Military aviation and the environment: Historical trends and comparison to civil aviation

Abstract

Trends in the environmental impact of military aviation between 1960 and 2000 are articulated. The focus is on community noise, local air quality, and global climate impacts and the discussion is restricted to fixed-wing aircraft. Comparisons are made to trends within the commercial air transport industry. The unique features of military aircraft technology and operations responsible for the differences in environmental impacts are described. The discussion also considers the effects of environmental restrictions on the deployment and combat readiness of military aviation services. Regulations designed to mitigate environmental impacts from military and civil aviation are also reviewed. The analysis shows that military aviation has been responsible for a small and decreasing fraction of total fossil fuel use in the United States. Furthermore, when averaged nationally, contributions to local air-quality impacts and community noise have decreased over the period considered. These trends are a result of historical reductions in fleet sizes and number of operations. However, because base closures were largely responsible for these reductions, the impacts at any given installation may not reflect overall trends. Community noise and air quality are expected to be a growing concern for military aviation due to increasing urbanization, increasing public and regulatory attention, and use of training spaces for larger, multiservice operations involving longer range, higher speed weapon systems.