Air University Review, September-October 1969
My mind was open and free to receive any new impressions, without having to struggle against the bias which a lifelong practice of routine operations cannot fail more or less to create.
Sir Henry Bessemer, F.R.S.–
An Autobiography
Among the foremost lessons learned by military practitioners throughout history has been the need to beware of lessons learned—especially when someone also professes to have learned them.
There is a universal tendency to “learn lessons” from every exercise and operation, as long s they reinforce the notions the learner already holds dear. If we can force experience to teach us the same lesson two or three times running, the inevitable next step is to proclaim: “It is, of course, axiomatic that . . . ”—which conveniently forgets that “axiomatic” means, at bottom, “you’ll just have to take my word for it.”
And so the proponent of almost any concept or piece of hardware can in time, if he is ingenious enough in deducing what he wants from experience, assert that his proposition is self-evident. But to say that a proposition is believed because it is self-evident is only to baptize the difficulty, as Poincaré remarked, not to solve it.
Thus, there is a tremendous premium on isolating the true and valid lessons of military experience from the greater body of narrow and self-serving traditions which, among other well-known anomalies, prescribed boots and spurs as part of the early flying uniform.
In mathematics, this sort of filtering problem is addressed by the “Theory of Groups,” which seeks to determine those things that remain invariant under groups of transformations. Or, in broader terms, as Alfred North Whitehead put it: “To see what is general in what is particular, and what is permanent in what is transitory, is the aim of scientific thought.”
The problem was well addressed in terms of the Army by its Chief of Staff, General William C. Westmoreland, during the course of an interview toward the end of 1968. “The Army must retain the experience we gained from our operations in Vietnam,” he said, “and profit from the lessons learned.”
“Yet,” he added, significantly, “we must exercise caution in this application of experience, because our operation in the environment of Southeast Asia was unique. Many of the lessons learned have broad applications, but some do not. We must have an Army that is versatile enough to carry out its assigned mission in any terrain, in any climate, and against any enemy."
Put another way, the classic lesson turns out to be that there is, in the last analysis, no classic lesson—except to be ready for anything, anywhere, at any time.
The thesis advanced in this article is that modem combat airlift is fundamental to the strategic mobility by means of which our armed forces can maintain that kind of universal spatiotemporal readiness. The thesis will not be defended by a tortuously documented panoply of lessons learned—not because we in the Military Airlift Command (MAC) are immune to the temptation but because this kind of combat airlift does not exist anywhere and cannot therefore be admitted into evidence.
It does not exist physically because the C-5 Galaxy is fundamental to the actuality and the operational C-5 force is still in the future. But even with the fully programmed force of C-141s and C-5s, modern combat airlift will not automatically spring into being. Combat airlift, as it will be described herein, is in its essence a concept—and a concept, in order to become a reality, must be thoroughly understood, supported, and proved.
The best we can hope to adduce, then, is that the revolution in airlift, which I described three and a half years ago in these pages,1 is as much conceptual as technological and that certain conceptual conclusions flow from the technical antecedents with inevitable logic.
The technology detailed in the earlier article can be briefly summarized: The C-141 obviates many of the historic constraints upon airlift (in speed, range/payload trade-off, flexibility of employment, cubic capacity, loadability, self-sufficiency, terminal base requirements, fuel dependency, and direct operating cost) by virtue of its high speed (above 425 knots) and its range/payload options (up to 32 tons or 154 troops nonstop to Europe or nonstop from the West Coast to Tokyo with reduced payload). Requiring little more than 4000 feet of runway for takeoff or landing, the C-141 can use about 1850 airports around the world, greatly enhancing flexibility of employment. It is loaded straight-in from the rear, utilizing 463L Materials Handling System equipment, and incorporates a troop/cargo airdrop capability. It is not, however, an outsize carrier, being capable of lifting only 58 percent of current major items of Army divisional equipment.
Since that article was published, the C-141 has been tested for operations on landing mat surfaces and has proved to have quite promising flotation characteristics. Further work is being directed toward adapting the aircraft for primitive field conditions akin to the C-5’s capability in that sort of environment.
Finally, from a productivity standpoint, the C-141 accomplishes approximately 10,000 ton-miles of work per hour, a factor-of-four improvement over the C-124, which it has virtually replaced.
