Toward an Airborne Army

Following World War II, many influential officers envisioned what they referred to as an entirely airborne army. The belief was that airborne operations would play a significant role in the future and that the United States needed the capability to deploy complete major combat units by air. A study recommended that every piece of equipment in the army’s inventory be lightweight and air transportable—not necessarily for the entire army at once, as the service would still move most of its forces by sea, as it does today; but every item of equipment would at least meet stringent air force requirements for aerial transport. The wartime commander of the First Allied Airborne Army, Lt. Gen. Lewis H. Brereton (a rated pilot) advocated for a large peacetime self-sustaining and self-supporting airborne organization operating directly under the Department of Defense. Brereton’s Airborne Army was created before Operation Market Garden to provide command and control for all Allied airborne units for the remainder of the war. It was Ridgway’s higher headquarters and also controlled the troop carrier units. Gen. Omar Bradley noted the importance of lightweight, air-transportable equipment when he addressed the 1949 graduates of the Command and General Staff College. Yet by the end of the decade, a typical infantry division of seventeen thousand men would require 176 C-82 Packet and 88 C-54 Skymaster transport aircraft, operating continuously, to move the entire unit in twenty-nine days. Creating an air-transportable force that would give the entire service an expeditionary capability and match the era’s infatuation with air power was a pipe dream.⁵

The Cold War and the positioning of the Red Army near US allies in Europe meant the United States would no longer have months or years to build military forces. The army needed combat units to reach the battlefield within hours instead of weeks. Permanent readiness and the ability to respond to multiple crises led to the creation of a ready reserve in the United States. The army designated its lone post–World War II airborne division as a strategic striking force. This idea was less about parachuting into combat but rather about rapid air transport. According to Taylor, “the airborne concept to me is the capability of rapid movement by air of military units, both for tactical and strategic purposes.” At the outbreak of hostilities in Korea in June 1950, the army considered the 82nd Airborne Division its only combat division ready to fight—the rest of the army was either on occupation duty or missing much of its allotted strength. The division was alerted for potential employment in Korea, though never sent. There was still insufficient transport aircraft to lift even half of an airborne division in 1950. This situation did not improve until the C-130 was developed in the late 1950s.⁶

Strategic mobility intrigued leaders in the postwar army as they reevaluated the requirements for the size of the airborne division. As constructed in World War II, the 82nd Airborne Division had little firepower compared to the airborne division of 1950 that included a tank company—identical to the standard infantry division. The mission of the parachute infantry remained essentially the same since the 1943 issuance of Training Circular Number 113—airborne troops were to be committed by air transport only on missions that other forces could not more expeditiously perform. As airborne forces were not to be employed unless other forces could support them within three days, the general assumption was that they would be used as part of a larger operation. In the future, however, airborne forces needed more firepower and air-transportable equipment—an almost impossible combination with existing air transport capabilities—to increase their effectiveness once on the ground. Increased effectiveness in ground combat would earn aerial-delivered forces greater autonomy.⁷

Bradley envisioned the next war in three stages. First, the United States would use strategic nuclear weapons. Next, the United States would seize bases either near or within the enemy’s homeland. Finally, a large-scale ground assault would defeat the enemy. Airborne forces would be a key component in phases two and three. Six months later, Gen. Ridgway announced the army’s plans “to place increasing emphasis upon airborne, air-transportability and air-ground support techniques.” In a February 1950 memorandum to Maj. Gen. William Miley, Lt. Col. Melvin Zais wrote that the future concept of airborne operations must include provision for airfield-seizure-type missions. Zais, an airborne battalion commander in World War II, echoed the postwar General Board for United States Forces in the European Theater, which recommended maintaining airborne divisions for forced-entry situations while emphasizing that the air transport of an infantry division would become a vital mission in future warfare. The board found that there was no acceptable alternative to the airborne division.⁸

Landing troops in slow-moving transport aircraft required a secure airfield. Seizing an airfield in enemy-held territory required trained parachute forces to accomplish the feat without landing airplanes. However, seizing, reinforcing, and expanding the perimeter of an airfield required massive amounts of airlifted supplies, something the fledgling US Air Force was not yet ready to provide. Plans in 1952 called for the 82nd Airborne Division and one marine division to be prepared to fight in Europe thirty days after mobilization. Should the Soviet Union invade Western Europe, airborne forces were needed to regain a foothold on the Continent. The use of parachute forces combined with atomic weapons featured prominently in Ridgway’s plans for reinforcing Europe. When discussing exercise priorities with his successor as commander of Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, Gen. Alfred Gruenther, he stressed that “of far greater importance to us, in my opinion, will be a capability to move and strike rapidly by air, in conjunction with the use of special [atomic] weapons.” He urged Gruenther to stress joint army and air force training because he believed that “the ability to move across large bodies of water and reestablish a lodgment in Europe through the combined use of special weapons and airborne assault forces may well be decisive.”⁹

Nevertheless, the army and its mission of reinforcing Western Europe in the event of a Soviet invasion suffered because of the air force’s steadfast resistance to developing more transport aircraft. This resistance was based on the institutional preference for more and better bomber and fighter aircraft to fulfill the nuclear delivery and air superiority missions. This resistance continued even though the Berlin airlift demonstrated to military leaders the value of air-landed resupply during contingency operations when no other recourse was possible. In a defining moment for the new US Air Force, the operation’s zenith had an aircraft landing in Berlin every sixty-two seconds. By delivering eight thousand tons or more of cargo daily, the operation proved that the air force could deliver large quantities of supplies with its current transport fleet. It was, therefore, easy to draw the connection between the ability to feed 2.5 million people and the ability to deploy and support a ground combat force by air alone. Yet despite the herculean effort of the fliers, they did not provide sufficient calories, and Berliners often turned to the black market to get what they needed. Regardless, Lt. Col. William Kuhn—an airborne battalion commander wounded in Normandy— used the Berlin airlift as an example in his article on airborne armies. He noted that planners in 1950 were no longer thinking of only World War II– style airborne units but entire air-transported armies. “The planners of today are thinking in terms of airheads established by airborne and air-transported corps equipped with air-transportable howitzers, tanks, bulldozers, and other essential weapons and vehicles,” he wrote. Gen. Devers and other army leaders considered the Berlin airlift a critical turning point toward creating fully air-transportable army divisions. It was the proof the army needed of the air force’s ability to insert land combat forces into airfields behind enemy lines and keep them supplied.¹⁰

