End of the Air Force

he Air Force was born of the Cold War, a conflict Merrill McPeak and that defined the service and shaped its forces, organiza- dramatically reshaped the Air tions, and focus for decades. Then, in the late 1980s and Force in 1991 and 1992, creating earlyT 1990s, the Cold War came to an end faster than almost anyone predicted the organization still used today. even a few years earlier. The Berlin Wall came down in 1989, Germany reunited, and the Soviet Union dissolved in December 1991. strategy in March 1990. The strategy is increasingly clear: a role that is the Where would the Air Force go from embraced the end of the Cold War essence of airpower—the ability to there? and prepared for an uncertain “new react fast, far, and overwhelmingly.” The Air Force had already debuted a world order” where the main military Rice quickly captured this essence new strategic framework backed by a challenges would come from regional in “The Air Force and US National sweeping reorganization. This was the conflicts. Security: Global Reach, Global Power,” handiwork of Secretary of the Air Force “As we’re pulled on the one hand a short paper published in June 1990. Donald B. Rice and Chief of Staff Gen. by a changing world and on the other The paper’s main thrust was intro- Merrill A. McPeak. “The Air Force was by a constricting budget, a fundamental ducing a new structure for airpower in not—and could not afford to be—on question emerges: What role will the national defense—in scenarios from autopilot,” Rice later wrote. Air Force play in a new world order?” humanitarian operations to the- Out went the singular focus of US asked Lt. Gen. Jimmie V. Adams, then ater war. Conventional forces were defense strategy: the confrontation in USAF deputy chief of staff for plans essential for regional conflicts, so the Europe. In came a new national security and operations, in 1990. “The answer new force planning called for “an in- s

MAC SAC STRATCOM

s s

s s

AMC TAC ACC

40 AIR FORCE Magazine / July 2012 End of the Cold War Air Force By Rebecca Grant

Gen. Merrill McPeak (l) and Air Force Secretary Donald Rice speak jointly to reporters at the Department of Defense. Air Force reorganization was a top priority for them. creased emphasis on force projection capabilities—even more flexible, rap- idly responding, precise, lethal forces with global reach.” The White House also put the ser- vices on notice that it was time to reform. President George H. W. Bush

