On Thursday, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates forced Air Force Chief of Staff General Michael Moseley and Secretary of the Air Force Michael Wynne to resign and appointed a former secretary of defense to devise new ways to better guard nuclear weapons. To justify this extraordinary move, Gates has pointed to a Pentagon report chronicling gross negligence in the way the Air Force has been safekeeping its nuclear weapons. However, considering this decapitation of the Air Force leadership comes so quickly after April's verbal attack against the Air Force, something more must be going on behind the scenes.
Gates is going all out to change the anachronism that the US Air Force has become. They want their F-22 high-tech fighter so bad, but they can't admit to themselves the whole concept of pilots is now low-tech. With the creation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), like the Predator and Global Hawk, there is no need to risk the lives of pilots on dangerous reconnaissance missions. The wave of the future is UAV fighters and bombers. Why risk a human's life when a machine can go in his place?
The implications of a UAV future are too painful for the Air Force to even contemplate: they would cease to exist as a separate branch of the military and probably be absorbed back into the Army Air Corps. No wonder the Air Force is pushing for the F-22, and not building the UAV's Gates is requesting. They don't want to work themselves out of a job. But it's too late, and Gates is taking no prisoners on the road to modernization.
Goodbye General Moseley.
Goodbye Secretary Wynne.
Goodbye Air Force.
