Whither the Air Force?

Don't think so. A few bloggers have been suggesting the Air Force has lost its relevancy in this age of asymmetric warfare and its tactical components should absorbed by the respective services they support (ground attack and air control to the Army for instance).

I'd posit that the Air Force mission has evolved into so much more than cruising the wild blue yonder, dropping bombloads on a faceless enemy 60,000 feet below. The Air Force's capability of military airlift is unparalleled, as is its ability to turn an empty field into a forward operating base for tactical air within hours. Those talents can be put to use in more ways than strategic bombing:

The Air Force doesn't just drop bombs. The service does all kinds of "soft power" missions, too -- training doctors, strengthening local economies, and building America's image abroad.

That's the reaction I got from a bunch of Air Force types, after a recent post, suggesting that "hard power" was topic #1, when the service discussed its contribution to fighting insurgencies.

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'Winning hearts and minds', a tactic that (unlike the Bush administration's use of the term) must go hand in hand with counterinsurgency efforts. Unlike the PNAC/Neocon version of the world, you can't beat people into the dust and expect them to comply with your dictates. You have to show them you actually give a damn about what happens to them or their cooperation lasts as long as your wallet is open. Haven't we learned that in Afghanistan?

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But nowhere is the Air Force flexing its soft power more than in the Caribbean and Central and South America, argues Lieutenant General Norman Seip, who oversees the service's efforts in the region, as commander of Air Forces Southern.

During 30 "medical readiness events" in 2008, AFSOUTH teams "treated more than 100,000 patients in 14 countries, accomplishing 675 life-altering surgeries such as cleft palate repair and vision corrections, as well as 1500 dental procedures," Seip tells Danger Room.

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It's the quality of life issues the Air Force can help with better than any other service, those oriented almost exclusively toward supporting the combat mission.

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New Horizons is an annual infrastructure program sponsored by U.S. Southern Command. In 2008, Air Force New Horizons building projects in the region helped to erect schools and clinics, drill wells and bring services to remote populations. The three clinics and two school houses constructed by Airmen now serve more than 20,000 Peruvian citizens while medical personnel took the opportunity to treat more than 12,000 local patients in the province.

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Granted, the strategic threat faced by the United States is nowhere near what we were looking at during the Cold War and the future of the Air Force will not be centered around the nuclear deterrent, but the Air Force can play a large humanitarian role in the 21st Century and do it better than the other services. The ability to move large amounts of personnel and materiel quickly and efficiently is something not to be taken lightly in this time of accelerated climate change and unrest around the world.

Aside from their combat support operations, the Air Force's role in humanitarian operations around the world cannot be understated. If anything, the organization of the military in general should be reviewed for redundancy among the services (the F-35 program is an attempt - though halfhearted - to rectify some of it) and to objectively cut costs. As the Navy did with the battleships, the strategic nuclear force should be relegated to dinosaur status (a nuclear threat in the 21st Century won't come from ballistic missiles over the North Pole) but the abolition of the Air Force would be a mistake. We can't afford to make that mistake when the people of the world look to us for help when hard times befall them.