Air Mobility

Air power invariably provides the only way for the United Kingdom to intervene in a crisis quickly enough to make an immediate difference, to restore order, to provide security, or to deliver critical aid supplies. The RAF's C-17 and Tristar strategic transport aircraft currently provide the United Kingdom with global reach, and this capability will be supplemented by the European A400M aircraft in the future.

Once in a war zone or at the site of a natural disaster, roads may be non-existent or unusable, either because they have been washed away, or are mined or booby trapped with Improvised Explosive Devices (lEDs); consequently, tactical air lift often provides the only practical means of movement in difficult terrain. The RAF's Hercules aircraft and its support helicopter fleet of Chinooks, Pumas and Merlins are the lynchpins of tactical mobility, moving people, ground forces, equipment, supplies and humanitarian aid around theatres of operation. This permits air power to act as a force multiplier, enabling relatively small and light units to maintain a presence over very wide areas, exemplified by current operations in Afghanistan.

The closely integrated air-land operations conducted by RAF aircraft and small units of Special Forces throughout the broad reaches of the Iraqi Western Desert in 2003 also provide a classic example of the way in which air power can be used in conjunction with light, mobile land forces to dominate huge tracts of territory efficiently and economically, creating genuinely strategic effects.

Photography: RAF/MOD Crown Copyright 2010.