We are HUGE fans of General Welsh. We never hear him speak without feeling better about wearing blue, the decision we made many years ago, and the future of our Air Force. He understands and talks about our heritage in a way that few can equal, and every time we are inspired in a way that we haven’t been for a long time. That said…
A number of things struck us in his speech at the 2014 Air Force Association’s Air and Space Conference. We’ll just mention one here, and see if a discussion ensues. At minute 44:30, General Welsh introduces a video featuring an Airman working in the cyberspace trenches. When the video ends at around 45:30, General Welsh offers the injunction that we need to start thinking about what cyber does for the air component in the theater of operations. We were a little gobsmacked by the irony of juxtaposing a young Captain proclaiming (correctly) that we are in the Billy Mitchell days of cyber with a parochial Service proclamation that operations in, through, and from another operational domain should be focused on service to the air component. It’s almost as if a Billy Mitchell diatribe on the independence of airpower (he was a vehement sort of fellow) had been followed by General Charles Summerall with a claim that we need to start thinking about what air can do for the land component. Perhaps we’re finding oddity where there is none, or perhaps we’re overly sensitive to an oddity like this, but we find this thinking disturbingly parochial. (To be fair, much of the rest of the discussion vis-à-vis cyber is far less ironic.)
Are we crazy and swatting at shadows? What did you see in this speech (or the SECAF’s speech, the CMSAF’s speech, or some other AFA event) that bears thinking about?
The conclusions and opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the official position of the US Government, the Department of Defense, or any military service.
