A Revolutionary Approach: Cooperation
E., G.
A Revolutionary Approach: Cooperation Promising military innovations like the remotely piloted drone often are opposed by the services because' they 'don't fit the plan for the most...
...Finally, the Air Force agreed to halt development of the Air Force tank-a gun-and-missile armored vehicle it was designing to defend air bases...
...Whew...
...Tiny kamikaze drones are another idea that could go to either service and, as a result, are going to no one...
...This is the Army's big plum in the .agreement insurance that the Apache will have a monopoly over fighting tanks at the front-but from a commander's standpoint it is another bureaucratic obstacle to devising creative tactics that will surprise and confuse the enemy, rather than acting out a predictable script on cue...
...Mitchell later found out the "bombs" were sandbags...
...At one point the Navy bombed the surplus battleship, Washington, with what it said were explosives,-'and when the ship didn't sink, declared victory...
...Trouble is, not only did it not work in tests, but if it did work, an Air Force study found, during combat it would cost more than $1 billion a day to operate for a single corps...
...Watch to see if Congress restores funds for Assault Breaker development...
...Nothing alters the inefficient overlap between the two services' antitank systems: the Army's Apache helicopter, Hellfire missile, and 'Cop perhead shell...
...To put that number in perspective, the total U.S...
...It allows the Army to concentrate on its favored approach, MLRS, and the Air Force to concentrate on its favorite, the cruise missile, all the while trying to arrive at a "joint statement of need...
...What's more interesting about the agreement is ;' what it doesn't say...
...The National Guard, for one, issued a report two years ago endorsing it...
...The Army, in turn, seldom shows much interest in ground defense ,of harbors and air bases...
...Also part of the agreement-missed entirely by the press-is a decision to "defer" for at least five years the ambitious Assault Breaker program...
...But worst of all, it costs less than onefourth what Army and Air Force antitank aircraft cost...
...One of the few items on which both services found themselves in hearty agreement was that neither would consider an airplane called the Piper Enforcer...
...In fact the "revolutionary" document takes pains to guarantee that the present budget hierarchy will not be disturbed, spelling out both services', right to competing ground attack weapons, and goes on to impose a ridiculously stringent new interservice restriction: A10 airplanes will be allowed to attack only the fringes of a battlefield or 43.5 or more miles behind enemy lines...
...During the 1950s the Army, Navy, and Air Force grappled with each other shamelessly over control of nuclear weapons, and at one point all three services had their own space programs...
...The Air Force gets airborne radar-jamming systems, the Army gets ground-based electronic warfare...
...The Navy and the Air Force seldom leave much money in their budgets for transport ships or planes, since transport would serve mainly Army troops...
...The long-standing argument about' air base defense is not resolved...
...the services' merely promise to "jointly develop a plan to resolve" it...
...General Charles Gabriel, the Air Force chief of staff, and General John Wickham, the Army chief, held a news conference to announce a 31-point "memorandum of understanding" on what Gabriel called a "revolutionary approach" to combat-Air Force-Army cooperation...
...A Revolutionary Approach: Cooperation Promising military innovations like the remotely piloted drone often are opposed by the services because' they 'don't fit the plan for the most important battle of all-the battle against the other services...
...The agreement-actually it wasn't exactly an agreement but "the initial step in the establishment of a long-term, dynamic process" that would begin with a bold "study of future realignment of roles and missions" insures, General Wickham said, that if the U.S...
...Another Whew...
...is attacked, "we will go to war jointly...
...Sometimes it works the other way around, and good ideas go begging because they do not fall clearly under any one service's jurisdiction...
...Will he volunteer to give up Cobra Judy-the Air Force's ship...
...For one thing, the Piper Enforcer was privately developed...
...The services will cooperate on development of a common friend-or-foe identification system...
...This is an antitank plane based on the World War II P51 Mustang, which many military analysts believe would actually make a better ground-attack weapon than jets or helicopters...
...Right now the JVX tilt-rotor aircraft-a cross between a helicopter and an airplane-is stagnating because it isn't clear who should get it, the Army or the Air Force...
...Although the Piper Enforcer has performed well in many tests (see "The Better, Cheaper Plane the Pentagon Didn't Want," George E. Hopkins, March 1977), and is now in operational demonstration at Edwards Air Force Base, both services bitterly oppose it...
...G.E...
...General Gabriel says next he will conclude a cooperation pact with the Navy...
...Assault Breaker, an idea beloved by many defense intellectuals and endorsed by presidential candidate Walter Mondale, was on paper the greatest doeverything wonder weapon of all time, promising not only to hit enemy tanks far behind the lines but to hit them square on the tops of their turrets, their weakest points...
...For another, it isn't state-of-the-art-gee-whiz technology...
...And so on...
...defense budget is less than a billion dollars a day...
...Right...
...During the 1920s and 1930s, for instance, the Navy vehemently fought Billy Mitchell's bombers, and lied, not once but repeatedly, about tests it claimed proved ships could not be sunk from the air...
...Good thing war didn't start the day before...
...rather they took some areas of redundancy and split them roughly down the middle: The Air Force will get future antiaircraft missiles, the Army will get future antihelicopter weapons...
...Close reading of the 31 points reveals, however, that the Army and Air Force resolved little or nothing...
...the Air Force's A1"0 airplane and Maverick missile...
...The memorandum further advances "cooperation" by all but abandoning one of the few interservice programs now in existence, the Joint Tactical Missile, an attempt to develop a big -conventional missile that could be either ground- or airlaunched against supply depots and similar targets...
...Every decade or so the services announce plans to end such infighting, and in .late May there came another...
Vol. 16 • July 1984 • No. 6
