Aerospace Operations in Urban Environments: Exploring New Concepts

The recent spate of urban operations in Panama, Somalia, Haiti, and Bosnia has motivated the Department of Defense to put considerable effort into identifying and correcting shortcomings in the United States' ability to successfully conduct urban military operations. Project Air Force undertook a yearlong investigation of the role that aerospace forces can play in joint urban military operations. This study sought to help the USAF better understand how the urban physical, social, and political environment constrains aerospace operations, to identify key operational tasks that aerospace forces can help accomplish, and to develop new concepts of operation, including enabling technologies, to enhance the contribution that aerospace forces make to joint urban operations.