Good news, Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England has told the Air Force to Sod off.

The Airforce wanted to manage all UAVs that operated over 3500 feet. That’s right all of them, Army, Navy, Marines, etc.

They wanted to run the contracts, for basically anything larger than a hand launched short range system.

The army, quite logically said that the USAF does a piss-poor job supporting people on the ground. They just don’t give a damn, hence the inanity of the USAF drawing up its own counterinsurgency manual, which basically says, bomb everything that moves^*.

While there are some economies gained from merging programs, Congress has pressured the DoD to merge USAF Predator and Army Warrior unmanned aerial system (UAS) programs for this reason, absent real duplication, and positive proof that the USAF if the ONLY service that can efficiently manage the system, any mergers should cut against the fly boys from Colorado Springs.

^*Come to think of it, that’s pretty much their answer to everything.