Also by General Merrill A. McPeak
Hangar Flying
Below the Zone
Roles and Missions
General Merrill A. McPeak
Former Chief of Staff, US Air Force
Lost Wingman Press
Lake Oswego, Oregon
LOST WINGMAN PRESS
123 Furnace Street, Lake Oswego, OR 97034
www.LostWingmanPress.com
Copyright 2017 by Merrill A. McPeak
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. Published 2017.
Editor: Holly Franko
Illustrations: Keith Buckley
Cover and book design: Jennifer Omner
Publishers Cataloging-In-Publication Data
McPeak, Merrill A., 1936
Roles and missions / Merrill McPeak.
pages cm
Includes index.
ISBN: 978-0-9833160-9-1 (hardcover)
ISBN: 978-0-9916587-0-1 (pbk.)
ISBN: 978-0-9916587-2-5 (leatherbound)
ISBN: 978-0-9916587-1-8 (e-book)
1. McPeak, Merrill A., 1936 2. United States. Air ForceGeneralsBiography. 3. United StatesMilitary policyDecision making. 4. National securityUnited States. 5. Persian Gulf War, 1991Aerial operations, American. I. Title.
UG626 . M4353 A3 2017
358.4`0092dc23
2014904864
For Brian
Contents
Preface
Chapter 1: Desert Storm
Chapter 2: Lessons of the Gulf War
Chapter 3: 1991: Organize
Chapter 4: 1992: Train
Chapter 5: 1993: Equip
Chapter 6: Bosnia
Chapter 7: The War on Biology Part I: Women in Combat
Chapter 8: The War on Biology Part II: Gays in the Military
Chapter 9: Somalia
Chapter 10: Roles and Missions
Chapter 11: Followed by More
Appendix: Battlefield Control Measures
1990 official photo.
Preface
A s I returned to Washington to become the Air Forces 14th chief of staff, Id accumulated much experience dealing with security problems in some of the worlds most interesting spots. Id spent 11 years in various NATO and national assignments in Europe, flown combat missions in Southeast Asia, worked the Arab-Israeli problem for three years as a Pentagon staffer, led the Air Force component responsible for operations in Central and South America, and commanded Air Force units serving in Japan, Korea, Alaska, Hawaii, Guam, the Philippines, and elsewhere throughout the Pacific. This would seem ideal preparation for a job sometimes described as being a principal military adviser to the secretary of defense and the president. As it turned out, military aspects of international security were the domain of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the service chiefs playing only a cameo role. I watched from the sidelines and did not always have the strength to stay quiet, as will be seen. But the problems were someone elses. Here, I report observations, for what they are worth.
Happily, there was much to do inside the Air Force. There is a sort of second law of bureaudynamics at work in large organizations, arising from an urge to elaborate that approaches the status of a physical constant. Left unchecked, social structures become complex, opaque, messy. Recurring failure is the result we should expect and is, in fact, what we getand what we make worse, as each new disappointment calls for a customized solution, new prohibitions, an office of its own, some furniture and carpeting. Its hard to understand why we let this happen, since the more complex a mechanism, the less likely it will work under any but the best conditions, with armed conflict being a sort of limiting case for social disorder. Simplifying, tidying up the Air Force, making it more suited for use in combat, was a problem I could and did take on.
But rationalizing how the services collectively provide integrated combat forces at reasonable cost is a job for the secretary of defense, or even the president. In my experience, the topic of who will do it is of only theoretical interest, since nobody with authority actually tried. An imaginary effort would start with a review of who should be doing what on the battlefield. This is the Roles and Missions question, an important one, and one not yet answered as this is written.
Have you looked at a modern airplane? Have you followed from year to year the evolution of its lines? Have you ever thought, not only about the airplane but about whatever man builds, that all mans industrial efforts, all his computations and calculations, all the nights spent over working draughts and blueprints, invariably culminate in the production of a thing whose sole and guiding principle is the ultimate principle of simplicity?
Antoine de Saint-Exupry, Wind, Sand and Stars
Chapter 1
Desert Storm
Never send a man where you can send a bullet first.
Samuel Colt
W ashington can be a miserable place in the best of times, but being trapped in the Pentagon during a shooting war is surely one of the citys more exquisite agonies. That Id taken up duties as the Air Forces chief of staff following Mike Dugans dismissal did nothing to lighten the load. Dugans predictions about the war were in line with the views of most airmen, mine included. Hed committed the capital citys gravest sin: being right too soon. So here I was, with nothing much in the way of fresh ideas to offer, manifestly a second-stringer, the substitute whose unanticipated insertion into the game can only disappoint the crowd.
Secretary Dick Cheney and Pentagon General Council Terry ODonnell swear me in as the Air Forces 14th chief of staff.
More to the point, the Gulf War was coming on fast. One could argue it made little sense to switch service chiefs in the midst of a buildup for war. Frankly, it didnt matter much, the chiefs having been marginalized in an era of jointness. But if I had any illusions about my importance in upcoming events, they quickly dissolved. In Washington, uniformed leadership was firmly in the hands of General Colin Powell, who dominated military discussions and decision making and who embodied the sole connection to higher civil authority. Powell was smart and gutsy, so worse things can happen to the country.
Powell had played a role in bringing me to Washington. He wanted a quick replacement in view of the situation in the Gulf, and I was an obvious choice, having come second to Dugan only a few months earlier. Powell had met me in Honolulu during one of his visits to outposts. He checked with Vice Chairman David Jeremiah, who said wed worked well together as component commanders in the Pacific. Jeremiah described me as a team playerunlike Dugan, evidently.
By way of professional background, Powell was an infantryman and Jeremiah a surface sailor. As for the other service chiefs, Carl Vuono was an artilleryman, Al Gray a Marine infantryman, and Frank Kelso a submariner. None of these gentlemen had a reputation for passionate airpower advocacy. Id be the outlier, convinced airpower would prove decisive in the coming combat. (Of course, Dugan had already been removed for saying this, though maybe not in just the right way.) In JCS deliberations, Id also be the new guy, someone who should perhaps observe a period of respectful freshman silence. As a consequence, I worried a little about the lack of an authoritative Washington voice able to address the problems and prospects of the impending air campaign.
