In a new article on War is Boring over at Medium, Robert Farley argues that the United States can and should do away with an independent Air Force by folding it back into the Army and Navy.
There are some very practical reasons why an independent Air Force is a good thing. First, not all airpower is used in support of operations over land or water. Strategic air and space power, whether with manned aircraft or missiles, most notably our strategic nuclear forces, can be employed in support of ground and naval operations, but need not be. Furthermore, strategic air and missile forces are projected from the continental United States, not from an overseas theater of operations. To assign the strategic airpower function to either the Army or the Navy would make no sense. Second, we need a central repository for doctrine to manage the air battle in a theater of operations. To assign that responsibility to aviation assets of the Army or Navy would create an unbalanced situation where the interests and concerns of one service outweighed the other.
There is the Soviet/Russian model, where Frontal Aviation is under the control of the Army, and the Strategic Rocket Troops do their nuclear thing. This may have worked for a power that is quintessentially continental, where the Army does, and must, dominate all other services. But we’re both a continental and a maritime power, where neither Army nor Navy, nor aviation wherever placed, is the most important. Unlike Britain, where the Royal Navy was, and is, considered the “Senior Service,” we don’t have a senior service.
We all know the Air Force isn’t going to go away. But it’s important that we know why we do have an Air Force, and why there is an enduring need for one.
Robert L. Goldich retired from a 33-year career in the Congressional Research Service in 2005. He was the senior CRS military manpower analyst when he left. Bob is currently writing a book on conscription in history, from the first human civilizations to the present.
Photo Credit: U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Asha Kin
Alexander B 
Another reason to not fold the Air Force is the heavy-lifting and logistics missions which, I personally, cannot see any other service taking over. It is a critical piece of America’s ability to get man-power and material to theater be it for combat pre-staging or humanitarian assistance.
If anything, this mission would have to come under a new entity along the lines of the Military Sealift Command. Think Military Airlift Command.
Considering the expanding of roles of ballistic missile defense, satellite employment, heavy airlift, cyber and future theaters such as space, we need the Air Force more than ever.
Although the RN is known as the Senior Service it doesnt translate into anything practical and hasn’t done for a very long time
One only needs to read a bit of history about the formation of the Royal Air Force to see the need for a separate air arm, many of the same issues would re-appear if the USAF or indeed the RAF were absorbed into the sea and land elements
David Axe seems to me to be looking at this rather simplistically with no eye on the reality of large organisations