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How far is the United States willing to go in order to feed and police the world? One answer to that question came from American military experience in Somalia between 1992 and 1994. In those three years, the United States embarked on no less than four major operations in Somalia, and the ultimate result was failure. The U.S. military experience in Somalia taught lessons that might be applied to today's occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq. Since the beginning of the Cold War, the United States had committed military forces when needed all over the free world, sometimes in response to natural disasters, but often also in an attempt to prevent friendly governments from falling to communist forces. Sometimes the policy succeeded, as in South Korea in the early 1950s, and sometimes it failed, as in Vietnam in the 1960s and early 1970s. By 1992, however, the Cold War was over. The Soviet Union had split into fifteen parts, and other former communist countries such as Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia were also breaking up. International Communism seemed to have evaporated as a threat. U.S. President George H. W. Bush, aware that U.S. military forces were shrinking, could have reduced U.S. military commitments abroad. Instead, he increased them. In 1991, for example, the United States led an international coalition to drive Iraqi military forces out of Kuwait, which they had invaded and occupied the previous year. The President called for a "new world order", a post-Cold War world in which the United States, as the only surviving superpower, would be the beneficent leader, working with the United Nations to aid the victims of natural and political disasters all over the world. In 1992, America's armed forces took part in no less than twelve major humanitarian operations across the globe.

Psychological operations attempt to alter the behavior of people in enemy-controlled territory. Airplanes have served as psychological instruments in recent conflicts by dropping leaflets and broadcasting radio and television messages. In conjunction with air strikes, these methods have persuaded enemy troops to surrender, abandon their positions, and stop fighting. In association with humanitarian air missions, they also have convinced civilians to turn against enemy leadership and welcome friendly forces. This paper reports on the military operations that involved psychological missions from 1990 to 2003, the advantages and disadvantages of various psychological operations, and the lessons learned from them. Only recently did the Air Force and its sister services carve out a significant place for psychological operations in their doctrine. The fact that Air Force doctrine must include psychological operations is perhaps the most important of the lessons learned since 1990. As Air Force doctrine continues to evolve, it should devote increasing attention to psychological operations. The lessons learned over the past 13 years are as follows: (1) Formulators of Air Force doctrine should continue to develop psychological operations theory; (2) Psychological operations should be part of operation plans from the beginning; (3) Psychological operations should be coordinated with other air operations; (4) Media and messages should be tailored carefully for the target population; (5) Psychological operations should complement each other; (6) Certain aircraft are more appropriate for psychological operations than others; (7) Vulnerability of psychological operations aircraft limits their use; (8) Eliminating enemy media enhances alternative information; and (9) Timing leaflet drops according to weather conditions enhances their effectiveness.

Between 1991 and 2003, the United States used a variety of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in combat operations. These included the Pioneer, the Pointer, the Hunter, the Predator, the Global Hawk, the Dragon Eye, the Desert Hawk, and the Shadow. During those 13 years the role of UAVs expanded from mere reconnaissance to target designation and attack. Advantages of UAVs over manned aircraft systems include eliminating pilot risk, saving money, providing long-term real-time video reconnaissance, and reducing the time between target identification and destruction. UAVs are especially useful for extremely long reconnaissance missions and for missions in areas of extreme danger. The percentage of unmanned aircraft sorties should continue to grow as UAV capabilities increase. This paper elaborates on the lessons the military has learned about UAVs over the last 13 years, the advantages of UAVs, and their vulnerabilities. The lessons learned are as follows: (1) UAV flights should be carefully synchronized with each other and with the flights of other systems; (2) UAVs should be improved to reduce their vulnerability to weather, enemy air defenses, and mechanical and communication failures; (3) UAVs should be specialized and used for a greater variety of missions; and (4) the Air Force should develop countermeasures to enemy UAVs.

Forecasting increasingly determined the success of air missions in operations between 1990 and 2003. Weather affected whatever traveled through the atmosphere, including manned and unmanned aircraft, missiles, bombs, and electromagnetic signals. Commanders who knew probable atmospheric conditions for specific locations and times were better able to select systems and launch missions when and where they would most likely succeed. As weather forecasting improved, commanders were increasingly able to incorporate it into mission planning. Reasonably accurate long-range forecasts allowed weather personnel to influence the air tasking order prepared days in advance of the mission. Because clouds affected reconnaissance, bomb damage assessment, and the accuracy of certain air strikes, their location, thickness, and movement was especially important. Weather also greatly influenced aircraft deployments, aerial refueling, airlifts, parachute drops, aerial broadcasts, and leaflet drops. Although aircraft flew in more weather conditions than ever before, using radar and infrared devices to compensate for lack of visibility, airplanes remained vulnerable to thunderstorms, icing, crosswinds, turbulence, and other weather factors. A truly all-weather airplane had not yet been built. Unmanned aerial vehicles, strategic reconnaissance aircraft, airborne warning and control airplanes, and helicopters were especially sensitive to certain weather conditions. Moreover, increased use of sensors magnified the importance of weather as a planning factor. For all these reasons, weather support personnel and their equipment contributed significantly to the success or failure of air campaigns.

