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The short, shallow, opinionated and easily contestable (also, cynical) version:
The services compete over the course of roughly a decade, within very broad doctrinal grounds, over who will be the most important or lead agency in a range (from which they pick) of likely contingencies, most of which turn out to be way off. It doesn't matter how important their actual contribution is, if they are not lead agency, they do not control their own destinies and, so goes the thinking, are inevitably squandered, robbed of the chance to win wars, or saddled with the blame for losses. Their competition encompasses their budgets for weapons systems, training and doctrine, force structure, and so forth.
One or the other service is usually having an identity crisis, in any given decade. After WWII, the Army (to use an example) was having the blues (so to speak)because nukes, strategic bombers and so forth left its leaders wondering what good they would do in any imagined exchange with the Soviets. After a few decades and many shifts in doctrine (oh yeah, and a couple wars), it worked that out in the form of joint doctrine that saw the Army and Air Force joined at the hip. That 'AirLand Battle Doctrine' was what you saw in the first gulf war, and it worked reasonably well for a conventional doctrine.
From the Air Force's perspective, this doctrine placed an emphasis on their supporting (mobility + close air support) role, instead of their strategic (bombing) role, in which they are the lead agency. Arguments have been going on since the forties as to whether the USAF could ever win a war all on its own, without ground pounders involved.
Okay, all that you might have already known. Now, enter the post-gulf war shrinkage of the military, which starts in fall of 1991 and continues throughout the 90s. All the forces shrink; all are given some lattitude (within the context of first a 'bottom-up review', then 'quadrennial defense reviews') about how they will do this, so long as they can claim to be able to fight one major war or two major regional conflicts at the same time, and the whole package adds up to the target number (around $250 billion in 1990s dollars). Everybody wastes time letting go of their dreams. The USAF's choice, with every budget cycle, is to trade off force structure (bodies and units) for technology (platforms, etc). The assumption is that they will 'get well' in later budgets and that their weapons systems will put them back in the lead role.
Suffice to say, it didn't happen that way. The fashion of the day does not favor conventional tactical platforms or new strategic bombers, or even (much) the 'expeditionary' mobility platforms (they did get a new tanker funded, though). They even lost the battle about who would 'own' (be proponent for) Predators and other unmanned drones. This does not make for a happy air force. Mobility is not lead agency stuff; it's 'hauling trash'. Enter identity crisis. Enter advertising to the public. And, to bring this bedtime story full circle, enter Cyber Command.
I can't think of any good reason why this needs to concern the rest of us, really, in the short term. We don't need a new generation of warplanes, incremental upgrades and maintenance , fresh avionics and targeting systems, etc. should be enough. Not sexy, I know. But hey, Go Cyber Command!
Let the challenges begin. RMP?
