Air Force Intelligence Woes

I wanted to provide a bit of commentary on the SECDEF’s comments about the Air Force, particularly about UAVs. He and most of the press have focused on the “front end” of the problem – aircraft and pilots. This is a red herring. The real issue is the “back end.” Each ISR aircraft requires a large team of intel people – imagery analysts, linguists, etc. Building airframes and training UAV pilots (be they rated officers or unrated enlisted – as heretical as that idea may be) isn’t the long pole in the tent. The problem is that the intel career field has been surging since 1990. Common sense dictates that as the size of the AF shrinks, the importance of intel increases. That, to be blunt, is the opposite of the approach frequently taken by the Air Force. In the last drawdown (post-Cold War), Gen McPeak went out of his way to cripple the AF intel corps. In this drawdown, the cuts were spread more equitably – at least until the AF leadership realized how badly crippled intel was and exempted the career field from the last round of cuts. How bad is it? They anticipated a reenlistment rate of 58% for Arabic linguists last year – they got 11% to re-up. For intel captains just hitting four years in service, they have suffered DOUBLE the attrition that they projected. As it stands now, we don’t have enough intel bodies to cover all the desired UAV orbits – the training pipleline for intel has been increased, but the career field is severely – if not mortally – wounded.