Tactics

Thanks to the airborne mafia, the army remains “air-minded,” as it has developed techniques and ideas since the 1960s that have kept the service agile, adaptable, and innovative. This air-mindedness has resulted in tactical innovations rooted in the original conception of how airborne units would operate and in the reality of World War II airborne operations. The modern air assault concept, special operations forces, and doctrinal changes are important tactical legacies of the airborne mafia found in the twenty-first-century US Army. Even the men who led American forces in the Vietnam War were, by and large, paratroopers.

Through the Vietnam War, airborne officer protégés of Ridgway, Taylor, and Gavin were in the forefront of the American effort. Despite his consistent early warnings of a widening commitment, Maxwell Taylor was a key player in American involvement in Vietnam while serving as chairman of the Joint Chiefs and later ambassador to South Vietnam. Meanwhile, his protégé William Westmoreland led Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) from 1964 to 1968. Other officers with World War II experience in airborne units commanded divisions and corps throughout the war, including Melvin Zais, Julian Ewell, John Norton, and John Tolson, who served, respectively, in the 517th, 501st, 505th, and 503rd Parachute Infantry Regiments during World War II. Richard Seitz, another 517th veteran, served in numerous key staff positions for Westmoreland and commanded the 82nd Airborne Division when it sent a brigade to Southeast Asia and troops to quell domestic civil unrest in 1967 and 1968. Five airborne brigades were deployed to Vietnam at one time or another, including the 101st Airborne Division, the 173rd Airborne Brigade, and the 3rd Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division.³

Helicopter air mobility continued to evolve in the early part of the war. The People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) and the People’s Liberation Armed Forces (Vietcong) learned to negate the advantage of air mobility by not engaging large American forces and staying close to the Americans in the jungle to offset superior firepower. By the end of 1966, the 1st Cavalry Division, for example, focused on foot patrols and ambushes, and half its contacts came from a third of its forces—those operating on foot. Nevertheless, the utility of helicopters was so evident that the army decided to divide the rotary-wing assets in-country among all combat units. This was done so that every brigade had an organic assault helicopter capability, although this was not enough to move more than a company of infantry at once. Still, this reflects the ubiquity of the airmobile concept and the legacy of the airborne mafia.⁴

Aside from the “Triple Capability” TRICAP division, air mobility fell out of favor in the 1970s. In the lingering aftermath of the American defeat in Vietnam, leaders questioned the survivability and usefulness of helicopters on the new mechanized battlefield as envisioned in the 1976 Field Manual (FM) 100–5. The doctrine of the day, commonly referred to as “active defense,” assumed numerical inferiority and was predicated on massing firepower in tank combat. Rather than focus on light forces moving about the battlefield by air, leaders were more interested in employing helicopters for antitank warfare, epitomized by the development of the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter. By the 1980s, helicopters were again in vogue for missions other than antitank roles. They became more significant to army planning thanks to the introduction of “AirLand Battle” doctrine in the 1982 version of FM 100–5.⁵

The 101st Airborne Division is still the only full-scale air assault division in the army—though every division has a combat aviation brigade and the ability to lift at least a portion of its combat personnel at any given time. What distinguishes the 101st Airborne from other army divisions is its institutional focus and expertise in air assault operations. The rest of the army considers the Screaming Eagles the lead proponent of modern air assault tactics, techniques, and procedures. As of 2024, the army has twelve combat aviation brigades, including eleven divisional and one separate in the active component, with eight divisional and six separate in the US Army Reserve and National Guard. The March 25, 2003, deep penetration raid in the opening stages of Operation Iraqi Freedom by thirty AH-64 Apaches of the 11th Attack Helicopter Regiment resulted in nearly every aircraft sustaining battle damage, two downed aircraft, and two pilots captured. The mission further highlighted the antiarmor capabilities Hamilton Howze alluded to in his prepared briefings around the Pentagon in the mid-1950s. However, the theorists miscalculated the extent of air defenses on the modern battlefield, making independent deep operations by attack aviation units increasingly difficult.⁶

