General Petraeus v General Hostage: Could the USAF be wrong?

Former CIA Director and commander of US/ISAF forces in Afghanistan General David Petraeus gave this speech at Royal United Services Institute in June:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10111708/General-David-Petraeus-We-must-be-coldly-realistic-over-the-use-of-force.html

What’s interesting is this comment:

Our enemies will typically attack us asymmetrically, avoiding the conventional strengths that we bring to bear. Clearly, the continuation of so-called “small wars” cannot be discounted. And we should never forget that we don’t always get to choose the wars we fight.

This is in contrast to ACC Commander, General Mike Hostage:

http://www.acc.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123363664

it is time for us to restructure…to prioritize programs that allow the CAF to execute full-spectrum operations in highly contested environments. Our Nation’s security demands the CAF maintain these higher-end capabilities and skill sets.

To this end USAF is fighting a hard battle to get rid of A-10s and reduce C-130 numbers and has won the battle to cancel C-27. UAV orders are decreasing substantially.

So we have 2 contradictory viewpoints:

1. Small wars and assymetric threats are more likely and we cannot pick and chose the wars we fight.

vs

2. Most likely future conflict is high end conventional warfare. This is the wars we want to fight.

Unfortunately for General Hostage, history since 1945 favours General Petraeus’ argument. And since 1991, the assymetric threat has increased massively, whilst the conventional one has not.

China is nowhere near the threat the USSR was and it never can be:

1. Cold War was primarily ideological with both ideologies having supporters around the world. China and USA don’t share such a great ideological divide. China’s drivers are blatantly Chinese self interest whereas USSR could hide behind ideology.

This makes creating allies much more difficult.

2. During WWII USSR created a series of client states, something which the Chinese cannot.

3. USSR was not so reliant on foreign natural resources.

4. China does not share land borders with American allies unlike USSR. This meant USSR could have considerable power projection without need for aircraft carriers, air refuellers, large navy supply ships etc etc. China on the other hand needs large air and sea forces to project power into Northern Asia.

Basically it’s cheaper to build and maintain tank divisions and short range figher regiments than it is to build and maintain aircraft carriers and amphibs as well as long range jets.

5. China’s maritime access is limited and it’s constrained by the ring of potential enemies. USSR on the other hand had relatively open access to both Pacific and Atlantic.

6. China’s military has shrunk in terms of absolute numbers and is outnumbered by USA + Allies.

China is on the rise but it’s still a second rate power compared to USA and is still contained by US allies and US Naval power. [u]This will not change unless US slashes its military massively.[u]

USAF will probably still be called in very often to fight small nasty wars when an A-10 and an MQ-1 are far more capable and cost effective than an F-16/-35 and where a C-130 is far more cost effective than a C-17.

Seems to me the A-10s and C-130s should stay and cutbacks should probably take place to the F-16 fleet.