{"id":69773,"date":"2008-03-21T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-03-21T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/2008\/03\/21\/letat-de-lusaf-quelques-faits-chiffres-de-la-crise\/"},"modified":"2008-03-21T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-03-21T00:00:00","slug":"letat-de-lusaf-quelques-faits-chiffres-de-la-crise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/2008\/03\/21\/letat-de-lusaf-quelques-faits-chiffres-de-la-crise\/","title":{"rendered":"L&rsquo;\u00e9tat de l&rsquo;USAF: quelques faits &amp; chiffres de la crise"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><p>C&rsquo;est un point sur lequel nous avons pris l&rsquo;habitude de revenir avec la plus grande attention parce qu&rsquo;il nous para\u00eet aussi important que fort peu r\u00e9alis\u00e9. Il s&rsquo;agit de <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dedefensa.org\/article.php?art_id=4616\" class=\"gen\">la crise<\/a> de <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dedefensa.org\/article.php?art_id=4951\" class=\"gen\">l&rsquo;USAF<\/a>, qui tient une place particuli\u00e8re au sein de la crise du Pentagone.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>\tNous allons nous attacher \u00e0 deux aspects de cette crise, l&rsquo;un documentaire et l&rsquo;autre de circonstance. Ils doivent permettre de mieux mesurer les implications de cette crise, tant du point de vue de ses origines que du point de vue de ses perspectives.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>\t Un aspect documentaire nous vient d&rsquo;un article de Rebecca Grant, dans Air Force <em>Magazine<\/em>, num\u00e9ro de <a href=\"http:\/\/www.afa.org\/magazine\/march2008\/0308command.html\" class=\"gen\">mars 2008<\/a>. Cet article apporte une \u00e9clairage documentaire assez impressionnant sur la position \u00e9trangement minoritaire,  \u00e9trangement, par rapport \u00e0 la perception qu&rsquo;on a de ce qui serait la puissance de l&rsquo;USAF,  par rapport aux autres services. C&rsquo;est l&rsquo;extr\u00eame faiblesse du nombre de postes de commandement <em>joint<\/em>, ou interarmes, tant techniques que g\u00e9ographiques,  qui reviennent \u00e0 l&rsquo;USAF.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>\t\u00ab<em>Air Force officers who run big regional commands are rare birds indeed. In Europe, for example, there have been only twoGen. Lauris Norstad, who served as the Supreme Allied Commander Europe during the period 1956-62, and Gen. Joseph W. Ralston, who held the same post from 2000 to 2003.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>\t\u00bb<em>In fact, the only other regional command ever to be headed by an Air Force officer is US Northern Command, created after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks here. Two of its commandersGen. Ralph E. Eberhart (2002-04) and Gen. Victor E. Renuart Jr. (2007-present)have been airmen.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>\t\u00bb<em>Other than thatzip.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>\t\u00bb<em>US Pacific Command, dating to 1947, has been led by 21 admirals but zero officers from the Air Force (or any other armed service). US Central Command, established in 1983, has had nine commanders, all from the Army, Navy, or Marine Corps. Not one of US Southern Command&rsquo;s 30 commanders has been an airman. The newest regional entity, US Africa Command, drew its first commander from the Army.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>\t\u00bb<em>True, Air Force officers today lead both US Strategic Command and US Transportation Command. In the recent past, airmen have commanded both US Special Operations Command and US Joint Forces Command. Airmen have also had their fair share of rotations as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, from Gen. Nathan F. Twining (1957-60) through Gen. Richard B. Myers (2001-05).<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>\t\u00bb<em>Still, with regional combatant commands growing in importance, there&rsquo;s a sense that airmen have been overlooked and perhaps even slighted. If airpower is the dominant force in today&rsquo;s military operationsand it isyou would expect to see more airmen in command. Why are they not?<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>\t\u00bb<em>The first thing to say is that the record cannot be an accident of history; the numbers are too stark. Indeed, notes the airpower historian Phillip S. Meilinger, The statistics are stunning.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>\t\u00bb<em>The birth of the unified command system roughly coincided with the birth of the Air Force, so random selection would have led to roughly equal numbers of commanders among the services. As Meilinger (a retired Air Force colonel) totes up the score, there have been 110 theater commanders since World War II, counting the four-star joint commanders on the Korean Peninsula and in the Vietnam and Iraq wars.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>\t\u00bb<em>The Air Force has supplied only the four mentionedNorstad, Ralston, Eberhart, and Renuart. The Army has been the overwhelmingly dominant service, supplying 75 of those 110 joint commanders. The Navy has produced 25 of them, most of them in the Pacific. Even the Marine Corps has outpaced the Air Force, providing six regional commanders, according to data prepared by Meilinger.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>\t\u00bb<em>When it comes to non-geographic-theater four-star command billets, USAF&rsquo;s record has been better, but only marginally. USAF has supplied commanders in 21 of 71 of these cases. (On Oct. 7, 1999, Atlantic Command became US Joint Forces Command and its mission switched from geographic to functional responsibilities.) Even so, the Navy significantly surpasses the Air Force in this category of command, with 30 commanders.