Logistical Support System

At the level of military strategy, general purpose force employment refers to the application of military power in a broad, national sense.1 Force development is concerned with the marshalling of the resources required for force employment. Logistics support is a part of force development. Although force development is driven by force employment, there is an interactive relationship between the two concepts.2 In a realistic sense, force employment decisions are influenced by both the availability of resources, and by the ability to position those resources where they may be used effectively.

Obviously, the state of the national defense industrial base in the United States affects in significant ways both force employment and force development.3 This issue is, however, beyond the scope of this examination. For purposes of this research, resource availability is assumed, and the

1D. M. Drew, and D. M. Snow, Making Strategy (Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama: Air University Press, 1988), 81.

3Air Force Association, and the USNI Military Database, Lifeline in Danger (Arlington, Virginia: The Aerospace Education Foundation, 1988), 15. examination emphasi

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have been used as a last resort; however, they were used extensively in the Golf War of 19901991, and in the limited employment of general purpose forces in the Lebanon and in West Africa. Air lift operations depend first on the Military Airlift Command (MAC), and second on the Civilian Reserve Air Fleet (CRAF). The CRAF is a creation of the national airlift policy, which forges a common bond between the United States government, as represented by the Department of Defense (DOD), and the civil aviation industry, as represented by individual participating air carriers.19 Through contractural arrangements between DOD and individual air transportation carriers, "a fleet of preidentified civil passenger and cargo aircraft" is "committed to supporting military strategic airlift requirements in emergenices."20 The CRAF includes "almost all of the widebodied jets operated by domestic U.S. airlines and roughly 170 commercial cargo planes."21 During an emergency, the aircraft in the CRAF __________ 19T. D. Cohoon, "AirliftReinforcing Europe," Airlift, Winter 1989, 912. 20Ibid., 20. 21Ibid.remain under the operational control of the individual air carriers; however, the missions for these aircraft are assigned by the Military
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Approximate Word count = 3839
Approximate Pages = 15 (250 words per page)

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