Patrick was not hostile to aviation, however. He underwent flight training and obtained his wings, then issued a series of reports to the War Department emphasizing the need to expand and modernize the Air Service. In his first annual report in 1922, he warned that the Air Service had been degraded by budget cuts to the degree that it could no longer meet its peacetime obligations, much less mobilize for war. In one of the Air Service's first inclusions in the army's promotion system after becoming a combatant arm, among the 669 lieutenant colonels on the 1922 candidate list for colonel, the first Air Service member (James E. Fechet) was 354th. Patrick supported and issued the first air doctrine for the service, "Fundamental Conceptions" (patterned on Army Training Regulation 10-5 "Doctrines Principles and Methods"), which outlined strategy and tactics for the air arm. Patrick was also critical of the policy that placed air units under the command of corps commanders and proposed that only observation squadrons should be part of the ground forces, with all combat forces centralized under the control of an air force attached to General Headquarters.