By 1950, the air force could still not move a two-division corps to Europe in fewer than ninety days. The airlift capability to do so did not exist. In May 1950, Ridgway reported to the army vice chief of staff that the army could not meet its mission of reinforcing Europe with two divisions in fifteen days if a crisis arose. At best, it would have taken seventy days. Brig. Gen. Lemuel Mathewson, commander of the 11th Airborne Division at the outbreak of the Korean War, lamented the lack of aircraft and complained to Ridgway that it was time for the air force not only to rebuild its troop carrier fleet but also to give the transport pilots more prestige. Ridgway was an ardent supporter of airpower but saw an overemphasis on one form—the long-range bomber—at the expense of others. To Ridgway, the army of the future would be dependent on aircraft, and the air force needed the capability “to lift whole armies, armed with nuclear weapons, and put them down upon any spot on the earth’s surface where their tremendous, and selective, firepower will be needed.” The financial cost to maintain both a large Strategic Air Command and the troop carriers required for airborne and air-transportable troops was not feasible within the budget constraints before the summer of 1950.¹¹

In April and May 1950, a multidivision airdrop training exercise at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, known as Exercise Swarmer, confirmed the problem of aircraft availability. The field maneuver was the first attempt to insert an airborne force into an airfield and sustain it until follow-on forces arrived. In this exercise, the entire air force troop carrier fleet could drop only one regiment at a time, and the drops were scattered over multiple days. Yet Swarmer was not without its successes. It was the first exercise to feature large-scale heavy drop operations. The relatively new C-119 “Flying Boxcar” transport aircraft represented a significant improvement over previous transport aircraft. Before its development, the heaviest droppable item was a 75mm howitzer, which could only be dropped in multiple pieces—making putting the gun into action on the drop zone an adventure. The C-119 could transport forty fully equipped paratroopers or sixty air-landed troops. Its increased payload allowed it to deliver items as heavy as a medium-size bulldozer through its rear clamshell-style doors. The critical component of the C-119 was its floor-mounted monorail system, running through the center of the aircraft. This system allowed for the ejection of bundles from a forward hatch before paratroopers exited the sides. More importantly, this monorail allowed large items to be dropped from the rear in a controlled fashion. During Exercise Swarmer, approximately 85 percent of all airdropped supplies were recovered with no damage, and thirty of thirty one-quarter-ton trucks were operational after being dropped—a more than twofold increase over World War II experience. This exercise also included four 105mm howitzers dropped intact, thanks to the monorail system. Despite the lack of aircraft, Swarmer served as a preview of future operations in Korea and led to the creation of a joint board to solve problems discovered during the exercise.¹²

Putting the lessons of Swarmer into practice, 1,470 paratroopers of the 1st and 3rd Battalions of the 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team (RCT) exited their C-119 and C-47 aircraft over Sukch’on, Korea, on October 20, 1950. Simultaneously, the 2nd Battalion jumped fifteen miles east at Sunch’on. Minutes before the personnel drop, for the first time in combat, jeeps, antitank guns, howitzers, and the requisite ammunition fell from the sky under nylon parachutes. Seventy-one C-119s and forty C-47s delivered 2,860 paratroopers and over three hundred tons of supplies in a few hours. On the first day, twelve howitzers, four antitank guns, their requisite vehicles, ammunition, and a host of other supplies found their way to the drop zone ahead of Eighth Army forces near Pyongyang. Between October 21 and 23, forty C-119s delivered more personnel, howitzers, and equipment to the troopers on the drop zones. The 187th RCT performed well, capturing 3,443 and killing more than 450 of the more than 5,000 North Korean soldiers it encountered. The operations in Korea involved the heaviest equipment dropped in combat to that point. Because of the difficult terrain, heavy supply drops became standard for all units during the Korean War, made possible by the C-119’s ability to transport much heavier equipment.¹³

A Joint Airborne Troop Board, established on April 26, 1951, met multiple times over the next six years and held three major conferences in 1951, 1953, and 1957. The board was charged with studying new concepts for the application of airborne units in future warfare while laboring to improve interoperability. Its initial goals were to develop a suitable concept for operations, estimate the army’s requirements for airborne operations in the next war, and recommend programs for training in peacetime to maintain readiness. An additional task was to assess the effectiveness of equipment and organizations. The initial iteration of the board declared the venerable towed glider obsolete. Instead, the board called for helicopters, small assault transport planes, and “convertiplanes” to replace its payload delivery capabilities. A convertiplane is an aircraft that uses rotor power for vertical takeoff and landing and converts to fixed-wing lift for normal flight, as exemplified by the Boeing V-22 Osprey and the new Bell V-280. Two ideas were developed, the Bell XV-3 and the McDonnell XV-1, but neither entered production.¹⁴

The Joint Airborne Troop Board’s findings and recommendations laid the groundwork for developing air mobility throughout the decade. One of the panel’s main conclusions was the need to procure improved troop carrier airplanes in larger numbers, something air force bomber-oriented generals resisted. More importantly, the board established joint doctrine for airborne operations, noting that “there must be a unified airborne, striking force in being with the necessary airlift earmarked and capable of immediate mobile deployment,” a crucial step in the development of joint air mobility. The result was the publication of the Joint Action Armed Forces manual, published in the Army as Field Manual 110–5, Navy JAAF, and Air Force Manual 1–1.¹⁵

In a series of 1953 speeches, the under secretary of the army, Earl Johnson, stressed the need for greater mobility to offset Soviet numerical superiority and to move land forces quickly across oceans to meet threats. His August speech to the Air Force Association’s national convention was sent directly to the Joint Airborne Troop Board, which was then studying mobility concepts at Fort Bragg, and reprinted in the December 1953 issue of Army Information Digest. To the army, achieving full air transportability was paramount for preparing for the next war. “This problem of becoming airborne and mobile is not just an exercise,” Johnson said. “It is a considered goal which we must not fail to attain. If war should come, an airlift capacity must exist which is, on the one hand, transoceanic so that we can deploy rapidly, and which, on the other hand, is capable of lightning quick assault.” Johnson acknowledged the expensive nature of airlift capabilities but reminded the air force of its role and the army’s efforts to streamline equipment for air transport. He closed his speech by calling on the air force to serve as the army’s all-too-important partner in achieving his service’s goals. “Airpower properly fitted to Army needs,” said Johnson, “greatly enhances the Army’s mobility.” Later in November, Johnson alluded to the future of air mobility when he remarked that “fortunately for the Army and the country, the new Secretary of the Army, Robert T. Stevens, is fully air-mobile-minded.” The aerial movement of combat troops was poised to become the primary means of moving combat forces worldwide.¹⁶

