ARSENAL OF AIRPOWERARSENAL OF AIRPOWER, Wydawnictwa anglo i rosyjskojęzyczne
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ARSENAL OF AIRPOWER: USAF Aircraft Inventory 1950-2009 By Col. James C. Ruehrmund Jr., USAF (Ret.) and Christopher J. Bowie A Mitchell Institute Study | November 2010 Brig. Gen. Billy Mitchell On September 12, 1918 at St. Mihiel in France, Col. Wil- liam F. Mitchell became the irst person ever to command a major force of allied aircraft in a combined-arms opera- tion. This battle was the debut of the US Army ighting under a single American commander on European soil. Under Mitchell’s control, more than 1,100 allied aircraft worked in unison with ground forces in a broad ofen- sive—one encompassing not only the advance of ground troops but also direct air attacks on enemy strategic tar- gets, aircraft, communications, logistics, and forces beyond the front lines. Mitchell was promoted to Brigadier General by order of Gen. John J. Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Force, in recognition of his com- mand accomplishments during the St. Mihiel ofensive and the subsequent Meuse-Argonne ofensive. After World War I, General Mitchell served in Washington and then became Commander, First Provisional Air Brigade, in 1921. That summer, he led joint Army and Navy demonstration attacks as bombs delivered from aircraft sank several captured German vessels, including the SS Ostfriesland. His determination to speak the truth about airpower and its importance to America led to a court-martial trial in 1925. Mitchell was convicted, and re- signed from the service in February 1926. Mitchell, through personal example and through his writing, inspired and en- couraged a cadre of younger airmen. These included future General of the Air Force Henry H. Arnold, who led the two million-man Army Air Forces in World War II; Gen. Ira Eaker, who commanded the irst bomber forces in Europe in 1942; and Gen. Carl Spaatz, who became the irst Chief of Staf of the United States Air Force upon its charter of independence in 1947. Mitchell died in 1936. One of the pallbearers at his funeral in Wisconsin was George Catlett Marshall, who was the chief ground-force planner for the St. Mihiel ofensive. ABOUT THE MITCHELL INSTITUTE FOR AIRPOWER STUDIES: The Mitchell Institute for Airpower Studies, founded by the Air Force Association, seeks to honor the leadership of Brig. Gen. William F. Mitchell through timely and high-quality research and writing on airpower and its role in the security of this nation. ABOUT THE AUTHORS: James C. Ruehrmund Jr. is a retired Air Force Reserve colonel. He holds master’s degrees in history and business administration and is currently employed by Deloitte Consulting. Christopher J. Bowie is currently Corporate Director of the Northrop Grum- man Analysis Center. He holds a doctorate in history from Oxford University and has held a variety of positions at the RAND Corporation, the Air Staf, and Northrop Grumman Corporation. Published by Mitchell Institute Press © 2010 Air Force Association Design by Darcy Harris ARSENAL OF AIRPOWER: USAF Aircraft Inventory 1950-2009 By Col. James C. Ruehrmund Jr., USAF (Ret.) and Christopher J. Bowie A Mitchell Institute Study November 2010 A Mitchell Institute Study Foreword This Mitchell Study presents a valuable new resource for re- search on airpower. Printed in the Appendix are tables of the United States Air Force aircraft inventory from 1950 through 2009. This brand of force structure analysis gained traction in the late 1970s and early 1980s when adjustments to the conventional force posture across the services were essential strategic tools in countering a resurgent Soviet military. Asymmetric threats and hybrid wars were not center-stage. A very symmetrical, well-equipped, and iercely committed adversary sat across the inner German border. Fine-tuning force structure was no aca- demic exercise. It meant the diference between holding a So- viet attack or losing Western Europe. Dollars were limited, then, too, and betting on the wrong posture was unacceptable. Before this, there was no single source for such extended data on the airpower inventory as it became a dominant element of US national security. Air Force Magazine’s long-running annual “USAF Almanac,” which presents aircraft inventory data, be- came especially telling as the aging of the inventory grew seri- ous over the last decade. However, the data in those almanacs were not collected in a single place, and they did not cover the years back to 1950. Yet force structure analysis made a great gateway to strategy. One summer, I worked briely for the same Dr. Kevin Lewis while I was an intern at RAND. His project was about mid-level con- tingencies, and it was ahead of trend. Sure enough, after 1991 these came to dominate force planning under the names “ma- jor contingency operations” and “major theater war” and stuck around for the next 20 years. Dr. Christopher Bowie and Col. James Ruehrmund, USAF (Ret.), have delivered the irst data tool of its kind. Their database stands alone as a major historical reference. Within its rows and columns lives the story of how America built the aircraft in its Air Force through Korea and Vietnam; the massive strategic bomb- er forces supported by tankers; and the rise of precision attack capabilities. It also measures the planned reshaping of the force after 1991. Here rests the data behind the famous fat spike in aircraft inventory from Korea to the mid-1970s. The inventory starts out with specialized platforms bought in quantity. The Air Force retired them rapidly, replacing them with newer designs or eventually, by block upgrades to the basic type. Some air- craft, like the B-52, the C-130, and the KC-135 enter the inven- tory almost uneventfully, with little indication that the types will remain at work and at war six decades later. In the past decade, force structure analysis fell out of vogue. To some, it became synonymous with budget drills. After 9/11, the soaring interest in counterinsurgency war techniques pushed conventional force structure analysis even further of the stage. Perhaps the inal decoupling of strategy and planning came with the 2009 QDR which espoused countless missions but with no clear link to spending priorities and major war force posture. At the time, this was explained in testimony to Congress as ac- cepting “medium risk.” It turned out to be at least as much a case of losing interest in the type of serious analysis practiced so well by Lewis, William Kaufman, and others. In the inal portion of the database comes the drop-of after the Cold War. Each aircraft category suddenly has fewer rows of types. Totals for the ighter force fall sharply as precision at- tack capabilities allow a full 40 percent decline in the size of the primary ighter force from 1991 to 2009. What Bowie and Ruehrmund have produced is force structure analysis at its best. It comes at a time when the Air Force is in- exorably committed to something it’s never had to do before. Over the next decades, USAF will of necessity retain many “legacy” systems with 50- to 70-year-old designs and fuselages nearly as old. They will mix with and be enabled by small—in fact, historically miniscule—quantities of new aircraft such as the F-22, which makes its appearance in the Bowie and Ruerh- mund database. Much rich detail remains to be mined from this work. Bowie and Ruehrmund wrote a long essay at the beginning to “provide a brief historical overview of key USAF trends and issues to illus- trate the potential utility of this database,” in their words. It is, in fact, a very concise history in itself. With little elaboration, the authors call out major trends in the data and conclusions that speak for themselves. Read on for an informative look at the past—and sobering preparation for choices of the future. What stands out is both the efort and the quality of this type of work. The authors pay homage to the inspiration of the late Dr. Kevin Lewis of RAND, a brilliant and eccentric practitioner of the art of force structure analysis. “In presentations,” the authors recalled, “Lewis would note that when you were in the midst of a riot, everything seemed chaotic, but if you were in a helicop- ter overlooking the riot, patterns would emerge that ofered unique insights.” Rebecca Grant, Director Mitchell Institute for Airpower Studies November 2010 3 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |
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