For those who are reading this without having read Chapter 43, you’ll need to go to scroll down to fully appreciate the context!

The gauntlet has been thrown!  Mark asked the question last week, “So, where’s the moral in the story?”.  That, my friend, is a good question.  I like to think there’s an object lesson in almost any story so, after much thought, here we go.

We’re given tasks every day.  Whether it’s from your boss, or your wife, or even your Dad.  We all have work to do and, usually, a limited time to do it in.  The confusion with difficult taskings come when it’s not clear how to accomplish the job or what the end results should be.  In the military we call it “commander’s intent”.  You need to know what the desired end result is.  For instance, if my Dad had said that we need to find some way to calm down the nasty goat then we might have come up with another solution.  Maybe we could have drugged the thing, or bought a female goat so that he would have an “outlet” for his goatly passions.  We might have just put a round in his head and served up some cabrito for dinner. But, we knew he wanted the goat to continue to be available for mowing duties.

The other half of a tasking is the method.  When there is something to be done there is often a preferred method or, at least, a limited number of options.  If my Dad had instructed us to remove the goat’s offending appendage we could have used a variety of more expedient techniques.  Pruning shearers, machete, chainsaw, or my Mom’s butcher knife, any would have adequately accomplished the job.  But the goat would have either bled out, died from shock, or ended up with a nasty infection.

The Air Force has been given a task.  Whether or not you agree with the national security objectives of the administration, we find ourselves in the position of trying to maintain the security of the country with an ever shrinking budget.  The goal is to maintain as much capability as possible at the lowest possible cost.  Sounds simple but, even with our nation’s future at stake, the Air Force has continued to play politics and failed to even try to apply any cost benefit analysis to its recommendations.  They were given an opportunity to go back to the drawing board after the utter failure of the Force Structure Announcement earlier this year but instead of working to meet the tasking professionally with data and common sense they have, again, attempted to apply a pure political solution to, what should be, an apolitical recommendation.  The states have a voice when it comes to the ANG but the Reserves finds itself in the position of the bastard stepchild.  For example, AFRC is saddled with three incredibly expensive wings on facilities fully owned and operated by the reserves yet the Air Force seems to be blind to their fiscal responsibility and continue to recommend the most cost effective units for closure.

Either senior Air Force leadership is executing a brilliantly conceived plan to convince Congress that they are incapable of doing their job and the BRAC process should be initiated so they can blame someone else, or someone has used the little rubber band on them and they care more about their own careers than the security, financial and military, of the country.

I do hope it’s the former.

As always, comments welcome, and feel free to link to your Facebook page.