Nearly every exercise throughout the 1950s featured airborne operations, which represented the level of institutionalization that airborne units had reached. This was despite the realization that the parachute was a “very inefficient means of transport.” The need to develop more means of inserting forces was necessary. In October 1955, Taylor stressed that “the Army today is bent on reaching a condition of airborne effectiveness which we are convinced is necessary for the successful conduct of modern warfare. We want an Army with many completely air-transportable combat units, complete with sufficient weapons, vehicles, and supplies to sustain themselves in ground operations.” The goal was not just paratroopers but fully air-landed units capable of fighting upon arrival.¹⁷

Nevertheless, the army relied on airborne units because of those units’ familiarity with aerial transport. In 1956, the army transported an entire regiment of paratroopers from Fort Campbell in Kentucky to Japan and then back to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in ten days to showcase its strategic air mobility. Airborne units had gained such prestige that regular infantry commanders called for a curtailment of parachute training as a reenlistment incentive since it diverted much of the army’s manpower to these units. By Ridgway’s retirement in 1955, the army had a “mobile ready force” under the guise of a strategic reserve in published policy. Still, it was inadequate and was competing with such budget black holes as nuclear weapons and continental defense requirements for funding. Nevertheless, in his retirement letter to the secretary of the army, Ridgway called for funding a joint mobile force of such versatility that it could apply to almost any scenario, sowing the seeds for what became STRAC.¹⁸

In 1957, the assistant deputy chief of staff for military operations, Maj. Gen. Earle Wheeler, noted that the current long-range airlift option, the C-124 Globemaster II, made transporting one airborne division in three hundred sorties possible. However, this was without logistical support—only the division’s combat echelons could deploy with this number of sorties. Wheeler also saw that the army’s ability to win and deter general or local wars depended on strategic mobility. Heavy drop and the ability to land on unimproved runways allowed more combat power to reach the objective area in less time. The double-decker configuration of the C-124 was imperfect for parachute operations but allowed for robust cargo capabilities. The replacement of the C-119 with the new C-130A Hercules in 1956 doubled lift capacity, as it could carry twice as much tonnage or personnel. When the upgraded C-130B entered operational service in 1958, the army’s strategic reach doubled thanks to the aircraft’s increased range.¹⁹

According to Maxwell Taylor, strategic mobility was the key to developing “a powerful Army capable of coping promptly with military situations wherever they may occur… . It is the combination of firepower and mobility that wins war.” Army efforts in touting its airborne capabilities were not wasted, and by June 1957 even Secretary of Defense Wilson included paratroopers alongside such strategic assets as bombers and missiles in a speech, a sign of the airborne’s importance as a national security option and credible deterrent. While the service had become increasingly expeditionary since 1898, the airborne mafia successfully imparted their expeditionary vision to the rest of the service and ensured the entire Department of Defense heard their pleas.²⁰

The Strategic Army Corps

Airborne forces were rapidly becoming the army’s primary component for deterrence in the Eisenhower era. They featured in every major exercise, and with Taylor and Gavin directing the service’s priorities, they became the veritable military poster children of the age. The next logical step was an official organizational structure for a large rapid-response force. This would soon evolve into the Strategic Army Corps. The concept was initiated in 1957 but not formally announced until 1958. STRAC received “maximum emphasis to prime its units for immediate movement into combat anywhere in the world.” The idea was to create a force capable of responding to any global crisis, from general war to irregular conflict. Gavin wrote in 1955 of the need for a dual-capable force that could “mobilize for large-scale war” while having “sizable forces in being ready to move rapidly and put out ‘brush fires’ before they get out of control.” This type of force, he believed, would provide a credible deterrent to adversaries. STRAC, then, became a four-division combat-ready force that was “ready to move at a moment’s notice,” as one article described its posture. STRAC was composed of the 82nd and the 101st Airborne Divisions, as well as the 1st and 4th Infantry Divisions. At least one of the airborne divisions was on alert to fly into a hot spot on short notice. STRAC was primed to demonstrate the efficacy of strategic mobility in action.²¹

Needing a mobile corps-level command element, the army reactivated the XVIII Airborne Corps to provide necessary command and control. As the core of the broader nine-division Strategic Army Force, STRAC could give American leadership more than 125,000 troops ready to respond to global crises. The corps fell under the US Continental Army Command for training but would be turned over to the established command structure in the theater of operations if activated. Its primary mission was to reinforce American or Allied forces in Europe or the Far East, and at least one of its airborne divisions had previously, since 1953, been prepared to move on a moment’s notice as a Western Hemisphere response force. Readiness became STRAC’s watchword as the corps resembled the US Air Force’s Strategic Air Command, at least on paper. In fact, Taylor admired SAC and hoped to replicate in the army its dedication to readiness. The STRAC motto—“Skilled, Tough, Ready Around the Clock”—took on a life of its own throughout the army, as a “STRAC trooper” referred to any squared-away soldier like those on alert. Lt. John R. Galvin capitalized on this acronym to galvanize morale in his beleaguered administrative section. Also, while airborne divisions comprised parachute-qualified volunteers, they additionally enjoyed a unique ability to transfer marginal, low-performing soldiers out of their ranks, thus reinforcing their brand of discipline and readiness.²²

In practice, however, the concept was imperfect. STRAC’s state of readiness was often in doubt. Mass parachute drops accompanied nearly every major exercise, but these often served as showpieces— better suited to public relations opportunities than combat. Many of the paratroopers, it seemed to Maj. Gen. Hamilton Howze, the 82nd Airborne Division commander in 1958, were interested only in the jump and disdained anything that came after. He was not the only airborne officer to comment on training deficiencies affecting morale during the decade; Robert Haldane, who commanded a battalion in the 82nd in 1959, rarely had more than eighty paratroopers in each company and observed that the 82nd was “never really trained as well as they thought they were. There were too many distractions.” In addition to personnel and equipment shortages, commands had poorly developed standing operating procedures governing movement, and procedures that did exist were often not synchronized across the rest of the corps.²³

