Expeditionary Air Operations in Africa: Challenges and Solutions: Fairchild Paper

Publisher Marketing: Lt. Col. Karen U. Kwiatkowski's Expeditionary Air Operations in Africa: Challenges and Solutions details air operations challenges in Africa. She discusses how the USAF currently meets or avoids these challenges. She contends that Africa is like the western frontier of America's history - undeveloped, brimming with opportunity as well as danger, and that it is a place where standard assumptions often do not apply. Africa has not been, and is not today, a US geostrategic interest area. However, as the dawn of the twenty-first century breaks over a planet made both intimate and manageable by CNN and DHL Air Express, Colonel Kwiatkowski believes that the winners will be those who understand Africa and can meet the challenges of air operations on the continent first. Air operations whether commercial or military, are critical to a continent that has a limited overland transportation infrastructure of roads, rail, and waterways. Sea and river access to most of the major population areas of Africa is possible and well used. But from a US military perspective, water transportation does not always provide the desired speed or flexibility for contingency or humanitarian response. Africa is a continent connected overwhelmingly via airways, and the USAF will continue to use African airspace and air infrastructures. There are multiple perspectives on the numerous air and transportation challenges in Africa. The problems - whether air safety, navigation, ground transportation network and airport infrastructure immaturity, security, geography, culture, governmental mismanagement - are often presented as insurmountable. Ironically, the air transport situation is often seen as a problem that must be solved collectively by the 53 very different and very burdened states of Africa; and for this reason, unsatisfactory air operation infrastructures are accepted as a permanent handicap. A portion of Colonel Kwiatkowski's study is dedicated to illustrating how USAF air transport is really done in Africa on a daily basis. In hopes of shedding light on lessons the leadership of the world's most powerful air force may have missed. She recommends ways to improve our ability to conduct expeditionary air operations on the continent. Contributor Bio:  Air University Press Walter Gary Sharp Sr. serves as a senior associate deputy general counsel for intelligence at the US Department of Defense, where he advises on legal issues related to intelligence, covert action, intelligence and counterintelligence policy, intelligence oversight, information security, information sharing, security classification policy, information operations, and computer network operations. Prior to his appointment, Dr. Sharp served as an associate deputy general counsel for international affairs at the Department of Defense; the director of legal research for international, comparative, and foreign law at the Law Library of Congress; the director of global and functional affairs within the Bureau of Legislative Affairs at the State Department; and a principal information security engineer at The MITRE Corporation. A veteran with 25 years of service, Dr. Sharp retired as a decorated US Marine Corps lieutenant colonel with prior enlisted service. His military assignments include commanding officer of a field artillery battery, senior prosecutor, deputy legal counsel to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and international law adviser for the commanding general of the Unified Task Force in Somalia during Operation Restore Hope. Dr. Sharp's military decorations include the Defense Superior Service Medal, and his many awards for writing excellence and academic achievement include the Judge Advocate General's School Alumni Association Annual Professional Writing Award and an American Bar Association Award for Professional Merit. Dr. Sharp is the author of numerous articles and three books: UN Peace Operations (1995), CyberSpace and the Use of Force (1999), and Jus Paciarii (1999). He serves as an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center where he currently teaches a counterterrorism course, The Law of 24. He has also taught graduate-level seminars on United Nations peace operations and international peace and security. He lectures internationally in universities and other diverse public forums on wide-ranging topics of international law and national security law, such as international peace and security, conflict management, and peacekeeping operations.