problems presented by surface-
to-air missile installations, developing specialized aircraft (“Wild Weasels”)
for attacking them.71 It developed complex, large-scale strike packages capable
of managing the multifaceted threat and even explored the option of using B-58
bombers as “pathfinder” aircraft in strike packages.72
Tactically, the air force struggled to establish command of the air. The
interceptors and fighter-bombers designed in the 1950s were not optimized
for air-to-air combat against enemy fighters. A lack of good fighter doctrine
compounded the problem, as a concentration on safety and readiness had
limited training in air-to-air combat.73 Even the air-to-air missiles carried by
USAF fighters performed poorly against small, maneuverable aircraft. This left
68
Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven, CT, 1966), 74–75.
69
Clodfelter, The Limits of Air Power, 130.
70
Douglas M. White, “Rolling Thunder to Linebacker: US Fixed Wing Survivability over North
Vietnam,” (MMAS thesis, US Army Command and General Staff College, 2014), 21.
71
William A. Hewitt, Planting the Seeds of SEAD the Wild Weasel in Vietnam (Darby, PA, 1992),
11–12.
72
Anonymous, “The B-58 and SEA Camouflage Story,” TBOVerse, www.tboverse.us/HPCAF
ORUM/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=63.
73
C. R. Anderegg, Sierra Hotel: Flying Air Force Fighters in the Decade after Vietnam
(Washington, DC, 2001), 33.
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Newcastle Library, on 20 Oct 2019 at 05:18:34, subject to the Cambridge Core
terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108622752.019
440 Robert Farley
the fighters and pilots largely unprepared to deal with the threat of small,
maneuverable enemy fighters such as the MiG-17 and MiG-21, which appeared
over North Vietnam in numbers during the early days of Rolling Thunder and
imposed unacceptable losses on American aircraft.74 The air force initially
viewed the problem through a technological lens; its aircraft could not detect
MiGs approaching from behind and below, and its missiles were designed to
track and kill sluggish bombers rather than agile fighters.75 The navy, on the
other hand, suspected that its combat air crews lacked sufficient experience in
air-to-air combat.76 Its effort to improve training became the “Top Gun”
program, accompanied by more flexible tactical employment doctrine.77
Over time, the US Navy kill ratio increased from 3.7:1 to 13:1. The air force
kill ratio did not improve until much later in the war, when the air force began to
train its pilots against dissimilar aircraft.78 Air force personnel policies also
contributed to the problem, as pilots better suited for bombers and transport
aircraft found themselves forced into fighter combat.79
On the political, operational, and strategic levels, the USAF performed better
in the late-war Linebacker I and II campaigns. In both cases, it offered
capabilities that could resolve the strategic problem; in the former case, the
need to defeat a North Vietnamese offensive into South Vietnam, and in the
latter, the need to reassure Saigon and Hanoi of American credibility.80
Operationally, Linebacker I resulted in a significant success, and Linebacker
II a partial success. However, the USAF still struggled tactically with the
problems presented by North Vietnamese air defenses, a problem that the
next generation of air force leadership would try to address.
74
Marshall L. Michel III, Clashes: Air Combat over North Vietnam 1965–1972 (Annapolis, MD,
1997), 232–233.
75
Michel, Clashes, 181, 186; Anderegg, Sierra Hotel, 33. 76 Michel, Clashes, 186.
77
Ibid., 183. 78 Cunningham, “Rediscovering Air Superiority”; Anderegg, Sierra Hotel, 33.
79
Anderegg, Sierra Hotel, 14. 80 White, “Rolling Thunder to Linebacker,” 72–73.
81
Michael Worden, Rise of the Fighter Generals: The Problem of Air Force Leadership 1945–
1982 (Maxwell, AL, 1998).
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Newcastle Library, on 20 Oct 2019 at 05:18:34, subject to the Cambridge Core
terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108622752.019
US Air Force Culture, 1947–2017 441
82
Gross, American Military Aviation, 54.
83
Harold R. Winton, “Partnership and Tension: The Army and Air Force between Vietnam and
Desert Shield,” Parameters (Spring 1996), 100–119, 100.
84
Brian D. Laslie, The Air Force Way of War: US Tactics and Training after Vietnam (Lexington,
KY, 2015).
85
Steve Davies, Red Eagles: America’s Secret MiGs (London, 2011).
86
Anderegg, Sierra Hotel, 128.
87
Abraham Rabinovich, The Yom Kippur War: The Epic Encounter That Transformed the Middle
East (New York, 2007).
88
Barry Watts, “The Evolution of Precision Strike,” Center for Strategic and Budgetary
Assessments 2 (2013), 5.
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Newcastle Library, on 20 Oct 2019 at 05:18:34, subject to the Cambridge Core
terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108622752.019
442 Robert Farley
89
John Andreas Olsen, John Warden and the Renaissance of American Air Power (Washington,
DC, 2007), 103.
90
Grant T. Hammond, The Mind of War: John Boyd and American Security (Washington, DC,
2001), Kindle, loc. 235.
