This seems like pretty big news, and is yet another one of those things that I know nothing about:
Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley and Secretary Michael W. Wynne were forced to resign Thursday during hastily arranged meetings with their Pentagon bosses.
Moseley was summoned from the Corona leadership summit at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, to an early morning meeting at the Pentagon with Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to discuss a report on the Air Force’s problems handling nuclear weapons.
The report, by Navy Adm. Kirkland Donald, director of naval nuclear propulsion, revealed widespread problems and convinced Defense Secretary Robert Gates that senior officials must be held accountable.
Moseley resigned in response.
Later in the morning, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England was dispatched to Wright-Patterson to ask for Wynne’s resignation, sources said. Wynne resigned during the meeting.
At a Pentagon press briefing Thursday afternoon, Gates said his decision to seek their resignations was “based entirely” on the Donald report, which uncovered a “gradual erosion of nuclear standards and a lack of effective oversight by Air Force leadership.”
I remember the loose nuke story, and I remember a second issue a month later, but what else is going on? This from the other day seems to show systemic problems:
The same Air Force unit that mistakenly flew nuclear-tipped cruise missiles on a B-52 last summer has failed a nuclear security inspection, according to a Defense Department report.
Security broke down on multiple levels during simulated attacks across the 5th Bomb Wing’s North Dakota base, including attacks against nuclear weapons storage areas, according to the Defense Threat Reduction Agency report, which was obtained by Air Force Times.
Inspectors watched as an airman played video games on his cellphone while standing guard at a “restricted area perimeter,” the report said. Meanwhile, another airman nearby was “unaware of her duties and responsibilities” during the exercise.
Over at Lawyers, Guns, and Money, Robert Farley has more:
It’ll be no secret to the readers of this blog that I believe the problems with the Air Force run too deep to be solved with firings like this; the reason that the Air Force is having difficulty figuring out its roles in the Middle East, its public relations strategy, and its force structure is that it’s an organization without a coherent 21st century mission. It doesn’t help, of course, that the Air Force brass decided to try to seize greater slices of the bureaucratic and procurement pie just as it reached the height of organizational incoherence…
So what exactly is going on? How did we get to this point? Have any of you been following this? Is this simply a leadership issue, or are the problems system-wide? How easily can they be remedied? Can they be remedied, or is this a long-term issue?
smiley
Not to mention their best and brightest are being educated at an evangelical christian institution.
JWeidner
I guess all the Air Force Academy graduates are too busy praising the Lord to be bothered with things like security, procedure, proper handling of nuclear weaponry, and so on and so forth.
smiley
JWeidner— funny how that happens sometimes.
cfaller96
I’m only the 4th commenter, yet I’m already being redundant: one of the overlooked problems with the Air Force is that they have a Christianist running through various levels of its organization, from the Academy to the Pentagon.
Giving nuclear weapons responsibility to people who believe it is their purpose in life to bring about Armageddon seems like a really bad idea to me. Until the Air Force figures out how to weed out the religious zealots, there are going to be serious problems, especially with their nukes
cfaller96
Christianist ‘streak’ running through the organization, that is…
4tehlulz
Well, it’s like a sports team; you can’t fire the players, but you can fire the manager.
Though with nukes being guarded by idiots playing video games and alcoholics, firing the Air Force may be a good idea.
The Moar You Know
It’s a systemic issue, and one that’s been building since the first Gulf War – in a nutshell, the Air Force, as originally concieved, has very little to do in the “brushfire wars” that so far seem to be the hallmark of the 21st century.
Remember, the Air Force was orginally conceived to deliver nuclear weapons, via bombers, to the late Soviet Union. Fighter aircraft were to protect the bombers and fight interceptors.
Nowadays, the Air Force has been reduced to two functions, both non-nuclear:
1. A trucking service to get supplies and personnel in and out of theater.
2. Close air support of ground troops; a mission that the AF has fought tooth and nail against accepting, as it puts them in a subordinate role to the Army (and on occasion, the Marines).
