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the White House and later to the Senate, the Chief of Staff himself reviews personally the requirement for the general in that position, the individual and whether in his opinion he is general officer class, and so on and so forth.

Mr. HARDY. Well, the tendency not only-I am not thinking in terms of Air Force alone, I am thinking in terms of all the military services. For that matter, even in civil service, the tendency is always to upgrade a position. I am just wondering what sort of

General WETZEL. Well, I am sure you have that kind of impression. We don't feel in the Air Force

Mr. HARDY. I wouldn't expect you to feel that way, General. But I am just trying to see if I can see through this thing. And I am not thinking strictly in terms of general officers. I am thinking all the way down the line, even to the extent of whether or not some enlisted personnel might not be qualified as pilots, rather than requiring that they all be officers. I am just wondering whether we are doing a real job on that, or whether we are giving way to this tendency to build up the rank of each particular billet and whether there is any real effort to objectively evaluate these things. Of course that is tied-Mr. Chairman, that is tied into this whole officer personnel consideration.

General WETZEL. Well, of course it is.

Mr. RIVERS. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. HARDY. Certainly. I will be happy to.

Mr. RIVERS. You mean what governs and the importance of the billet?

For instance, take a troop carrier wing. Say you got a headquarters, for the X Troop Carrier Wing Headquarters, whether you call it the 15th or 12th or 13th or any Air Force. That is a troop carrier, or whatever it is. Say a troop carrier.

General WETZEL. Troop carrier wing.

Mr. RIVERS. No. Say the 17th Air Force, which is a troop carrier, or the 18th.

sir.

General WETZEL. Eighteenth is the Troop Carrier Air Force; yes,

Mr. RIVERS. What he is talking about: would you have a two-star general as head of that or one-star?

General WETZEL. Normally a numbered Air Force is a two-star general officer's job. It was in the last war and I don't know what it was in World War I

Mr. RIVERS. How many wings would that

General WETZEL. Anywhere from

Mr. RIVERS. Two to four to six?

General WETZEL. More than that. It seems to me the 18th, and I have that some place, must have 10.

Mr. RIVERS. I see.

General WETZEL. That we consider to be a numbered Air Force. It is the 18th Air Force, responsible for a lot of equipment, a lot of personnel. We consider that a major general's job.

Mr. RIVERS. I see. Regardless how that expands, that will still be a two-star general?

General WETZEL. Normally speaking.

Mr. RIVERS. And how many one-star's?

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General WETZEL. The only numbered Air Forces that we have today that we consider to be a lieutenant general's job is the 5th Air Force, which is fighting the air war in Korea. We consider that to be a lieutenant general's job and the officer in command is a lieutenant general.

Mr. RIVERS. As that 18th Air Force expands, or whatever it is, how many one-stars would you have?

General WETZEL. We are getting a little ahead of our schedule, but I will be happy to answer your question.

Mr. RIVERS. I see.

General WETZEL. Normally, as I pointed out, we have fewer general officers authorized than we consider we have jobs for, general officer billets for, if I can use the Navy term.

Mr. BLANDFORD. You mean the other way around, don't you, General?

General WETZEL. No. We have less capability to man our general officer positions.

Mr. BLANDFORD. You mean you have more billets requiring general officers than you have authorizations for general officers?

General WETZEL. Yes, of course, that is what I mean.

So normally a wing is a general officer's job.

A troop carrier wing, even, we consider to be that responsible a job, to have that much money involved and so on and so forth. Mr. RIVERS. What is that, about 50 planes?

General WETZEL. How many transports in a medium transport wing?

Lieutenant Colonel BURKE. Twelve per squadron.

General WETZEL. That makes it 36. But we are unable to-that is what I am trying to get to. Presently it is only a heavy troop carrier wing that we would consider to be a general officer's job. Mr. RIVERS. How many would that have, a heavy?

General WETZEL. The same number.

Mr. RIVERS. Larger planes?

General WETZEL. However, you will find as you look over some of our jobs that we have medium transport wings in the 18th Air Force commanded by general officers. They were Reserve wings that were called to duty. Their officer came to duty with them. And we use up a brigadier general's space while he is on duty.

General Murrow, who commanded one of those and who has recently returned to civil life, will not be replaced by a general, because we can't afford it.

Mr. HARDY. Mr. Chairman, if I could just follow up one step further here.

General WETZEL. Yes, sir.

Mr. HARDY. The thing I am wondering about-and I don't knowis whether or not all through the Air Force and the other services for that matter we may be actually in a position where we have lieutenants filling certain billets that might appropriately be filled by enlisted personnel, colonels filling lieutenant colonel's billets. Certain billets, that might be filled by majors and so on and so forth. I don't know. But I am wondering whether there is actually any real objective study been given to that particular subject by the Air Force?

General WETZEL. Yes, sir.

