1991 and 2003 wars in Iraq, the mantra of two major regional
contingencies led military professionals to question the nation’s
ability to support even one theater. In a 1994 Senate testimony,
then Commander-in-Chief of U.S. Central Command, General
Joseph P. Hoar opined to the Chairman of the Armed Services
Committee, Sam Nunn, that “strategic lift, airlift in this country
today is broken.” Noting the Arabian/Persian Gulf was 7,000
miles from the U.S. East Coast (by air), and 8,000 miles by
sea, General Hoar testified it was all the U.S. could do to keep
enough airplanes flying to supply 3,500 troops in Somalia,
while also supporting a medium-sized exercise in Egypt.28 A
few months later, two students, then-Majors Mark Pires and
Darrell Williams at the Army School of Advanced Military
Studies examined the nation’s ability to meet the requirements
of the “nearly simultaneous” strategy. MAJs Pires and Williams
acknowledged that the adverb nearly reflected the unwillingness
to absorb the cost of supporting two simultaneous campaigns.
They used a DoD Strategic Mobility Study for their analysis to
determine transport requirements, concluding the nation was
capable of supporting 48- to 50-million ton-miles per day (MTM/D) of a 57 MTM/D airlift requirement, and a sealift capability that fell short of the 10 million square feet requirement by
35% or more.29
Though Pires and Williams appeared to argue for more organic
uniformed capacity, their figures actually offer a b asis for favorable comparison between organic (military) transport capability
and the portion that the civil sector provides, however the comparison is favorable only under some circumstances. A decade
later, Air Force Lieutenant Colonel James W. Herron at the
Army War College suggested that reliance on civil aviation was
not an Air Force choice, but a necessity. He began his review of
future airlift requirements with the observation that when Iraq
invaded Kuwait in 1990, the U.S. Air Force was not equipped
to move substantial troop formations into theater in sufficient
time to prevent the Iraqis from moving farther south.30
Even with the airline industry’s preference for avoiding CRAF
mobilization, it significantly increased the proportion of lift it
provided by 2012. Reliance on commercial partnerships continues to grow. In 2014, testimony before the House Committee
on Armed Services, General William M. Fraser III, Commander, U.S. Transportation Command, acknowledged civil-military
collaboration by including active duty members, National
Guard, Reserve, civil servants, merchant mariners, and commercial partners in his overview of USTRANSCOM capabilities.
General Fraser portrayed the command as a “global distribution
synchronizer,” that relies on maintaining a “multimodal network of military and commercial infrastructure,” while seeking
to “improve partnerships with our allied nations” and “strengthen our commercial partnerships.”31
The coupling of CRAF mobilization with USTRANSCOM’s
management capabilities offers some relief to the worry that
34
expenditures on combat aircraft might leave the nation under-resourced for transport aircraft. Such a sanguine perception
requires a significant leap of faith that future circumstances will
not be more difficult than in recent experience. Looking at the
factors that affect risks as well as experience in meeting shipping
demands is instructive.
The legislative branch and its research efforts have undertaken
considerable discussion of transport requirements. In 2005, the
Congressional Research Service noted that the closure of two
thirds of forward bases in the previous decade required more
frequent deployments over greater distances. The 2005 Mobility Requirements Study raised the estimate for personnel and
cargo capacity to 54.5 MTM/D, with some estimates ranging
as high as 67 MTM/D.32 Some reviews estimated capacity
gaps from 15 MTM/D to 22 MTM/D, as actual requirements
approached 60 MTM/D during simultaneous operations in
Afghanistan and Iraq.33
Requirements for outsized cargo (military vehicles that cannot
fit in commercial planes) raise additional worries. Due to the
insufficient C-5 left capacity, between 2003 and 2004, DoD
contracted with Russia to provide AN-124 heavy-lift aircraft
to fly over 200 missions.34 Although the rotation of units that
use stay-behind equipment helps reduce the demand for strategic lift,35 there are few alternatives to maintaining a domestic
capacity. Our closest allies do not have similar airlift capabilities
to the AN-124, and relying on part-time partners creates a clear
risk to operational lift capabilities. Moreover, austere infrastructure would limit the ability of the civilian industry to provide
mobility and multi-modal transport.36
The 2012 Defense Strategic Guidance and the 2014 Quadrennial
Defense Review projected smaller forces, “no longer […] sized
to conduct large-scale prolonged stability operations.”37 Such
projections allow mobility planners to reduce projected lift
requirements, but the results raise the risks commensurately. In
2012, testimony before the House Armed Services Committee,
Cary Russell of the Government Accountability Office, as well
as staff of the Congressional Research Service, questioned the
planning assumptions behind the Mobility Capabilities and Requirements Study 2016.38 Downplaying stability operations may
support both reduce projections for ground forces and mobility
requirements, but as Ambassador James Dobbins pointed out
repeatedly in a series of RAND reports, despite the preferences
of successive Administrations, the United States found itself in
stability operations missions seven times in just over a decade.39
Conclusion
In the face of reduced Defense spending, Air Force planners
naturally want to preserve funds for combat aircraft and shift
more transport to civilian partners, but this approach ignores