The Marines have taken over the air superiority (fighter) role. A nuclear bomber is worse than useless, these days. The Air Force considers close air support beneath their dignity. The F-22 Raptor is costing billions of dollars and has no clearly defined mission.
The Air Force needs a top to bottom reorganization, not just a token firing of a couple of top officers. They need to get with the 21st century, instead of fighting the wars of the 20th.
passerby
First of all I like to suggest the reasons being given for their dismissals are trumped up. If these officers were guilty of these accusations, wouldn’t they be subject to military discipline?
But, they won’t be properly disciplined because they’ve done nothing wrong. I think we are witnessing high military officials taking a rightful stand against a push for illegal military aggression.
There will be no hearing on this because the last thing Gates wants is factual evidence regarding their actions to be made public.
The house of cards built by the covert MIC cabal (Cheney/Bush) is starting to collapse.
T
The Moar You Know
Only 5% of the officer corps goes through the AF Academy. Sorry, guys. I loathe what the Academy is doing more than most but it isn’t the root of the problem.
Knightrain
I think a big part of the problem with the Air Force is that they are fighting for their own budget. This means that they have to find all sorts of expensive things to do that don’t reflect real requirements.
My solution would be to reabsorb them back into the Army. The Army can fight for its budget and then decide how much of that is really needed for air operations. Not perfect, but better than what we have now.
srv
The story has already changed. First, Gates wanted Wynne to fire Moseley, and he refused. Now it’s a hastily-held meeting with Adm. Mullen (the guy who sacked Fallon)… You folks will believe anything that gets regurgitated to you.
Loosing nukes, that’s worth at least another star.
This administration has never, ever, held anyone accountable for failure. They’ve only sacked people when it was politically required or when someone was not a good team players.
mellowjohn
not to tip my tinfoil hat or anything, but could it be that wynne and moseley were 86’d for the same reason mullen was: lack of sufficient enthusiasm for plans to “bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb iran?”
Michael D.
Senior officials being held accountable??
When did this new concept come into being???
TheFountainHead
I and those who serve as my echo chamber as well as my few friends in the Air Force all agree that the public motivation for these oustings is complete and utter bullshit. In a worst case scenario, these two are being removed/made an example of in an administration run-up to action against Iran. Best case scenario they were axed because they actually wanted to get tot he bottom of the organizational and larger security issues the Air Force faces, and the powers above them did not. Either way, neither of them are getting fired because nukes got flown over the US on their watch. That was a HUGE blunder for Air Force protocol and security, no doubt, but reprimand at their level was totally unwarranted.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
passerby,
The tea-leaf reading news commentary and analysis I’ve seen has always suggested that SecDef Gates is one of the obstacles standing in the way of “Bomb,bomb,bomb Iran”, not one of its cheerleaders in the admin.
I can imagine that these firings are political, but it seems unlikely that it would be because the officers in question are peaceniks.
SpotWeld
… it seems like it’s almost to the point where the Air Force could be scaled back considerably and folded into the Navy/Army with minimal effect on mission and huge savings to the tax payers (by eliminating duplications of effort).
Or course that would involved pulling power out of the hands of some very insecture people. So now were getting this “nope, no problems here” attitude as metric tons of brass attempt to justify thier existance and whitewash as much of thier record as possible.
JWeidner
I probably should have pointed out in my initial post that I was being quite snarky. I don’t really believe that military personnel do a poor job just because they’re worshipping the deity of their choice, or even that Academy graduates do a poor job because of the heavily Christian presence at the Academy.
Mainer
What was their position on bombing Iran? Perhaps this is more smoke and mirrors from the Bush gang.
J. Michael Neal
The underlying problem isn’t rampant Christianism, though I have no doubt that it is a problem. Even if most of the officers don’t go to the Academy, what goes on there is going to permeate the ranks.
The fundamental problem with the Air Force is the path to promotion. In the Army, you reach top command by running a battalion, then a brigade, then a division, and so on. You manage and lead successively larger groups of people, with more comprehensive duties, until you are doing some very complicated management. The same is true in the Navy; commanding a modern aircraft carrier is basically being in charge of a small city.