What has become a great deal more certain since the 1966 article is that the C-141, having proved its great reliability and maintainability, can easily be flown many more hours a day than any of its piston or turboprop predecessors. Thus, its inherent productivity is greatly magnified in practical application; we have, in fact, been operating the C-141 force for more than three years at 160 percent of programmed peacetime rates. As a direct result, MAC-managed (active force plus military reserve and commercial augmentation) ton-mileage, on a worldwide basis, climbed from 2.29 billion in fiscal year 1965 to 7.47 billion in FY 1968, an increase of 226 percent. The reason for the forced acceleration was, of course, the war in Southeast Asia, and most of the increased production was focused in that direction. In FY 1965 we airlifted 136,000 tons of cargo and 595,000 troops and passengers throughout the entire Pacific Command. By FY 1968 the volumes to and from Southeast Asia alone had swelled to 595,000 tons and 1,900,000 troops/passengers—increases of 338 and 219 percent, respectively
The 1966 article then described the C-5 technology. The basics were a speed of 440 to 470 knots, a productivity of more than 40,000 ton-miles per hour, payload capacity up to 132 tons (with mission options of 55 tons for 5500 nautical miles or 110 tons for 2700 nautical miles), troop/cargo airdrop capability, volumetric capacity of 35,000 cubic feet, drive-through loading and unloading (front and rear openings and kneeling landing gear), high-flotation characteristics for operation in primitive environments, high fuel capacity to eliminate support dependence upon the forward battle area, and low direct operating cost (estimated at the time to be 4½ cents per ton-mile, since refined to about 3⅓ cents).
An important key to this efficiency was the high-bypass-ratio TF-39 power plant. Its far-reaching impact was summed up in these words:
It is not too complicated a chain of reasoning to follow from single advancements in materials or cooling methods, to double power at lower specific weight and one-third less specific fuel consumption, to the considerable payloads and ranges thereby made possible at lower cost, to the end result: a powerful amplification of the strategic range of military/ diplomatic options available to the President for his enforcement of national policy goals. He is thus afforded more latitude for maneuver and more time for decision.
Since that was written, results of testing the first three C-5s have been encouraging. For one thing, they have demonstrated 2% less drag at cruise speed than the guarantee specifies, which translates into greater payloads over both long and short ranges. Takeoff and landing performance is also about 2% better than predicted. At an average gross weight of 532,000 pounds, the C-5 has landed in 1700 feet on asphalt and 2600 feet on dirt. Takeoff distance is 6860 feet at basic design weight, and less in the long-range configuration.
That being a summation of the technology, it may be seen that the C-5 and the C-141 mutually fill any gaps that the one or the other might singly leave exposed. The C-141 does its optimum work and reaches its highest efficiency in carrying high-density cargo and troops. The C-5, on the other hand, is singularly well suited, as it was designed to be, to accommodate the very large and bulky (although generally less dense) items of equipment that are organic to heavy combat divisions. Together these two aircraft provide the full potential for modern combat airlift.
What, then, is modern combat airlift, and what conditions underwrite its necessity? In short, what conceptual conclusions flow with logical necessity from what technology has made possible? One answer, of course, is the broadening of statecraft’s options as mentioned above with reference to the TF-39 power plant. But that is close to the surface, and the underlying need goes a great deal deeper.
To start digging, we might consider a statement by Admiral U. S. G. Sharp, made when he was Commander in Chief, Pacific:
It is [at] the first destination in an underdeveloped country that we run into trouble. Ports and airfields—if there are any—are so lacking in modern facilities that they cannot efficiently receive and redistribute the huge tonnages which our transportation system can deliver.
He then went on to point out that this problem was solved in Vietnam by a massive construction program— "a costly solution, but acceptable if the strategic concept calls for a gradual buildup over a protracted period of time.”
“But,” he asked at that point, “what about those situations when time is of the essence, when a rapid deployment of force could mean the difference between war and peace, when the success or failure of subsequent military operations is at stake, when there isn’t time to build ports and airfields?”
Admiral Sharp in those words captured the very essence, the irresistible rationale for a modern combat airlift capability. For I would submit that the time-dependent situation he postulated has the highest probability of occurrence and that a strategic concept of gradual buildup has always—an invariant under transformation—exacted a very high price.
Of course, one of the presumptive lessons learned after World War II was that there would never again be time to prepare-but for different reasons: the push button was going to replace the infantry as the Queen of Battle. We have seen, though, that the modes of warfare since 1945, contrary to any lessons that appear to have been taught, have all been of the “limited” type and have been staged by and large in the most remote and underdeveloped arenas of the globe.
