By David Ignatius
Washingtonpost.com, July 5, 2013
For an illustration of why the federal government has become so unmanageable, consider the Air Force's attempt last year to cut its budget by retiring unneeded warplanes. This sensible policy ran into a shredder — largely because of the political clout of the Air National Guard and the Air Force Reserve.
Governors united across party lines to protest the potential loss of their pet C-130s and other planes. Members of Congress lined up behind the potent lobbying pressure of the Guard and the reserves. The result: The Air Force was ordered not to make the cuts it thought were best for the nation’s defense, and it instead had to retain scores of planes it wanted to retire.
Phi Beta Iota: Ignatius is a shill for the establishment and prints what they feed him. The C-130 is the ONLY aircraft in the inventory that can both carry major payloads and land anywhere, and especially in remote regions of Africa, the Americas, and Asia. What this is really about is the strategic dishonesty of the US Air Force. They have been corrupt for decades, a wholly owned subsidiary of Lockheed, and totally divorced from reality. Reality calls for a long-haul Air Force (not one that has to rent aircraft from Russia to resupply Afghanistan), an air-mobile Army, and a complete inventory of theater-capable aircraft such as the C-130 that can move loads from major hubs to everywhere regardless of field conditions. The Nation Guard is a very good place to maintain that inventory for two reasons: 01) the USA is going to have many more natural disasters and severely damaging storms as long as the US military continues to play ignorantly with HAARP and geoengineering; and 02) the Nation Guard is where all of the military-civil capabilities should be kept, including the medical, civil affairs, military police, and a new communications, computing, and educational corps. When they are mobilized, the C-130 is the single best aircraft for both domestic relief and foreign peace operations. The US military is out of control; not only are they not receiving intelligence with integrity, at the flag and senior executive levels they have no interest in receiving intelligence with integrity.
See Also:
2013 Robert Steele: Reflections on Reform 2.2 Numbers for 30% DoD Cut over 2-4 Years
2012 Itemization of Information Pathologies
2011 Peace from Above: Future of Intelligence & Air Power
2011 National Intelligence and National Defense
2011 Cyber-Command or IO 21 + IO Roots
