The Security Forces Rewrite

摘要

Airmen need secure airfields to project power. No one knows that better than a member of USAF's security forces. More than 30,000 airmen serve in SF, but the field is in flux. An upsurge in expeditionary air operations is shaking up a mission that was once tightly focused on defending established bases at home or abroad. Today, security forces are part of a new warfighting concept. In operations from Tuzla to Thumrait, airmen of the security forces have been among those "first in" to set up major operating bases in the so-called "nonlinear" battlespace. Experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq are changing the way airmen secure their bases. It is no longer enough merely to guard a perimeter. Mortar fire that has rained down on Balad Air Base in Iraq provides just one example of the modern threats to base security. Future joint concepts of operation—like forcible entry and vertical envelopment—will take airmen and their air bases deep into dangerous territory.