US Air Force After Vietnam. Postwar Challenges and Potential for Responses

摘要

The study examines several areas of concern facing the United States Air Force, and the other services in varying degrees, in the years after Vietnam. These concerns are traditional, familiar, and constant when stated abstractly--such matters as doctrine, force structure or force mix, and professional military education. But the study seeks to find if, how, and to what extent some of these traditional interests may have taken on distinctive features inviting special treatment when considered concretely--in the aftermath of the US involvement in Vietnam. In one sense, the study is not intended as an evaluation of the impact of the US experience in Vietnam in isolation from other influences. In another sense, however, the Vietnam experience affected the US military so deeply and so broadly that it lurks behind most of what has been thought and done in military and security affairs since then, even when civilian or military officials specifically disavow a connection. Vietnam is so much a part of the foundation on which present behavior is premised that it forms part of the context of influence as a matter of fact, even when it is not accepted in this role as a matter of consciousness. To speak, then, of 'the Air force after Vietnam' inevitably entails some assessment of the service's reaction to its experience in the war--good or bad. To speak of the service's 'response to its challenges' during the past decade similarly establishes an interplay between the impact of the Vietnam experience and the conscious focus on present difficulties and future contingencies.