So what, if anything, has remained invariant under transformation and deserves truly to be called axiomatic? In warfare, at least two maxims have retained their validity over the twenty-four centuries since they were enunciated by Sun Tzu: “The highest art is to win a war without battle,” and “There has never been a protracted war from which a country has benefited.”
To help prevent any type of war, if possible, and to help bring it to a swift conclusion if deterrence fails are the basic functions of a modern combat airlift force. Any other benefits that may accrue from such a force-and they can be shown to be numerous-flow from the nature of that primary capability and can in no sense be considered as deserving higher precedence in designing, exercising, and operating that force.
The role of modern combat airlift, then, is to airlift combat forces and all their battle equipment, in the size and mix required—with the greatest speed—to any point in the world, no matter how remote or primitive, where a threat arises or is likely to erupt.
The strategic airlift force must be so constituted and so geared as to perform this task, with the added possibility of having to deploy sizable forces in opposite directions simultaneously and keep them all resupplied until, if required, surface lines of communication are fully established and operating at capacity.
Derivatively, airlift also makes it possible to reduce stock levels in the theater of engagement, so that the troops, having arrived, can move quickly into action without having to delay for the cushion of a large stock build-up. Thus, fewer men and fewer supplies are needed to support the men and supplies in the combat force, and the ratio of combat troops to support personnel is thereby increased.
Given the capability to satisfy this maximum demand, the airlift force can with lesser effort operate jointly with sealift or prepositioned equipment or both, or in tandem with fast deployment logistic ships, once the initial rapid-reaction requirements have been fulfilled. But the basic requirement is invariant: to rush integral, combat-ready fighting forces anywhere, including the battle area itself, without a preliminary massing of logistics, within hours of the time a decision to commit has been taken; and to reinforce and sustain them for as long as airlift is the only practicable way to do it.
Regardless of transformations that have taken place through the ages, surprise and mass have been invariants in all military considerations. Maximum force deployed in minimum time achieves both. As long as minimum time is a factor, it must inevitably be recognized that an airplane covers as much distance in one hour as a ship can in a full day’s sailing and that an aircraft, having arrived in the theater, can land or drop its troops and equipment directly in the battle area.
Thus, while airlift is certainly one element in the national defense transportation structure and can very effectively complement the more massive sealift capacity, it must again be emphasized that this is a derivative capability and a secondary role. This concept is by no means universally understood, and until it is understood—and applied—there will be no modern combat airlift in the ultimate sense of that term.
In his book Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy (1957), Dr. Henry A. Kissinger wrote with a high degree of perception:
Contemporaries are in a peculiarly difficult position to assess the nature of revolutions through which they are living. All previous experience will tempt them to integrate the new into what has come to seem familiar. They will have difficulty understanding that what is most taken for granted may be most misleading because a new order of experience requires new ways of thinking about it. A revolution cannot be mastered until it develops the mode of thinking appropriate to it.
That may explain why the real revolution in airlift is not as thoroughly perceived and understood as it might be. Many think of the strategic airlift capability of the near and more distant future as being precisely what it has always been, except that there is more of it: in effect, merely a “brute force” quantitative expansion of something we had in World War II. What they do not realize is that the jet age and the technology that makes an aircraft like the C-5 possible have also engendered a radical qualitative alteration in airlift. Total ton-mile capability will soon have increased by at least an order of magnitude over 1961—true—but the important point is that we have at the same time achieved a whole new kind of airlift.
So we might look upon this new kind of airlift-strategic combat airlift-as a proof in search of the validating experiment. Because airlift has been used to date, with minor exception, in the traditional way. The record of several exercises will illustrate the point.
· BIG SLAM/PUERTO PINE, March 1960 —first of the so-called strategic mobility exercises conducted on a large scale. A total of 21,000 troops and 11,000 tons of cargo were airlifted from 14 bases in the United States to Puerto Rico, and return, in a 15-day period. While the numbers seemed impressive at the time, the troops were from a large assortment of Strategic Army Corps units, not an integral fighting force; the cargo was miscellaneous, not organic divisional battle equipment; and the distance from the CONUS to Puerto Rico was short compared to real-world military strategy. Rated a highly “successful failure,” BIG SLAM did dramatize the deficiencies of a C-118/C-124 type of force, while at the same time providing a vivid glimpse of what combat airlift could be.