Throughout subsequent counterinsurgency wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, attack and reconnaissance helicopters served in important cavalry-type roles, assisting ground forces in finding and fixing insurgents as intended but rarely operating on their own without ground force assistance. UH-60 Blackhawks and venerable CH-47 Chinooks also served prominent roles in moving troops into and out of combat, especially in the rugged mountainous terrain of Afghanistan. Furthermore, helicopter medical evacuation has played an important role—evolving from its origins in World War II through difficult lessons in Vietnam—in decreasing mortality by reducing transport time. This capability is a direct result of the efforts of Ridgway, Taylor, and Gavin in World War II and, more proximately, the evolution of the airborne concept into airmobile techniques.⁷

The tactical impact of airborne leaders is best summarized by examining terms in the army’s capstone doctrine for operations. I analyzed the frequency of the words “airborne,” “airmobile,” and “air assault” against the terms “armor(ed)” and “tank(s)” across each of the twelve different publications of FM 100–5 or FM 3–0 published between 1949 and 2022. The term “airborne” peaks in the 1968 version, alongside “airmobile,” before being superseded by tanks and armored warfare in 1976. The words have stabilized since 1976, yet armor-related terms remain slightly more prevalent today. Those numbers indicate an institutional tactical preference for aerial-type operations as the airborne mafia was in charge through the Vietnam War. In many ways, the war in Vietnam was the airborne mafia’s war. The preponderance of units that fought there were light infantry—initially mostly airborne and Special Forces. Tactically, the war was dominated by vertical envelopment through air mobility with helicopters. Portions of all major airborne units took part. The service’s attempts to learn counterinsurgency during the 1950s and early 1960s were championed by many airborne officers, and the overall commander in Vietnam, Gen. William C. Westmoreland, was himself a member of the airborne mafia. US Army doctrinal data also demonstrates a clear shift to focus on mechanization in the 1976 manual, which boasted that one of every two American infantrymen was fully mechanized.⁸

Overall, this suggests a distinct post-Vietnam cultural shift in the army, especially regarding tactics. Supplanting the airborne, armor officers and mechanized doctrine came to dominate the service. Instead of maintaining a flexible army prepared for multiple threat scenarios across the spectrum of warfare, the US Army of the late 1970s and 1980s focused almost exclusively on large-scale armored combat. The 1973 Yom Kippur War helped thrust the army in that direction as William E. Depuy (a onetime Taylor acolyte) and others rewrote army doctrine with a nearly singular focus on large-scale mechanized forces to meet the threat of the Soviet Red Army in Central Europe. This came at the expense of learning from the American experience in Vietnam, alongside an attempted institutional erasure of counterinsurgency ideas. One only needs to compare the 1962 and 1976 editions of FM 100–5 to understand the vast changes in doctrine and cultural emphasis. Gavin was consulted to assist on the 1976 manual but called it a manual “that in some places appeared a compendium of opinions.”

Nevertheless, an old airborne officer, Lt. Gen. John Norton, commanded Combat Developments Command between 1970 and 1973, pivotal years during which it developed the requirements that led to the “big five” weapons systems developed during the 1980s. These included the M-1 Abrams main battle tank, the M-2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicle, the UH-60 Black Hawk transport helicopter, the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter, and the MIM-104 Patriot air defense missile. While the helicopters were heavier and less air transportable across long distances, they reflected a continued commitment to the fusion of air and ground forces to defeat Soviet armor. Even airborne officers had a hand in the mechanization of the post-Vietnam army.⁹

Strategy

The airborne mafia have also had a lasting effect on civil-military relations and American strategic culture, in the organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and their relationship with the president, and the evolution of parachute-capable rapid-response forces. The airborne mafia were correct in their critique of massive retaliation, as increased tensions in disparate parts of the world, including Southeast Asia and the Middle East, caused President Eisenhower to quietly reconsider his stance on limited warfare and the utility of conventional forces. However, the airborne mafia’s legacy in civil-military relations furthered the gap between the military sphere and political spheres of power in Washington. The 1958 Defense Reorganization Act reduced some of the service chiefs’ responsibilities, removed them from the chain of command in wartime, and emphasized the role of the chairman. By the time President Kennedy took office, the structure of the Joint Chiefs actively discouraged broad dissenting advice, which separated the president from the service chiefs and prevented him from receiving differing opinions while making critical strategic decisions.¹⁰ All three airborne officers were saying the same thing in different ways. They all held that nuclear warfare was so unimaginable that warfare would revert to its natural form—ground forces fighting for territorial domination. They argued for well-trained and well-resourced forces to fight a ground war in various forms in any theater of the world.