Mr. HARDY. I am wondering-well, can you tell us, then, who is doing it? Is there anybody that has a responsibility for it or is it sort of a hit-and-miss proposition?

General WETZEL. No, sir. It is not hit and miss. The Director of Manpower and Organization, which you will see on the chart as we go with our presentation, is charged with that.

Mr. HARDY. That is the person I want to ask these questions of. General WETZEL. We have a representative from that office. That officer is charged with this continuing study.

Mr. ARENDS. General, let's proceed in sort of an orderly fashion here and according to your suggestion here that we go ahead with your presentation as divided in parts 1 and 2 here to begin with. General WETZEL. Right, sir.

Mr. ARENDS. First the discussion of the organization of the Air Corps. I think you said Lieutenant Colonel Burke would handle that?

General WETZEL. Yes, sir.

Mr. NELSON. Mr. Chairman, may I ask the gentlemen a couple of questions?

Mr. ARENDS. You want to do it now? I thought some of these things would develop as we go along. Go ahead.

Mr. NELSON. General, are you having any difficulty getting flying cadets?

General WETZEL. Yes, sir. We are. In particular, we are having difficulty getting flying cadets who want to be aircraft observers. We presently are having difficulty across the board, but I am reasonably sure we can fill our flying training program with aviation cadet volunteers up through September or October. As of today, we are in difficulty getting aviation cadets to be aircraft observers.

Mr. NELSON. Aircraft observers are enlisted men, are they not? General WETZEL. Oh, no, sir. An aircraft observer is a radar bombardier-navigator type. He is the guy on the B-47 that says

when.

Mr. BLANDFORD. May I interrupt for just a second, Mr. Nelson, and ask this question?

Have you ever thought, General, that one of the reasons you are not getting aviation cadets but you are getting a multitude of applications for OCS is that you pay an OCS nonflying cadet $147 a month and make him a staff sergeant while you only pay an aviation cadet $109 a month?

General WETZEL. Yes; that has occurred to us.

Mr. BLANDFORD. Wouldn't it be better to reverse that? It seems to me the Air Force needs pilots more than they need ground officers. General WETZEL. That is a fair statement.

Mr. NELSON. What reasons do you ascribe, General, why you are not getting aviation cadets?

General WETZEL. Oh, well, it is a pretty broad question. The military today isn't-let's face it a very popular place to be in. The Air Force is making an effort to be an entirely volunteer force. The military catches it on the front page of every newspaper in the land. We feel we are constantly being tapped for little things we used to have. We can now only carry 9,000 pounds when we change stations. The brass catches it constantly. Kids just don't today think that is a

good league to get into. I happen to have two sons at West Point. I didn't advise them to go. They made up their own minds.

I have heard regular Air Force and Army personnel who have kids of that age who have not advised them to go, specifically, for all of those reasons. It is a complicated thing.

Mr. NELSON. Is any part of the reason ascribable to the fact they have to fly jets?

General WETZEL. No, sir. I don't think so.

Mr. NELSON. Now just one more question, General. You say on your estimate only-I understand that.

General WETZEL. Yes, sir.

Mr. NELSON. That you have [deleted] wings combat ready.
General WETZEL. Yes, sir.

Mr. NELSON. Now, when you say combat ready, do you mean that those wings are equipped with a type of plane they are ultimately designed to fly, or are some of them equipped with old World War II planes?

General WETZEL. Some of them are equipped with old World War II planes. Some of the strategic air command units that I would classify in my estimate of [deleted] combat ready I think are still flying B-29's.

Mr. NELSON. How about your Air Defense wings? How many of them are equipped with jet interceptors?

General WETZEL. You are way out of my field. I am sorry I can't answer that. Can you?

TESTIMONY OF LT. COL. MARK J. BURKE, DIRECTORATE OF MANPOWER AND ORGANIZATION, OFFICE DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF, OPERATIONS, USAF

Lieutenant Colonel BURKE. No, sir.

Lieutenant Colonel PLOTT. We have it here. It will take a few minutes to give it to you.

Mr. NELSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. ARENDS. All right, will you continue? Let the colonel proceed. Lieutenant Colonel BURKE. All right.

Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, I will not attempt to give you a detailed technical discussion on our Air Force organization, but rather shall try to give you a brief picture of the broad scope of our organizational segments so that you may reach your own conclusions relative to our policies and procedures of our entire Air Force structure. Now the reason we have an organizational pattern is to enable us to accomplish our overall mission.

Each segment of that organization contributes its specific share to the overall mission.

We in the Air Force consider that our mission is, first, by our very existence to act as a deterrent to any potential enemies; and, second, in time of war to help defend our country and to defeat these enemies. And each segment of our organization must be so organized that we can best accomplish this mission in the shortest possible period of time. Now in order to render my discussion of easier comprehension, I shall employ certain graphic charts. I would like you to take a look at the first one.

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