Examining Air Mobility Command Support to the Expeditionary Aerospace Force.

The Air Force has been tasked at an ever-increasing rate to support contingency operations around the world. These operations range from providing relief supplies to hurricane victims to providing combat firepower to enforce no-fly zones in Southwest Asia. As the Air Force responds to these contingencies, its opstempo has risen dramatically. The family lives of Air Force people are disrupted by the frequent and unpredictable deployments, which pushes experienced people out of the service. To counter these almost daily crises, the Air Force is creating a new organizational structure, the Expeditionary Aerospace Forces. The structure is based on providing light, lean forces, tailored to each individual contingency that allows rapid and decisive response to any potential crisis. This concept allows stability by providing a 15-month fixed schedule of what units would deploy and when. This paper examines the support required by Air Mobility Command's airlift and air refueling assets under the Expeditionary concept. It focuses on the expected workload in deployment days for crews. The research compares current opstempo with the opstempo associated with past Air Expeditionary Force-type deployments and expected workload from the new concept. The results of the research depict a slight increase in opstempo under the Expeditionary concept but also discusses other possible reasons for the increase.