Airborne: A Guided Tour of an Airborne Task Force

Tom Clancy: XVIII Airborne Corps, which you command, is a rather special unit from a mission perspective. Would you please lay out that mission for us?

General Keane: It certainly is a rather unique organization, not only in the U.S. Army but in all of the armed services. XVIII Airborne Corps’ mission is strategic 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 encountered in Haiti. The mission that XVIII Airborne Corps received in both cases was to provide some stability to those countries and their people. The corps is ideally suited for that kind of mission, because it can move rapidly, and we can tailor our forces to the particular mission of the moment. In addition, we have a history of dealing with battlefields that are not conventional in the sense that our soldiers have to constrain their use of combat power and deadly force. In addition, we recognize the value of civil affairs and psychological warfare operations on that kind of battlefield.

XVIII Airborne Corps also uses special operations forces [SOFs] extensively. In fact, no other unit in the U.S. Army uses SOFs in concert with its mission to the degree that we do. We plan for their use all the time, work with them regularly during training exercises, and they are of enormous value to us. SOFs provide us with knowledge of the country we’re operating in, break down cultural barriers for us, give us the capability to have valuable human intelligence [HUMINT] resources out to great distances from the front, and provide us resources for direct-action [covert] missions should that be required, on the ground, sea, or in the air. I think that we understand their capabilities, and have a history of taking advantage of their special talents and skills, and using them properly. Conversely, I think that they have confidence in our abilities to properly use them. This is a special concern of SOFs, because of their traditional worries about conventional force leaders possibly misusing them. I think that XVIII Airborne Corps has proven that this is not the case. We have very close relations with them. Remember, a lot of our officers and leaders have served in both.

Much like the United States Marines, the troopers of XVIII Airborne Corps proudly wear their berets with a “can-do” spirit and a powerful sense of history. Let the general explain it in his own words, as well as telling some more about his command.

Tom Clancy: Is it fair to say that if XVIII Airborne Corps has a spirit or ethos, that it has derived from the airborne units and their history/ traditions?

General Keane: I think that the airborne ethos is as good an expression of the pride, esprit, and high standards of discipline that you find throughout the XVIII Airborne Corps. The airborne certainly set a standard for us and our army for such things. The corps clearly has a special spirit and capability.

Tom Clancy: You command a unique mix of units in XVIII Airborne Corps. Could you tell us something about each of them?

General Keane: We have four divisions in the XVIII Airborne Corps, out of only ten divisions in the entire U.S. Army, and each of them is different. We have four basic types of divisions in the Army (armored/mechanized, airborne, air assault, and light infantry), and one of each type is in this corps. That is by design, not by accident. That variety gives us the versatility to organize and package those units based upon our mission, the intentions and organization of our enemies, and the overall political and military objectives that we have to achieve.

You can see that packaging manifested in deployments like Desert Shield/Storm, where we pretty much packaged up the entire corps and took it to the Saudi Arabian desert, and actually had other units like the French 6th Infantry and 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment attached. Now contrast that with a quite different organization that we put together for Operation Just Cause [the 1989 invasion of Panama]. There, we operated as part of a Joint Task Force [JTF], where we used some of our own units [the 82nd Airborne], and we also brought in special operation forces, as well as the Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force. We work well with those organizations, and package/tailor our forces based on the type of conflict that we encounter, as well as the terrain.

Our corps is 85,000 personnel strong, which is a formidable force in itself. It has four divisions (3rd Mechanized Infantry, 10th Mountain (Light), 82nd Airborne, and 101st Air Assault) that make up 50,000 of the 85,000 personnel on strength. The other 35,000 are assigned to the thirteen separate [attached] brigades. Certainly in the U.S. Army, there is no parallel for that type of an organization, with that particular mission, and also with the enormous versatility that we bring to bear. Now, with regards to the individual units, let’s run them down:

82nd Airborne Division (the “All Americans”). They represent a completely unique