15. The post-Vietnam era weakened the US Military
The end of the Vietnam Era in the United States military led to two significant changes in the services. The United States shifted to an all-volunteer military, with the draft discontinued. It also saw drastic reductions in operational budgets, as well as for future expansion. At the time US Naval doctrine centered around the aircraft carrier-based task force for surface warfare. Anti-submarine warfare was an important part of surface, aerial, and submarine doctrine as well. By the late 1970s, there was significant concern the Soviet air and naval assets could overwhelm the defense systems of the carrier task force through simple force of numbers.
Joint US Navy/US Air Force operations allowed the B-52, its defenses hardened by modifications following the Vietnam War, to fly long-range reconnaissance missions monitoring the steadily expanding Soviet fleet. Those flights were considerably outside the envisioned duties of the B-52 when it was designed in the 1950s. In 1975 the US Air Force began training B-52 aircrews in naval reconnaissance missions. By the early 1980s, B-52s were armed with anti-ship missiles, which could be launched against Soviet Naval assets. Anti-naval B-52 squadrons operated out of bases in Maine in the Atlantic, and Guam in the Pacific. They were coordinated by US Navy or US Air Force AWAC airplanes and formed an important part of the American response to the Soviet naval buildup during the latter years of the Cold War.