This is not the case in the Air Force. The path to promotion is through flying planes. The size of the units is relatively small, which means not only that there is less management training, but also that the other parts of the job are relatively more important. I bet that a lot of the top Air Force brass were really good pilots, but that’s not a skill that is of much value in running a large organization. If your a general, it’s a lot better to make the right decision after giving it some thought than it is to make a decision RIGHT NOW.
Really, the Air Force is run by a bunch of people with the same vocational training as John McCain. He’s a pretty good example of why the Navy keeps the pilots out of the top command track.
Phildo
The nuclear screw-ups are pretty darn important. If there is anything that cannot be tolerated, it is laxness with regard to nuclear weapons and material. This is something you don’t mess around with. A mistake there could literally be fatal to the country. And there have been at least two, maybe more, in recent years, and the Air Force leadership doesn’t seem to be taking it seriously enough.
However, I agree that there is probably more going on than that. The management of the Air Force has been in decline for some time. Many of the high profile controversies and scandals (the tanker scandal, Darleen Druyun’s corruption, etc.) come out of the Air Force. There is a bad culture there, and this is the only way to shake things up. People in the organization really sit up & take notice when something like this happens!
T. Scheisskopf
This has all the stink of panic about it, especially the “hastily arranged meeting”. The Air Farce has huge black budgets, status symbols for Generals, with no effective oversight and amazing appetites. It has fundies shot through the organization who treat the AF as their personal fundagelical ministry. It has cost overruns. It has contracting scandals. It has nukes being mounted on weapons points and transported, without National Command Structure authorization. It has huge mission creep and incredible expenditures as it moves into its new role of being the putative police force for cyberspace, a job for which it is singularly unqualified.
This all reeks of hastily-prepared panic moves to make some cosmetic changes and appear to address systemic issues before the landscape in Washington changes in ’09.
In military terms, the phrases “goat fuck” and “CYA” are applicable. I suspect that when the reviews start(and start they will…), they stand a real chance of being decimated, and they know that.
After Hubris comes Nemesis. Always has. Always will.
tballou
John Cole asks “So what exactly is going on? How did we get to this point?”
How can any of this be a surprise after 7+ years of Bush mismanagement of practically every aspect of government? This is what Bush and the Repugs do.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Fred Kaplan at slate has turned into a cheerleader for Gates over the course of the last year. Does anybody have a take on this? Is Kaplan in the tank for him, or is Gates as much of a keeper as Kaplan makes him out to be?
Secretary Gates Declares War on the Army Brass –
Unfortunately, he doesn’t have time to fight that battle.
Prison Break-Maybe the Army’s not so hidebound after all.
Be sure to also read Kaplan’s April 23 column which was the prelude to his “Prison Break” column about the career trajectory of Paul Yingling and what it says about efforts by Gates and others to reform the institutional culture in the Army. The link is at the start of the P.B. story.
Kaplan makes Gates sound almost too good to be true. Hard to know without more inside info if this is journalistic fluffing or not. Comments anyone?
Jason Lefkowitz
One level of the issue is operational problems like the nuke-handling issue, but there is a deeper issue at play as well.
Defense Secretary Gates has been quite vocal about how the military needs to concentrate on the wars it’s fighting now rather than worrying about potential future wars with states who aren’t threatening us today like China and Russia.
To the Air Force brass, this position is quite threatening because the wars we are fighting today don’t really need air power. In fact, in a counterinsurgency, air power can be downright counterproductive — wantonly dropping bombs onto houses has a bad way of making more insurgents than it kills. The air power that works for these wars is stuff like transport planes, reconnaissance planes and unmanned aerial vehicles — all things the USAF thinks are un-sexy, because USAF has traditionally drawn its leadership from the fighter pilots of the service.
Meanwhile, hypothetical wars against big, powerful states (what military types call “full-spectrum” opponents) would have a much bigger role for high-tech manned combat aircraft, providing justifications for big-ticket programs like the F-22 fighter. And the way generals get more stars on their shoulders is by moving big-ticket programs forward, not by canceling them.
