lol maverick, thanks for the motive to do some reading, because I knew the GAO wouldnt have suggested something that was banned by federal law.
your statement is not entirely correct. congress established the reorganized and new departments, and put it on the sec. of defense to:
"but not to merge these departments or services...to eliminate unnecessary duplication in the Department of Defense...to provide more effective, efficient, and economical administration in the Department of Defense; to provide for the unified strategic direction of the combatant forces"
Historically if the
services wanted to shift responsibilities, the affected services would have to agree with each other first, before DOD would consider it. for instance when the army took on Close Air Support with the rotary-wing AC, DOD enacted the agreement between the army and airforce as policy, and that agreement left nearly all fixed-wing CAS to the AF.
The other part of the GAO proposal was that the AF would have to scrap their f-16 attack squadrons. This would be consistant with The National Security Act of 1947. If the Army would take on in effect all of the CAS mission, the AF could not provide a duplicate service. The GAO would not let the AF retask their f-16s to a fighter role, so they did not like the idea either. However, the idea appearently started with the AF indicating to the GAO that they would be willing to give the A-10s to the army.