advocated “not merely reductions, but s restructuring” of the military in a speech AFSC in Aspen, Colo., in August 1990. What to do next ended up squarely s in the hands of Rice and a new Chief of Staff, McPeak, who took over in October 1990 when his predecessor and friend, Gen. Michael J. Dugan, was fired after just two months on the AFMC job during the buildup for the Persian . “I went in immediately to Don Rice’s office,” McPeak recalled. “I said, ‘Let’s reorganize the Air Force.’ He said, ‘OK, Yes, it was as complicated as it looks. how do you want to do it?’ ” AFLC McPeak served as a fighter pilot in the 1960s, including combat time in Vietnam. He’d come up in a rough AIR FORCE Magazine / July 2012 41 Rice briefs the press corps on the B-2 program in 1992. Rice “What’s important around here?” was and McPeak made Air Combat the question McPeak asked himself. Command the centerpiece of the Perhaps the No. 1 goal was achieving post-Cold War Air Force. greater agility for airpower in regional conflicts small and large. That called DOD photoWard by R.D. for command reorganization to better to drive change into the fabric of integrate forces. McPeak had experi- USAF. “I saw organization as my enced problems with force integration job,” he said. while he commanded . Rice was ready, too. “He let PACAF had C-130s at Yokota AB, me do stuff no other Secretary Japan, but they belonged to Military would have had the courage to Airlift Command. do,” McPeak later said. Similarly, “By Dec. 31, 1990, Rice and owned the tankers based at Kadena I had made all the fundamental AB, Japan. decisions,” McPeak recalled. “In- The Persian Gulf War provided mo- cluding some mistakes we made.” mentum to rationalize the command It was not just the end of the structures. “The unified employment Cold War that drove them. Both of airpower in Desert Storm confirmed were motivated by deep convic- that change was needed within the Air tions about how to optimize USAF. Force,” Rice later explained. “It was a desire to make a stronger Rice and McPeak had plenty of lati- Air Force,” McPeak said. tude for change, and as soon as Desert To be sure, USAF budgets were Storm ended, hints of the reorganiza- tumbling. The four fiscal years tion emerged. First up were SAC and from 1990 to 1993 saw USAF’s . working-class childhood with no father, budget decline from $103.6 billion to “I never could understand the differ- and the Air Force opened up another $83.9 billion, as measured in constant ence between a bomb dropped from a world for him. As a , he Fiscal 1993 dollars. Still, strategy came bomber and a bomb dropped from a worked on the US Air Forces in Europe first. The Air Force “focus is on evolv- fighter,” McPeak said. “What separates staff, held the Air Staff’s top programs ing US national security needs,” Rice strategic from tactical? The target and resources job, and commanded wrote in “Global Reach, Global Power,” doesn’t care.” Pacific Air Forces from 1988 to 1990. and “not simply on fiscal constraints, Desert Storm wiped away the stra- Rice came from a business-oriented though they too are real.” tegic and tactical distinctions, as F-117 family and his father was mayor of “We would want to pursue these fighters flew strategic missions and B- Frederick, Md. Rice earned a degree initiatives even if there were no budget 52s provided tactical, front-line support. in chemical engineering from Notre pressure to do so,” McPeak insisted Rice and McPeak decided to create Dame, served in the Army, and worked as the reorganization took hold. The one single command—Air Combat as a “Whiz Kid” in the McNamara summer of 1992 found USAF upend- Command—as the centerpiece of the- Pentagon before taking over RAND ing organizational structures from the ater airpower. Corp. in 1972, at age 32. He transformed squadron level to major commands. “ will possess RAND from a boutique Air Force think Soon the Cold War behemoth Stra- all the bomb dropping, bullet shoot- tank to a broad-based policy institute tegic Air Command was gone and ing, and support capabilities that we serving the Air Force, Army, and other massive decentralization across the know must be integrated in modern DOD agencies and doing research for service pushed general officers out air combat,” McPeak said at the time. the federal government. of headquarters staffs to command “In other words, it will itself be able Rice and McPeak were cool, cerebral wings at bases. to conduct independent, integrated air personalities. Both in their early 50s, operations.” they were professionals at the top of SAC, MAC, and TAC The subtext here resonated with their game and seized the chance pro- By the time Rice’s and McPeak’s issues raised by Air Force operations vided by fast-moving events to remake initiatives were fully implemented, from Vietnam through Desert Storm. In the Air Force. practically every airman in the force those conflicts, SAC had kept jealous The time was right, despite the hectic had a new master and the Air Force control of its bombers and its crucial pace of events leading up to Operation was primed for an era of expedition- tankers. Regional air force commanders Desert Storm. ary operations. had to work out agreements with SAC The Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 With Rice’s new strategic framework for use of their assets, as SAC still had had taken the military departments out in place, it was time to focus the Air a nuclear deterrent to maintain. How- of the warfighting chain and gave a Force on what McPeak saw as its core ever, commanders chafed at having to service Secretary and Chief consider- task: prevailing in “manned, winged deal with SAC while also deploying able room to maneuver in the areas of combat,” in his words. and fighting. organizing, training, and equipping This streamlined operational phi- Dismantling SAC, long viewed as the services. losophy prized simplicity and eliminat- the crown jewel of Air Force organi- McPeak wanted to move fast. He felt ing clutter at every level of organiza- zations, was no easy task. The storied a four-year term was not much time tion from bases to