Herbert Norman Schwarzkopf, the future commander of coalition forces in the 1991 Gulf War, served as a young platoon leader in the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell from 1957 to 1959. As a brand-new lieutenant, he explicitly requested assignment to the 101st “because it was part of the vanguard, the Strategic Army Corps, and had lately attracted publicity as America’s first ‘pentomic’ division, specially tailored to fight on the atomic battlefield. It had a magnificent tradition as well.” Schwarzkopf loved the glamour and mystique of the 101st but quickly grew disillusioned at the number of untalented leaders who rested on the laurels of the unit’s history. “The Strategic Army Corps trumpeted itself as a great fighting force,” he wrote, “but we knew we really weren’t that good. We could see it in our officers … and the quality of our equipment.” Distractions like demonstration jumps and a shortage of air force aircraft exacerbated problems, limiting the STRAC divisions to only a few significant annual exercises. While Schwarzkopf’s experience highlights some of the issues affecting the pentomic division, most airborne units assigned to STRAC maintained a better than 90 percent readiness rating. In comparison, the infantry divisions hovered around 70 percent.²⁴

Rather than moving to deter a Soviet onslaught, STRAC’s first major employment came within the United States. In September 1957, at President Eisenhower’s request, a battle group of the 101st Airborne Division was mobilized in response to rioting in Little Rock, Arkansas, over the admission of African American students to a high school in the city. The paratroopers were selected because they were already on alert and ready to move, and Taylor wanted to demonstrate the army’s quick-response capability. The 1st Airborne Battle Group, 327th Infantry, was deployed in four trips between their home base at Fort Campbell, and Little Rock. The first aircraft landed at Little Rock Air Force Base a mere four hours after the battle group received its initial alert, while the entire battle group was on the ground at Little Rock within nine hours on September 24. The officer placed in charge of the Arkansas Military District, Maj. Gen. Edwin Walker, on his way back from a Pentagon briefing, stopped at Fort Campbell and briefed the 101st Airborne commander, Maj. Gen. Thomas L. Sherburne Jr., on the situation in Little Rock. Walker, a staunch white supremacist, advised Sherburne to “reduce, very discreetly, the ‘colored strength’ of his task force; and to ensure that black infantrymen who went to Little Rock were out of direct contact with the public.” The paratroopers personally escorted Black students into Central High School and were a welcome change, as the agitators in the situation did not respect the authority of the National Guardsmen, who had helped prevent desegregation until federalized by Eisenhower. The paratroopers dispersed the mob and returned to Fort Campbell by November 27 after the situation stabilized.²⁵

The following year, on May 13, 1958, when Vice President Richard Nixon’s motorcade came under attack from rioters in Venezuela, the president and Joint Chiefs positioned military units to respond quickly if needed in the aftermath. This included STRAC personnel from Fort Campbell, US Marines at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the aircraft carrier USS Tarawa. The attack represented a culmination of widespread opposition to Nixon’s eight-nation tour of Latin America. After stops in Uruguay, Argentina, Paraguay, and Bolivia, the Nixon entourage experienced an inconsequential rock-throwing crowd in Peru. Tensions seemed to cool as Nixon visited with leaders in Ecuador and Columbia, but in Venezuela, the vice president’s group faced increasing tensions, culminating in multiple blockades by several hundred protesters, who shattered the windshield of Nixon’s vehicle. The motorcade made it through the riot, assisted by a group of reporters, but this proved to be one of the scariest moments of Nixon’s life. News of the event reached the United States quickly, and STRAC had its first overseas mission.²⁶

Just before 4 p.m., the telephone rang at the 101st Airborne Division commander’s office at Fort Campbell. In little less than three hours, two rifle companies of paratroopers—about four hundred men—were on their way to Puerto Rico on twenty-two C-130s. In less than five and a half hours, they were seventeen hundred miles from home, staged at Ramey Air Force Base, in Puerto Rico, awaiting further instruction. The task force, commanded by Col. Robert C. Works, was from the 1st Airborne Battle Group, 506th Infantry, and had enough provisions for five days of fighting. Not expecting a parachute drop, the men were nonetheless prepared to land and fight if needed. The 101st Airborne Division’s alert and movement, according to then-STRAC and XVIII Airborne Corps commander Lt. Gen. Robert Sink, who had commanded the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment in World War II, “demonstrated the ability to move into action rapidly and decisively to put out a brush fire anywhere before it can develop into general war.” The rioting relented; US troops did not land on Venezuelan soil, and the vice president made it home unscathed. The 101st troopers returned to Fort Campbell on May 15.²⁷

The episode in Venezuela demonstrated the potential of STRAC. Following the incident, President Eisenhower suggested carrying out exercises and airlift operations outside the continental United States so that when the US did respond to contingencies, the troop movement would not cause alarm. While intended to reinforce Allied forces in Europe in the event of a Soviet invasion, the STRAC-ready brigade concept quickly proved ideal for responding to global crises, putting out “brushfires” before they turned into something larger. By the middle of the decade, however, officers realized that using quick-strike, lightly armed airborne forces against mechanized armed forces of an industrialized nation, and in the era of surface-to-air missiles, was akin to suicide. Nevertheless, the value of these forces in advancing US foreign policy in developing nations while protecting American interests and citizens was on full display in the late 1950s. Moreover, having a force “ready around the clock” provided the United States with credible combat power prepared to project anywhere in the world and deter would-be challengers.²⁸

After the Venezuelan incident, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff called for a reappraisal of emergency airlift plans. In the ensuing report, the Department of Defense boasted two dedicated airborne quick-response capabilities. The Tactical Air Command (TAC) and Continental Army Command (CONARC) maintained a task force of two 82nd Airborne Division battle groups and fifty-two C-130 transports ready to move within twenty-four hours of notification. A second plan under development relied on the Military Air Transport Service to move two battle groups of the 101st Airborne Division to a secure airfield in Europe or the Middle East. That plan required eight days and 361 trips to move five thousand personnel and 4,500 tons of supplies. Expansion to include the rest of the division would require eighteen days and nine hundred further sorties to move the rest of the 101st’s 15,000 tons of personnel and supplies.²⁹

