Spanning the decades form the beginning of the Cold War to today's strategy of global engagement, the twenty-three operational summaries in this book illustrate each of the objective for military operations other than wart. The USAF conducted each of these contingencies in a combat zone or area of serious civil disturbance. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, a series of geographically localized crises caused by political, religious or ethnic unrest; outright military aggression; and natural disasters has replaced the relative stability that characterized international relations for more than 50 years of the Cold War. For the United States Air Force, this has meant short notice deployments, air lifts, and other operational missions conducted in reaction to local crises. Such missions have come to dominate Air Force Operations.

First published in 2000. From the foreword: "Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, a series of geographically localized crises caused by political, religious, or ethnic unrest; outright military aggression; and natural disasters has replaced the relative stability that characterized international relations for more than fifty years of the Cold War. For the United States Air Force (USAF), this has meant short-notice deployments, airlifts, and other operational missions conducted in reaction to local crises. Such missions-once of secondary importance to nuclear deterrence or preparations for theater war-have come to dominate Air Force operations. The result has been recognition that global aerospace power and mobility are central to effective American crisis intervention in the post-Cold War world. This recognition has led the U.S. Air Force to restructure itself as an Expeditionary Aerospace Force, exploiting diverse core competencies consisting of global air and space superiority, rapid global mobility, precision engagement, global attack, information superiority, and agile combat support. Via rapid-response air expeditionary forces, the U.S. Air Force can furnish global power and presence for humanitarian or combat purposes-"bombs or bread or both"-in hours to any spot on Earth. A traditional precept of USAF doctrine has been that the service must always be prepared to assess its roles and missions in light of new and ever-changing national policy and strategy. Recognizing that doctrine is largely a distillation of knowledge gained from historical experience, the Air Force Historical Research Agency has compiled this record of USAF contingency operations covering the last half-century. This book is an effort to meet the needs of Air Force commanders and other decision makers for a useful reference work on contingencies. One of an ongoing series of reference works, it is organized in the style of the recently published The United States Air Force and Humanitarian Airlift Operations, 1947-1994. It adds to the history of the Air Force by providing statistics and narrative descriptions of the Air Force's most significant contingency operations over the last fifty years."

This book is prepared by the United States Air Force Historical Research Center for the use of the Air Force and the general public. It presents fundamental data about the 7 medals and streamers earned in combat by Air Force members and units in military campaigns from the beginning of military air power up to the present day.