Midrats Today

This afternoon I’ll be on Midrats with EagleOne and CDR Sal.  We’ll talk politics, strategy, AirSea Battle, what not, and so forth.  Coincidentally, I just read this excellent Harold Winton article on Army-Air Force collaboration 1973-1990.  Key points:

The relative cohesion and strength of the Army-Air Force partnership from 1973 to 1990 can be attributed in rough priority to:

• the unifying effect of the NATO defense mission;

• the close cooperation of personalities at or near the top of each service;

• a leadership shift in the Air Force that put fighter rather than bomber pilots in the majority of influential positions; and

• the clarity of the Army’s vision of how it intended to fight a future war that tended to pull the Air Force in its wake.

…There was, however, also a set of forces that tended to pull the services in opposite directions. These included:

• the operational differences between the media in which they fight;

• the cultural implications these differences engender;

• varying institutional structures for doctrinal formulation; and

• the capabilities of emerging technology.

Worth thinking about in context of USN-USAF cooperation in the Pacific.