When most Americans think about their independent Air Force, screaming fighter jets and stealthy bombers dropping precision-guided weapons in “shock and awe”-type campaigns flash to mind.
Occasionally, we may be impressed by the Air Force’s amazing global logistical support for its sister services — like its fleet of aerial tankers, flying gas stations that can fill an average American swimming pool with fuel in less than 10 minutes. Or the Air Force cargo fleet: a military version of FedEx-meets-Amazon that enables our Army and Marine Corps to deploy anywhere, anytime.
Yet beyond its obvious warfighting missions, the United States Air Force performs many roles that quietly underpin our American values and way of life, while also helping to underwrite our economy.
The geography of Tweets: This image uses all of the geo-tagged Tweets since 2009 — billions of them. (Every dot is a Tweet, and the color is the Tweet count.)
Twitter, Flickr, 2013.
Without the Air Force and its GPS support, we’d still have to stop at the gas station for directions. Without the Air Force as the traffic cop of space, we’d be frantically trying to call our service provider as our dish or satellite TV stopped working—even though our cell phones would similarly be down.
Indeed, America’s airmen at home and abroad work hard each day to support our daily lives in ways we only notice typically after something stops working.
- The Air Force owns and operates our entire GPS constellation.
Anyone who uses Facebook, Instagram or Twitter uses technology enabled by the US Air Force. The ability to take a phone out of our pocket and instantly know exactly where we are at any time has changed how many Americans travel on a daily basis.
The US-led global positioning system consists of 31 satellites in mid-earth orbit that provide unique global coverage. The Air Force launches and operates all 31 satellites to ensure that military and civilian users alike have uninterrupted access to precision positioning and timing information. Nearly everything we take for granted to move around and keep track of time relies upon Air Force satellite data.
A big chunk of the US financial sector — and many pensions and college funds — rest upon assured access to millisecond-accurate timing to conduct its $24 quadrillion in yearly trading.
So too do the precision navigation systems that have made commercial airlines the fastest and safest method of rapid travel; without them, crashes would be more common and we could never have reached the sheer volume of today’s air travel—31,000 flights per day.
These capabilities underpin how we navigate cities, how we travel to visit distant relatives, how we share information about where we are on social media, and how we make financial transactions. And they are so well-maintained by the Air Force that few ever have to think about it.
- The Air Force provides accurate local and worldwide weather prediction.
Hurricane season has the potential to negatively impact a large portion of our population and economy depending on the severity of storms and our ability to recover. The US Air Force helps how we all prepare for Mother Nature’s worst. When you look at your phone to check the weather in the morning as you decide whether to pack an umbrella, Air Force data is embedded in your weather app.
The Air Force operates the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program, a 6-satellite constellation that provides highly accurate forecasting to the military and local meteorologists so that Americans have as much warning as possible about severe weather activity. These satellites have sensors that measure cloud cover patterns and surface temperature—critical early indicators for hurricanes and wildfires.
Meteorologists have gotten much better at what they do — they can now predict a storm more accurately five days in advance than they used to be able to predict three days out. The advances in accuracy and earlier forecasting abilities are largely owed to improved Air Force weather tracking capabilities and improved techniques at the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration.
American airmen maintain other unique weather and disaster response capabilities unmatched elsewhere. From a variety of bases, Reservists fly modified WC-130Js into hurricanes to find critical data about air pressure and wind speed— data that aforementioned defense meteorological satellites cannot get. Just last month, these hurricane hunters flew from Hawaii into Tropical Storm Guillermo, saving residents of these islands and their businesses millions of dollars through improved storm path prediction.
- The Air Force acts as a homeland and global first responder for disaster relief.
In addition to helping scientists calculate warnings about impending storms, the Air Force also does the heavy lifting for disaster relief, literally. No matter whether you live in the United States or abroad, the Air Force has likely responded to a natural disaster in your backyard, from hurricanes and floods to wildfires and even nuclear mishaps.
Here at home, the Air Force Reserve and National Guard fly critical firefighting missions that help the US Forest Service take on the worst of the wildfires. Just one wildfire can cost hundreds of millions of dollars, leaving thousands of families without homes. Flying out of Peterson Air Base in Colorado, the 302nd Airlift Wing operates modified C-130 cargo planes full of fire retardant. Just last month, the Air Force announced that two Air National Guard firefighting C-130s will join two Colorado-based Reserve fighting planes that have already dropped 250,000 gallons of fire retardant in California in the past few weeks.
The Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard also carry out 90% of all Air Force aeromedical evacuation missions and the 1st Air Force coordinates all airborne search and rescue within the United States, with over 15,000 “saves” under its belt since 1974. Less well-known, the Air Force Reserve’s 757th Airlift Squadron flies all of the Air Force’s aerial spray missions using six modified C-130 cargo planes out of Youngstown, Ohio. These airmen conduct missions such as large-area spray against mosquitoes after Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Gustav, and the oil repellant spray missions such as the one that contained the damage after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
While you might remember Air Force helicopters saving over 8,000 people after Hurricane Katrina or air-delivering electrical utility work trucks after Hurricane Sandy, the Air Force also does the same abroad. The Air Force is often the first institution on scene with its sister services, delivering emergency aid in great quantities and, more importantly, setting up air traffic control so that the international community can access disaster-struck areas, as in Haiti in 2010.
In addition to humanitarian assistance, the Air Force also deployed to the Fukushima Dai-chi nuclear power plant after the Japanese tsunami in 2011 with reconnaissance drones and its unique Radiation Assessment Team providing high-fidelity assessments of the disaster so Japanese first responders could operate safely and effectively.
- The Air Force protects American airspace — including above all major US cities.
Whenever the threat of danger or terrorism arises on passenger jets, the Air Force stands ready to escort these planes and, if necessary, disable them to protect Americans here at home. Since the day of 9/11, when F-15 and F-16 fighter jets were launched to shadow suspicious airliners after the initial attacks, the Air Force has flown 87,000 of these missions.
In May of this year, two international flights were escorted to their destination by Air Force F-15s, scrambled within minutes in response to an anonymous terror alert. Earlier in the year, it was Air Force F-16 pilots that flew protective patrols around the Super Bowl in Phoenix, Arizona.
In addition to the Air Force’s mission against potentially hijacked aircraft, the Air Force conducts intercepts against foreign aircraft that stray too close to US airspace. As the Russian Air Force became more aggressive following the invasion of Crimea in 2014, the US Air Force maintained its routine tracking and intercepts of Russian aircraft. A lot of this aerial signaling occurs off the coast of Alaska—most recently on Independence Day, when Air Force F-15s were forced to intercept a Soviet-era nuclear-capable Tu-95 Bear.
The 1st Air Force has also taken the lead, alongside the Federal Aviation Administration, on dealing with small drones in US airspace. Run-ins have been frequent, and the Air Force has been forced to divert fighters to respond to dangerous appearances of drones over restricted airspace, such as Washington, D.C., New York, and several other US airports.
- The Air Force conducts cutting-edge drone research that can be used for commercial purposes and to ease the tasks of daily life.
Just as Air Force research once led to a revolution in lasers — which now show up in DVD players, printers, and Lasik eye surgery — the Air Force is leading innovation in unmanned aerial technology.
Drones are not just for the military anymore. Remote-controlled aircraft are now helping across the US with border security, storm prediction, and farming. Advances in unmanned flight and miniaturization by the Air Force have been rapidly adopted for civilian usage in a market expected to reach $8.2 billion in yearly sales by 2020.
Two years ago, the civilian drone market was virtually nonexistent. Now, new hurricane-hunting drones will soon give Americans living in the Southeast better, more reliable information about oncoming storms.
Cheap drones with impressive sensors have significantly improved how agricultural giants and family farmers alike monitor their crops. Already, former Air Force drones have been given to first responders for fighting wildfires or conduct search and rescue after recent flooding in Colorado.
And Amazon recently announced Amazon Prime Air, a home drone delivery plan that promises to change the way we shop and stock our homes for daily life.
Going forward, potential applications for drones are limited only by the ingenuity of the human mind. The Air Force remains on the cutting-edge of drone technology that could change our lives in the future, whether by miniaturizing these platforms or improving their sensor systems—breakthroughs that can quickly be used by commercial companies.
This article is the second in a three-part series examining how the US military contributes to the daily life of ordinary Americans. You can find the first part on the US Navy here.
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