Airborne response forces faced another test in the summer of 1958 when Lebanese president Camille Chamoun requested assistance from Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser in deterring Communist subversion. Ostensibly acting to maintain American credibility, Eisenhower reluctantly sent American troops to the region. The initial plan called for the 101st Airborne and 4th Infantry Division to fly directly into Lebanon as part of STRAC in a move known as Operation Swaggerstick. A War College study determined that deploying the entire STRAC to Lebanon would require more than three-quarters of the US Air Force’s available airlift assets. Rather than deploy STRAC, the Joint Chiefs elected to send a US Marine Corps task force and a reinforced airborne battle group from Germany so as not to commit the entirety of air force lift assets at once. Initial plans called for the airborne battle group to secure a lodgment to allow British follow-on forces to fly in and assist, if met with a hostile environment. The Joint Chiefs clamored for a parachute drop throughout the planning phase, even clearing the necessary airspace. Meanwhile, the airborne battle group from Augsburg, Germany, flew to Adana, Turkey, before landing in Beirut. This force consisted of the recently reorganized 24th Airborne Brigade, a semiofficial designation for the two airborne battle groups of the 24th Infantry Division that had assumed the airborne mission in Europe after the army deactivated the 11th Airborne Division. American forces under the command of Maj. Gen. Paul D. Adams secured Beirut’s airport, seaport, and the road approaches leading into the city. Throughout the crisis, the 101st Airborne Division remained on alert, ready to send its initial elements within six hours of notification.³⁰

Operation Blue Bat, the name of the Lebanese operation, validated the concept of airborne elements as a quick-reaction force by, in this instance, landing the paratroopers in 110 C-130s and C-124s. However, the operation was not without its problems, and it further illustrated the challenges the air force faced in providing enough airlift to support the army’s plans for strategic mobility. The airborne troopers in Lebanon exhibited high morale and impressed the task force’s commander despite their tenuous mission as essentially a show of force, and to support President Chamoun amid civil strife. The army claimed it needed the air force to maintain forty-five troop carrier wings of between thirty-six or more aircraft, or enough to carry the assault forces from three airborne divisions simultaneously—a number the air force was not remotely interested in procuring. Despite STRAC’s role as an easily deployable force for emergencies, aircraft limitations prevented it from truly living up to its potential. Without a declared national emergency, procuring the required lift assets to support a full-scale troop deployment was impossible. Blue Bat also demonstrated that the air force had been neglecting its airlift capacity and reinforced the notion that conventional ground forces remained important in the atomic era. Ultimately, the Lebanon experience demonstrated that the entire Department of Defense needed to be better prepared for limited overseas operations and interventions.³¹

By 1959, STRAC had lost one infantry division to the mission of initial recruit training, making it a three-division corps. Gen. Lyman Lemnitzer, who succeeded Taylor as army chief of staff, emphasized at the Sixth Annual Conference of Civilian Aides to the Secretary of the Army that with two-thirds of its divisions being airborne, STRAC was capable of employment in areas that lacked “ports or airfields or even beaches—necessary for other types of forces to be landed.” The airborne force “could parachute into a zone where combat was actually taking place, and seize airfields, beaches, or ports to defeat the enemy or permit the landing of other forces.” Later that day, Lt. Gen. Sink, the STRAC commander, outlined the specific capabilities of his corps. In addition to the 82nd, 101st, and 4th Divisions, STRAC consisted of a division’s worth of infantry, armor, and cavalry assets arrayed at Forts Devens, Hood, and Meade, as well as the 1st Logistical Command at Fort Bragg. On paper, these units allowed for a self-sufficient force tailorable to any perceived contingency. STRAC was also intended to deter aggression, “so we won’t have another Korea,” or to prevent, through swift military intervention, escalation to general (nuclear) war. Sink emphasized the need for the predesignation of air force aircraft and a unified commander to ensure readiness. Only then would STRAC become “the force that fills the void between defeat by default and massive retaliation.”³²

Units of the Strategic Army Corps attempted to demonstrate their abilities in training exercises worldwide. These included exercises throughout the Caribbean, in Alaska, the continental United States, Turkey, and even Greenland. From January 14 to February 19, 1959, the 2nd Airborne Battle Group, 503rd Infantry, from the 82nd Airborne Division, flew from Pope Air Force Base, North Carolina, to Alaska to participate in Exercise Caribou Creek. The battle group conducted an air-landed reinforcement in Alaska, followed by tactical parachute operations. As that exercise finished, more than fourteen hundred paratroopers of the 2nd Airborne Battle Group, 501st Infantry—also from the 82nd Airborne Division—flew two thousand miles nonstop in seven hours to Panama in twenty-three C-130 Hercules aircraft. After the long flight, on the morning of February 19, the battle group conducted a parachute-assault exercise to “seize” Rio Hato airfield and then completed a further week of jungle training for Exercise Banyan Tree. Despite their imperfections, both operations successfully showcased STRAC’s mobile capabilities. These missions tested and validated the Strategic Army Corps’ ability to operate in disparate climates far from home, a key responsibility of STRAC.³³

Despite the plethora of exercises, the army’s deputy chief of staff for operations, Lt. Gen. John C. Oakes, thought more were needed. In a draft memorandum sent for chief of staff approval, his office wrote that “the credibility of the Army’s role as strategic deterrent force is weakened by the lack of frequently demonstrated performances.” In his draft proposal for strategic mobility exercises, he envisioned sending reinforced battle group STRAC task forces to places as varied as Turkey, the Philippines, and Thailand throughout fiscal year 1962. These exercises would demonstrate “the strategic capabilities of Army forces,” improve “the combat readiness of the Army,” and provide “positive evidence to other countries of our ability and determination to participate in the defense of the free world.” Oakes reiterated the need to demonstrate a credible capability for deterrence by exercising American expeditionary forces.³⁴

Aircraft ranges increased so much by the decade’s end that the rapidly deployable Strategic Army Corps was now a national strategic asset on par with the air force’s Strategic Air Command. Despite the advances in aircraft, air force support came from two sources—the Tactical Air Command (TAC) and the Military Air Transport Service (MATS). Often, TAC aircraft were disapproved for strategic mobility exercises. At the same time, the army often competed with the air force’s other various requirements for MATS aircraft, receiving no more than 35 percent of available flying hours for fiscal year 1959. Nevertheless, while the air force procured improved aircraft, the army developed lighter, air-droppable equipment. Lighter metals allowed the airborne division to maintain the same structure as a regular infantry division. In World War II, pack howitzers, mortars, and bazookas were the heaviest weapons airborne troops could hope to bring into combat by parachute. By 1960, artillery and vehicles were not only air transportable but air droppable.³⁵

