The Army wouldn't take the A-10s if they were offered.[0]
>doesn't want to get involved with smaller fixed-wing aircraft for close air support.
But they have[1]. An OA-X demonstration is scheduled for August, of which they're looking to field an off-the-shelf plane.
[0]: http://www.military.com/daily-news/2015/02/25/army-not-inter... [1]: http://www.defensenews.com/articles/air-force-leaders-confir...
Not needing a pilot could make them smaller, cheaper, and able to enter (and remain in) dangerous areas in a way a helicopter or plane never could.
This seems like something the Army could operate themselves.
There's no particular reason why air superiority fighters, long range bombers, aerial refueling tankers, and airdrop cargo haulers should all be under the same command just because they all fly. Clearly, two of those are for logistics, and two are for force projection.
I suspect that the existence of the military academies don't help in that respect.
Makes me wonder if the U.S. military is the next big institution to be "disrupted" by thousands of tiny startups, we just don't realize it because fortunately, everyone would rather have peace.
https://www.fastcompany.com/1784731/regina-dugans-innovative...
JSOC (Joint Special Operations Command) is a cross-functional mission-driven organization:
https://dupress.deloitte.com/dup-us-en/deloitte-review/issue...
Do you have a source for that? Not because I'm challenging you, but because I'd like to read more on it.
https://stratechery.com/2016/apples-organizational-crossroad...
Also by personal experience at Google, which reorganized from functional lines to product lines when Larry took over as CEO in 2011.
There've also been a bunch of other articles about this. Selected reading material:
https://medium.learningbyshipping.com/functional-versus-unit...
http://thetechnalyzer.com/apples-functional-organization/
https://hbr.org/1968/11/organizational-choice-product-vs-fun...
https://a16z.com/2010/08/02/taking-the-mystery-out-of-scalin...
I'm perhaps overselling product organization as having "won" - the choice remains controversial, and the a16z article even explicitly says that it's basically a "pick your poison" situation where whichever choice you make will have drawbacks. But the general principle remains that product organization leads to more nimble products, while functional organization leads to more efficient functions. Perhaps the military's functional organization is a function (no pun intended) of it being peacetime, and the primary goal of Congress being to control costs.
This seems decades late. The USAF has no manned space capability. The U.S. Government once owned the Space Shuttles. They had astronauts. The USAF once had a Space School. That's all gone. Now, they just buy commercial rocket launches.
If anything, the reorganization the USAF needs is to lose the close air support mission, and the A-10 Warthogs, to the Army. The USAF keeps trying to kill off the Warthog, and doesn't want to get involved with smaller fixed-wing aircraft for close air support. The Army needs that low-level aerial firepower. They need it from affordable aircraft they can use in quantity, not rare, overpriced F-35s. There's an old deal between the Army and the USAF, the "Key West Agreement", that the Army would stay out of fixed-wing aviation and only use helicopters. That needs to be looked at again.
(The Marines have their own air, and it works out well for them. Marine air and ground forces tend to coordinate better than USAF/Army combos.)