major commands. command was a Cold War icon, steeped 42 AIR FORCE Magazine / July 2012 McPeak during his tenure as PACAF chief. As USAF Chief of one of the best examples. At one point in Staff, he moved fast to imple- time, the Air Weather Service was part USAF photo ment organizational changes of MAC and boasted 5,000 people and within the Air Force. six weather wings. Rice and McPeak took it apart and set up a field operat- nuclear training, alert missions, ing agency with 1,100 people, headed and weapons handling. “I had by a reporting to the 300 nuclear weapons at Upper Air Staff. The change shed people, put Heyford [UK], and no one was policy at headquarters, and decentral- better at keeping track of them ized operations out of Washington. It than me,” McPeak said. was textbook for what the Chief and What about the ICBMs? Secretary wanted. McPeak decided they, too, The bulwark of the Rice-McPeak were “shooters” and ordered changes was the concept of one base, them to ACC, which was based one wing, one boss. at TAC’s old headquarters of Previously, colonels usually com- in manded combat wings. McPeak himself Virginia. had been a when he commanded “That was stupid and I undid the 20th Tactical Fighter Wing at Up- that as quick as I could, without per Heyford. it looking like I spilled ketchup Now Rice and McPeak wrung billets on my tie,” he said later. “It for general officers out of headquarters made no sense to move the and elevated many wing commands to ICBMs to Langley.” He chalked one-star rank. This was a fundamental the ICBM decision up to being change for operational airpower. At the too eager to get the reorganiza- peak, 65 wings out of 115 had general tion under way. officer commanders. (Today, roughly in tradition and prestige. Step 1 was the On another point, he hesitated—and 18 out of 96 wings are commanded by retirement of SAC Commander Gen. later regretted it. “It was a mistake not brigadier generals.) John T. Chain Jr., who “would never to put all tankers at Langley” under the Some changes have occurred since, have acquiesced” to the command’s control of Air Combat Command, Mc- but the structure has endured. Wings dissolution, said McPeak. Peak later said. “There is no capability acquired operations, logistics, and McPeak believed that intercontinen- more critical to theater air warfare than support groups as cornerstones of wing tal nuclear war was not solely an Air air refueling.” organization. This provided “account- Force mission. SAC had led the way On June 1, 1992, Rice and McPeak ability for mission accomplishment,” in the first years of nuclear deterrence, stood up ACC in the morning then flew Rice and McPeak noted in a September but the mission had become joint at to Scott AFB, Ill., to turn Military Airlift 1991 white paper. the end of the Eisenhower era. The Command into . Another innovation was the creation Joint Strategic Target Planning Staff “We now understand that the real require- of composite wings of multiple types of was created in 1960 to convert broad ment is for mobility—that is, deployabil- aircraft. This did not take root so deeply, national strategy into the detailed single ity and sustainability in combination,” but it did push USAF thinking on how integrated operational plan. McPeak said at the ceremony. to prepare forces for air intervention. Going forward, Rice and McPeak Air Combat Command was based on wanted conventional bombers ready for strong principles about how air forces Systems + Logistics = Materiel theater warfare. Hence came the need should deploy for war. McPeak wanted Air Force Systems Command and to break bombers out of SAC. ACC to pick up and fly off to war fast. Air Force Logistics Command suffered “The impetus for disestablishing Little did leaders realize how quickly similar fates as SAC and TAC. SAC was to integrate manned, winged it would be tested, as expeditionary The four-star Systems Command combat forces,” McPeak said. “That’s operations soon began to dominate Air housed at Andrews AFB, Md., had why the manned bomber force had to Force operations. The task of sending been so redesignated in 1961 after come over.” McPeak proposed to Army expeditionary air forces to numerous several years of debate about how best Gen. Colin L. Powell, Chairman of the locations on a moment’s notice was to handle research, development, and , that SAC convert greatly facilitated by the new ACC and risk management. Post-World War II to a new joint command with leadership AMC commands. reviews by luminaries such as Theodore rotating between the Air Force and the Other changes moved on apace. Field von Karman and Jimmy Doolittle had Navy. US Strategic Command, based operating agencies were restructured, long recommended a separate R&D at the SAC headquarters site of Offutt too. command. AFB, Neb., would oversee DOD’s “We needed to look at every echelon McPeak believed Systems Command nuclear planning and warfighting. down to squadron level and ask: Is this had been essential in the large-scale USAF leadership did not worry about as simple as it can be?” McPeak later developments of the 1950s and early preserving the nuclear culture of SAC said. “If structures are not simple they 1960s and a key ingredient in winning because TAC had a nuclear mission, too. will fail.” the Cold War. “There was a period McPeak and countless other command- Breaking up functional stovepipes when we needed a four-star Systems ers in TAC had long experience with was another major goal. Weather was Command,” he said. AIR FORCE Magazine / July 2012 43 By 1990, technology had moved on. “It was done very quietly, in camera,” opportunity and they took full advan- The civilian sector, not USAF, led infor- Skantze said of the decision. tage of it. mation technology development. With The merger was the last moment of As they knew, their restructuring ulti- the SAC, TAC, and MAC reorganiza- silence. McPeak soon found himself mately touched “every man and woman tions, Rice and McPeak were guided by vociferously defending the move. in the Air Force.” In less than two years, operational experience. They had less There lay