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>\t\u00bb<em>Experts have cited a large number of possible reasons for the paucity of airmen serving in theater command. The list begins with the peculiarities of the Air Force as an institution and extends to the US military&rsquo;s stunted view of airpower, politics of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Pentagon&rsquo;s nomination and Congressional confirmation processes.<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>\t Pour le deuxi\u00e8me point, nous revenons sur l&rsquo;enqu\u00eate de <em>Foreign Policy<\/em> que nous avons pr\u00e9sent\u00e9e dans cette rubrique le <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dedefensa.org\/article.php?art_id=4991\" class=\"gen\">18 mars<\/a>. L&rsquo;enqu\u00eate pr\u00e9sentait l&rsquo;avis des militaires US (3.400 officiers de tous grades interrog\u00e9s) sur l&rsquo;\u00e9tat des forces arm\u00e9es US apr\u00e8s 5 ans de guerre en Irak. Nous citons un extrait de cette enqu\u00eate, avec le passage qui nous int\u00e9resse soulign\u00e9 par nous en gras.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>\t\u00ab<em>The health of the Army and Marine Corps, the services that have borne the brunt of the fighting in Iraq, are of greatest concern to the index&rsquo;s officers. Asked to grade the health of each service on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 meaning the officers have no concern about the health of the service and 10 meaning they are extremely concerned, the officers reported an average score of 7.9 for the Army and 7.0 for the Marine Corps.<\/em> <strong><em>The health of the Air Force fared the best, with a score of 5.7.<\/em><\/strong> <em>The average score across the four services was 6.6. More than 80 percent of the officers say that, given the stress of current deployments, it is unreasonable to ask the military to wage another major war today. Nor did the officers express high confidence in the military&rsquo;s preparedness to do so. For instance, the officers said that the United States is not fully prepared to successfully execute such a mission against Iran or North Korea.<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>\tCes jugements au sein des forces arm\u00e9es sont tr\u00e8s caract\u00e9ristiques. Ils sacrifient \u00e9videmment au plus spectaculaire, que sont les pertes essuy\u00e9es en Irak, essentiellement par les forces terrestres. On l&rsquo;a vu, la crise de l&rsquo;USAF est d&rsquo;une autre substance, beaucoup plus profonde, beaucoup plus fondamentale, mais \u00e9galement affect\u00e9e indirectement par l&rsquo;Irak. Dans la perception des choses, cette crise n&rsquo;appara\u00eet absolument pas.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>\tPour le cas des commandements, c&rsquo;est une situation qui est \u00e0 peu pr\u00e8s similaire, o\u00f9 la perception et le spectaculaire tiennent une place consid\u00e9rable. L&rsquo;USAF a toujours su soigner sa publicit\u00e9 et ses relations publiques, et c&rsquo;est essentiellement gr\u00e2ce \u00e0 des efforts dans ces domaines qu&rsquo;elle s&rsquo;est impos\u00e9e comme arme ind\u00e9pendante en 1947. Cette \u00e9volution et ces m\u00e9thodes se sont poursuivies ensuite, notamment toujours avec le soutien d&rsquo;Hollywood qui a consacr\u00e9 nombre de films \u00e0 l&rsquo;USAF et aux forces a\u00e9riennes militaires en g\u00e9n\u00e9ral. Le Strategic Air Command, par exemple, fut le sujet de plusieurs films d&rsquo;Hollywood. Ce sens des relations publiques donna l&rsquo;impression fausse, et \u00e0 l&rsquo;USAF elle-m\u00eame aussi peut-\u00eatre, d&rsquo;une position de tr\u00e8s grande puissance de l&rsquo;USAF au sein des forces arm\u00e9es. Puis l&rsquo;on d\u00e9couvre que l&rsquo;USAF n&rsquo;a eu que quatre commandants interarmes de th\u00e9\u00e2tre sur les 110 que compt\u00e8rent les forces arm\u00e9es depuis 1945. C&rsquo;est une position structurelle de grande faiblesse qui contredit la perception qu&rsquo;on en a, qui compl\u00e8te la perception vue plus haut d&rsquo;une USAF semblant assez \u00e9pargn\u00e9e par la crise alors qu&rsquo;elle est en fait la plus touch\u00e9e.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>\tOn en tirerait la conclusion que l&rsquo;USAF est victime de son propre brio pour la publicit\u00e9 et les relations publiques. Par contre, elle manque de ces racines et de ces traditions qui conduisent \u00e0 une consid\u00e9ration instinctivement plus compatissante pour les autres services, notamment dans les milieux politiques et parlementaires.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p><p>\tMis en ligne le 21 mars 2008 \u00e0 17H29<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>C&rsquo;est un point sur lequel nous avons pris l&rsquo;habitude de revenir avec la plus grande attention parce qu&rsquo;il nous para\u00eet aussi important que fort peu r\u00e9alis\u00e9. Il s&rsquo;agit de la crise de l&rsquo;USAF, qui tient une place particuli\u00e8re au sein de la crise du Pentagone. Nous allons nous attacher \u00e0 deux aspects de cette crise,&hellip;&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[7485,3228,2863,7486,2864,41],"class_list":["post-69773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bloc-notes","tag-commandements","tag-crise","tag-foreign","tag-interarmes","tag-policy","tag-usaf"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69773"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69773\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}