Book Review: 'Airborne: A Guided Tour of an Airborne Task Force (The Tom Clancy Military Library)'

(C) 1997 Berkley Books and Jack Ryan Limited Partnership

On November 1, 1997, Berkley Books (G.P. Putnam's Sons' paperback division) published Airborne: A Guided Tour of an Airborne Task Force. Co-written by the top-billed Tom Clancy and his researcher John D. Gresham, this was the fifth book in a series of non-fiction works devoted to specific unit types of America's armed forces. 

Clancy, of course, is best known to readers as the creator and principal author of the long-running Jack Ryan series of novels. He also co-wrote (with former Navy officer and wargame designer Larry Bond) Red Storm Rising, one of the 1980s top-selling novels and his most popular work of fiction that's not set in the still-expanding "Ryanverse." In addition, he was also a respected conservative commentator and self-taught expert on military and intelligence matters, a successful entrepreneur who turned his name into one of the most recognizable names in American mass media. 

One of the hallmarks of Clancy's fiction was its detailed and respectful depiction of America's armed forces and the weapons systems they use to carry out their assigned mission in times of peace or war. Though some wags often say that the late "Master of the Technothriller" (an honorific that sometimes annoyed Clancy) was the only novelist who used six pages of prose to describe a pencil, many critics and fans understood that through his fiction, Clancy was trying to educate the general public about how the military and the intelligence communities work. 

In short, Clancy's 19 novels and various works of non-fiction, including Airborne, were the author's earnest attempt to counteract the distorted view of U.S. armed forces personnel and the Central Intelligence Agency provided to the public by mass media, including Hollywood movies, novels about disillusioned or cynical CIA agents, and cheesy TV shows like Mission: Impossible and I, Spy. 

Published 16 months after the Jack Ryan novel Executive Orders, Airborne: A Guided Tour of an Airborne Task Force takes readers along on an extended visit to the 82nd Airborne ("All-American") Division, the principal airborne element of the Army's XVIII Airborne Corps and its associated Air Force transport and air support units. 

They are America's front lines--serving proudly in forward areas around the world. Representing the very best from the Army and Air Force, the Airborne Task Force is an unstoppable combination of manpower and firepower. Now, Tom Clancy examines this elite branch of our nation's armed forces. With pinpoint accuracy and a style more compelling than any fiction, the acclaimed author of Executive Orders delivers a fascinating account of the Airborne juggernaut--the people, the technology, and Airborne's mission in an ever-changing world...- Publisher's back cover blurb, Airborne: A Guided Tour of an Airborne Task Force

As he does in other books in the Tom Clancy Library (the publisher's present name for the Guided Tour series and other non-fiction works by the late author), Clancy covers a great deal of ground in Airborne. In the book's 318 pages (including a glossary of military terms and acronyms but not the bibliography), Clancy and Gresham focus on the history and traditions of the Army's XVIII Airborne Corps from its origins as an all-parachute and glider-borne force during World War II all the way to the 1994 mission to restore democracy in Haiti. 

Per the book's back cover, Airborne also includes:

• Two Tom Clancy mini-novels-real world scenarios involving the airborne task force
• Airborne's weapons of the 21st century, including the Javelin anti-tank missile, the fiber-optically guided N-LOS fire support system, and the Joint Strike Fighter
• 18 weeks: Life in an Airborne Alert Brigade
• Exclusive photographs, illustrations, and diagrams
• PLUS: An in-depth interview with the incoming commander of the 18th Airborne Corps, General John Keen

My Take

Airborne: A Guided Tour of an Airborne Task Force is an interesting, if perhaps outdated, look at the 82nd Airborne Division and its various partners in the Army/Air Force Airborne Task Force circa 1997. It should be read in the spirit of looking at how the XVIII Airborne Corps and its units were organized and equipped in the late 1990s rather than as how the same military organization exists today (at the tail end of 2018, to be exact).

Since Airborne's original publication in the late 1990s, the unit has seen action in various places, mainly in Afghanistan and Iraq (as part of Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom). The 82nd Airborne has also undergone radical reorganizations that have transformed it from a division-sized task force to a brigade combat team-based organization. Furthermore, the division's parent unit, the XVIII (or 18th) Airborne Corps has been downsized; instead of consisting of three divisions (the 82nd Airborne, the 101st Air Assault, and the 24th Mechanized Infantry), the corps is now made up by the 82nd and 101st, with other support units and Air Force squadrons attached.

Though far from perfect, Airborne achieves its 1997-era mission and gives readers a glimpse into the various units that made up a turn-of-the-century airborne task force, as well as a revealing account of the rigorous routines that our men and women in the Airborne lead during training and deployment.