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Here we go again. Former Air Force chief of staff Gen. Merrill A. "Tony'' McPeak recently declared, "For all but the resolutely sightless, it is now obvious that air combat determines the outcome in modern war."

Heretofore known as the general who personally designed a new uniform for his officers that was scrapped to cheers about 30 seconds after McPeak retired in 1994, the general remains remarkably nearsighted in his retirement. Colorblind, too. He only sees Air Force blue.

The Air Force has been declaring itself the decisive force in wars since the days when it was known as the Army Air Corps and carpet bombed Nazi Germany day and night with no fatal effect on the German nation's will to fight or its ability to produce guns, bullets and better tanks and warplanes than the allies had.

The Air Force has indeed made terrific technological strides since those long-ago days. Precision strikes with precision munitions make war a far more deadly game than the time of dumb bombs when the only thing pilots could guarantee was that their bombs would hit the ground after they were dropped.

But it must be noted that it was only after teams of U.S. special operations forces got on the ground in Afghanistan to spot the targets, and paint them with lasers, that the Air Force started hitting what it was supposed to hit.

It must also be noted that the war in Kosovo was conducted entirely by the Air Force, bombing from above 10,000 feet. Later it was reckoned that - aside from a number of civilian targets bombed by mistake such as a column of Albanian refugees and a town marketplace - the Serbian army managed to conduct its massacres and then withdraw its tanks and armored cars virtually untouched. What was bombed to bits were decoys: mocked up model tanks and artillery pieces.

It was not the Air Force that blasted its way into Baghdad. It was not the Air Force that captured Kirkuk or Mosul. It was a remarkably deadly and synchronized air and ground attack that won the war in Iraq in just three weeks. Neither the Army nor the Air Force nor the Navy, or even the Marines, could have done it alone.

The watchword from the Pentagon for more than two decades has been "joint." Not the ones one smokes, or the others that hurt after a hard game of tennis. This kind of joint is the kind that is decreed by law under the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986, which says the branches of our military will learn how to play together as a team.

The Army knows it can't fight alone. It depends on Navy and Air Force assets to get soldiers and supplies wherever they are needed. It depends on the Air Force and the Navy for sweeping the skies clear of enemy aircraft; it depends on them to soften up enemy defenses from the air.

Neither the Army nor the Navy has ever suggested that they could win our wars by themselves. Only the Air Force believes that. It has believed that ever since Maj. Gen. Clair Chennault, World War II commander of the volunteer Flying Tigers and later of the 14th Air Force in China, sang his song of victory over Japan from the air in Franklin D. Roosevelt's ear. Some Air Force officers believe it now, in their heart of hearts.

McPeak's ramblings are nothing new, but they're not exactly in the spirit of inter-service cooperation.

The only two pieces of air power equipment that performed badly in the recent war, McPeak says in The Washington Post, are the Apache Longbow helicopter and the Patriot missile. Guess what? Both of them are owned by the U.S. Army.

McPeak knows full well that the problem with the Apache Longbow was that it was mistakenly sent on a deep-strike mission into flat terrain and an urban environment without the advance air and artillery preparation that Army doctrine requires.

He faults the Patriot for shooting down two allied aircraft, admitting it was likely a software glitch, but overlooks the fact that the much-improved Patriot batteries knocked down every missile the desperate Iraqis fired into Kuwait.

The former Air Force chief suggests that the Apache either be handed over for joint air tasking - shorthand for putting it under Air Force control. And while it's at it, he says, the Army should hand over the Patriots and any other theater missile defenses it owns to the Air Force, as well.

Very helpful, Gen. McPeak. Very helpful.

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Fighters are our salvation, But BOMBERS alone provide us with the means of VICTORY! - Winston Churchill