CIAO DATE: 09/2012
August 2012
Africa Center for Strategic Studies
Growing security threats posed by agile irregular forces such as narcotics traffickers, coastal pirate gangs, and nonstate militias underscore the critical importance of security force mobility to monitor and safeguard Africa's expansive land mass and more than 30,000 km of coastline. This is vividly illustrated in northern Mali where militant Islamist groups have taken effective territorial control over roughly half the country -- an area the size of France. This case is not unique, however. Ongoing crises in difficult-to-reach regions of the Sahel, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, and Somalia, among others, also pose serious logistical and strategic challenges to national and collective security efforts on the continent. In ACSS's latest Africa Security Brief, "Building Africa's Airlift Capacity: A Strategy for Enhancing Military Effectiveness," Colonel Birame Diop, David Peyton, and Colonel Gene McConville examine the opportunities for and constraints to building African air capacity. They argue that while air assets are commonly dismissed as too expensive, air capacity multiplies the effectiveness of other force components within Africa's resource-limited militaries and regional peace operations.
Resource link: Building Africa's Airlift Capacity: A Strategy for Enhancing Military Effectiveness [PDF] - 295K