Air Mobility Plan, 2008 - The Black Vault

Air Mobility Mission Area Roadmaps
Chapter 3—Air Mobility Mission Area Roadmaps
Chapter 1 showed the highlights of our analysis of the future operating environment in which the
Mobility Air Forces will operate. With America’s post-Cold War military services primarily based
in the continental United States, rapid power projection will be essential to our national interests.
Threat systems will become more widespread and increasingly lethal weapons of mass destruction
will continue to proliferate throughout the world; and our adversaries will continue to employ antiaccess
and area denial strategies.
Air mobility supports the National Security and Military Strategies across the range of military
operations, from peacetime humanitarian missions to participating in major combat operations. The
synergy of airlift, air refueling, and support processes provides the velocity and precision necessary in
deploying, employing, protecting, and sustaining our combat forces.
This chapter contains the roadmaps for three mission areas—airlift, air refueling, and air mobility
support. These roadmaps are designed to serve as approved flight plans that provide the overarching
guidance to field the required mobility capabilities necessary to meet our Nation’s needs from now
through the year 2032.
Air Mobility Mission
Air Mobility supports the Air Force mission by providing global reach for the United States through
airlift and air refueling of the Nation’s military forces and other authorized agencies. It provides the
wherewithal to project US forces rapidly anywhere in the world in support of actions ranging from
humanitarian operations to warfighting. Today’s strategic environment reinforces the importance of
air mobility. US forces, responding to overseas contingencies, must be projected over long distances
from CONUS—and this trend is expected to continue in the national defense strategy discussed in
Chapter 1.
Rapid global mobility is achieved
through the optimized use of active
duty and Air Reserve Component
military airlift and air refueling
forces, and is supplemented by the
Civil Reserve Air Fleet during major
operations. The Global Mobility
CONOPS “operationalizes,” or
puts into context, many air mobility
capabilities delivered by the MAF.
It ties them together to suggest that
air mobility is a system dependent
upon a wide range of supporting
sub-capabilities. The essence of
global mobility is rapid global
projection of US warfighting capability. This may equate to supporting strike operations with air
refueling, or quickly moving personnel and equipment from the continental US to overseas theaters,
between theaters, and from ports of embarkation in the theaters to points of effects as close as
practicable to the final destination. Any movement must be exercised as a single, seamless process,
providing a commander visibility over air mobility operations and providing warfighters a “single
face” for their air mobility requirements.
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