Grounded: The Case for Abolishing the United States Air Force

Grounded: The Case for Abolishing the United States Air Force By Robert M. Farley Lexington: University Press of Kentucy, 2014. 244 pages $26.95 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Robert Farley's Grounded: The Case for Abolishing the United States Air Force offers a bold, provocative thesis: the Air Force as a separate entity should be eliminated with its assets and missions distributed between the Army and Navy. Farley argues the Air Force's independence has always rested solely on its ability to carry out strategic attack missions. Early airpower theorists such as Brigadier General William Mitchell linked the independent air service with strategic bombing theoretically capable of defeating enemies quicker and cheaper than traditional ground and naval campaigns, and this core belief continues to drive the modern Air Force. Farley argues this optimistic view of airpower's potential violates Clausewitz's theories on the nature of war and has never been borne out through a century of combat experience. America's political leaders and decision makers continue to give the Air Force a privileged position because they are seduced by airpower's assurances of efficient, almost bloodless war; but the Air Force is incapable of delivering on its promises. Since the Air Force is presently attempting to apply its own skewed, paranoid worldview to cyberspace, seemingly unable to perform its nuclear deterrent mission, and is under cultural assault by the promise of remotely piloted aircraft (RPA), Farley reasons the Air Force should be abolished. Farley's fundamental point about the need for defense reorganization in the wake of both the Cold War and the post-9/11 interventions is a sound one. He also identifies failings of the Air Force as a fascination with technology and frequent conflation of targeting and strategy. The author's critique of the Air Force's Manichean cyberspace policies and its contrasts with the Navy's view of cyberspace as a virtual global commons is easily the highlight of Grounded. Yet, while lay readers may be entranced with Farley's argument and see a viable path for defense reform, informed readers will find a book heavily reliant on secondary sources with oversights, conceptual flaws, and factual errors that completely undermine the book's core thesis. By focusing so much on the Air Force's organizational behavior and its policymaking consequences, Farley gives short shrift to the strategic context of decision making. Unlike many defense reorganization plans, Farley specifies neither the threat he envisions the United States and its allies will face in the coming decades nor how abolishing the Air Force will help the nation overcome those challenges. There is a similar absence of strategic context in the historical examples cited as evidence. It was not by accident the two dominant sea powers of the last two centuries --the United States and Great Britain - pursued strategic bombing and robust, independent air forces while most other great power nations did not. …