Since airlift was first used as a tool of national security during the Berlin airlift, it has grown to deliver passengers, cargo, and fuel to operations worldwide in support of national security. However, Air Mobility Command (AMC) is the single organization that performs for air mobility for the United States. Currently, the UA Air Force has structured AMC for war; yet this command performs operations during times when the United States is at peace. AMC performs missions to support US military operations in hostile environments as well as humanitarian operations in nonhostile environments....

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. Critics of the F/A-22, the US Air Force's next generation air superiority fighter, have identified it as a cold war relic - unjustifiably expensive and out of step with the Department of Defense (DoD) transformation. Colonel ate argues that the six operational goals of the DoD transformation, as defined in the Quadrennial Defense Review Report (QDR) of 2001, actually demand a highly capable air superiority fighter. He shows how achieving these...

Lt. Col. Karen U. Kwiatkowski's "Expeditionary Air Operations in Africa: Challenges and Solutions" details air operations challenges in Africa. She discusses how the USAF currently meets or avoids these challenges. She contends that Africa is like the "western frontier" of America's history - undeveloped, brimming with opportunity as well as danger, and that it is a place where standard assumptions often do not apply. Africa has not been, and is not today, a US geostrategic interest area. However, as the dawn of the twenty-first century breaks over a planet made both intimate and manageable...

Lt. Col. Karen U. Kwiatkowski's "Expeditionary Air Operations in Africa: Challenges and Solutions" details air operations challenges in Africa. She discusses how the USAF currently meets or avoids these challenges. She contends that Africa is like the "western frontier" of America's history - undeveloped, brimming with opportunity as well as danger, and that it is a place where standard assumptions often do not apply. Africa has not been, and is not today, a US geostrategic interest area. However, as the dawn of the twenty-first century breaks over a planet made both intimate and manageable...

The rapid expansion of social democracy and technology, as well as changes in the social/political patterns of American society, has drawn the military closer to civilian society. One element of this dynamic relationship is the military's adoption of commercial business paradigms and identities, resulting in the institutionalization of what one can describe as a business scientific/management-professional culture that surrounds the warrior of the 1990s. This culture seems to contrast and oftentimes openly conflict with the values and traditional culture that once embraced the professional...

In October 1956, Mao Tse-tung ordered the start of China's space program. Four years later, on 5 November 1960, China launched its first rocket, becoming the fourth country, behind Germany, the United States, and the Soviet Union, to enter space. Today China routinely launches space satellites for Western companies, including US corporations, and is increasing its share of the global space launch market. But the Chinese also use the technology and assistance gained in foreign ventures for PRC military applications. And a principal organization in China's space effort, the China Great Wall...

In "China as Peer Competitor? Trends in Nuclear Weapons, Space, and Information Warfare" Lt. Col. Kathryn L. Gauthier analyzes the potential for China to emerge as a peer competitor of the United States in the coming decades. First, she examines two traditional pillars of national strength - China's status as a nuclear weapons state and as a space power. Second, she then explores China's growing focus on information warfare (IW) as a means to wage asymmetric warfare against a technologically advanced adversary. Third, the author carefully examines the status of the three programs, highlights...

Space power is arguably one of the most valuable, yet underappreciated and misunderstood components of US national power. The effects derived from our presence in space have tremendous strategic implications: an explosion of communication capabilities, better weather prediction, precision navigation, and intelligence are but a few of the dividends derived from investments in space programs. The United States no longer enjoys a near monopoly on space effects. Every week brings news of advances in space technologies by China, Russia, India, European powers, and others. Space, as a strategic...

In this compelling study, Lt. Col. Carla D. Bass argues that the American military, underestimating vulnerabilities of the US information infrastructure, has based its strategic policy not on a firm foundation, but rather has built castles on sand. Such documents as "Joint Vision 2010 and United States Air Force Global Engagement" assume the United States will have unimpeded access to information on our own forces and on the enemy's forces as well, due largely to our technological sophistication. They propose application of a downsized US military in a still very deadly world, based on the...

Doctrine for joint urban operations, which include aviation urban operations, combined with revised tactics, techniques, and procedures for joint close air support, offers the combined/joint force air component commander a set of best practices for conducting counterland operations on urban terrain. In this study, Lt Col Todd Kemper, USMC, argues that aviation urban operations, particularly urban close air support, are no longer high-risk, low-probability missions left to academic discussions, but are proving to be high-risk, high-probability missions, as witnessed during Operation Iraqi...