Strategic Airlift is Air Power

Abstract

Strategic airlift is a key component of air power in that it enables the Department of Defense to rapidly deploy and employ combat power in support of national objectives. Our experience in the Gulf War, where in a seven-month period, we airlifted over a half-million short tons of cargo and almost a half- million passengers into the theater of operations, showed clearly that strategic airlift is a system. It is a system so capable that it enabled the United States and its allies to deliver to the Gulf ten times the daily ton-miles as the 1947- 48 Berlin Airlift and four times that of the 1973 airlift to Israel. However, the Gulf War airlift was far from flawless. It generated some unique and challenging situations that highlighted shortcomings in what is first and foremost a system

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
May 01, 1993
Accession Number
ADA283138

Entities

People

  • Mary T. Bonnet

Organizations

  • Air War College

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Ground and Sea Platforms

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Aircrafts
  • Airlift Operations
  • Contingency Operations (Military)
  • Department Of Defense
  • Deployment
  • Employment
  • Flight Crews
  • Lessons Learned
  • Logistics
  • Maintenance
  • Passenger Aircraft
  • Personnel Management
  • United States
  • United States Transportation Command
  • War Colleges
  • Warfare

Readers

  • Aerospace logistics and air mobility.
  • Educational Psychology
  • Mathematics or Statistics