Gates has specifically called out the Air Force before for having an unhelpful attitude on this issue:
It didn’t help matters either late last year when the entire fleet of F-15s — the front-line fighter that’s supposed to eventually be replaced with shiny new F-22s — had to be grounded for safety concerns. The buzz at the time was that the USAF had been plowing resources that were supposed to go into maintaining F-15s into instead buying more F-22s, with the result that the F-15s didn’t get the maintenance they needed to stay in the air.
All of which is a long-winded way of saying that Moseley and Wynne have had serious disagreements with Gates pretty much since the day Gates took over, and since Gates is the top man in the defense pecking order, it was probably inevitable that things would boil over eventually.
calipygian
This has nothing to do with Christianism or Iran and every thing to do with bueaurocracy. The proximate cause of the firings was the poor nuke handling and a symptom of the larger problem, which is a rudderless leadership, or more properly, a leadership going in a direction that Gates didn’t approve of. Gates had to grab their attention by the balls by basically saying that the Air Force wasn’t pulling their weight in Iraq OR Afghanistan because they were too busy trying to get their pet weapons system funded (the F-22) and taking UAVs away from the other services, as well as imposing ridiculous requirements for their use (for instance: in all three other services, they do just fine with E-5 Pilot/Operators while the Air Force, needing work for all those out of work fighter jocks, insists on using rated pilots to fly UAVs).
The solution: re-organize the Air Force into a Strategic Weapons force, an Air Defense Force and an Air Transport Force and let the Army fly their own fixed wing air support, since fixed wing air support to ground forces are the crux of Gates’ charge that the Air Force isn’t doing a goddam thing in either of the wars that we are fighting and the Air Force just isn’t interested in fixing it.
calipygian
I take everything Fred Kaplan has to say about the military very seriously.
passerby
Oh…Guilty of making assumptions because of Gates’ CIA linkings. To me CIA=no trust.
Q: How are you determining the political standing of the officers?
My opinion is based on thinking that there must be those in the military who are true blue soldier, oath believing, honorable men. Admittedly who’s to say which ones, but, I am certain that many are biding their time, waiting for the moment when they can restore purpose and honor.
If these officers were baddies, I thank you and stand corrected.
[nevertheless: House of cards, coming down.]
T
The Moar You Know
Bingo.
Add the AF’s manaical single-minded focus on the F-22 over the aircraft that are actually getting the work done, such as the F-15 and especially the A-10 (probably the most useful plane the AF has and the one they’ve tried the hardest to mothball) and you have the real reason for the firings – total intransigence. I expect many more.
MobiusKlein
Hmm, maybe the way to avoid loose nukes is to put all the GODDAMN NUKES IN A BUNKER, NOT ON AIRPLANES.
We could keep a credible deterrent with no bomber / cruise missile delivered nukes. Why play with fire?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
So if Gates is doing yeoman’s work here pushing needed reforms thru and refocusing the military on 21st Cen brush-fire wars, would it make sense to keep him on in an Obama administration, and let him keep taking whacks at the bureaucracy? Or perhaps even announce that idea now to bolster his credibility in fighting these Pentagon turf wars between now and January.
That might add some bipartisan cred to the campaign and it seems like a real shame to let somebody as smart as Gates retire after spending his last 9 months in the Pentagon as a lame duck (which will encourage the holdouts to dig in and wait him out), but I also worry about it reinforcing the “Dems are weak on defense” meme.
Alan
J. Michael Neal,
I think you’re basically right. But there are exceptions. For instance, my father died just before he was going to be promoted to general and he was never a pilot. But then, that was 30 years ago.
libarbarian
My favorite comments on Reason:
M
bago
Apparently, Gates was brought in as an old GHWB hand to try and reign some of the stupid.
libarbarian
sorry – wrong thread :(
Jason Lefkowitz
You’re not the only one who thinks so.
