Lt Col Karen U. Kwiatkowski’s Expeditionary Air Operations in Africa: Challenges and Solutions details air operations challenges in Africa. She discusses how the USAF currently meets or avoids these challenges. She contends that Africa is like the “western frontier” of America’s history—undeveloped, brimming with opportunity as well as danger, and that it is a place where standard assumptions often do not apply. Africa has not been, and is not today, a US geostrategic interest area. However, as the dawn of the twenty-first century breaks over a planet made both intimate and manageable by CNN and DHL Air Express, Colonel...

When thinking about air safety in Africa, what comes to mind for many Americans are the tragic accidents such as the September 1997 midair collision of a USAF C-141 and a German Tu-154 off the coast of Namibia, the deadly crash of a hijacked Ethiopian Air jet off the Comoro Islands in November 1996, or the Kenyan Airways crash out of Abidjan in February 2000. Accidents involving smaller aircraft—such as the Cape Verde Airlines charter in August 1999, the Tanzania sightseeing flight in September 1999, or the January 2000 Swiss charter crash off the coast of Libya—are worrisome....

Continually increasing air traffic, poor safety statistics, persistent airfield and ATC problems, and a relatively sparse and nonsystemic international approach towards achieving regional improvement are the sad facts of African air operations. What does this mean for USAF expeditionary operations in Africa? The framework for US air operations in Africa is limited, not only by national interest and will but also by the effective ability of our air forces to operate in Africa. For example, in 1993 only 15 percent of all runways were reported to be able to support a heavy C-130, the USAF’s smallest tactical transport aircraft.¹ Even...

Even with the breadth of expeditionary air operations experienced in Africa prior to 1997, it is fair to say the seminal USAF flight safety event in Africa was the midair collision of the US C-141 and the Tu-154 transport near the coast of Namibia on 13 September of that year. As for most airline and other complicated system mishaps, this tragedy was the result of many correctable factors converging chronologically.

A variety of preventive measures to the mishap, at multiple stages in the process, could have occurred but did not. As a result of this one accident, the USAF operational...

The previous chapters overview some of the conditions affecting air expeditionary operations in Africa, discuss operational level lessons learned, and share some solutions currently being pursued for future improvement. To meet these challenges practically today, our pilots, aircrews, and planners adapt to the air operations situation and do their best to overcome the challenges. Beyond the traditional sources of data discussed above, we also have the experience of the numerous active and Guard pilots of USAF aircraft who fly routinely into Africa supporting routine channel flights, VIP transport missions, and special assignment airlift missions. These pilots and aircrews support multinational...

Africa faces tough problems: among them the unavoidable issues of a vast and varied geography, long-standing poverty in both financial and visionary arenas, and the high cost of construction and implementation of modern air control and operations infrastructures and technologies. Open war, simmering conflict, and uncertain government dominate much of the continent. Due to a widespread lack of transparency, user fees paid by commercial air carriers and the international community specifically to improve air infrastructure, estimated at $6 million per month, are utilized for purposes other than those intended.¹ Money thrown at the problem will not solve it anytime soon,...