{"id":3386,"date":"2010-01-28T00:35:07","date_gmt":"2010-01-28T08:35:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=3386"},"modified":"2010-01-27T23:36:53","modified_gmt":"2010-01-28T07:36:53","slug":"us-military-losing-perishable-skills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2010\/01\/28\/us-military-losing-perishable-skills\/","title":{"rendered":"US Military Losing Perishable Skills"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Commandant of the Marine Corps has said that the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.marinecorpstimes.com\/news\/2010\/01\/marine_amphib_012410w\/\">Marines&#8217; &#8220;amphibious readiness may be suffering&#8221;<\/a> after years of fighting on land.\u00a0 In short, the wars that they are fighting now may be detracting from the tactics and training that the Marines may require to fight a future conflict.<\/p>\n<p>The same is true for the Air Force.\u00a0 One of the hardest things to do as a fighter pilot <!--more-->is to lead a four-ship of fighters against another four-ship, with each trying to outmaneuver and kill the other.\u00a0 Air-to-air training requires not only skills in aircraft maneuvering and tactics, but also relies heavily on perishable mental proficiency.<\/p>\n<p>Likewise, SEAD (Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses, or &#8220;SAM-hunting&#8221;), deep strike, and even defensive maneuvering against ground threats are all complex skill sets&#8211;none of which the Air Force is using right now in either Afghanistan or Iraq.\u00a0 Fighter units that return from months-long deployments to the two combat areas end up spending weeks regaining their skills in these areas that they haven&#8217;t practiced in for months.<\/p>\n<p>General Conway said of the Marines:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>We are inherently a maritime force, and we still consider that our primary responsibility, but for all intents and purposes&#8230;we have become a second land army&#8230;Now, we\u2019re OK with that because that\u2019s what the nation needs right now, but that can\u2019t be the long-term future of the Corps. We\u2019ve got to get back to sea.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The same is true of the Air Force.\u00a0 It has become, for all intents and purposes, a variation of airborne artillery for the Army.\u00a0 That&#8217;s what the nation needs right now, so it works.\u00a0 But that isn&#8217;t what the Air Force is all about, and it certainly won&#8217;t be that in future conflicts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Commandant of the Marine Corps has said that the Marines&#8217; &#8220;amphibious readiness may be suffering&#8221; after years of fighting on land.\u00a0 In short, the wars that they are fighting now may be detracting from the tactics and training that the Marines may require to fight a future conflict. The same is true for the Air Force.\u00a0 One of the [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[13,149,2,150],"class_list":["post-3386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fighter-pilot","tag-aircraft","tag-marines","tag-military","tag-sead"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3386\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}