Gates Calls Air Force Slow To Adapt
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Gates said yesterday that U.S. military services are not doing enough to support soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, singling out the Air Force for adapting too slowly to the new enemies on those battlefields.
In unusually harsh public criticism, Mr. Gates said his attempts to get the Pentagon to help commanders more quickly on the ground have been “like pulling teeth,” and he blamed military leaders who are “stuck in old ways of doing business.”
He said he was particularly upset with the military’s failure to get more unmanned spy planes into the air over the two war zones — primarily an Air Force responsibility. While the number of drones has doubled in recent months, Mr. Gates has set up a task force to push for even more. “We can do and we should do more to meet the needs of men and women fighting in the current conflicts while their outcome may still be in doubt,” Mr. Gates said. “Our services are still not moving aggressively in wartime to provide resources needed now on the battlefield.”
The criticism comes in the midst of a tense period for Mr. Gates and the Air Force. The Defense secretary has fought a series of increasingly acrimonious internal battles against the Air Force leadership, who have pushed for dozens of new F-22 fighter planes and resisted more drone deployments. In doing so, the Air Force has failed to focus its energies on the wars at hand, Mr. Gates has charged.
The Air Force Association, an independent advocacy group composed largely of retired Air Force officials, issued a statement shortly after Mr. Gates’ remarks insisting that the service has pushed to get more drones to war zones. Association officials said they concluded Mr. Gates “was referring to the Army” in his criticisms.
“I don’t think he’s got a lot of airmen advising him on things,” the association’s president, a retired Air Force lieutenant general, Michael M. Dunn, said in an interview. “This would be in a lot worse shape if the Air Force hadn’t gotten out ahead of it, because you can’t produce something overnight.”
