LETTERS

摘要

It was a pleasure to again run into my old friend, Lt. Col. Price Bingham, not in person unfortunately, but in his well-written and researched article: "The Air Base: The Air Force's Achilles' Heel?" [October, p. 48]. Price, a proud Air Force Academy grad-not a ring knocker-and I met on the Air Staff in the Pentagon in 1980. I was assigned to Doctrine and Concepts and my boss was a former Misty pilot, shot down once in his fast-mover F-100 over South Vietnam. When I showed up, he briefed me on our mission, then said, 'Find a problem area, study it, and write me a paper. That was it, and how I got into Soviet armor attack and what I called a concept with a fatal flaw. Price was researching similarly contentious issues, not always well received, but we moved amongst people with vision who had the future of the Air Force in mind, not their personal careers. One of them was John Boyd, whose thinking shaped us both. Boyd is best-known for the OODA Loop-Observe-Orient-Decide-Act-a fighter pilot's survival guide. Boyd pushed his concept vigorously, to the chagrin of many of the senior staff, and when we met him he was working as a retired colonel for a dollar a year in OSD. Before that, Boyd developed a series of energy maneuverability curves for the F-105S assigned to the 36th Tactical Fighter Wing in Bitburg [Air Base, Germany,] and helped bring out the airplane's true capabilities. All that before handheld computers or GPS. So I am not surprised that Price came up with this article, which has to be among the top 10 issues the Air Force is-or should be-working.