It's time for a new Key West agreement
Airpower, air defense, Marines’ role—all need revisiting, three-quarters of a century after the seminal roles-and-missions pact.
R.D. Hooker, Jr. | January 24, 2025 02:47 PM ET
Commentary Army Navy Air Force Marine Corps Space Force
Roles and missions for the U.S. military were laid down in 1948 at Key West at a conference chaired by James Forrestal, the first Secretary of Defense. Subsequently approved by President Truman, these accords have remained in place ever since, despite extraordinary changes in the national-security environment. The end of the Cold War, the unification of Germany, the Goldwater-Nichols legislation, the rise of China, NATO expansion, 9/11 and the Global War on Terror, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine all represented seismic shifts. Rapid and dramatic advances in technology do as well. While the basic roles of the military services are fundamentally sound, service missions should be revisited in light of these changes. It’s time for a reboot.
As in 1948, a key point of contention today concerns airpower. In every conflict, concerns resurface about close air support, traditionally the lowest priority for the Air Force. While “strategic” missions maximize the employment of Air Force assets under Air Force commanders, close air support requires close coordination and integration with ground commanders, violating tenets deemed essential for the optimum employment of airpower. Army doctrine depends heavily on airpower, which enables the flexible and powerful concentration of combat power more than any other capability on the battlefield. From the perspective of most airmen, however, CAS is seen as a wasteful dispersion of airpower for tactical and not strategic ends. As Carl Builder noted in his classic Masks of War, “losing the freedom to apply airpower independently to decisive ends is to lose that which pilots have striven so hard to achieve for much of the history of the airplane. Thus, close air support will always be an unwanted stepchild of the Air Force.” Strong and ultimately successful pressure from the Air Force to retire the A-10, its only dedicated CAS platform, confirms this point.
Mindful of these facts, the Navy and Marine Corps fought persistently and successfully to retain control of their fixed-wing aviation at Key West, a consideration denied the Army. Over many decades the Army built up a rotary-wing “attack” community in the form of the AH-1 and later AH-64-series helicopter gunships. Though an important capability, Army attack helicopters lack the speed, range, weapons load, and survivability of the A-10—an airplane the Air Force doesn’t want for a mission it doesn’t like. The Army needs fixed-wing combat aviation for the same reasons that the Navy and Marine Corps do: to provide immediate and responsive air support for service missions. An obvious solution is to transfer both the mission and the platform to the Army, freeing the Air Force to focus on its traditional and favored missions of air supremacy, strategic bombing, air interdiction and air mobility.
https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2025/01/time-new-key-west-agreement/402489/?oref=d1-featured-river-top