The airborne mafia also had a tangible and lasting impact on strategic force structure. The continuing emphasis on quick-response forces to give national leaders a flexible parachute-capable option reflects the expeditionary mindset developed from the 1940s through the 1960s. While many airborne officers and units fought in Southeast Asia, the XVIII Airborne Corps and most of the 82nd Airborne Division were held in reserve to fulfill the STRAC mission of rapid response. They were used throughout the continental United States but remained—on paper—capable of worldwide deployment to meet contingencies. Of course, with the constant rotation of military personnel into and out of Vietnam, the 82nd Airborne Division was always in transition and often understrength, despite its priority status. Nevertheless, the division was placed on alert three times throughout the 1970s. First, in 1973, in case the Yom Kippur War might have expanded; second, in 1978, to respond to tensions in Zaire; and third, for the 1979 Iran hostage crisis.¹¹

Meanwhile, the United States increased its quick-response-force capabilities. In 1974, the first two modern Ranger battalions were formed on the orders of army chief of staff Gen. Creighton Abrams (an armor officer for most of his career). The army reactivated the 1st and 2nd Ranger Battalions as elite, light, highly proficient infantry battalions. Since its inception, the 75th Ranger Regiment has maintained a special operations role, prepared to conduct no-notice forced-entry operations, deep penetration raids, and provide support to other special operations units, while it carries on the legacy of airborne elitism today. Its leaders are promoted at a higher rate than other infantry officers, and the unit is charged with disseminating its knowledge and expertise to the rest of the force, effectively diffusing a new “Ranger culture” that is an evolved version of airborne culture.¹²

After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and during the Iran hostage crisis, the Carter administration pushed forward a new Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force (RDJTF) headquarters that would command forces assigned to contingency operations. Activated on March 1, 1980, the RDJTF was tasked with out-loading and supporting American quick-reaction forces and figuring out what equipment was needed to move forces quickly. The idea was to tailor equipment to the force rather than the force to available means of transport. The RDJTF was initially designed as a light, general purpose force to respond with special quickness to contingencies worldwide. However, given existing plans for defense against a conjectural twenty-two-division Soviet invasion of Iran, the task force evolved into a large, heavy, and firepower-dependent group. Nevertheless, the RDJTF was intended to fight any number of “half wars,” small wars, or contingency operations in those areas. At the same time, the Department of Defense maintained enough resources to fight the Soviets in Europe.¹³

Refining concepts like rapid-response forces earmarked for opening airheads to support contingency operations worldwide continued into Ronald Reagan’s presidency. In his 1981 article in the New York Times that elaborated on new ideas in the defense strategy of the Reagan administration, incoming CIA director Stansfield Turner extolled the virtues of rapid-response forces as crucial to combat threats in the Persian Gulf. Gambling that decisive rapid movement of American forces to seize bases would deter Soviet interference in the region, Turner cited the inability of the United States to quickly move sufficient forces into Korea in 1950 as proof of the need to maintain robust quick-response-force capability. Congress offered solutions to recapture the “rapid” portion of the RDJTF, namely to assign the XVIII Airborne Corps as the permanent army component with its two airborne divisions, the 82nd and 101st—like in Bastogne and the early Cold War.¹⁴

The American interventions into Grenada and Panama during the 1980s represent activations of rapid-response units that have become part of airborne lore. When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and threatened Saudi Arabia, the army initially deployed the 82nd Airborne Division to the Persian Gulf because of its rapid-response capability. The first members of the division left the United States on August 8, 1990, and the entire Division Ready Brigade was on the ground in Saudi Arabia and ready to fight seven days after the alert. By August 24, the twelve thousand paratroopers from the division were staged and ready in Saudi Arabia, an incredible feat that took 582 C-141 sorties. Further, throughout the 1990s, the army focused on early entry forces designed to follow an initial forced-entry assault, fight, and buy time for heavier forces. The speed with which light, airborne forces could deploy was unmatched by heavier, armored formations that sometimes took weeks to arrive via the fastest ships. The army needed something in between and developed a new unit type based on a lightly armored vehicle—the Stryker—that could carry a standard infantry squad but was C-130 transportable and therefore could be landed on unimproved runways. The only version of the Stryker that is not air transportable is the double V-hull version that was developed specifically in response to improvised explosive device threats encountered by US forces in Iraq in the early 2000s. The Stryker gives the army an “early entry” capability to augment airborne or ranger forcible entry operations.¹⁵

Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, airborne culture, in all its many forms, has played a critical role in the US Army’s prosecution of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Parachute and heliborne forces seized footholds in Afghanistan in 2001 and were used in Iraq in 2003. Small 75th Ranger Regiment parachute operations occurred near Kandahar, Afghanistan, and later in the deserts of western Iraq. These operations provided American planners with airfields to support operations in both countries. The first brigade committed to Iraq for the 2007 troop surge was the 2nd Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division, thanks to its assumption of the Global Response Force mission at the time. Initially deployed to Kuwait in January 2007 as the theater reserve, it moved into Baghdad to support multinational force operations in Iraq to stem sectarian violence over the next fifteen months.¹⁶

Throughout the twenty-first century, the obligation of rapid response continued to fall to airborne forces. Today, the 82nd Airborne Division has a mission to be prepared to deploy elements of its formation anywhere in the world. Initially, a battalion-size task force can be “wheels up” on its way to an objective in eighteen hours, and within thirty-six hours an entire brigade’s forty-three hundred paratroopers can be in the air. The former Global Response Force (GRF) deployed sixteen times to buttress operations in Iraq and Afghanistan between 2001 and 2013 and twice more for humanitarian operations. In 2010, the GRF supported relief operations following an earthquake in Haiti and almost immediately sent a battalion to Afghanistan after its return.¹⁷

In the 2020s, this force is called the Immediate Response Force, which consists of three subordinate Immediate Response Battalions at varying levels of echeloned readiness. The IRF deployed three times overseas between 2020 and 2022: first in Iraq after Iranian missiles threatened the American base in Baghdad on New Year’s Day 2020; in 2021 to supervise the ad hoc departure of American forces from Afghanistan in August; and in 2022 to Europe in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In each case, the 82nd’s ready battalion deployed within eighteen hours. One of the significant side effects of fostering an expeditionary mindset is a cultural predisposition toward readiness that manifests itself in the necessary training and resources. As the journalist Jay Price put it, “In one sense, the 82nd’s specialty is parachuting. In another, it is being ready.” This capability gives the United States unprecedented flexibility in deciding options for national security crises or even natural disasters.¹⁸

In the summer of 2020, during the Black Lives Matter protests, the 82nd’s IRF deployed alongside other forces from throughout the country to the National Capital Region. Much like the airborne forces, the 16th Military Police Brigade headquarters and its 91st Military Police Battalion also deployed rapidly and had their full complement of soldiers in Washington within seventy-two hours. As in the army’s response to domestic situations in the 1950s and ’60s, the paratroopers took bayonets, which later became a source of media controversy. The bayonets were quickly placed inside duffel bags, and the 2nd Battalion, 504th Infantry, typically called Task Force White Devil, changed its name to TF 2–504. The paratroopers staged at Andrews Air Force Base but never entered the city. This battalion had deployed to Iraq in January 2020 and was the core of the same task force activated for Afghanistan in August 2021.¹⁹

During the initial confrontation with Vladimir Putin and the Russian Federation over the invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, the 82nd Airborne Division and XVIII Airborne Corps were the first American forces moved to Europe to bolster NATO—as the STRAC was designed to do in the late 1950s. The deployment in Poland was the fourth for the 82nd Airborne Division’s IRF in two years. The XVIII Airborne Corps, commanded by Lt. Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla, a former commander of both the 75th Ranger Regiment and the 82nd Airborne Division, set up a headquarters at Wiesbaden, Germany, as Task Force Dragon, while the 82nd Airborne Division moved into Poland. The XVIII Airborne Corps was sent to form the command element of a joint task force designed to integrate units and assets across service and multinational lines should the situation call for it. The decision to send the 82nd Airborne and its corps headquarters is a notable sign of how deeply embedded airborne ideas from the 1950s are woven into the fabric of the army. That the United States would first send lightly equipped paratroopers to stare down a heavily mechanized Russian force speaks volumes about how trusted airborne forces are and how normalized using airborne units in all manner of missions has become. When the country needs a quick-reaction force to fly across the world, it routinely calls parachute-capable forces with either a direct lineage to early airborne units or derivatives thereof. The 82nd, because it maintains forces that are poised to deploy within eighteen hours of notification, has become a national “easy button.” It has become, over eighty years, America’s all-purpose force.²⁰