During the decade of the 1990s, the United States and her allies won three conflicts. In 1991, they forced Iraq to withdraw its army from Kuwait. In 1995, they forced the Serbs of the former Yugoslavia to recognize the independence of Bosnia-Herzegovina. In 1999, they forced Yugoslavia to stop an ethnic cleansing campaign in Kosovo, to withdraw its army from that province, and to allow ethnic Albanians to return. Air power played a larger role in these victories than in any previous conflicts in history. One controls the air by denying its use to the enemy, partly by shooting down enemy aircraft. This can be done with surface-to-air missiles, antiaircraft artillery, or other airplanes. During the 1990s, the United States and her allies chose the last of these options most often. One method of determining the success or failure of aerial combat is by the use of kill ratios, or the number of enemy aircraft shot down by friendly airplanes compared with the number of friendly airplanes shot down by enemy aircraft. In this paper, the author focuses on the kill ratios of the U.S. Air Force (USAF). During the 1990s, USAF pilots shot down 48 enemy aircraft. In the same decade, enemy pilots did not shoot down even one USAF aircraft. What are the reasons for such an overwhelming kill ratio? Surely, the allies had clear quantitative and qualitative advantages over small nation states that were fighting alone. However, the United States enjoyed the same advantages over North Korea between 1950 and 1953, and over North Vietnam in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but the aerial kill ratios were different then. For every 6 enemy aircraft USAF pilots shot down during the Korean War, they lost 1. In Vietnam the record was worse. The USAF lost 1 airplane for every 2 it shot down. How did the kill ratio change from 6-1 and 2-1 to 48-0? Clearly there are lessons to be learned here. The author explores reasons why the USAF was able to enjoy such aerial combat success in the 1990s., Presented at the Society for Military History meeting held at the University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada, in May 2001.

Weak air defenses in Afghanistan during Operation ENDURING FREEDOM in 2001 and 2002 failed to down a single U.S. Air Force (USAF) aircraft. In operations between 1990 and 2000, however, the USAF lost 17 airplanes in combat, including 14 over Iraq and 3 over the former Yugoslavia. Thirteen USAF airplanes fell to Soviet-designed surface-to-air missiles (SAMs): 7 to heat-seekers (infrared) and 6 to missiles guided by radar. Antiaircraft artillery (AAA) downed 3 airplanes. One other aircraft maneuvered out of control after falsely perceiving enemy aircraft fire. Allied air superiority assured that no USAF airplanes were lost to enemy aircraft, either in aerial combat or because of enemy raids on friendly airfields. Given the number of sorties flown, the number of aircraft lost is minuscule. For example, during Operation DESERT STORM against Iraq in 1991, the USAF lost a total of 14 aircraft after flying more than 29,300 combat sorties, or .048 percent. This was against an enemy with 16,000 SAMs, 7,000 antiaircraft guns, and 750 combat aircraft. During Operation ALLIED FORCE against Serbia in 1999, the USAF lost one F-16 after more than 4,500 F-16 sorties, or .02 percent. Analysis of the aircraft losses suggests effective countermeasures. Superior fighters and destruction of enemy airfields suppresses the threat of interceptors. Stealth technology provides protection against both radar-guided and heat-seeking SAMs. Flying high, fast, and at night reduces the risk of destruction by relatively small heat-seeking SAMs or AAA. For aircraft that fly slow and low during daylight, flares and armor provide some protection against heat-seekers and AAA. High-speed anti-radiation missiles (HARMs), electronic jamming, destruction of enemy command and control centers, dispensing chaff, and launching decoys counter larger radar-guided SAMs. Flying unpredictably and using standoff weapons, unmanned aircraft, and cruise missiles also reduce manned aircraft losses., The original document contains color images.

Between Operations DESERT SHIELD/STORM in 1990-1991 and ENDURING FREEDOM in 2001-2002, the Air Force modernized its intertheater mobility. It acquired significant numbers of new C-17 aircraft, created Air Mobility Command to centralize control of long-range transports and tankers, launched an expeditionary force deployment system, modernized its materiel handling equipment, and improved its embarkation airlift schedules. Despite all of these strategic airlift improvements, Operation ENDURING FREEDOM faced challenges the Southwest Asia War did not, including lack of theater infrastructure, hostile fire in the theater, shortages of diplomatic clearances, and the absence of a preliminary operations plan that included intertheater airlift to Afghanistan. Strategic airlift problems that persisted through both conflicts included failures in automated planning systems, insufficient in-transit visibility, initial shortages of theater bases, overloaded staging bases, low mission-capability rates for older transports, and unnecessary airlift of cargo that could have gone by alternative means. Future air mobility managers would do well to address the persistence of these problems in their planning.

Presents a narrative overview of the USAF's humanitarian airlift operations in chronological order, concentrating on major operations since 1947, but also mentioning the origins of humanitarian airlift before World War II. Includes an appendix listing selected Air Force overseas humanitarian operations from 1947-1994., ISBN-0160496977