MAXWELL AIR FORCE BASE, Ala. -- Air University Press announces the release of Defending Air Bases in an Age of Insurgency, volume 2, edited by retired Col. Shannon W. Caudill.
This second volume examines current and future operational challenges to the security and defense of air bases. The authors probe the effects of a variety of threats against airpower projection, including the growing complexity of the anti-access/area-denial environment.
Responding to an advance copy of this book, Gen. David L. Goldfein, Air Force chief of staff, commented, “As a land-based force, we fight the base first to project power and destroy the enemy. Doesn't do any good to have the best crews and equipment on the planet if we let someone breach our defenses and wreak havoc. We must be the best in the world at integrated base defense.”
In this volume, authors explore modern air support for base defense, counterintelligence enablers, commander responsibilities for air base defense, lessons from the Afghanistan theater of operations (a major gap in the first volume), projected technological advances in base defense, and unique operational defensive challenges at a conflict’s beginning (getting in) and end (getting out). Importantly, this volume features material collected through a research partnership with the Air Force Historical Research Agency, which assessed and categorized the effects of air base attacks during the Iraq conflict (2003–12) using Air Force history reports.
Dr. Alan Vick, senior political scientist for RAND Corporation, praised both volumes in this series. “The first volume of Defending Air Bases in an Age of Insurgency, published in 2014, was an exceptional work of scholarship, careful analysis, and combat lessons learned,” he said. “It has earned a place among other classics such as John Kreis’s Air Warfare and Air Base Defense and Roger Fox’s Air Base Defense in the Republic of Vietnam. Volume 2 greatly expands the issues addressed while living up to the high standards established by the first book. The two volumes together present the most comprehensive treatment of air base ground defense yet published.”
Volume 1 of this book was Air University Press’s number one download in 2014. Maj. Gen. Thomas Deale, praised volume 2 and the intellectual efforts of the authors by stating, “Colonel Caudill and his fellow authors have done a real service for the Air Force and joint community by tackling the thorny issues discussed in this book. They are adding a rich new volume to an important and often underappreciated part of airpower history and the operational art.”
Download publications at http://www.airuniversity.af.mil/AUPress/. Order publications by e-mailing aupress@us.af.mil or calling (334) 953-2773 (DSN 493). Publications are also available at the Air University Press Bookstore, 600 Chennault Circle, Building 1405 (Muir S. Fairchild Research Information Center), Maxwell AFB.