Strike Command

Strategic response capabilities expanded in the early 1960s. The XVIII Airborne Corps commander Lt. Gen. Thomas Trapnell, who endured the Bataan Death March and later commanded the 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team in Korea, worried that the navy and marines were attempting to infringe on the army and air force’s natural role and mission for rapid strategic response. He recommended a joint “briefing to showcase how, together, those elements can engage and defeat any aggressor in any area of the world, without regard to distances, obstacles, or climate.” The disparate commands of the 1950s-era response forces needed a new, unified command structure.³⁶

On January 1, 1961, the Department of Defense activated United States Strike Command (STRICOM) at MacDill Air Force Base, Florida, under the command of Gen. Paul D. Adams. STRICOM was born of a desire to combine the Strategic Army Corps of US Continental Army Command and the US Air Force TAC into an integrated command structure of ready forces based in the continental United States. This was done partly to alleviate competing demands on aircraft and provide unity of command for any operation. STRICOM’s biggest “almost” operation was Operations Plan 316 (OPLAN 316), the proposed invasion of Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. By 1965, the Atlantic Fleet joined the command to give the United States a “world-wide General-Purpose Forces Command.” STRICOM was a joint command responsible for the planning and executing of multiple exercises and operations from its inception until it was reorganized as the US Readiness Command in 1972. The army’s portion was ARSTRIKE, or Army Strike, while the air force provided elements known as AFSTRIKE. The command’s initial missions included providing a reserve of general purpose forces for reinforcing the other unified commands, training the general reserve, developing joint doctrine, planning for and executing contingency operations, and providing troops for later civil disturbance operations. The army also expanded its airborne capabilities to provide a “more flexible response” to regional crises, with the activation of the 173rd Airborne Brigade (Separate) in Okinawa and the 1st Brigade (Airborne/Mechanized) of the 8th Infantry Division on March 26 and 27, 1963 respectively. This unique brigade was to be airborne and mechanized—an interesting concept attempting to marry two cultures that ultimately proved unsuccessful.³⁷

Life in airborne units under STRICOM continued much like Galvin described in the late 1950s. Men and equipment stayed on alert, bags packed, and personal goods ready for storage in a constant rotation of the Division Ready Force and its constituent Immediate Response Force. Units on alert were to be ready to move within eighteen hours of notification. The two-hour recall status was shared around the division, often lasting two weeks for one company before rotating to the next. Galvin also described how his unit packed their gear and slept in pup tents beside the C-124 Globemasters standing by on the taxiway. Galvin’s experiences were normalized as part of a unit with an expeditionary mindset. The Division Ready Force consisted of one thousand men within an infantry battalion task force, including a battery of 105mm howitzers and a platoon of engineers. Sometimes, if more advanced notice were given, the ready brigade would move to a secure location and be able to depart even before eighteen hours. Those at the highest state of readiness were on a two-hour recall notice and maintained one company as the Immediate Response Force restricted to the barracks. Once the unit received an alert, the battalion had to be on base, assembled within two hours, and prepared to leave within eighteen hours of the original notification. The nine infantry battalions in the 82nd Airborne Division would rotate through training and support functions throughout the year.³⁸

In October 1962, the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions went on full alert to prepare to execute a parachute assault into Cuba during the missile crisis. While the XVIII Airborne Corps and the 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions prepared to seize four airfields, the US Marine Corps was prepared to make an amphibious assault. They were to secure the port of Mariel to bring in Task Force Charlie, an armored brigade from the 1st Armored Division. The rest of the 1st Armored and the 2nd Infantry Divisions would constitute a floating reserve. Once all marine and army assets were on the ground, Hamilton Howze, the commanding general of XVIII Airborne Corps, would assume command of all forces, known as Joint Task Force Cuba. Maj. Gen. William P. Yarborough would dispatch Army Special Forces teams and Cuban exiles to support an uprising under his authority as commander of the Joint Unconventional Warfare Task Force, Atlantic. The commander of STRICOM during the Cuban Missile Crisis was Gen. Paul Adams, who had successfully commanded joint forces during the 1958 Lebanon intervention. Airborne officers commanded most of the major units involved in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Besides the airborne division commanders, Taylor was serving as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adams commanded STRICOM, Howze led the XVIII Airborne Corps, Yarborough oversaw Special Forces, and Maj. Gen. Charles Billingslea commanded the 2nd Infantry Division. The planned joint seaborne and airborne invasion never happened, of course.³⁹

To further exercise the capability of STRAC and MATS to move forces rapidly to reinforce Europe, the 2nd Armored Division executed Exercise Big Lift in October 1963. Given seventy-two hours to accomplish the feat, the combined team completed the last flights into France and Germany in sixty-four hours. US Air Force transport aircraft had transported 15,358 personnel and 504 tons of equipment in what was, according to Secretary of Defense McNamara, “the transoceanic largest Army–Air Force deployment ever to be made by air.” Rather than ship their armored vehicles, the men of the 2nd Armored flew directly to pre-positioned stocks of tanks and armored personnel carriers in Germany, which the army had decided to store there following the 1961 Berlin Crisis. The exercise was designed to demonstrate the United States’ ability to project force for rapid and large-scale reinforcement of NATO by air alone. Some NATO allies, however, expressed skepticism in private that while it was a useful peacetime exercise, the concept had little utility in the event of open hostilities with the missile-armed Soviet Union.⁴⁰