91
Ibid., loc. 2975.
92
John A. Warden III, The Air Campaign: Planning for Combat (Washington, DC, 1988).
93
Olsen, John Warden and the Renaissance of American Air Power, 66.
94
Colonel John A. Warden III, “Employing Air Power in the Twenty-First Century,” in Richard L.
Shultz and Robert L. Pfaltzgraff Jr., eds. Future of Air Power (Washington, DC, 1992), 57–82,
64–66.
95
Ibid., 65. 96 Ibid.
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Newcastle Library, on 20 Oct 2019 at 05:18:34, subject to the Cambridge Core
terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108622752.019
US Air Force Culture, 1947–2017 443
97
Colin S. Gray, Airpower for Strategic Effect (Washington, DC, 2012), 212.
98
Williamson Murray, “Part I: Operations,” in Thomas A. Keaney and Eliot A. Cohen, eds., Gulf
War Air Power Survey, vol. 2 (Washington, DC, 1993), 25.
99
Olsen, John Warden and the Renaissance of American Air Power, 150.
100
Johnson, Learning Large Lessons, 35; Murray, “Operations,” 39.
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Newcastle Library, on 20 Oct 2019 at 05:18:34, subject to the Cambridge Core
terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108622752.019
444 Robert Farley
achieved air supremacy within the first few days of the conflict by destroying
Iraqi air forces on the ground and in flight. In the ensuing bombing campaign, the
USAF and its partners attacked a wide array of Iraqi targets along the front lines
and in depth. The attacks, mostly carried out with non-precision “dumb” ord-
nance, caused heavy damage to Iraqi deployed forces, as well as to logistics,
communications, and government infrastructure.101 A ground offensive
launched on February 17 overwhelmed remaining Iraqi forces, ejected them
from Kuwait, and ended the war.
Airpower triumphalism initially carried the day.102 Advocates claimed that
airstrikes broke the back of Saddam Hussein’s army, allowing coalition ground
forces to defeat the rump Iraqi Army with very low casualties.103 These
advocates concentrated on the morale effects of bombing on Iraqi front-line
troops, the destruction of Iraqi command and control networks, the interdiction
of Iraqi logistics, and the attrition of Iraqi fielded forces. In effect, airpower
advocates argued that the USAF in the Gulf War had decisive effect at the
strategic level, even granting that the “strategic” attacks had failed to drive
Saddam Hussein from power.104
Later assessments of battle damage raised questions about the decisiveness
of the air campaign.105 Despite the heavy damage inflicted on Iraqi forces,
during the coalition ground offensive they maneuvered into blocking positions,
retaining good order and staying in communication with Iraqi leadership.
Although the USAF and its partners inflicted heavy damage on the Iraqi
economy and on Iraqi government installations, the Iraqi regime did not
collapse, and only temporarily lost control over certain portions of its territory.
The USAF generally maintained good relations with the army, the navy, and
coalition partners, but friction occasionally arose, especially in post-conflict
assessments. Within the USAF, however, the campaign was generally seen as a
vindication of the neoclassical airpower theory, at least in principle.106
101
Barry Watts and Thomas A. Keaney, “Part II: Effects and Effectiveness,” in Thomas A. Keaney
and Eliot A. Cohen, eds., Gulf War Air Power Survey, vol. 2 (Washington, DC, 1993).
102
Edward Luttwak, “Airpower in US Military Strategy,” in Richard H. Shultz Jr. and Robert L.
Pfaltzgraff Jr., eds., The Future of Airpower in the Aftermath of the Gulf War (Washington, DC,
1992), 17–38, 20.
103
Luttwak, “Airpower in US Military Strategy,” 19.
104
Ibid., 30; Watts and Keaney, “Effects and Effectiveness,” 15.
105
Daryl Press, “The Myth of Air Power in the Persian Gulf War and the Future of Warfare,”
International Security 26(2) (Fall 2001), 5–44, 7; Stephen Biddle, “Victory Misunderstood:
What the Gulf War Tells Us about the Future of Conflict,” International Security 21(2) (Fall
1996), 139–179, 148. For an alternative interpretation and criticism of Biddle, see Thomas G.
Mahnken and Barry D. Watts, “What the Gulf War Can (and Cannot) Tell Us about the Future
of Warfare,” International Security 22(2) (Autumn 1997), 151–162.
106
Colin S. Gray, Airpower for Strategic Effect (Maxwell, AL, 2012), 212.
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Newcastle Library, on 20 Oct 2019 at 05:18:34, subject to the Cambridge Core
terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108622752.019
US Air Force Culture, 1947–2017 445
107
Olsen, John Warden and the Renaissance of American Air Power, 135.
108
Andrew L. Stigler, “A Clear Victory for Air Power: NATO’s Empty Threat to Invade Kosovo,”
International Security 27(3) (Winter 2002–2003), 124–157, 125; Benjamin Lambeth, NATO’s
Air War for Kosovo: A Strategic and Operational Assessment (Santa Monica, CA, 2001), 219.
