Army and Marine Corps divisions ought to be joint commands, “and the number two guy” in each should be an Air Force one-star general,” Barry McCaffrey, ex Army general and national drug czar, said at a Capitol Hill seminar March 12 (see above). “Because, if you look at an Army division, 600 [to] … 900 Air Force guys operate in support of a division—inside, never mind flying ‘in support of.’ We gotta have one person run that airspace.” The Army and Marine Corps have to get past their “huge sense of mistrust” that the Air Force won’t be there when called for. McCaffrey said such a notion is foolish, given that in today’s war, a single Army platoon “can have a B-1 bomber overhead in 20 minutes” to do its close air support.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Dan Caine said the U.S. needs to prepared for future conflicts in which its adversaries will be able to closely track the location of American forces and attack with autonomous systems that use artificial intelligence.
