Word: air
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...fellow who spent only two years as a young officer in the Air Force, Defense Secretary Robert Gates is looking equal parts Clausewitz and Sun Tzu - two of history's greatest military tacticians - as he unfolds his battle plan to remake the U.S. military. Last week he unveiled a $534 billion budget proposal for 2010 that calls for killing some of the military's most cherished weapons in favor of less high-tech gear better suited for the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and the most likely future conflicts. "You don't need," he said, "a $5 billion ship...
...military parlance, he's "shaping the battlefield" for the fights ahead with Congress, which gets the final word on military spending and doesn't take kindly to economic engines in its home districts and states being summarily axed. Key programs on his chopping block include the Air Force's $350 million-a-copy F-22 Fighter, the Army's $160 billion Future Combat Systems - a network of ground and air vehicles - and the Navy's DDG 1000 Destroyer. To prevail, Gates is employing what those in uniform call TTPs - tactics, techniques and procedures...
...Washington muted the outrage that would have exploded had all 535 of them been hanging around the Capitol surrounded by cameras and reporters. Not that that has entirely stopped all the rhetoric, including many critics' bogus claim that Gates is shrinking the overall Defense budget. By canceling the Air Force's prized F-22 fighter, Gates "is willing to sacrifice the lives of American military men and women for the sake of domestic programs favored by President Obama," said Senator Saxby Chambliss, a GOP member of the Armed Services Committee from Georgia, where the plane is built...
...deftly matched many of his proposed cuts with what's known inside the Pentagon as "plus-ups" - more money for different, but similar, programs. Changes that might seem dubious in isolation make more sense when viewed as part of what Gates calls his "holistic assessment." The argument that the Air Force needs more F-22 fighters loses some of its punch once you learn that Gates wants to boost production of the $100 million-a-copy F-35 fighter...
...During the 1990s, the world repeatedly looked on in shock at acts of French rebellion, including the occupation of airport runways by striking Air France workers to stop flights for days, and the paralysis of French highways by protesting truck drivers. Similar dismay resounded abroad at images of French farmers, angered by the import of cheaper goods, capturing trucks from the U.K., Spain, and other European Union countries and dumping or burning their cargo - which often included live animals...