Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
New York Times
April 23, 2008
Pg. 13
News Analysis
By Thom Shanker
WASHINGTON — For the past 16 months as defense secretary, Robert M. Gates has emphasized the positive in trying to repair relations between senior military officers and their civilian masters at the Pentagon and the White House.
But Mr. Gates departed sharply from this tone of reconciliation in two major addresses delivered Monday. In them, he made public deep misgivings about a military culture that squelches independent thinking, and he offered a glimpse into a significant fight over how other parts of the military establishment should support ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Mr. Gates said he had “been struggling for the last four months or five months” to bring more surveillance aircraft to the war zones, saying that increasing the number of drones and other resources would mean that “lives are going to be saved.” In an interview, he also described in unusually blunt terms his frustration with what he called a tepid response to his pleas.
“I said I am really not, frankly, interested in what you can bring to the table two years from now,” Mr. Gates said in recounting what he said had been his message to the armed services. “We are in the war — now. This is a critical time in the war. We need more, and we need it now.”
In his speech at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama, Mr. Gates did not single out the Air Force for criticism. He said the responsibility should be shared across the military and the vast bureaucracy that researches, develops, builds, buys and fields intelligence assets.
But the Air Force owns most of these airborne surveillance systems, and the message Mr. Gates delivered at the Air War College at Maxwell was clear — and especially painful to a service whose reliance on expensive new jets can seem at odds with 21st-century counterinsurgencies fought in the alleyways of the Middle East.
Mr. Gates said he was convinced that the next war would not be a conventional conflict, and that “asymmetrical conflict will be the dominant battlefield for decades to come, and procurement and training have to focus on that reality.”
In response to Mr. Gates’s criticism, the Air Force Association, a private organization that acts as surrogate and spokesman for the service, issued a statement defending the Air Force’s contributions to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The news release was a throwback to the worst days of interservice rivalry and boiled down, basically, to saying, “Air Force good, Army bad.”
To be sure, Mr. Gates went out of his way to compliment the Air Force. He cited the 14,200 airmen performing “in lieu of” tasks on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, including Air Force civil engineers replacing Army construction engineers. He highlighted the fact that the C-17 transports that carry food, fuel and equipment into Iraq each month mean that some 5,000 truckloads of cargo do not have to risk traveling bomb-filled roads.
But the last thing Air Force leaders want to hear is a push away from glamorous, white-scarf missions in high-tech fighters to take up, instead, the greasy wrenches and winches to put eyes over Iraq and Afghanistan and ferry troops and gear, food and fuel to the fight.
At the end of the day, the debate over remotely piloted surveillance aircraft is about what kind of military America truly needs in the age of terrorism — and how hundreds of billions of dollars will be divided among the armed services.
The Air Force allows only those officially rated as pilots to sit at the remote controls of its unmanned reconnaissance vehicles, a policy that Mr. Gates says has limited how many of these aircraft it can deploy. The Army allows enlisted personnel and noncommissioned officers to apply for those jobs. The push to add surveillance to the war zones may also require a rethinking of how the current crop of jetfighters is outfitted for war, as well as whether to look at low-tech fixes, like using off-the-lot Cessnas outfitted with surveillance gear.
“I want to see if there is more that can be squeezed out of the system,” Mr. Gates said. “Those are the kinds of ideas I have been asking them to look at. But there has been an element of turf in it: ‘Who ought to be in charge?’ They probably think I’m being a pain.”
Mr. Gates, in a speech Monday evening at West Point, also made a call for new ideas. He spoke in the interview of “the need for the services to re-examine their culture and their way of doing business, and the need for them to think outside the box in problem solving.”
April 23, 2008
Pg. 13
News Analysis
By Thom Shanker
WASHINGTON — For the past 16 months as defense secretary, Robert M. Gates has emphasized the positive in trying to repair relations between senior military officers and their civilian masters at the Pentagon and the White House.
But Mr. Gates departed sharply from this tone of reconciliation in two major addresses delivered Monday. In them, he made public deep misgivings about a military culture that squelches independent thinking, and he offered a glimpse into a significant fight over how other parts of the military establishment should support ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Mr. Gates said he had “been struggling for the last four months or five months” to bring more surveillance aircraft to the war zones, saying that increasing the number of drones and other resources would mean that “lives are going to be saved.” In an interview, he also described in unusually blunt terms his frustration with what he called a tepid response to his pleas.
“I said I am really not, frankly, interested in what you can bring to the table two years from now,” Mr. Gates said in recounting what he said had been his message to the armed services. “We are in the war — now. This is a critical time in the war. We need more, and we need it now.”
In his speech at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama, Mr. Gates did not single out the Air Force for criticism. He said the responsibility should be shared across the military and the vast bureaucracy that researches, develops, builds, buys and fields intelligence assets.
But the Air Force owns most of these airborne surveillance systems, and the message Mr. Gates delivered at the Air War College at Maxwell was clear — and especially painful to a service whose reliance on expensive new jets can seem at odds with 21st-century counterinsurgencies fought in the alleyways of the Middle East.
Mr. Gates said he was convinced that the next war would not be a conventional conflict, and that “asymmetrical conflict will be the dominant battlefield for decades to come, and procurement and training have to focus on that reality.”
In response to Mr. Gates’s criticism, the Air Force Association, a private organization that acts as surrogate and spokesman for the service, issued a statement defending the Air Force’s contributions to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The news release was a throwback to the worst days of interservice rivalry and boiled down, basically, to saying, “Air Force good, Army bad.”
To be sure, Mr. Gates went out of his way to compliment the Air Force. He cited the 14,200 airmen performing “in lieu of” tasks on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, including Air Force civil engineers replacing Army construction engineers. He highlighted the fact that the C-17 transports that carry food, fuel and equipment into Iraq each month mean that some 5,000 truckloads of cargo do not have to risk traveling bomb-filled roads.
But the last thing Air Force leaders want to hear is a push away from glamorous, white-scarf missions in high-tech fighters to take up, instead, the greasy wrenches and winches to put eyes over Iraq and Afghanistan and ferry troops and gear, food and fuel to the fight.
At the end of the day, the debate over remotely piloted surveillance aircraft is about what kind of military America truly needs in the age of terrorism — and how hundreds of billions of dollars will be divided among the armed services.
The Air Force allows only those officially rated as pilots to sit at the remote controls of its unmanned reconnaissance vehicles, a policy that Mr. Gates says has limited how many of these aircraft it can deploy. The Army allows enlisted personnel and noncommissioned officers to apply for those jobs. The push to add surveillance to the war zones may also require a rethinking of how the current crop of jetfighters is outfitted for war, as well as whether to look at low-tech fixes, like using off-the-lot Cessnas outfitted with surveillance gear.
“I want to see if there is more that can be squeezed out of the system,” Mr. Gates said. “Those are the kinds of ideas I have been asking them to look at. But there has been an element of turf in it: ‘Who ought to be in charge?’ They probably think I’m being a pain.”
Mr. Gates, in a speech Monday evening at West Point, also made a call for new ideas. He spoke in the interview of “the need for the services to re-examine their culture and their way of doing business, and the need for them to think outside the box in problem solving.”