109
Paul K. Davis, Effects-Based Operations: A Grand Challenge for the Analytical Community
(Santa Monica, CA, 2001), 3.
110
Watts, “The Evolution of Precision Strike,” 8.
111
Ivo Daalder and Michael O’Hanlon, Winning Ugly: NATO’s War to Save Kosovo (Washington,
DC, 2000), 150–151.
112
Stephen Biddle, “Allies, Airpower, and Modern Warfare: The Afghan Model in Afghanistan
and Iraq,” International Security 30(3), 161–176, 161–163.
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Newcastle Library, on 20 Oct 2019 at 05:18:34, subject to the Cambridge Core
terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108622752.019
446 Robert Farley
Conclusion
This chapter has treated organizational culture in constitutive fashion as an
active, intentional means of managing reality, and also as an impersonal
structure that enabled and limited particular choices. The pre-founders and
founders of the USAF created a set of institutions with cultural precepts
designed to win the wars that the United States would choose to fight, and to
produce a military organization capable of managing American airpower
independent from the existing military services. These founders did not view
these two goals as contradictory, and indeed believed them to be necessary to
one another.
These efforts boiled down to a fundamental belief: technology would enable
aircraft to destroy targets that would force the enemy to end its armed struggle
and concede America’s political objectives. This depended on a further belief:
that the enemy’s economic, social, and political structures would be sufficiently
transparent to enable the accurate targeting of specific critical sinews, the
destruction of which would force (or at least incline) the opponent to sue for
peace. This resulted in an organizational culture heavily focused on values of
technological supremacy, precision, and transparency, all in the service of
achieving independent, decisive victories.
113
Chris Rawley, “Libya Lessons: Supremacy of the SOF-Airpower Team . . . Or Why Do We Still
Need a Huge Army?” Information Dissemination, September 15, 2011, www.informationdis
semination.net/2011/08/libya-lessons-supremacy-of-sof-airpower.html.
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Newcastle Library, on 20 Oct 2019 at 05:18:34, subject to the Cambridge Core
terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108622752.019
US Air Force Culture, 1947–2017 447
The air force retained a close relationship with mathematicians and game
theorists developing nuclear weapons employment strategy.114 One commen-
tator notes that “American airmen have tended to be overzealous in their
enthusiasm for pat formulas and engineering-type calculations seems hard to
deny.” He adds that these tendencies persist across generations, and that this
represents a “bedrock error” in American airpower doctrine.115 There is no
question that neoclassical airpower theory prominently reproduced the tradi-
tional USAF focus on precision and transparency.
These ideas provided clear, long-term guidance for the air force as an
organization, in both its history and its prehistory. Faith in strategic bombing
provided clarity regarding procurement and innovation in the interwar and
immediate postwar periods. A belief in the efficacy of technology helped to
create productive ties with industry, allowing long-term innovation in air-
frames, weapons, and communications equipment. A recommitment to preci-
sion was finally realized in the advent of the precision-guided munitions of the
1970s and 1980s, which have legitimately revolutionized many aspects of
modern warfare.
Finally, the overwhelming commitment to autonomy helped the organization
develop a strategy for pursuing resources from the US government and for
managing relations with the other two services. It provided a ready-made logic
for fights over appropriations, strategic orientation, and prominence in foreign
policy problem-solving. The appeal of decisive effect, combined with precision
(offering the appearance of minimal cost) and technological impressiveness,
made the use of the air force, often detached from the other two services,
particularly appealing to civilian officials. In short, these cultural elements have
enabled considerable political effectiveness on the part of the air force, while
causing difficulties at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels.
Advocates of the “air force way of war” can reasonably argue that the long-
term cultural foundation of the USAF will prove ever more productive as
technology catches up with the visions of airpower established by the early
theorists. Critics, on the other hand, may insist that technological dynamism is
more complex than simply increasing the ability to hit targets with precision,
and that in any case the social landscape of war is vastly more complicated than
airpower theorists allow, making successful coercion a tricky business.
Despite its long pedigree, the culture of the air force may yet change in
response to generational shifts and outside stimuli. Changes in communications
technology have already altered one of the USAF’s long-term cultural norms,
the primacy of the officer-pilot, by allowing operators to conduct attacks from
114
Lynn Eden, Whole World on Fire: Organizations, Knowledge, and Nuclear Weapons
Devastation (Ithaca, NY, 2004), 74–75.
115
Barry D. Watts, The Foundations of U.S. Air Doctrine: The Problem of Friction in War
(Maxwell, AL, 1984), 106–107, 110.
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Newcastle Library, on 20 Oct 2019 at 05:18:34, subject to the Cambridge Core
terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108622752.019
448 Robert Farley
116
Bruce Danskine, Fall of the Fighter Generals: The Future of USAF Leadership (Maxwell, AL,
2001).
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Newcastle Library, on 20 Oct 2019 at 05:18:34, subject to the Cambridge Core
terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108622752.019