· LONG PASS, February 1961--This exercise, by spanning the Pacific, remedied the range deficiency of the Puerto Rico scenario, but it had to make a corresponding trade-off in the size of the force airlifted. Slightly more than 1000 Army troops and 1000 tons of cargo were carried from the CONUS to the Philippines and back, while 200 troops and less than 100 tons went from Hawaii to Clark AB. With some added Tactical Air Command personnel and equipment, the total force package came to 1700 troops and 1400 tons. It was a brave attempt by C-118s, C-124s, and C-133s, but still only a veiled hint of the genuine possibility of airlift.
· LONG THRUST IIA, January-February 1962 — This rotational type of deployment to the NATO area was the first definite manifestation of the enormous promise of jet airlift. The distance, from the State of Washington to Germany, was realistic enough. However, the 5300 troops and 170 tons of cargo could not be described as overwhelming, nor was the closure time—almost six full days—for a force of that size awe-inspiring. Two of the three battle groups remained in Europe, while the other was redeployed to Fort Lewis, Washington; thereafter a further series of LONG THRUST exercises rotated these units back and forth. The revealing aspect of this first operation (LONG THRUST I had been canceled the year before) was the impact of a jet transport, the C-135. While mission flying time to Germany for the older aircraft ranged from 31¼ hours on the C-133 to 38¼ for the C-124 (with all the maintenance, supply, servicing, and support complications at the way-stops), the C-135s flew nonstop in 10½ hours. While these converted tankers were highly productive and efficient, they were not fully effective for the combat airlift mission. They were, for one thing, unstressed for intensive hauling of heavy military equipment, and, for another, they had to be loaded through a side door high off the ground, which restricted the individual items of battle gear that could be accommodated. They also required long concrete runways for takeoff and landing. They were, in short, more closely akin to the “people hauling” jets of the airlines than to combat airlift workhorses. But they did, once and for all, underscore what speed and range could do for the rapid-response military mission, and they strongly foreshadowed today’s ability to fly modified polar great-circle paths to achieve minimum distance and shortened enroute times.
· BIG LIFT, October 1963 — Again demonstrating rapid and “massive” reinforcement of NATO forces, this exercise airlifted a full division—more than 15,000 troops—and closed the force in 63 hours. The concept of the operation was for the troops, deploying from Texas with little more than toothbrushes in the way of impedimenta, to “marry up” with equipment already prepositioned in Germany. Thus, the grand total of cargo airlifted was some 440 tons, and three-fourths of that belonged to a TAC Composite Air Strike Force that was also involved in the exercise.
So, while highly touted as a “landmark” operation, BIG LIFT was little more than another LONG THRUST—but with three times as many troops, slightly more cargo, and a closure time less than half as long. These were important improvements, to be sure, but it is perhaps unfortunate that they were so widely advertised because even today the BIG LIFT type of thinking seems to dominate a good deal of the prevalent insight into airlift.
As a matter of fact, one would have to say that the REFORGER I/CRESTED CAP I operation of early 1969 was, basically, BIG LIFT revisited: about the same number of troops, offloading once again at the vast, modern Rhein-Main complex, very little more cargo, and a longer time to close the force.
It should be noted, in the last connection, that force closure time is rarely constrained by any limits inherent in the airlift system itself, given a certain irreducible minimum dictated by the distance to be covered and the size of the force to be moved. The original LONG THRUST, for example, could have been accomplished much more quickly; BIG LIFT could have beaten even the low 63-hour mark; and certainly the REFORGER exercise could have been greatly compressed in time. The actual closure time, in such cases, is prescribed by the planners of the force being moved, by budgetary considerations, by the priority accorded the operation (vis-á-vis, for example, the undiminished need for airlift to Southeast Asia and the rest of the world), and any number of other factors.
This is not to say that such exercises are not extremely useful. They exercise both the MAC force and the airlifted forces in concert, they test the entire airlift system, and they demonstrate both the capability and the intention of the United States to honor its international commitments.
But what they do not do is demonstrate conclusively what combat airlift can be and should be. Those two things, interestingly enough, were first demonstrated—although on a somewhat microcosmic scale—almost two years before BIG SLAM ever took off for Puerto Rico.
