Bringing Back the Past: The Impact of Procuring Low-Tech Strike Assets on Air Force Culture

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Service culture affects how military branches organize, train, equip, and survive as separate institutions of the US military. The culture of a service includes the persistent, patterned way of thinking about operations and relationships. The population of a particular service will identify with a common mission, capability, and or ethos, thus forming a cohesive culture. Air Force culture is centered upon the idea that advanced technology enables the service to be a decisive contributor to warfare from the air domain. In order to stay relevant to current military requirements, services are faced with the challenge of either re-organizing or directing a major change in practices, or both. Once the service initiates the change, the service culture's response is a direct contributor to whether or not the change will be successful. The US Air Force is considering procuring propeller-driven aircraft to conduct strike operations. This is a major change in practices, and goes against the current service culture that has, since before its inception as an independent institution, fostered a technology biased ethos. There are historic examples that illustrate how service cultures rejected the institution's proposal to re-organize or initiate a major change in practices. During Vietnam the Army culture resisted transformation to deal with counterinsurgency due to organizational and material costs. There are also historic examples that demonstrate how cultural buy-in from the institution allowed a major change to occur. The methodology for this monograph analyzes two such case studies. The first case study is the Army Transformation that was initiated by General Shinseki in 1999 and is still ongoing. The second case study analyzes the Marine Corps' decision to resurrect the amphibious assault mission during the interwar period. Both case studies are examples of how Army and Marine leaders influenced their service culture to adopt a major re-organization and a significant chang