[Infowarrior] - DOD turf wars suspected in CyberCommand decision

[Richard Forno]

Pentagon turf wars suspected in decision

By John Andrew Prime • jprime at gannett.com • August 23, 2008

http://www.shreveporttimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080823/NEWS01/808230325

Some national commentators suggest the brakes were applied to Air  
Force Cyber Command by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike  
Mullen, who they say wants a greater cyber role for the Navy.

If so, this would echo turf wars between services that for decades  
have resulted in unintended consequences.

For example, a tiff between the Army and the Navy at the end of World  
War II, over which service would control air assets, ended with the  
Navy getting certain seaborne platforms and limited ground air units  
and the Army retaining helicopters and some reconnaissance platforms.

Later in the 1940s, the Navy and the fledgling Air Force arm-wrestled  
over the issue of new supercarriers and new strategic bombers. The Air  
Force won that battle, getting the huge B-36 Peacemaker bomber, which  
was the nation's main strategic weapons platform through the 1950s.

And in the 1950s, the Army and the Air Force fought over which service  
would control strategic missile forces, with the Air Force again the  
winner and a new upstart agency called NASA getting the space mission.

The Navy gained a nuclear mission with the advent of nuclear  
submarines and the development of missiles for these and in 1960 tried  
to argue that maritime missiles eliminated the need for Air Force  
missiles and bombers.

"The end result was not what the Navy had in mind," John T. Correll,  
of Air Force Magazine, wrote in a lengthy essay on the interservice  
bickering. Instead, he said, the Pentagon "created the Joint Strategic  
Target Planning Staff to control the targeting of both Air Force and  
Navy strategic weapons." And, he added, "after that and until the end  
of the Cold War, missiles predominated in the Air Force alert force."