Army Fights To Control Its Air Space
23rd May 2008
What the air force is really worried about is not getting chastised by the boss, but being put out of a job by new technology. The UAVs take away the original job for the air force, air reconnaissance. Now smart bombs have made it so easy to deliver accurate firepower to the ground troops that even the new army Predator can drop them.
And, indeed, this points up the absurdity of having a separate Air Force. In the Industrial Age environment of massed air fleets this might have been justified, but the modern “retail” nature of the battlefront merely underscores its obsolescence. The Navy and Marine Corps provide excellent models for integrating air assets into the overall force structure; time to turn the Air Force back into the Army Air Corps where it belongs.