The summer of 1958 was one of those times of “double trouble” that have become more the rule than the exception in the years following. Almost simultaneously, help was critically needed in both the Middle East and the Taiwan Strait. MAC airlifts to both Lebanon and the Far East brought a modest show of force to each area, which to all appearances resulted in the stabilization of both situations and thereby proved to be a workable deterrent. We may have been a little short in the capability department, but the United States left no doubt as to its intention and determination. The invariant in that case would certainly seem to have been our speed of response.
The same effect was achieved during the 1961 Berlin crisis, when MAC airlift played a large part in moving TAC forces to Germany. Again in the Cuban missile confrontation, airlift brought a massive concentration of power into focus in the Southeastern United States and also moved a large force of Marines from California to Guantanamo Bay. And in 1965, regardless of what one may feel about the casus belli, the immediate appearance of a sizable show of force in the Dominican Republic did quell the disturbance.
No proof can be had as to what might have happened in any of these situations without airlift, but the rapid marshaling of forces was the common denominator in every instance—the undeniable invariant. Thus, there is very powerful presumptive evidence that national will, made immediately manifest and unmistakable through high-speed strategic mobility, was the operative element.
With such precedents, one is strongly tempted to speculate upon what effect the same sort of demonstration, on a much larger scale, might have had in Southeast Asia in the early 1960s—or even in 1964 or 1965.
One possibility may be deduced from Professor Walt Rostow’s New York Times interview at the beginning of 1969, in which he postulated that the United States would have been better off to intervene with military force in Vietnam on a major scale nearly three years before it did in 1965.
Or from a lecture delivered at Air University by Dr. Frank N. Trager of New York University in April 1968:
To achieve a limited-war goal does not necessarily imply that the conventional means employed should be applied with restraints or other forms of gradualism. . . . one should use sufficient conventional power to achieve his goal in the shortest possible time. . . . It seemed to me that the doctrine of limited war and limited means to achieve its ends . . . omitted from consideration the operative concept of time in the use of power. I have unsuccessfully argued that the speedy use of enough conventional power in Vietnam would have been more acceptable at home and less costly on the battlefleld.2
This thesis would seem to have been contained within the body of official Department of Defense policy, as evidenced by extracts from Secretary Robert S. McNamara’s posture statements before various committees of the Congress:
The ability to concentrate our military power rapidly in a threatened area can make a great difference in the size of the force ultimately required and, in some cases, can serve to halt aggression before it really gets started. [FY 67 Defense Budget]
All of our studies show that the length and cost of a war, as well as the size of the force ultimately required to terminate it favorably, are importantly influenced by how fast we can bring the full weight of our military power to bear on the situation. [FY 68 Defense Budget]
. . . . the ability to respond promptly to clear threats to our national interests and the security of our allies, possibly in more than one place at the same time, can serve both to deter and to prevent such threats from expanding into larger conflicts. [FY 69 Defense Budget]
In each instance the Secretary was addressing the addition of the C-5 to the MAC strategic airlift force, major improvements in the national sealift posture, and the presence of prepositioned equipment in specified areas. None of the three conditions obtained when the serious buildup of our forces in Southeast Asia (SEA) began in 1965. There were no C-5s in MAC, and MAC had only about one-sixth of the full C-141 force. Sealift was in rather marginal condition with respect to both the available number of bottoms and the berthing and handling facilities in Vietnam. And prepositioning had not applied to that immediate area.
Therefore, a rather sizable burden descended upon the airlift segment, and the resultant great increase in strategic logistical airlift has already been described. As an interesting aside, a part of the cargo carried by MAC duplicated urgently needed military equipment which had already been shipped via surface but which—because of long unloading delays—was in ship bottoms sitting off the harbors in Vietnam. Another vital part of the load consisted of equipment for improving and enlarging the harbors and replacement parts for the heavily used handling equipment at the ports.
In addition to the constantly accelerating, high-volume logistical role, MAC combat airlift also came into play in the succeeding period. Flying integral battle units and their equipment into the war area, such operations as BLUE LIGHT, EAGLE THRUST, COMBAT FOX, and BONNY JACK were the first combat airlifts conducted under a de facto state of war. But, while they previewed what the C-141/C-5 force would be capable of doing in the future, they did not provide the definitive laboratory experiment that would prove the basic concept. For one thing, a good part of the massive logistical base had already been fairly well established; and, for another, the concept of operation did not call for minimum closure times.
