By Marina Malenic
Defense Secretary Robert Gates last week warned the Air Force not to revert to relying on 20th century capabilities and methods after the current low-intensity conflicts in the Middle East and Asia wind down.
“The versatility on display by the Air Force in combat theaters these past few years befits the greatest traditions of the force,” Gates said. “Yet I’m concerned that the view still lingers in some corners that once I depart as secretary, and once U.S. forces draw down in Iraq and in Afghanistan…things can get back to what some consider to be real Air Force normal.”
In a March 4 speech to cadets at the U.S. Air Force Academy outlining “what the Air Force of the 21st century must look,” Gates said that this return to business as usual “must not happen.”
“Stability and security missions, counterterrorism, train, assist and equip, persistent battlefield ISR, close air support, search and rescue, and the ever-critical transport missions are with us to stay,” he said.
Gates has long advocated institutional change to meet the needs of the current, low-intensity wars.
“I freely acknowledge that this focus has, at various times, brushed up against the traditional preferences and bureaucratic sacred cows of all the services,” he added.
For example, Gates has pushed the Air Force to field larger numbers of unmanned intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets into theater, a process he last week compared to “pulling teeth.”
However, Gates added that he believes air power will be “indispensable to maintaining American military strength, deterrence, and global reach for decades to come.” While U.S. “ownership of the skies” has been taken for granted in recent decades, near-peer competitors are rising to meet the challenge, Gates said. He noted that countries like China are developing long-range precision weapons, including anti-ship cruise and ballistic missiles, quieter submarines and advanced air defense missiles.
Such capabilities, he said, “appear designed to neutralize the advantages the U.S. military has enjoyed since the end of the Cold War–unfettered freedom of movement and the ability to project power to any region across the globe by surging aircraft, ships, troops and supplies.”
Gates applauded the Air Force and Navy for beginning to develop an Air-Sea Battle Concept to counter that development.
“This country requires all the capabilities we have in the services–[aircraft] carriers, tacair, tanks and amphibious assault [vehicles],” Gates said. “But the way we use them in the 21st century will almost certainly not be the way they were used in the 20th.
“Above all, the services must not return to the last century’s mindset after Iraq and Afghanistan,” he added, “but prepare and plan for a very different world than we all left in 2001.”