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.
[From Bosses Nuked, Some Air Force Missileers Cheer | Danger Room from Wired.com]
This is probably the less cryptic article about this subject that I have found over the last couple of days. The infighting between the fighter and nuke camps is interesting, it almost reminds me of what the US Navy went through right before the Pearl Harbor attack.
Back in the day there were two camps: the Battleship Admirals (the establishment) and the Aircraft Carrier Admirals (the newcomers). The Battleship Admirals saw the political dangers of the aircraft carrier, it would eventually become the center of the standard Navy battle group arrangement, instead of battleships. So their solution? They fought it like hell.
Pearl Harbor came, and most of the battleships were sunk. The aircraft carriers were away, so WWII in the Pacific was an aircraft carrier war. The end of WWII saw the rise to power of the Aircraft Carrier Admirals.
Now we are going to see a showdown between a camp that is holding weapons they can't use (the nukes), and a camp flying jets that have no real adversary, so many question why we need to buy so many.
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