Overview

Defending air bases from attack remains a major operational challenge in every theater and every conflict. Airfields are strategic targets; they allow for the generation and projection of crucial military power and are usually a key joint and/or coalition command and control node. The growing problem of adversary anti-access and area-denial strategies only adds to the necessity of studying integrated base defense, with special emphasis on ground-based threats. Since the Vietnam War, ground-based threats have been our biggest challenge as adversaries have sought to counter U.S. airpower from the ground rather than in the air. Future conflicts will continue to see enemy strategies designed to inhibit air operations from a distance through not only growing missile technologies but also traditional methods like indirect fire, special operations, and sapper attacks. The second volume of this anthology further explores the contemporary challenges to airpower from ground-based threats; most of the authors conducted their research and writing as students at Air University. As Airmen and joint leaders, we must reflect on and debate the important issues addressed in this volume. We owe it to the young men and women we lead to build on the lessons learned from recent conflicts so that we may lay a solid foundation for the security of future air operations and Airmen.Part 1 - Getting In... and Getting Out: Securing Air Bases at the Beginning and End of Conflicts * Part 2 - Iraq and Afghanistan Case Studies: The Base Defense Task Force and Air Force Historical Research Agency Research Results * Part 3 - Air Base Defense Enablers: Air-Mindedness and Counterintelligence * Part 4 - The Pivot to the Pacific: Air Base Defense and Airsea Battle * Part 5 - Organizing for the Future1 First In!: Expeditionary Air Base Seizure and Operations; Power Projection through Mobility Warriors * 2 Getting Out: Securing Air Bases during a Withdrawal * 3 An Airman Reports: Task Force 455 and the Defense of Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan * 4 Outside the Wire: Recollections of Operation Desert Safeside and TF 1041 * 5 Three Enemies: Lessons from Enemy Air Base Attacks in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan * 6 Enabling a Three-Dimensional Integrated Defense * 7 Dissipating the Fog of War: Improving Intelligence Support to Air Base Defense * 8 Airpower Projection in the Antiaccess/Area-Denial Environment: Dispersed Operations and Base Defense * 9 AirSea Battle and the Air Base Defense Shortfall * 10 Target-Air Base: The Strategic Effects of Ground Attacks on Airpower * 11 You Own It: The Commander's Responsibility for Air Base Defense * 12 U.S. Air Force Expeditionary Security Operations 2040: A Technology Vision for Deployed Air Base Defense CapabilitiesDefensive forces and commanders must foster relationships with the communities outside the wire to ensure the local population has a vested interest in the security and welfare of the base. Colonel Caudill and his fellow authors have done a real service for the Air Force and joint community by tackling the thorny issues discussed in this book. They are adding a rich new volume to an important and often underappreciated part of airpower history and the operational art.Why a second volume? First, there was a thirst for more material. Volume 1 bridged much of the gap in the literature that existed since the last publication on this subject in 1995 by Dr. Alan Vick and RAND Corporation.

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