After alerting and standing down for Cuba, STRAC and the 82nd Airborne executed a similar Caribbean response mission in 1965. On Saturday, April 24, 1965, a revolution broke out in Santo Domingo, the Dominican capital, and the crisis deepened over the weekend. On April 27, President Lyndon Johnson sent five hundred marines to protect American lives and property in the Dominican Republic and begin an evacuation in a mission dubbed Operation Power Pack. Two days later, the 82nd Airborne Division reinforced the US Marines already there. At 4:30 p.m. on April 29, the Joint Chiefs of Staff designated Maj. Gen. Robert York of the 82nd Airborne Division commander of all US ground forces in the Dominican Republic and ordered him to deploy the Division Ready Brigade (3rd Brigade with two parachute infantry battalions) to Ramey Air Force Base in Puerto Rico. The original plan was for the 150 C-130 Hercules aircraft to land in Puerto Rico, the men to put on parachutes, and then jump into the capital of Santo Domingo. However, while the force was en route, tensions escalated, and the troopers were needed immediately. The paratroopers received orders to land directly at San Isidro Airfield east of the capital—then in friendly hands. The first elements landed at San Isidro at about 2:15 a.m. on April 30, 1965, in the division’s first overseas combat operation since World War II. More elements left Fort Bragg; less than seventy-two hours after notification, two battalions and the division headquarters were on the ground.⁴¹

Lt. Gen. Bruce Palmer, a Maxwell Taylor protégé, and his XVIII Airborne Corps assumed control of the entire operation, while York directed the ground combat troops. The American mission was to protect the lives of Americans and others and to “give the InterAmerican System a chance to deal with the situation,” to preserve law and order, and to prevent a Communist takeover. A multinational force from the Organization of American States joined the Americans, including troops from Brazil, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Paraguay. Palmer’s unstated but obvious mission was to “prevent another Cuba.” The initial aim of the 3rd Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division was to create a safe corridor for US troops through the capital city of Santo Domingo. After securing the primary east–west transportation route through the capital and nicknaming it the “All-American Expressway,” York “marched the division band all the way through the corridor.” (Fort Liberty, the home of the 82nd Airborne, has a highway, completed in 1978 and dubbed the All-American Freeway, connecting the center of the base with the Cape Fear Valley Medical Center.) Follow-on operations resulted in only small engagements. The pro- Cuban rebels were suppressed, and the legal government reestablished its authority.⁴²

Raymond Weaver, a veteran of the 82nd Airborne, recalled, “There was pretty much chaos. And there had been civil but—all kinds of civil strife and lots of people killed down there, lots of civilians killed.” As units prepared to head to the island, rumors of fighting grew. Weaver remembered, “We found out that—we heard before we left that the 505[th Parachute Infantry Regiment] … had been fired on as they landed.” Combat, however, was minimal. This miffed many members of the 82nd, who dreamed of a combat jump and were ill-prepared for governance tasks, yet succeeded anyway. The fighting occurred almost exclusively in an urban environment, facing swift-moving guerrilla forces unlike anything the force had faced before. One soldier remarked, “We would hand out food to the people one minute and then be engaged in a firefight with the same ones the next,” wondering why his unit was cleaning the streets since, “Hell, we came here to fight.” The entire division was in the Dominican Republic by the end of May. While helping make food, water, and medical care available to the inhabitants, the division also found time to resume proficiency jumps. An eventual diplomatic solution ended the civil war, and most of the division returned to Fort Bragg in June and July, while the division’s 1st Brigade remained as a peacekeeping force until September 1966. By the end of their deployment, roughly twelve thousand members of the 82nd Airborne Division had served in the Dominican Republic. But it was not without fighting—27 Americans were killed in action and 172 wounded, the majority from the 82nd Airborne Division. The paratroopers played an instrumental role in ending the civil war, especially thanks to their ability to adapt to the changing political situation on the island. The 82nd Airborne Division demonstrated that regular army units can conduct governance tasks while validating the rapid deployment concept.⁴³

Meanwhile in 1965, US commanders in Vietnam had requested combat battalions as the military situation continued to deteriorate. The first army unit that deployed, in April 1965, was the 173rd Airborne Brigade from Okinawa, which was sent to reinforce and defend Bien Hoa Airfield. The plan was for a brigade of the 101st Airborne Division to relieve the 173rd, but that scheme never materialized. Rumors of deployment abounded at Fort Bragg, however. Weaver, the 82nd Airborne veteran of the Dominican intervention, remembered, “The word was the 101st was going one place, and we were going to the other, but we didn’t know for sure which was which.” As the 82nd prepared for its mission in the Caribbean, the lead elements of the 101st Airborne Division—its 1st Brigade—went to Vietnam, arriving on July 29, 1965. By 1966, personnel from the 101st and the 82nd were sending their men to fill critical personnel shortages for units overseas. The rest of the 101st Airborne Division deployed to Vietnam in 1967. The 173rd Airborne Brigade spent five and a half years “in country” and was employed extensively as a theater-level fire brigade, harnessing an airborne brigade’s light, deployable nature. The 173rd even conducted the only large-scale parachute jump of the war during Operation Junction City in 1967.⁴⁴

Later, after the Tet Offensive in early 1968, American leadership requested reinforcements, and the army ordered the 3rd Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division, to move to Vietnam. Desperate for additional forces, Gen. Westmoreland asked for the entire 82nd Airborne Division. The division was a key strategic reaction force and one of the few ready units in the continental United States earmarked for potential conflict in Europe or other “brushfires,” and consequently only its 3rd “Golden” Brigade went to Vietnam—six months after it participated in operations controlling civilian rioters in Detroit. The brigade was short-staffed and drew personnel and equipment from 1st and 2nd Brigades to bring it to 95 percent strength. Some 80 percent of the brigade had prior experience in South Vietnam. Within twenty-four hours of receipt of the mission, the initial elements of the brigade were en route, landing on Valentine’s Day, 1968. After an airlift of 135 C-141 Starlifter and 6 C-133 Cargomaster aircraft, the brigade arrived at its camp at Chu Lai. During its tour, the brigade demonstrated immense flexibility, moving between parent commands and locations throughout South Vietnam. The brigade stayed “in country” for approximately a year, departing on February 11, 1969. While the 3rd Brigade served in Vietnam, the army created a 4th Brigade at Fort Bragg to maintain three ready brigades to respond to crises at home or abroad.⁴⁵

Increasing domestic strife during this era gave the airborne another mission—augmenting civilian police. Much as they had in the 1957 Little Rock deployment, rapid-response units functioned as a domestic “brushfire” force as much as an international one. Their quick-reaction capability had even made the 82nd an enticing option for President Truman during a seventeen-day strike by the United Mine Workers in 1946. Labor unrest, however, represented a small fraction of the deployments of troops after World War II. The increasing strife of the civil rights era provided ample opportunity for national leaders to deploy the army’s quick-response forces. Besides the movement to Little Rock, airborne units were sent to Oxford, Mississippi, in 1962, to Detroit in 1967, and to Washington, DC, in 1968.⁴⁶

