An excellent example of an airlift supporting the tenets of peacetime engagement is Operation Provide Hope, which was flown by C-5 aircrews to key areas in the former Soviet Union. The airlift provided food to areas where starvation and consequent political unrest were likely. Such unrest in the collapsing empire is in no one's interest. Aerospace power provides the quickest, most visible, and most flexible form of such engagement. Airlift provides the glue that sustains peacetime engagement, but it is only one of the elements of aerospace power involved.
Special operations can serve informational and political elements of national power.
The targeting precision and intelligence provided from space operations are essential to special operations and airlift. The use of aerospace power in the form of airlift, special operations, and space is far less provocative than an air strike or employment of combat surface forces. Our doctrine should explicitly outline this breadth of application. Aerospace power should not be cast simply in terms of a military campaign against an armed foe in a regional conflict. Several additions to the current AFM 1-1 should be considered to achieve the necessary breadth of thinking.