But while the Air Force considers whether it needs a light-attack capability, SOCOM Commander Gen. Richard Clarke said a light-attack platform is essential for its forces and the mission it serves.
“Light attack is a need for SOCOM, and I think it’s a need for our nation,” Clarke said…
Air Force leaders are more tentative about the need for a light-attack capability. While Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein has spoken about how a light-attack plane would allow the service to accomplish low-end missions more cheaply, he’s also said the service won’t divert funds from priorities like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, B-21 bomber or KC-46 tanker to pay for a light-attack program.
That was from a nice update on Defense News, “US special ops command at odds with Air Force over need for light-attack aircraft.”
Somehow, the Air Force cannot fork over money to initiate a full-scale development which the operational users are clamoring for, despite having a $45 billion FY 2020 RDT&E budget — which is 40% higher than the Army and Navy RDT&E budgets combined. Is the Air Force saying SOCOM is wrong? Or are they saying, “if you want it you buy it!”
Unfortunately for SOCOM — who has had a great deal of acquisition success for lower level programs — their RDT&E budget is $820 million and procurement, only $2.5 billion. You’d think past success should be rewarded with higher budgets and failure punished with lower budgets, but in the DOD the case seems to be the opposite.
The way the Air Force talks, it is as though a light-attack (leave alone heavy-attack) aircraft is a debatable prospect and we require more experimentation of platforms to determine what is really needed in future conflicts. Another view is that they are attempting to kill by delay a known need with several prototypes already available. The future studies are still important, but that won’t result in capabilities for at least 5 or 10 years or more.
Of course, we’d never have had even the A-10 if the Air Force had its way. The F-16 was also put into an attack role it wasn’t suited for in order to maintain the air-to-air prestige of the F-15, but even the F-16 wasn’t wanted by the Air Force. In the Gulf War, the F-16 was supposedly dubbed the “A-16” until the A-10s were demanded by ground units.
The Gulf War perhaps provides a hint as to whether the Air Force culture is actually concerned with realistically evaluating different requirements, or whether it is stuck in WWII-era strategy (as its FY 2020 program priorities reveals). Here is Pierre Sprey testifying before Congress on the different mentalities of the Air Force and Marines/Army:
The air was the same old classic attrition warfare, interdiction bombing stuff we did in WW-2. There were no new ideas in the actual strategy of the air war. There may have been some new tactics, particularly in the A-10 side, but basically the overall direction of the air war was the same old stuff that generals have been doing in picking bombing target lists since 1942.
The ground war was a brilliantly different plan of campaign. It. reflects the fact there were a lot of young staff officers on the staff of General Schwarzkopf who heard and understood John Boyd’s ideas. General Schwarzkopf saw the merit of those ideas and approved that plan.
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