Culture

Airborne culture is a significant component of the army’s overall ethos. The airborne mafia remained alive and well throughout the twentieth century. In 1988, Maj. Gen. Bernard Loeffke congratulated Maj. Gen. John Foss on his appointment as the US Army’s deputy chief of staff for operations and noted that “we now have the airborne mafia in charge of DCSOPS.” A 1992 Naval War College paper on redefining roles and missions for the United States military referenced the list of officers who had served in the 82nd Airborne Division as a “Who’s Who of the 20th Century Army,” forming a formidable mafia committed to self-preservation. No other branch, not the infantry, armor, artillery, or even the cavalry, has its own nationally recognized holiday, yet the airborne does. When President George W. Bush declared August 16, 2002, as “National Airborne Day” to commemorate the first official parachute jump by the test platoon, he put the airborne on par with the other services in giving national status to its birthday. Senate Resolution 235 entrenched the day as a holiday in 2009. Later, when the United States Military Academy at West Point created special football uniforms to honor the past, the first choice—in 2016—was the 82nd Airborne Division and a World War II scheme. The 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) from Vietnam was selected in 2019.²¹

Nearly all combat arms officers attend airborne or air assault training, an important milestone for junior officers’ careers. Of the thirty-one brigade combat teams active in the US Army as of 2022, five are airborne, and another three are air assault brigades in the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), while the army reactivated the 11th Airborne Division in 2022 to command units in Alaska. This marks the first time the United States has had three active airborne divisions since 1958. Even one of the legends that explains the origins of the army’s ubiquitous “Hooah” is attributed to the 82nd Airborne: this particular version credits members of the division in World War II who responded to their commanders with “HUA,” an acronym meaning “heard, understood, acknowledged.” Further, sixteen of the twenty-one army chiefs of staff since Ridgway display their parachutist badges in their official photos.²²

Another international symbol of the airborne, the maroon beret, has been worn by paratroopers since 1981, when Gen. Edward Meyer authorized its use. The saga of berets before that time is very long and contentious; however, the first unit in the US Army to wear the maroon beret was the 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion, upon being gifted the symbol by the British 1st Airborne Corps commander during the Second World War. In 1973, the maroon beret was authorized by the 82nd Airborne division commander. But in 1978, when many unofficial colored berets permeated the force, the army chief of staff Gen. Bernard W. Rogers deauthorized all berets except the green Special Forces headgear, citing the berets’ proliferation as detrimental to “Army wide uniformity.” A grassroots “National Committee to Save the Beret” emerged, including Ridgway, Gavin, and influential senators. This resulted in a Senate resolution asking the secretary of the army to reverse the ban. Rogers’s successor as chief of staff, Gen. Edward C. Meyer—himself a former 82nd Airborne commander—noted that he had received “more advice, guidance, and counsel on the beret than I have had on whether or not we go to war.” He reversed the decision for the black Ranger beret in 1979, and in 1981 the maroon beret was authorized for the 82nd Airborne Division. It continues to be integral to the airborne’s distinctive appearance today.²³

Senior and Master Parachutist Badges represent another cultural artifact of airborne units. They were authorized in 1949 and denoted an expert in military static-line parachute operations and are awarded to “jumpmasters” with more than thirty and sixty-five jumps, respectively. Between these badges, the Basic Parachutist Badge, and the Air Assault Badge, soldiers can earn markers of their status as trained in these skills and wear them throughout the army—whether assigned to those type units or not. These cultural artifacts automatically elevate their wearers within whatever non-airborne or non-air-assault type unit they may be assigned to by denoting them as a two-time volunteer who has passed one of those essential rites of passage.²⁴