the problem. “Follow- six four-star Majcoms were consolidated to go on in structuring what remained ing World War II and on the eve of or renamed and significantly revamped. of USAF-led research, development, the greatest takeoff in aeronautical The change continued at a slightly acquisition, and sustainment. engineering technology, the essential lower level as well. A series of major Personnel reductions were a factor. difference in management of aircraft commands led by two- or three-star “We decided nationally we had a Cold logistics support versus contracting generals also lost their stand-alone Maj­ War legacy which we would cash in for research and development was com status. Air Force Communications on,” recalled Gen. Lawrence A. Skantze, recognized as a distinction of first Command, Air University, Alaskan Air who led Systems Command from 1984 importance,” wrote author and analyst Command, and Air Force Intelligence to 1987. A. G. B. Metcalf. “Those differences Command all ceased to be major com- But there was more to the story. The are just as true and far greater today,” mands between 1990 and 1993. The Goldwater-Nichols reforms removed Metcalf said. reorganization left behind an Air Force most acquisition authority from service Skantze concurred. “I think the with a flatter organization, clear pri- major commands and into a chain of problem was that Systems Command orities, and a meaty slogan in “Global authority running from the Office of and Air Force Logistics Command Reach, Global Power.” the Secretary of Defense to the service had entirely different philosophies. The simpler structure was not set up to Secretariat’s acquisition deputies. “We no The two didn’t match up very well.” feed operations in Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo, longer need to provide four-star leader- The logistics focus of AFMC was Afghanistan, and around the world. Yet ship for what has become, in important a success, but the Air Force struggled that was exactly what it did, creating the respects, an administrative support activ- to repair lasting damage to its acquisi- building blocks for the expeditionary air ity,” explained McPeak. tion capabilities. Skantze felt that the force rotational structure developed by The operators also had beefs with AFMC commander had no leeway to future Chiefs of Staff Gen. Michael E. Systems Command, which “produced rebuild acquisition or conduct sum- Ryan and Gen. John P. Jumper in the pretty good equipment, but when they mits and quarterly program reviews. 1990s and 2000s. handed it off, [the operators] found it The AFMC commander “is staggering Rice and McPeak were not shy about was hard to maintain,” McPeak recalled. under the requirements for intensive explaining each step. Dry humor crack- This was more a symptom of increasing logistics support to Air Force flying led on occasion. “Our tenure has been complexity in the weapon systems, but and ground forces half a world away,” characterized by change—I hope, con- in 1990, many thought better planning Skantze pointed out. “It is a continu- structive change,” McPeak said in the would solve the problem. ous 24/7 challenge that outranks any midst of it all in June 1992. “Others Skantze confirmed that by 1990 there other concern.” might call it turmoil, even confusion!” was little love lost for Systems Com- There were many more innovations. mand outside of the organization itself. Honing the Bayonet McPeak had come to believe training Previous chiefs had “encounters with Harder to gauge was the overall loss was more important than equipment Air Force Systems Command which left of finesse in managing research and and well worth a four-star command. somewhat of a bad taste,” said Skantze. development. However, the transfer “Rank is the best sign of sincerity in Likewise, “Don Rice had been president of power to OSD was already a fait the military,” he said, and the three-star of RAND and had several encounters with accompli. consequently the Systems Command hierarchy.” The “We had lost our deputy chief of became a four-star major command in net result, according to Skantze, was that staff for R&D,” said McPeak. The December 1992 and was redesignated “the idea of abolishing Systems Com- authority “moved over to an assistant Air Education and Training Command mand did not seem to be too difficult.” secretary of the Air Force for acquisi- in July 1993. McPeak said the primary goal for tion.” He and Rice sparred over who Certainly USAF was lucky in hav- merging Air Force Systems Command would hold requirements authority. ing two bold leaders committed to the with Air Force Logistics Command was McPeak wanted requirements in the unique vision of how the Air Force to create “one commander responsible XO requirements shop, the forerunner served America. for life-cycle weapon system support.” In of today’s A3/5, but many billets were The strategic vision brought the Cold line with other themes of the reorganiza- moved to the Secretariat’s side. War focus to an abrupt end in the best tion, the merger reduced headquarters “You mean to tell me you want civil- possible way: by clearing the path to while keeping power and resources in ians saying how sharp the bayonet has remake the Air Force into a structure the field. “In the process, we liberate 17 to be?” McPeak demanded of Rice. exquisitely in touch with the uncertain more general officers,” McPeak noted Responsibility for setting require- future operational environment. at the time. ments came back to the Air Staff. “Are we properly organized?” said Beyond this, it was thought that the Ultimately, the end of the Cold McPeak. “That’s something every Chief new Air Force Materiel Command could War gave Rice and McPeak a golden should ask.” n reduce maintenance and depot costs by anticipating requirements early in system Rebecca Grant is president of IRIS Independent Research. Her most recent article design—“If it all works like we hope,” for Air Force Magazine was “Linebacker I” in the June issue. See also “The Short, McPeak added. Strange Life of PSAB,” this issue, p. 50. 44 AIR FORCE Magazine / July 2012