Bombers
BombersPosted on: Feb. 27th, 2006 || www.thespacereview.com
It's time to admit that the 2001 decision-in keeping with the recommendations of the second Rumsfeld commission-that made the Air Force the "Executive Agent for Space" has just not worked: not due to any malfeasance or corruption or lack of good will, but simply because the USAF has other priorities.
The Air Force is all about airpower. Before World War Two, when it was still the Army Air Corps, its leaders believed that America needed airpower. In the grand scheme of things, they were completely vindicated, and no one more so than Hap Arnold, the Chief of Staff for air from 1939 to 1945. Arnold’s vision of a military organization dedicated to constantly developing its fighting edge through the use of science and technology is still one of the USAF’s core strengths.
The primary manifestation of airpower is air superiority or air supremacy—being able to put your airplanes in the sky over the enemy and preventing him from putting his airplanes over your own forces or even over his own. The ultimate expression of air supremacy is being able to prevent an opponent from flying anywhere above his own homeland. Today, the preferred instrument of this concept is the F-22, by far the best fighting aircraft ever built. The question the Pentagon and Congress are trying to answer is whether future air superiority campaigns be hard—that is, conducted with a force of 180 F-22s—or easy, conducted with more than 350?
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