Air Force Brass Nuked

As is being reported everywhere,Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Michael Moseley and Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne have been asked to resign. The proximate cause appears to have been the mishandling of nuclear weapons last year, but it’s fair to say that’s only the tip of the iceberg; SecDef Gates has been extremely critical of the Air Force, both regarding its performance in Iraq and Afghanistan and its public relations strategy in the United States. It’ll be no secret to the readers of this blog that I believe the problems with the Air Force run too deep to be solved with firings like this; the reason that the Air Force is having difficulty figuring out its roles in the Middle East, its public relations strategy, and its force structure is that it’s an organization without a coherent 21st century mission. It doesn’t help, of course, that the Air Force brass decided to try to seize greater slices of the bureaucratic and procurement pie just as it reached the height of organizational incoherence…