The culture ingrained in airborne units in World War II plays an instrumental role in how those units see themselves and operate to this day. The 82nd Airborne Division War Memorial Museum at Fort Liberty (formerly Fort Bragg) helps maintain an appreciation for the past within the 82nd Airborne Division. While every major army installation has a museum, new paratroopers assigned to the 82nd Airborne are brought to its museum explicitly to inculcate them into the culture and history of the unit of which they are now a member. The visit is “a way of maintaining a consistent culture and set of values in an organization that has constant turnover as soldiers cycle in and out—far more turnover than most civilian companies experience,” according to reporter Jay Price. This cultural immersion helps inculcate in every new paratrooper the values, beliefs, and norms that form the core of the division’s institutional makeup.²⁵

The 82nd Airborne’s museum began in a room in Berlin and moved Fort Bragg when the division returned in 1946. When its permanent building opened in 1957, it was the first purpose-built museum in the army. The 101st Airborne Division has its own division museum at Fort Campbell, and the Airborne and Special Operations Museum in downtown Fayetteville, North Carolina, helps cement the legacy of these elite forces throughout history. To further cement the connection between modern paratroopers and the legacy of the Second World War, hundreds of paratroopers from across the airborne community travel to Normandy annually to pay respects to their predecessors. Modern paratroopers continue to cement their connection to the original pioneers by participating in remembrance ceremonies and a parachute jump near Sainte-Mère-Église every year.²⁶

On August 12, 2021, the 82nd was sent to assist in the United States’ largest noncombatant evacuation operation. The paratroopers from the 82nd took charge of security around the airfield. They were ideally suited for the mission because of their readiness as the IRF and institutional focus on airfield-related missions. While the overall operation was a joint effort, the last soldier to leave Afghanistan at the end of the nearly twenty-year American commitment there was the commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, Maj. Gen. Chris Donahue. His decision to be the last American soldier to leave Afghanistan reflected more than eighty years of ingrained airborne leader culture—first in, last out. His boots are now on display at the new National Museum of the United States Army outside Fort Belvoir, Virginia. “In this division, leaders jump first, eat last—always,” Donahue said.²⁷

Reflecting the sort of ingenuity in ambiguous situations known to their World War II forebears, American paratroopers traded two cans of chewing tobacco for a green Toyota Land Cruiser pickup truck outfitted with a Russian-made ZPU-2 antiaircraft gun on August 17, 2021. To operate the vehicle, they relied on an Iraqi-born paratrooper, Pfc. Alsajjad al Lami from the 1st Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry, who had served in the Iraqi military before emigrating to the United States. The truck-mounted gun was bigger than the troopers’ primary infantry weapons and served as a deterrent to Taliban fighters as US forces landed in Kabul to assist with the massive evacuation effort there. The troopers had improvised a timely “show of force” to the Taliban surrounding the airport. (The truck itself was returned from Afghanistan and placed at the 82nd Airborne Division War Memorial and Museum.) The 82nd’s efforts in Kabul contributed to the evacuation of more than 120,000 Afghans and Western civilians between August 14 and 31, 2021, as part of their noncombatant evacuation operation. At one point, more than half the US Air Force’s 222 C-17 Globemaster III aircraft were running around-the-clock missions evacuating people and bringing supplies to Americans on the ground. As bookends to America’s longest war, which began with Special Forces, Ranger, Marine, and parachute units landing in Afghanistan, parachute units were there at the end as well.²⁸

To this day, airborne culture continues to shape the US Army. In 2022, the army reactivated the 11th Airborne Division to take over US Army Alaska as part of its long-term Arctic strategy. The army chose the 11th Airborne in lieu of the 6th Infantry Division, which had a longer history in Alaska. This paradox between decreasing operational use (few parachute operations since 1945) and their increasing cultural influence (the choice of the 11th over the 6th) is a clear sign of the long-term impact of the airborne mafia. Airborne paraphernalia adorns most army posts, and seemingly every soldier in the army knows the cadence about C-130s rolling down the strip. Early twenty-first-century films like Band of Brothers, We Were Soldiers, and Black Hawk Down further help inculcate airborne lore. Large-scale airborne operations may be outdated, and airborne units might one day be relegated to the historical dustbin like the old (also once elite) horse cavalry. However, the impact of the airborne mafia in implementing lasting, meaningful change in the army’s organizational culture and institutional makeup will endure in the overall air-minded expeditionary ethos of the modern US Army.²⁹

