Military reform - still needed

One of the signals of illness in our nation's current military - aside from its Civil War outlook - is in the proliferation of specialist roles and their elaboration not just into permanent functions, but into novel, permanent, and unnecessary organizations.

In a healthy organization, mission focus results in a compact organization with few internal divisions. Specialist units may exist - they tend to be resented and re-evaluated often - but they get infill by detailing people from the organization's core. Army fliers were once assigned from other branches (infantry, artillery, armor). Flying was not "core." And some fliers I recall as being grumpy about separation from from their mealtickets. Focus.

Call the doctor when organizations reach outside their missions or when organizations try to do each others' work.

Well, the Air Force is now forming its own combat infantry units. Not a rejiggering of sentries and base security this, nor another commando outfit ... we're talking about permanent organizations of ordinary light infantry combat units, hundreds of men strong, designed to take the war to enemy ground units, "to close with and destroy the enemy."

The Queen of Battle dons blue.

If history offers a guide, you next aggregate these demi battalions into Luftwaffe field divisions.

This is approaching the medical definition of cancer.