For example, EAGLE THRUST, which was to airlift the 101st Airborne Division less one brigade from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, to Bien Hoa, Republic of Vietnam, was scheduled by the Army to move in three echelons over a period of 42 days. If required, the entire national strategic airlift resource could have been massed behind the task and the entire mission completed in less than 2½ days, even in that end-1967 time frame.
A precise summation of the SEA operation was given by General Westmoreland to the Holland Society of New York in November 1968. “During those early days of 1965,” he pointed out, “I took a calculated risk on our marginal logistic capability. Finally, in the latter half of 1966 our physical facilities and logistical organization were able to receive the magnitude of forces required to move into sustained combat and to keep constant pressure on the enemy.” From that point on, he continued, beginning in late 1966 and continuing into 1967, we brought to bear on the enemy in South Vietnam the full measure of our power.
What MAC combat airlift will be able to accomplish, in the C-141/C-5 era just ahead, is to bring about that application of full military power—not in one year, or two or three, but within a greatly foreshortened time from the moment a threat is perceived.
This could, of course, be accomplished more easily if major items of equipment were prepositioned in the objective area. But it is manifestly impossible to have everything everywhere, aside from political, diplomatic, and caretaking problems.
The FDL concept could alleviate many of these difficulties and is, in my own opinion, an essential element of sealift capability for military purposes. In fact, whatever combat airlift may be able to achieve in the way of deterrence3 it is difficult to conceive of any sustained operation that does not ultimately depend upon surface lift for the great bulk of routine supply. It would therefore certainly be desirable to improve our total sealift resource, including a highly responsive commercial segment similar to our own Civil Reserve Air Fleet program.
Numerous studies have concluded what appears almost self-evident: the MAC C-141/ C-5 force would make its maximum contribution to the national effort, under a wide variety of circumstances, in conjunction with sealift and prepositioned equipment.
But, to deter hostile action anywhere in the world, or to contain aggression with maximum force in minimum time, ton-mile efficiency per se is far less relevant than fast, effective force deployment. And that is the one dominant capability of the MAC combat airlift force.
I have said that we do not physically have a combat airlift capability in the ultimate sense because such a capability presupposes the C-5 type of aircraft. By early fall of this year, we will be close to an initial operational capability with the C-5. But we will still not have genuine combat airlift until the full concept of modern strategic mobility is fully understood.
If we look upon BIG LIFT—and its various repetitions—as the ultimate airlift “lesson learned,” then we will not really have learned anything of durable value at all. I hope I have shown that the strategic mobility of this nation in the future will be of an order entirely different from anything we have yet experienced and that it can be, above all, an effective deterrent against protracted and eroding “limited” wars.
And that, beyond any doubt, is what the revolution in airlift is really all about.
Scott Air Force Base, Illinois
Notes
1. Howell M. Estes, Jr., “The Revolution in Airlift,” Air University Review, XVII, 3 (March-April 1966), 2-15.
2. Frank N. Trager, “What Is Security in Southeast Asia?” in Air University Review, XX, 1 (November-December 1968), 103-12.
General Howell M. Estes, Jr. (USMA) was Commander, Military Airlift Command, for five years preceding his retirement on 1 August 1969. After three years with the cavalry and in flying training, 1939-40, he served in various training and command assignments during World War II. Other assignments have been at Hq USAFE, in chief and deputy chief roles in plans and operations, to 1948; at March AFB, California, as Commander, 1st Air Base Group, 22d Bomb Wing, and 44th Bomb Wing, to 1951; on combat duty and as Vice Commander, FEAF Bomber Command, 1951; at March AFB as Commander, 105th Bomb Wing, later 12th Air Division, to 1953; Commander, Air Task Group 7.4, Joint Task Force Seven, Operation CASTLE, Eniwetok, 1954; at Wright-Patterson AFB as Director, Weapons Support Operations, later Assistant Deputy Commander for Weapon Systems and Commander. Detachment 1, Hq ARDC, and Director of Systems Management, to 1957; at Hq USAF as ACS/Air Defense Systems, later ADCS/O, to 1961; in Air Force Systems Command as Deputy Commander for Aerospace Systems, Los Angeles, 1962; and as Vice Commander, AFSC, Andrews AFB, Maryland, to 1964. General Estes is a 1949 graduate of the Air War College.
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.
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