Dennis - SGMM
The Air Force began life as the Army Air Corps. It became an independent service via The National Security Act of 1947. At that time, everyone thought that the highest probability was that we would, at some point be engaged in a war with the Soviet Union. That shaped the mission, and the thinking, of the Air Force for the next several decades. They’re still back there now, preparing for massive retaliation with the need for high-tech, high buck, manned fighter-interceptors to fly cover for our bombers and to shoot down the Russkies and/or the Chinese. The USAF has become obsolete.
The Moar You Know
Hard not to feel sorry for anyone attempting such a task with this administration.
That was my understanding of the situation as well, that Gates was crammed down Bush II’s throat. Hard to imagine, but it’s possible that GHWB and his cronies may have saved as all from Armageddon.
TenguPhule
First, get rid of the officers….
Dennis - SGMM
Addendum.
FWIW, in the part of Vietnam (IV Corps, the Delta) where I served, most units preferred to call in the Navy for CAS missions. The Air Force was notorious for coming in at high speed and dumping high yield ordnance all over everything – including the people who called in the strike. The Navy was flying propeller-driven fixed wing aircraft (OV-10A Broncos) and UH-1B Hueys and could thereby deliver ordnance with considerably more precision.
agorabum
I do have to disagree with all you haters out there; the Air Force needs to be its own service, impossible to fold it into the Navy (an argument could be made for the Army, though).
The Academy has some zealots, but the majority of attendees are normal folks who wholeheartedly support drinking, cursing, fornicating, etc.
And for those freaking out over an Airmen (read: 18-19 year old) playing video games on his phone while on “guard duty” in North Dakota… what would you do if you were 18 and your job was to watch an endless praire day after day with nothing happening? More importantly, would you expect an organization where every 18 year old would be able to do that with ceaseless vigilance 100% of the time?
The guys down in the silos play even more video games (but they’re not on guard duty).
Air superiority is amazingly critical to success in modern warfare. Just becasue we always have it due to our AF doesn’t mean it should be taken for granted or that the AF is now obsolete.
barrisj
And, as far as “mission updating” is concerned, let us not forget that the USAF has been lobbying hard for years now to “own” the militarisation of space, as part of the Pentagon’s “full spectrum dominance” theory of US hegemony, post-Cold War. The AF has created a “Space Command” in order to fortify its bureaucratic hold on this self-defined “mission”, and has allied itself (as usual) with powerful “defence” industry types and lobbyists to push its endeavours in this regard. An inevitable turn of events within a Pentagon whose budget has soared so dramatically in the past 10 years, that the Services are “incentivised” to promote themselves and their associated weaponry in order to get their piece of a seemingly infinitely increasing pie.
KevinD
The Air Force is a classic case of a means to an end becoming an end unto itself.
It needs to go away, for all the reasons listed here and more. On top of the obvious intuitional/leadership problems, they seem to have no understanding of war itself, everything just a target list to be serviced. And General Myers, had to be one of the worst JCS chairman ever.
barrisj
Ah, I almost forgot yet another “mission” the USAF has carved out for itself: war in “cyberspace”! Read Tomdispatch for a very revealing insight into this AF initiative.
“Attention Geeks and Hackers
Uncle Sam’s Cyber Force Wants You!
By William J. Astore
Recently, while I was on a visit to Salon.com, my computer screen momentarily went black. A glitch? A power surge? No, it was a pop-up ad for the U.S. Air Force, warning me that an enemy cyber-attack could come at any moment — with dire consequences for my ability to connect to the Internet. It was an Outer Limits moment. Remember that eerie sci-fi show from the early 1960s? The one that began in a blur with the message, “There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission….” It felt a little like that.”
…
http://tinyurl.com/54ylbq
Throwin Stones
A close personal friend is a civilian at WPAFB working on Systems and Reengineering. From what I can gather, the bureaucracy of the AF renders it hard to get anything done.
On a side note – don’t the new AF commercials boast about protecting Cyberspace?
Dayv
Isn’t this sort of thing normal for an empire in decline?
J. Michael Neal
My father learned it teaching at the Air Force Academy 40 years ago.
