The Air Force tried, a few years back, to assume the mantle, only to get slapped down. So now the flyboys have come back with a more modest proposal: Give us control of all the drones that fly higher than 3,500.
No dice, Brig. Gen. Stephen Mundt, director of army aviation, told Reuters on the 23rd. “Don’t get into the tactical (ground) commander’s fight… Don’t get into the way we do business.”
Then the Air Force counterattack:
William Ackerman, an Air Force spokesman, called Gen. Mundt’s comments as “a bit perplexing.” But that was just the start of the service’s counter-strike.
By last Thursday, Air Combat Command chief Gen. Ronald Keys was warning “that unless one service – his – is in charge of orchestrating UAVs, midair collisions with manned aircraft and ‘frequency fratricide’ of jamming each other’s communications [would be] inevitable,” according to Air Force magazine.
All very interesting, but I would say that this particular turf war is small potatoes compared to the one brewing over who will command the military’s future cyberwarriors. Air Force magazine has published a fascinating article on war in the third domain–cyberspace. Hampton Stephens writes that,
The Air Force’s goal is plain: to be able to operate in and, if necessary, dominate this nebulous, artificial “place” in which humans interact over networks without regard to physical geography. It is USAF’s third domain of combat.
[Secretary of the Air Force] Wynne and [Air Force chief of staff] Moseley on Dec. 7, 2005 published a new mission statement for the service. In it, cyberspace joined “air” and “space” in the catalog of Air Force domains. They said that the Air Force, from now on, would “fly and fight in air, space, and cyberspace.”
But the other services are clearly dubious of the Air Force’s claim to cyberspace:
Marine Corps Gen. James E. Cartwright, head of US Strategic Command and thus the nation’s top cyber warfighter, sees dangers in spreading such expertise.
“When you train a person to be good in this environment it’s not unlike the Manhattan Project,” said Cartwright. “You’ve given them the keys to the kingdom.”
If the Air Force and Army are, a hundred years later, still arguing over which should have control over what aircraft, how long will it take to resolve which branch of the military ought to control a domain as “nebulous” as cyberspace.
