Air Force Chiefs Fired

Wow. [Link]

The Air Force's top civilian and uniformed leaders are being booted out of the Pentagon. Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael "Buzz" Moseley has resigned. Secretary Michael W. Wynne is next.

The move, initially reported by Inside Defense and Air Force Times, isn't exactly a shocker. The Air Force has come under fire for everything from mishandling nukes to misleading ad campaigns to missing out on the importance of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Most importantly, the Air Force's leadership has been on the brink of open conflict for months with Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England. That's because in the halls of the Air Force's chiefs, the talk has been largely about the threats posed by China and a resurgent Russia. Gates wanted the service to actually focus on the wars at hand, in Iraq and Afghanistan. "For much of the past year I’ve been trying to concentrate the minds and energies of the defense establishment on the current needs and current conflicts," he told the Heritage Foundation. "In short, to ensure that all parts of the Defense Department are, in fact, at war."

Last fall, the Pentagon's civilian chiefs shot down an Air Force move to take over almost all of the military's big unmanned aircraft. "There has to be a better way to do this," Moseley complained at the time. Things only got more tense when Gates said that the future of conflict is in small, "asymmetric" wars -- wars in which the Air Force takes a back seat to ground forces. Then Gates noted that the Air Force's most treasured piece of gear, the F-22 stealth fighter, basically has no role in the war on terror. And when a top Air Force general said the service was planning on buying twice as many of the jets -- despite orders from Gates and the rest of the civilian leadership -- he was rebuked for "borderline insubordination."

Relations between Gates and the Air Force chiefs soured further when the Defense Secretary called for more spy drones to be put into the skies above Iraq and Afghanistan. The Air Force complained that all those extra flight hours were turning the roboplane's remote pilots into virtual "prisoners." Gates then publicly chastised the service during the drone buildup, comparing it to "pulling teeth."

This may help morale. [Link]

Defense Secretary Robert Gates didn't just kick the Air Force's two top leaders to the curb yesterday. When he fired chief of Staff General "Buzz" Moseley and Secretary Michael Wynne, he was telling the service that the long, slow decline of its nuclear corps is officially over.

Hallelujah, says one Air Force nuclear missileer.

Until 1992, the Air Force's Strategic Air Command controlled nearly every aspect of the country's nuclear bomber and missile operations. Then SAC was disbanded. The Air Force's nuclear specialists became bureaucratic orphans.