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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2011 > May > 01
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Editorial: Gates pushed Air Force to new focus
Robert Gates was not just any secretary of defense, certainly not from the Air Force point of view. He was pivotal.
He had long ago announced his plan to leave this year. President Barack Obama has now announced his replacement: CIA Director Leon Panetta.
In part because Secretary Gates served two presidents from 2006 to 2011,
it’s appropriate to associate changes on his watch with him more than George W. Bush or Barack Obama. His impact is symbolized by two facts:
• For decades after World War II, the top uniformed Air Force officer was always a former bomber pilot. Then, starting in the early 1980s, the top officer was always a fighter pilot. But Secretary Gates picked a cargo pilot, that is, one engaged in a relatively unglamorous support mission: getting troops and supplies to war zones.
• Secretary Gates put an end to the F-22 Raptor fighter program, much beloved by many as central to the Air Force’s future.
The pattern: He wanted an Air Force that was less built around combat pilots, that used less expensive equipment, that used unmanned aircraft, that focused on intelligence and reconnaissance, and that was more focused on wars like Iraq and Afghanistan.
He said the Air Force tended to focus too much on the possibility of wars — two at a time, actually — against major powers. He want more attention to wars that are not against a big, technologically advanced military force and are not against a government.
He pointed out that the F-22s that were built before he killed the program were never used in Iraq or Afghanistan.
He was notoriously outspoken and determined to get his way. He complained publicly about the Pentagon’s failure to deploy to Iraq many existing unmanned aircraft (a field in which Wright-Patterson Air Force Base is deeply involved). He expressed frustrations about delays and expenses in acquiring military hardware. He encouraged young officers to challenge the thinking of their superiors.
One day he fired the top civilian and uniformed officials in the Air Force. He actually sent a deputy to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base to deliver the word to Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne, who had just spoken at a Dayton Development Coalition reception in his honor.
The firings followed an official report that had criticized the Air Force’s handling of nuclear matters. The two men were also seen as not in philosophical tune with their boss. The firing was all Secretary Gates, not a response to political pressure.
He certainly had his critics. Some said that, for all his talk about new economies in defense spending, the Pentagon budget reached all-time highs in real terms on his watch, and not just because of the wars.
Others noted that crucial Air Force equipment is decades old and not being replaced as it needs to be.
But he managed to keep a bipartisan coalition pretty much behind him in Congress. He helped keep partisanship from completely overtaking debate about defense the way it has in domestic matters.
He was no enemy of the Air Force. In one of his ventures into surprising outspokenness, he said in February that “any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should have his head examined.”
Beneath the political content of the statement, there’s military content. It’s about the importance of air power.
The Air Force’s importance notwithstanding, the service faces tough budgetary times ahead. President Obama has asked for big cuts. If all the talk from the politicians in both parties these days about the importance of restraining the national debt is to be taken seriously, it’s hard to see how the Pentagon doesn’t take hits.
Mr. Panetta, 72, lacks Secretary Gates’ long background in defense. He seems unlikely to emerge as the same kind of historic figure, at least in shaping the Air Force.
Certainly Secretary Gates’ work is not likely to be reversed by his like-minded, moderate successor. Nevertheless, this departure is genuinely the end of an era.
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