Air Power Against Terror: America's Conduct of Operation Enduring Freedom

Benjamin S. Lambeth

2001-12 · Rand Corporation

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The terrorist attacks of 9/11 plunged the United States into a determined counteroffensive against Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorist network. This report details the initial U.S. military response to those attacks, namely, the destruction of al Qaeda?s terrorist infrastructure and the removal of the ruling Taliban regime in Afghanistan. The author emphasizes several distinctive achievements in this war, including the use of precision air-delivered weapons that were effective irrespective of weather, the first combat use of Predator unmanned aerial vehicles armed with Hellfire missiles, and the integrated employment of high-altitude drones and other air- and space-based sensors that gave CENTCOM unprecedented round-the-clock awareness of enemy activity.

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* (Ph.D., Political Science, Harvard University) is a senior RAND analyst specializing in air power and international security who has flown in more than 40 different combat aircraft types with eight air forces worldwide over the past two decades. He is the author of The Transformation of American Air Power (Cornell University Press, 2000), winner of the Air Force Association's Gill Robb Wilson award in arts and letters for 2001. He is also the author of numerous other volumes, including Russia's Air Power in Crisis (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1999) and NATO's Air War for Kosovo: A Strategic and Operational Assessment (RAND, 2001).