Airborne warfare still proves exceptionally costly in terms of both money and potential casualties. Gavin realized the futility of airborne operations in the missile age shortly after World War II, and the record since suggests he was mostly right. The only major parachute operations since World War II have been performed against lightly armed adversaries. Having a highly trained force capable of going anywhere in the world within eighteen hours is still a viable use of resources for a country that seeks to influence all corners of the globe with military power. The parachute is an inefficient bonus. Airborne forces remain a crucial component of the modern army not because of successful daring operations but rather owing to the institutionalization of their culture within the entire army. Following World War II, America’s airborne forces survived because of their ability to adapt and reorganize themselves to suit whatever mission was paramount within the US national defense strategy. The airborne’s elite status attracted some of the best and brightest officers; naturally, these leaders rose to high ranks in the army. This feedback loop created a preponderance of former paratroopers leading the army, which allowed the airborne to stay relevant.³⁰ The use of paratroopers was not a particularly efficient battlefield innovation, as they suffered massive casualties during the Second World War. However, their legacy persists in places like Fort Liberty, North Carolina; Fort Richardson, Alaska; Fort Campbell, Kentucky; and Vicenza, Italy. While it is unlikely that any modern paratroopers will experience anything like what their forerunners who jumped into Normandy encountered on June 6, 1944, every modern paratrooper accepts (and even welcomes) this possibility—no matter how far-fetched it might be.

The unique culture engendered in World War II airborne units has manifested itself in other ways—primarily in an air-minded expeditionary ethos found in many corners of the army. Thanks to personnel policies that rotate officers and soldiers between units, airborne and air assault troopers routinely find themselves among mechanized units where they can impart the values, beliefs, and norms learned while jumping out of airplanes. Crucially, they can impart the trust inherent in airborne operations—especially trust in one’s equipment and comrades, some of whom the paratrooper might not know but must rely on to survive. According to Brig. Gen. Brian Winski, quoted in the Army Times article that spurred this book, a “unique environment of absolute trust and subordinating your safety” exists in airborne units. Retired Gen. Barry McCaffery reiterated the importance of this culture that emerges from young soldiers, who are “proud to be doing something complicated, dangerous, and exciting. It’s hard to ignore that. That’s what comes out of this: young people who want to serve in that kind of unit.” This is well summarized in the “rule of the LGOP”—that “little groups of paratroopers” of all ranks and military occupational specialties will accomplish the mission with little guidance—which originated in Sicily and still infuses airborne units.³¹

There is an inherent danger in deploying troops who are always in a high state of readiness and might be primed to shoot first and ask questions later. Because of their intrinsic readiness and well-honed combat skills, parachute forces have become a double-edged sword. High-readiness troops are seldom the best choice for constabulary functions—yet they are often the only choice. Units primed to jump behind enemy lines and fight desperate actions with high casualties would understandably be disappointed to find themselves as police forces brokering peace between warring factions or trying to root out enemies who are in civilian dress in a population-centric counterinsurgency campaign. The first French forces responding to crises in Indochina and Algeria during the 1950s were paratroopers, who also moved toward helicopter tactics. Their brutal techniques, including torture and disdain for civilians, helped undermine the French effort to hang on to its former colonies. French paratroop officers gained notoriety and political clout that turned them into a nightmare of civil-military relations, resulting in their reassignment throughout the French military in 1961. Often placing highly trained, elite units into tense situations had nefarious results, as happened with the British Parachute Regiment in Derry on Bloody Sunday in 1972 and the Canadian Parachute Regiment in Somalia. The British “paras” remain, but the Canadian unit was disbanded.³²

Nevertheless, the US Army of the twenty-first century, without the impact of Matthew B. Ridgway, Maxwell D. Taylor, James M. Gavin, and their acolytes, would be unrecognizable. The airborne mafia’s mindset helped usher in organizational changes centered on decentralization and mobility, helicopter-borne airmobile tactics, and strategic response forces that continue to provide national leaders with a formidable force that can project combat power around the world. The airborne mafia imbued an air-minded expeditionary mindset that has had a lasting impact on how the army organized itself and fought throughout the second half of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. By institutionalizing a way of thinking that emphasized air-mindedness and sense of immediate response, the airborne mafia profoundly affected the entire army’s cultural, strategic, and tactical makeup. Airborne culture has become army culture.