Air Cargo Tenders: Theater Express for the World

摘要

Air Mobility Command (AMC) has historically focused on the movement of air cargo via whole aircraft loads. The process for moving these loads has been roughly similar for either organic (military or gray tail) aircraft or commercial augmentation. Cargo is aggregated at the aerial ports and consolidated onto aircraft as required. However, this has occasionally created 'orphan cargo,' the single pallet destined for a location not serviced often by AMC. The third party logistics business model has gained tremendous ground in the past several years. Companies all over the world have taken advantage of outsourced shipping, packing, door-to-door services, and the like, creating a multi-billion dollar freight forwarding/cargo handling industry which very often deals in less than full aircraft movements. The assimilation of these two trends is the focus of this research. How to best leverage the strengths of the transportation industry to better serve our warfighters on the ground, within the fiscal constraints of the modern Air Force. This research looks in depth at the processes used currently in the South West Asia theater, and then briefly explores their applicability to the rest of the world.