KevinD
Yeah, I think we seeing a lot of signs lately.
Thepanzer
Your all wrong, it’s the new PT uniform. You heard me. The AF recently adopted a new PT uniform with mandatory running shorts that look too fruity for the Lt character on Reno 911 to wear. Gates must have been on an AF base and watched a passing PT formation equipped with the new short shorts and been morally outraged. To add insult to injury the other services were upset that AF members were given an additional service ribbon for “accepting a new uniform during time of war and accessorizing beyond the call of duty.” There ya go.
KevinD
“I hate ALL officers”
Corporal Steiner, “Cross of Iron”
calipygian
We have a winner.
calipygian
We have a winner.
Tsulagi
That hasn’t changed. In the earlier days of OIF there were units who had more losses to AF CAS than to the bad guys. The British went ballistic when it became apparent our AF pilots were a little challenged in telling apart T-72s used by Iraq from their Challengers. When those AF suckers get the call coming in balls on fire wired on their go-pills, something is going to be blown up. What is secondary.
As for Moseley, Gates was right to shitcan him. Probably no single reason for it, but a collection. Biggest one likely being Moseley’s ignoring Gates direction for AF to focus now on their missions in Afghanistan and Iraq. Along with and under Rummy, Moseley had been a big proponent of RIF (downsizing) to pay for acquiring more of the coolest toys. He didn’t want to change that direction. Gates showed him he doesn’t get to make policy.
Gates seems to be a decent guy. And one that brings some civilian intelligence/sanity to the Pentagon from the Cheney/Rummy/Wolfie days.
Yeah, probably daddy Bush and his consilere, Baker, got the retard son to sack Rummy and install Gates as an attempt to salvage/preserve something of the Bush brand. Helped, but the stupid is still overpowering in the WH and VP residence.
While in their new retro dress uniform requiring them to wear a tie the AF ladies look butch. Uniforms was another area Moseley inserted himself that wasn’t widely appreciated. He was a decider.
Tony J
Wasn’t Gates one of the ‘bright young things’ of the emerging neo-con movement who spent the 1980s replacing disobedient naysayers at the CIA and proding their replacements to produce intelligence reports that ‘proved’ the USSR was a big, scary expansionist bear positively brimming with Red Menace, and absolutely not a failing state on the verge of economic and social collapse?
Not a stand up guy, really.
Alan
J. Michael Neal,
The place where I was born. :) Though, by ’68 we were living at Kirkland AFB in Albuquerque. When we left the AF Academy my father was an Associate Professor in the Department of Engineering Mechanics where he was responsible for the Materials Science program.
Posttoasty
My husband (ANG) returned from a 2 month deployment in Baghdad (Balad AFB) in support of MT National Guard. He left active duty in 1986, got his A&P (Airframe & Powerplant) license and worked in civilian aviation for 10 years while he continued in the Guard, then was hired full-time with his Guard unit. He’s been a dock supervisor for the last 8 years, inspecting and directly working on and modifying F-16’s. The MT guard asked him to act as an inspector at Balad on their planes during the mission, and he was happy to comply.
His active duty counterpart found out he wasn’t “AF Certified” and began treating him like shit. This continued for almost his entire stay. The active duty NCO’s are out of control, and the officers don’t do a f**king thing to reign them in, because they’re intimidated by the NCO’s. There is little to no accountability in the upper ranks, so it bleeds into the lower ranks. Many outside the AF bubble refer to it as the “Chair Force” for the lack of active engagement in the current wars, and with people on the ground running amok, it’s no wonder. Flying support missions is necessary, but when the sr. leadership starts balking at supplying additional support in the form of Predator drones, something is very rotten in the state of Denmark. Cooperate already!
MNPundit
Seems simple to me.
Find the Stargate and send the Air Force out to battle the aliens.
Seriously, the uses for the airforce should be reconnaissance and fighting aliens in space.
Li
MNPundit
Don’t joke about that, I think they have appropriated that job for themselves already, stargate or no. If you think their tendency of creating international incidents is bad, wait until they start and intergalactic one.