Magazine<\/em> John A. Tirpak, qui nous renforce sans doute d\u00e9cisivement dans cette appr\u00e9ciation.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00abWhen Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates ousted the Air Force’s two top leaders last week, there was more to it than just the service’s reported slip-ups with handling of nuclear weapons, according to Pentagon insiders. The shake-up was a clear message to the Air Force to quit making a direct case for preferred systems and get more Joint. It also took from the service its top champions in ongoing roles and missions discussions, decapitating airpower advocacy in the Department of Defense.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t()<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\t\u00bbGates has said numerous times that the Air Force should focus on winning the current war and not fall prey to next war-itis. Gates and his lieutenants have, with increasing frankness, told Congress to ignore the Air Force’s push for systems like the F-22, which they say are of limited value in an insurgency and compete with things like Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles needed for the ongoing fights in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pentagon leaders have also been unhappy with USAF’s push to buy more C-17s than are currently on the books.<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\tOn jugera particuli\u00e8rement impressionnants, dans l’\u00e9nonc\u00e9 des signes qui montrent l’intensit\u00e9 de la bataille entre Gates et l’USAF, les choix de personnes fait pour r\u00e9orienter la hi\u00e9rarchie de l’USAF. Le nouveau chef d’\u00e9tat-major, le g\u00e9n\u00e9ral Schwartz, m\u00eame s’il n’est l\u00e0 que pour quelques mois (il doit se retirer \u00e0 la fin de 2008) est essentiellement un homme de l’USAF d\u00e9l\u00e9gu\u00e9 aux missions et aux conceptions joint<\/em>, c’est-\u00e0-dire non-USAF sp\u00e9cifiquement (\u00abThe last time Schwartz held a job in which he advocated specifically for the Air Force was a decade ago, when he was USAF’s director of strategic planning.<\/em>\u00bb) C’est comme si l’on nommait \u00e0 la t\u00eate de l’USAF un officier en partie d\u00e9tach\u00e9 de ce service.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\tLes pr\u00e9cisions donn\u00e9es ci-dessous sont significatives et n’ont d\u00e9finitivement rien \u00e0 voir avec une question technique telle que la s\u00e9curit\u00e9 des syst\u00e8mes nucl\u00e9aires.\t<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\t\u00abHowever, doubters that Gates was slamming the door on further Air Force advocacy of systems not tailored to current operations need only look at his choices to replace the service’s top uniformed leadership. If loose nukes was really the issue, Gates might have chosen US Strategic Command head Gen. Kevin P. Chilton to be chief. Instead, Gates opted for US Transportation Command’s Gen. Norton A. Schwartz, who had already put in his papers and was to retire effective Jan. 1 of next year.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbIn his 35 years of service, Schwartz has spent 15 years in Joint jobs (mostly in Special Operations Command), including the last eight years of his career, during which he headed Alaskan Command, served as the Joint Staff’s ops director and director, and his current assignment as TRANSCOM boss. In that latter role, Schwartz has ignored the Air Force push to acquire up to 222 C-17s, maintaining instead that more than about 205 would be overkill.<\/em> () <\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbSlated to replace Schwartz at TRANSCOM will be the current USAF vice chief, Gen. Duncan McNabb, who, as the Air Force’s rep on the Joint Requirements Oversight Council, would have led this summer’s inter-service debates about roles and missions, and what goes into the Pentagon’s POM-2010 five-year spending plan. Although the plan may well be discarded by the incoming Administration, it will at least be the basis for the Pentagon’s new civilian leadership’s first defense budget.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbSucceeding McNabb in this crucial advocacy role will be Lt. Gen. William Fraser, assistant to Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen. Fraser, who leap-frogs about a dozen sitting four-star generals for the job, is more suited to supervise a tightening-up of the Air Force’s nuclear enterprise than Schwartz. He’s had a career in strategic bomber operations and strategic intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance; something Gates has repeatedly told the Air Force he wants given greater attention.<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\tCes d\u00e9cisions et ces diverses pr\u00e9cisions donnent sa dimension r\u00e9elle \u00e0 la l’affrontement entre Gates et l’USAF. Avec ces nominations, Gates entend contenir les activistes de l’USAF et \u00e9masculer les options les plus caract\u00e9ristiques de la puissance a\u00e9rienne dont l’USAF est la repr\u00e9sentante. Il s’agit bien d’une diff\u00e9rence majeure de conceptions, une opposition de philosophies qui touche \u00e0 la politique de s\u00e9curit\u00e9 nationale elle-m\u00eame. Cela admis, il est difficile de distinguer les positions des uns et des autres, et notamment les buts poursuivis par Robert Gates, qui s’en va en janvier 2009. (A ce point, il est absolument impossible de donner une appr\u00e9ciation sur la possibilit\u00e9 que Gates reste en place avec la future administration, parce qu’on lui trouverait des vertus diverses et une grande efficacit\u00e9. Notre sentiment est pourtant que son d\u00e9part est in\u00e9luctable, parce que les rapports avec le Pentagone seront un point de crise central de la prochaine administration et qu’il est n\u00e9cessaire, pour cela, d’installer \u00e0 sa t\u00eate un homme de poids, apportant une nouvelle autorit\u00e9 et marquant une v\u00e9ritable rupture avec l’administration GW Bush.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\tDans tous les cas, il faut suivre cette bataille avec l’USAF. Elle dissimule, mais de moins en moins, des tensions bureaucratiques d’une force consid\u00e9rable. Appr\u00e9ci\u00e9e en perspective, la crise USAF-Gates a toutes les allures d’une bataille interne d’une extr\u00eame gravit\u00e9. Pour l’instant, on le voit \u00e0 la mod\u00e9ration calcul\u00e9e des r\u00e9actions de l’Air Force Association, l’USAF mesure ses r\u00e9actions. Elle est \u00e9chaud\u00e9e par la brutalit\u00e9 de l’intervention de Gates et esp\u00e8re, plus que jamais, que la nouvelle administration va lui donner un peu de champ pour plaider sa cause et renforcer ses positions.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\tMis en ligne le 10 juin 2008 \u00e0 17H26<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On avance de plus en plus nettement dans la confirmation que la crise de l’USAF, avec la d\u00e9capitation du service (le secr\u00e9taire \u00e0 l’Air Force et le chef d’\u00e9tat-major forc\u00e9s \u00e0 la d\u00e9mission), r\u00e9pond beaucoup plus au conflit bureaucratique avec le secr\u00e9taire \u00e0 la d\u00e9fense Gates qu’\u00e0 la raison affich\u00e9e officiellement des n\u00e9gligences en mati\u00e8re… <\/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":[2623,3228,3984,41],"class_list":["post-69959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bloc-notes","tag-bureaucratie","tag-crise","tag-gates","tag-usaf"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69959","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=69959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69959\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}