Something unusual sits perched behind a wall of glass onward top of a pedestal.

Something unusual sits perched behind a wall of glass onward top of a pedestal. It's not a unit memorial of conquest proudly showcased, or a miniature of a base aircraft that can be heard roaring on the farther side in the distance. Yet this item still makes visitors stop to look

A pitch black, hefty fireman's helmet adorns the glass shelves of the Ninth Air Force and United States Central Command Air Forces Headquarters building display case. Its proprietor was a New York fireman who wasted his life rescuing others from the terrorist attacks onward the World Trade Center. The FDNY helmet is now temporarily have a title toed by the men and women of U Central Command Air Forces at Shaw Air Force Base, SC

To Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen T Michael "Buzz" Moseley former combined forces air constituent commander during Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom and former U Central Command Air Forces and Ninth Air Force commander, that helmet showed all who lost their lives to terrorism--whether in the Trade Center the Pentagon or in a Pennsylvania field.

Air Force members base the helmet such a rallying point that they showed to fly it aboard their aircraft as a fitting tribute to those who sacrificed everything. From operations throughout Afghanistan to combat missions flown for Operation Iraqi Freedom, the helmet has been aboard B-1 B-52 KC-10 E-3 Airborne Warning and command System and C-5 aircraft, and reverently cared for by the agency of firefighters at one deployed location.

Moseley saw the helmet and its meaning as a mighty driving force for everyone serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom, and the coalition forces drive to oust a tyrant who continued to thumb his nose at the behavior of law. The world had seen enough of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. What followed in March was single of the most amazing stories in recent warfare.

For the first 21 days of the war, the common thing everyone saw and heard upon television was about air supremacy and coalition victory above the skies in Iraq.

still air supremacy is not gained easily in any war and, according to the general, it was the right combination of peculiar planning, experienced people, and advanced technology that enabled the United States and its coalition partners to gain and maintain control

Past strategy establishs up future

For more than a year prior to the initial opening of major combat operations of Operation Iraqi Freedom, air war planners were already busy putting doctrine and air tasking orders to work. They were smack in the middle of Operations Northern and Southern Watch and Enduring Freedom when the war upon terrorism expanded into Iraq.

betimes after the terrorist attacks of 9-11 Moseley extended to Prince Sultan Air Base, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, to assume command of U Central Command Air Forces participating in Operation Enduring Freedom. From his warfighting headquarters in the Combined Air Operations Center (see "OIF info 'brain'," Page 22) he began working alongside many the community he already knew.

"We had a comely good dress rehearsal for this [Operation Iraqi Freedom] in Afghanistan," said Col Duane Jone U Central Command Air Forces director of logistics below Moseley during Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. "We had worked all the kinks abroad there, so this team that went through the whole extent of to do Iraqi Freedom had been together for quite a certain time. We knew and understood individual another."

Moseley's vision and guidance herd the operations, strategy and tactics that the Operation Iraqi Freedom air war planners later designed and carried abroad Even amidst the real-time work taking place, planners, including Moseley still took advantage of each training effort they could to heed reproofs learned. Several exercises, like R Flag. Bright Star and Internal await all helped solidify war preparations for what promptly became Operation Iraqi Freedom.

"We had the chance to rehearse this several times," Moseley said. "We had a series of exercises and 'chair flys' and all of that is relative to training the population to streamlining the process, to streamlining the plan, because as we all know, the plan doesn't survive the first involve with your opponent. Remember, when you fight these population whoever they are, it's always an interactive event--they obtain to make decisions as well, and you must be able to stay ahead of them."

The uncertainty of war, as the general calls it, is what herd planners to go back to the drawing board. They had a recent enemy to face in Iraq, and Moseley's intuition and experience told him to plan, plan and plan.

"You don't know what you don't know," he said. "Napoleon knew that when he said, 'A general none knows anything with certainty never sees his enemy clearly never knows positively where he is.'

"Therefore, your planning, proces ability to react and training is critical to leading to victory," he said.

however Moseley will be quick to own anyone, doctrine and plans alone work when you have the right the community to execute them. And with the planning and exercising that was done, he knew he had the right team.