Colonel Paul “P. J.” McAneny offers an analysis focused on aircraft maintenance but applicable to the entire force and recommends cultural changes to support lasting transformation. He examines the impact of metrics on transformation and evaluates the USAF aircraft maintenance culture. He asks several questions: Can focused metrics precede cultural change? Does the aircraft maintenance community support a Red Is Good culture, in which metrics are used to illuminate probl...

One of the United States’ greatest military advantages is rapid global mobility. The Civil Reserve Air Fleet (CRAF) provides a crucial supplement to the military’s mobility resources in time of war or national emergency. The proliferation of man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS), however, poses a growing threat to the CRAF and its critical airlift capacity. In this study, Lt Col Glen Downing describes the US government’s historical and potential future uses of the C...

In this paper, Lt Col Mary E. Griswold discusses the basics of the electromagnetic spectrum and UAS operations, pointing out how frequency management and bandwidth availability are key to UAS operations. She illustrates this through examples of difficulties encountered during military operations with spectrum and bandwidth issues. Finally, she notes that solutions to the current challenges are found in the employment of both short- and long-term actions in these areas to...

The US commercial air carriers provide a unique and critical enabler that helps us meet our mobility requirements in the form of the Civil Reserve Air Fleet (CRAF). Colonel Schauber contends that changes allowing increased foreign ownership or control opportunities would threaten our national security by jeopardizing the DOD’s accessibility to CRAF assets. Although the CRAF has formally been utilized only twice, its importance and our reliance on it cannot be overstated.

In this paper, Col David B. Hume, who served as an expeditionary air support operation group commander in Operation Iraqi Freedom, explores some of the mission employment and doctrinal issues associated with this emerging weapons system and argues that weaponized unmanned aircrafts should be commanded and controlled just like close-air-support (CAS) assets.

In this paper Lt Col Cristina M. Stone argues that the Air Force does not adequately prepare its intelligence analysts; targeteers; intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) operators; and unit-level and air and space operations center (AOC) personnel with the knowledge and expertise required to fill these positions. The author recommends that the Air Force leverage its technical and scientific core and expert organizations across the government to improve tra...

Gen John P. Jumper, former Air Force chief of staff, tasked Air Force Space Command with the responsibility of developing, fielding, and executing tactical and operationally responsive space capabilities near and through space. The newly created initiative known as Joint Warfighting Space focused on near space due to the advantage of achieving spacelike capabilities at a lower cost. Such capabilities could offer continuous, organic, survivable, and “stay and stare” persi...

The possible use of nonlethal chemical technologies in counterterrorist operations is drawing much attention in the ongoing global war on terrorism.The decision to apply nonlethal technologies requires an understanding of their overall effects, both tactically and strategically. This paper provides background information on both antipersonnel and antimaterial nonlethal chemical technologies; their applications within the special operations forces (SOF) counterterrorist e...

The F/A-22 Raptor is a new weapons system replacing the F-15C Eagle. The F/A-22’s development, testing, and IOC declaration at Langley AFB, Virginia, in December 2005 closely parallels the F-15A’s experience of 29 years ago. This paper provides background information on both aircraft, their T&E processes, and their first operational assignments to Langley AFB. Comparisons are made, differences highlighted, and recommendations offered. While it may appear that everything ...

Colonel dePalo believes that better application of the doctrinal tenets of airpower is needed for more effective and efficient utilization of USAF combat rescue forces. He uses the tenets of flexibility, concentration, and persistence to demonstrate that the current force can transform to more effectively support the global war on terrorism and adapt to new roles and missions leading to a more agile, multifaceted personnel-recovery capability worldwide. This force can ab...

In support of national and military security strategies, the DOD has established the joint force commander (JFC) as the means to provide unity of command, exercised through component commanders, during contingency operations. Intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) is key to the JFC’s successful prosecution of contingency operations. The multifaceted complexity cannot be overstated as both national and theater ISR architectures include many linked nodes that...

The author contends that urban terrain has become the preferred battlespace of US adversaries in the early twenty-first century. This environment poses unique challenges, especially to air and space warfare. The difficulty of sorting friendlies from enemy combatants, the latter intermingled with large numbers of noncombatants in very confined spaces, creates serious dilemmas for maneuver and aviation forces. Colonel Kemper believes that this mission, though well document...

In Tanker-Force Structure: Recapitalization of the KC-135, Lieutenant Colonel Juan Narvid challenges air mobility warriors to develop a tanker-force structure that overcomes the thinking of old to launch new concepts and capabilities for the future tanker. He argues that the future of warfare will require a tanker that is able to operate as a force enabler across the full spectrum of operations. This research is very timely with the Boeing 767 being looked at as a replac...

The use of the heavy bomber during Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) is just one more chapter on the flexibility of airpower. Bombers in the early stages of the war destroyed the Taliban air force on the ground and the limited air-to-air defenses, as well as disrupting command and control nodes. Orbiting close over problem areas, heavy bombers, guided by ground terminal attack controllers, precisely struck key targets. The bombers were supplying something different than t...

In this paper, Lt Col Devin L. Cate tackles the question of whether an air superiority fighter is relevant to warfare in the twenty-first century.

In Weather Operations in the Transformation Era, Col John M. Lanicci, USAF, takes a compelling look at future weather operations. His hypothesis is that a consolidated battlespace picture integrates both natural and man-made elements, which is totally consistent with USAF transformation efforts. He points out that the way ahead is easier said than done and offers several cogent reasons why the weather operations portion of information-in-warfare has not caught up with cu...

A huge portion of the military burden in support of these operations falls on the shoulders of the Mobility Air Forces (MAF). Lt Col Eileen M. Isola’s Leading Air Mobility Operations in Complex Humanitarian Emergencies provides just such an educational foundation for MAF war fighters charged with leading CHEs. She provides a superb synthesis of a dozen years of lessons learned from many resources and institutions, sifting through the tactical and operational lessons lear...

In this discerning assessment of Operation Allied Force (OAF), Lt Col Michael W. Lamb Sr. examines the myriad of lessons learned that have been written, and debated, from this campaign and synthesizes them into some golden nuggets for strategists and campaign planners. Indeed, there is much to be learned. From the beginning of the campaign, the military logic of OAF has been a matter of intense, even bitter debate. The problems and questions that arise from OAF are numer...

In Preventing Catastrophe: US Policy Options for Management of Nuclear Weapons in South Asia, Lt Col Martin J. “Marty” Wojtysiak, USAF, proposes a response to the dangerous proliferation of nuclear weapons in India and Pakistan. This paper highlights the threat in “The Nuclear Catastrophe of 2005,” a gripping projection of the worstcase scenario on the current realities of the Indian subcontinent. Written a year after the “catastrophe,” it vividly describes the events le...

Col Thompson, in his concentrated focus on China’s military space applications, examines PRC ground, space, counterspace, and space policy aspects. His principal findings: China has plans to construct a new launch site in the deep south; PRC telemetry, tracking and com-mand capacities are improving; China has the ability to conduct limited intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions from space; the PRC is pursuing a counterspace capability most likely using sa...