Gambling with House Money
Three Things About the Air Force's TACP Force Reduction
Most U.S. Air Force airmen conduct their roles distant from close quarters combat. Tactical Air Control Party (TACP) airmen are an exception, providing an in situ liaison to facilitate timely and precise air support to maneuvering ground forces. The TACP community is a critical and central component of the service’s Close Air Support (CAS) mission, by which it provides air cover for ground troops through the A-10 and other platforms.
Digression. Basically, it’s like this: we’d much prefer an adversary capitulate and come to terms after we shock and paralyze its military and industrial capacity through simultaneous and precise attacks on its vital centers and command elements. But more often than not, and indeed 100 percent of the time historically, we will still need to seize and control territory to achieve our war objectives. This means Americans and allies on the ground confronting a hostile enemy armed with lethal weapons. And this means the need for winged top cover to give our forces a decisive battlefield advantage.
That context in mind, let’s consider the Air Force’s recent decision to reduce its TACP workforce by around 44% over the next three years, as reported by Air Force Times. Just over 1,600 positions will be eliminated. It’s not clear what analysis of estimated combat requirements gives the Air Force confidence it should make this move.
In fact, the tossed and chopped word salad provided by the service’s spokesperson to explain this reduction is devoid of content.
“The Department of the Air Force continues to work hard to create a force of airmen and [Space Force] guardians with the right mix of skills to meet the mission requirements today and address future pacing challenges. We’ll continue to manage our personnel programs thoughtfully and deliberately, recognizing that people are our most valuable resource.”
It’s not unduly harsh to say this is gibberish. But in the many years I’ve observed the Air Force’s attitudes and actions around the CAS mission, it’s also not uncommon. Over the past decade, Air Force officials have demonstrated open scorn for the CAS mission, earning repeated legislative and rhetorical rebukes from Congress. Former Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh got himself sufficiently tripped up by his efforts to push the A-10 into retirement without a replacement that he was openly labelled “disingenuous and embarrassing” by the late Sen. John McCain.
On many occasions, McCain publicly castigated Welsh, bearing his frustration at the Air Force’s corporate contempt for CAS. Here’s but one example near the end of Welsh’s tenure, his fatigue from many previous beatings visible as he takes yet another.
But such muscular oversight, supported behind the scenes by advocacy groups and defense scholars feeding Congressional leaders critical insight, has not stopped the Air Force from marginalizing CAS in its resource allocation, organizational structure, and acquisition strategy. TACP reductions are just another step in a long march.
Here are three things to understand about this move.
It reflects the Air Force’s vision of itself. Rank-and-file Americans think of our military services as the ultimate examples of “can-do” American spirit: figure out what needs to be done, and solve the problem. While this is what happens in execution, there’s a bureaucratic battle fought well in advance over where the boundary lines will be drawn to separate what is an Air Force mission and what isn’t. Since its birth as an independent service in 1947, the Air Force has been fixated on ensuring its contributions remain distinctive. If they can be done by another service, this is a threat to the idea of independent airpower, and therefore a threat to airpower untethered from the control of a ground force commander. The Air Force has always seen CAS as an extension of land force combat power rather than a distinctive mission it alone can provide, such as air superiority or strategic bombardment. It therefore has always resisted ownership of this mission, resulting in a fractured corporate psyche as it has nonetheless owned and performed it with merciless effectiveness, instigating the evolution of entire constituencies and communities of practice. This fracturing has been exacerbated since the early 1990s. Desert Storm gave the Air Force’s legacy self-concept new life by showcasing stealth and precision as the means to unravel a technologically advanced enemy’s air defenses and create a fast track to decisive victory. Since that moment, the service has zealously pursued high-tech solutions, disfavoring whatever it must in order to free the budget to do so. The F-35 acquisition program has come to define the service’s entire strategy. It now confuses acquisition of its chosen means with the duty to achieve its assigned ends. TACP reductions are just the latest step in a long march to remove unwanted roles and missions from the service register. The service sees these missions as defects, but it of course can’t admit this openly. So it persists alternatively with a series of fantasies, such as the idea CAS won’t be necessary below brigade level in future wars, or that CAS will be effectively provided by the F-35, or my personal favorite, that CAS is really just the placement of iron on a set of coordinates and can therefore be done by high-altitude bombers. That’s a joke, and very much dark humor to those responsible to take and hold territory on the ground.
It’s dishonest. The reduction in TACPs is sold by the Air Force as part of its strategic pivot away from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and toward preparation to confront a near-peer adversary in major combat operations. But this is a bill of goods. Confronting Russia or China means a larger scale, more land force involvement, more maneuvering, more large-scale battles between more evenly matched formations, and therefore a higher demand for CAS. The idea that we’ll need less CAS to fight bigger and more intense wars is comically absurd. What should be happening now is a ramp up in CAS capacity and the development of tighter integration between air defense suppression assets and those providing ground force support. This is what will allow CAS to happen when it becomes necessary for armies to maneuver before an enemy’s air defenses are totally nullified. This adaptation isn’t happening because the Air Force does not want this mission. It knows the mission will still need done, but presumes that if it defaults, the Army and Marine Corps will grow their own capacity.
It could have a massive cost. After the Air Force scales down its CAS capacity, Americans operating in hostile territory and held at risk by lethally equipped enemies will not have the very best support they could have if a fight breaks out. The Air Force is willing to bet that its sister services will close the mission gap themselves before it matters, or that its vision of future combat being a largely bloodless series of enemy capitulations earned by superior technology will come true. But this is betting with house money. If a nasty war comes along during the interval between the Air Force cashiering its CAS capacity and the moment sister services replace that capacity, a lot of blood will be spilled unnecessarily. Not by the bureaucrats and techno-zealots who successfully maneuvered the nation’s air service away from a classic airpower mission … but by the nation’s unsuspecting and duty-bound sons and daughters, who depend on its adult leaders to be strategically sober and weigh risks rationally … not on scales laden with abstract theories, feelings, or preferences.
As an airman, I want the Air Force to own and exercise every airpower mission, because the service is likely to do it better than any other organization on Earth ever could. Citing: seventy-five years of evidence.
When it comes to TACPs, there is nothing to suggest they will be under reduced demand in the future, and plenty to suggest just the opposite. This is a bad move.
TC is a retired Air Force officer and an advocate for the Air Force’s Close Air Support community.