Par for the course with Gates.  He's all about making unilateral decisions, and his favorite tactic is to take all control away from the people affected by his decisions -- just like he did with the Air Force when he put them under a gag order so they couldn't discuss the decision to halt F-22 production.

 

As far as it goes, yes, this is a bad idea, for all the reasons the Guard leadership outlined.  Cargo aircraft like this are a needed resource for confronting domestic emergencies.  The best and most efficient way to see they are available in a timely fashion is to put them under ANG control.  But I'm sure Gates will just say this is another capability that is not on his list of high priority unfunded requirements and that will be that.

You are right about Gates;. This apparatchik starts to make me wish we had that numbskull, Rumsfeld back.

 

Herald

I admit I don't get this.  My impression with Gates when he replaced Rumsfeld that it was a good choice on Bush's part, and that Gates helped ramrod the surge, which worked very well (more Petraeus' brilliance than anything else, I'd surmise).

 

I expect this "screw the military" attitude from the Democrats, especially Jimmy Carter the Sequel.  But I thought Gates had better sense.  The Navy's not getting a break from him (though I agreed with the decision to cancel the Zumwalt-class), and from what I understand, the Army's not getting a break either--so I don't think we've got a case of reverse-Symington syndrome, that Gates simply despises the USAF and is doing everything he can to eff them over.

 

So what's with this guy?  DA can make all the apologies he wants for cutting the F-22, but the C-27J will be desperately needed by the Army, especially in COIN situations where we don't have a plethora of nice, concrete runways.  Is Gates being told "do this" by Obama, is he doing it on his own to suck up to the boss or in some misguided mania to cut the budget, or is the man simply an incompetent buffoon?

 

Gates is a Rumsfeld crony and is continuing Rumsfeld's policies.  Both of them are firm believers in covert action and special operations forces -- not in and of itself a bad thing, except that they believe in them to the exclusion of all other types of forces.  Gates also shares Rumsfeld's complete lack of strategic vision; their warfighting doctrines reflect this (as in both Iraq and Afghanistan where they had a successful plan to win the war but absolutely no follow-on strategy) and their procurement policies do as well (buy what is needed to fight today's conflicts with absolutely no thought to preparing for tomorrow's).

 

Obama kept Gates on because Gates' policies are compatible with Obama's.  Gates doesn't hate the military, he just doesn't see a need for large conventional forces.  Obama may or may not hate the military, but he clearly sees it only as a political tool, since highly visible cuts in military spending are an easy way to appeal to his constituency.  So the Obama and Gates relationship is basically a marriage of convenience: Obama will let Gates "transform" the military all he wants, and he'll benefit politically from the resulting force cuts.

 

All of which goes to explain the procurement policy Gates is following.  He doesn't want to see a program like the C-27J placed in the hands of ordinary Army and Air Force units (or, God forbid, ARNG and ANG) as he considers tactical airlift for conventional troops to be fairly useless, so he'll mostly procure them for AFSOC and leave everyone else to struggle along with aging Chinooks.