{"id":186292,"date":"2014-03-08T21:18:00","date_gmt":"2014-03-09T03:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/03\/08\/books-to-read-grounded-the-case-for-abolishing-the-united-states-air-force\/"},"modified":"2014-03-08T21:18:00","modified_gmt":"2014-03-09T03:18:00","slug":"books-to-read-grounded-the-case-for-abolishing-the-united-states-air-force","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/03\/08\/books-to-read-grounded-the-case-for-abolishing-the-united-states-air-force\/","title":{"rendered":"Books to Read:  Grounded: The Case for Abolishing the United States Air Force"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve got to read this book.  Professor Robert Farley, an assistant professor at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce at the University of Kentucky has written a book <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kentuckypress.com\/live\/title_detail.php?titleid=3719\">calling for the abolition of the US Air Force as an independent branch of the service<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">The United States needs airpower, but does it need an air force? In <i>Grounded<\/i>,  Robert M. Farley persuasively argues that America should end the  independence of the United States Air Force (USAF) and divide its assets  and missions between the United States Army and the United States Navy.  <\/p>\n<p>In the wake of World War I, advocates of the Air Force argued  that an organizationally independent air force would render other  military branches obsolete. These boosters promised clean, easy wars:  airpower would destroy cities beyond the reach of the armies and would  sink navies before they could reach the coast. However, as Farley  demonstrates, independent air forces failed to deliver on these promises  in World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the first Gulf War,  the Kosovo conflict, and the War on Terror. They have also had perverse  effects on foreign and security policy, as politicians have been tempted  by the vision of devastating airpower to initiate otherwise  ill-considered conflicts. The existence of the USAF also produces turf  wars with the Navy and the Army, leading to redundant expenditures,  nonsensical restrictions on equipment use, and bad tactical decisions. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I certainly agree with this idea.&nbsp; The raison d&#8217;\u00eatre for an independent air force is Douhet&#8217;s theory about how strategic bombing could win wars.<\/p>\n<p>History has shown this to be completely false.&nbsp; Strategic bombing with the possible exception of the use of nuclear weapons against Japan, have never won wars, nor do they appear to have shortened wars.<\/p>\n<p>H\/t <a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/war-is-boring\/ef5ac0f4a117\">War is Boring<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve got to read this book. Professor Robert Farley, an assistant professor at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce at the University of Kentucky has written a book calling for the abolition of the US Air Force as an independent branch of the service: The United States needs airpower, but does it need &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[991,1007,1006,1214],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academe","category-aviation","category-military","category-reform"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186292"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186292\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}