Airborne (1997) by Tom Clancy

response/crisis force, deployable by air, land, and/or sea. From there the Corps’ job is to fight and win! Actually, it is a pretty simple mission. On the other hand, though, our organization probably makes as much of a statement about who and what we do as the mission itself. To be able to accomplish the kinds of missions we do takes a lot of different skills and capabilities. Usually, whenever there is an armed [American] response required, we’re involved. That’s been our history and our legacy. We have never failed the American people, and we never will.
    Lieutenant General John Keane, the Commanding General of the U.S. XVIII Airborne Corps (center) and General Gary Luck (right) at General Luck’s retirement ceremony.
    OFFICIAL U.S. ARMY PHOTO

    As far as the mission itself, when you break it all out, we really do two kinds of operations here at XVIII Airborne Corps. We can do lots of other things, but we specialize in two major types of missions. One is a forced-entry operation, which means that the enemy situation or the hostile government will not allow us to make a “permissive” entry into the territory in question. The U.S. National Command Authorities [NCAs: the President, Secretary of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, etc.] currently hold three capabilities to do such forcible-entry operations. One is a parachute assault, the second is an air assault (helicopter-borne), and the third is an amphibious operation from the sea. Obviously the Marine Corps is the centerpiece for the amphibious-type assaults, and XVIII Airborne Corps provides the units for the parachute and air assaults.
    In these missions we can act as a Joint Task Force [JTF, a multi-service military force], or as a part of a JTF. As such, we train more with our sister organizations [Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force] than any other organization in the U.S. Army. The amount of work that we have done with the other services over the years has grown and matured. It’s friendly cooperation. Given the potential levels of fighting that are possible, we are interested in one thing only, and that is accomplishing the mission with the minimum loss of life. As such, we have no time down here for inter-service rivalries. We only have time to get the job done, working with others if that is the best way. Each service component brings, in many cases, unique capabilities that while they are important to that service, can achieve a certain synergy when you bring them together with those of the other services. It also give us here additional capabilities which can prove overwhelming when dealing with an enemy, as well as helping provide a more rapid resolution to a combat situation. The “joint” business [with other services and allies] is what we do here in XVIII Airborne Corps.
    On the flip side, our other specialized mission is to operate as a U.S. Army corps in the field, which is the foundation unit of large Army warfighting organizations. This is how we organize and operate our divisions and other units under a three-star [Lieutenant General] commander. Our history tells us that normally when we do that, the United States and our allies are probably in a relatively large conflict like we were in Desert Storm, fighting an army on a deployed battlefield. We could see ourselves doing that back in Southwest Asia or someday perhaps in Korea. In any case, these are the two ways in which the XVIII Airborne Corps packages itself, and in each instance it is a little different.
     
    Tom Clancy: In addition to the more traditional combat roles, XVIII Airborne Corps has developed quite a reputation in the areas of peacekeeping and humanitarian operations over the last few years. Tell us about it, will you?
     
    General Keane: These short-of-war operations are just as important to us as our combat ones, because they bring stability to countries and areas that may be struggling with famine such as in Somalia, or a lack of political stability such as we