The initial deployment of troops to Oxford, Mississippi, in September 1962 for Operation Rapid Road saw army leadership hesitant to use airborne troops because of heightened Cold War tensions and the potential need for a quick-response force elsewhere. Nevertheless, they were the ideal quick-response force to assist in preventing white violence against James Meredith’s attempt to attend classes at and desegregate the University of Mississippi. Airborne soldiers were far from the only military forces that responded to the rioting. By the zenith of tension in Oxford, ten airborne battle groups and command elements of the XVIII Airborne Corps were on the ground at Columbus Air Force Base southeast of the city, under the command of Lt. Gen. Howze, who suggested to the secretary of the army that they execute a parachute drop over Oxford as “a useful training exercise.” This rapid deployment happened during planning for the Cuban Missile Crisis, demonstrating the flexibility inherent in the Strategic Army Corps.⁴⁷

In Michigan, after the outbreak of racial violence in Detroit following a police raid, the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions each deployed a brigade on July 24, 1967, under the command of Maj. Gen. Richard J. Seitz. Each brigade was ready to move within two hours of notification from XVIII Airborne Corps headquarters and had its lead elements on the ground within ten hours. The paratroopers from both divisions operated out of the state fairgrounds and local schools, with city buses made available for transport. On their second night in the city, the task force (dubbed Task Force Detroit) reported eight “sniper incidents” but nothing more serious than that. Tensions de-escalated, and on the morning of July 26, Lt. Gen. John L. Throckmorton, the XVIII Airborne Corps commander and Seitz’s immediate superior, directed all troops to unload weapons and sheath their bayonets. Throckmorton had earlier commanded the 82nd Airborne in a federal response role in Washington, DC, in 1963 and was considered by President Johnson to be ideal for the delicate mission in Michigan. In Detroit, the regular paratroopers proved much more disciplined than local National Guard members, as some 30–40 percent were veterans of the war in Vietnam. In the afternoon, Throckmorton further advised that the paratroopers were to “remove flak vests and do everything to present a return-to-normal appearance to the public.” The paratroopers turned over operational control of the area to the 46th Infantry Division of the Michigan Army National Guard and redeployed to Fort Campbell and Fort Bragg on August 1 and 2.⁴⁸

More troops were deployed all over the country from various installations, including Fort Bragg, during the turmoil of 1967 and 1968, with the army setting up various task force headquarters in major American cities in operations as well planned as any during World War II. The deployment to Washington, DC, on April 5 and 6, 1968, in the wake of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. was a particularly delicate assignment. Paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division formed yet another task force, this time under the command of Task Force Washington. The 82nd guarded national landmarks, businesses, and the Capitol building while patrolling the district’s east side. The troopers returned to Fort Bragg on April 12. While these well-honed units were well prepared for overseas contingency missions, domestic riot control was often more common. This represents the dichotomy of rapid-response units—these quick-reaction forces were often the only ones available and flexible enough to perform such a mission. The increased discipline expected of elite infantry paid dividends in preventing large-scale incidents between troopers and civilians. Tasked with restoring order alongside the National Guard and regular law-enforcement units, these deployments of federal troops for domestic situations have become an enduring and uncomfortable feature of American life.⁴⁹

Between World War II and Vietnam, airpower drove military innovation, and the army responded through the leadership of airborne officers to create a strategically mobile and air-transportable force responsive to what its leaders envisioned as the future of warfare. Despite massive budget cuts and, at times, contentious relationships with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the army persevered. But to do so it had to show its worth in a contemporary operating environment that measured response and deployment in hours instead of weeks. In addition to the instances described, small contingents of the 82nd were also deployed to the Congo in 1964 and 1967 to provide security for US Air Force aircraft assisting Belgian forces. The Strategic Army Corps serves as a sign of the long-lasting influence the airborne has had on postwar army strategic capabilities. The rapid-response force developed during the Carter administration and its modern incarnation—the Immediate Response Force—are direct descendants of the Strategic Army Corps developed during Taylor’s tenure as army chief of staff.⁵⁰

Airborne leaders’ outsize influence in the postwar period put them at the forefront of organizational change. The airborne mafia shaped tactical thought and forced the army to redefine its role during the air-minded atomic age by emphasizing strategic mobility and the quick delivery of land combat power to the battlefield by air. Rapid airborne response capabilities became a critical component of postwar planning. The value of an airborne force, according to Gen. Howze, “lies in its contingency missions, its readiness to move by aircraft and to parachute onto foreign soil, if necessary, almost anywhere in the world that an airplane can get to … and thus serve as a very prompt application of force in situations other than that of a major war.” The airborne also represented a deterrence component, much akin to the Strategic Air Command of the air force. As Gavin wrote in 1947, “The knowledge of the existence of a well-trained airborne army capable of moving anywhere on the globe on short notice, available to an international security body such as the United Nations, is our best guarantee of lasting peace. And the group of nations that control the air will control the peace.” Strategic air mobility would bridge the gaps between the army’s personnel reduction, the national focus on airpower, and the military mission of conducting land combat.⁵¹

In the early Cold War, the ability to move rapidly and resupply forces by air became vital to the nation’s quick-response capabilities, whether to reinforce Europe or put out a brushfire elsewhere. The airborne mafia’s expeditionary mindset rooted in air-mindedness was critical to the army remaining a viable component of the national security apparatus. Creating a highly mobile ground force capable of worldwide deployment was necessary in an era where air power enthusiasts dominated military thinking, bent on making strategic bombing the only viable way of war. Still, while some have dismissed this capability as only a “paper army” or inconsequential, STRAC, the Strategic Army Corps—alongside missile and helicopter forces—represented army efforts to remain a viable strategic option in a rapidly shifting international environment. Experiences in World War II fueled the development of more and better ways to project force from within the United States to hot spots around the globe, which gave the army a critical component of the country’s national defense options. In the army’s view, airborne forces were fundamental as an alternative to massive retaliation. The development of strategic response forces in the 1950s set the stage for future applications of expeditionary warfare and has had lasting effects on how the United States projects combat power around the world today.⁵²