HOPE provides lightweight supplies during humanitarian airdrops

  • Published
  • By Roger Drinnon
  • Air Mobility Command Public Affairs
SCOTT AIR FORCE BASE, Ill. (AFNS) --  U.S. Air Force mobility Airmen investigated how to integrate "HOPE" packages into humanitarian airdrop bundles at an Airlift Tanker Association symposium in Anaheim, Calif., Nov. 1 to 4 to make delivery of valuable aid more safe and to provide the most important commodity when disaster first strikes: potable water.

Humanitarian Operations Packaged Essentials, or HOPE, are individual foam packages that can flutter to the ground slow enough that a disaster victim may be able to catch one out of the air. The symposium provided an opportunity for mobility experts to discuss this innovation in aid delivery.

"With a typical humanitarian airdrop bundle of food and water, you're looking at a lot of weight, so it's a challenge to find a safe drop zone that gets the supplies near the people without risk of the bundle injuring someone on the ground," says Lt. Col. Tom Lankford, chief of tactics for Air Mobility Command's operations directorate.

Lankford said each HOPE package contains six ounces of water or an energy bar and is enough to help sustain a person during a humanitarian crisis. He said the goal would be to drop 125,000 HOPE packages, which is enough to cover a city, in a single C-17 aerial pass.

"HOPE packages only weigh six ounces," said Lankford, "and we've conducted tests to ensure they fall to the ground much slower so there's no danger of injury to someone on the ground."

Also in development is the hydro-pack - a remarkable package that can be dropped into dirty water to allow a built-in filtration bag to soak up the dirty water and in minutes provide safe, drinkable liquid similar to a sports drink.

"Experiences in relief operations like Operation Unified Response in Haiti reveal people are far more desperate to get water versus food in the opening hours a disaster situation," said Lankford. "Hydro-packs not only allow us to get water safely to who need it, but also to get it right to them so they don't have to go to a (distant) drop zone, which could be dangerous."

Lankford said the United States Agency for International Development, also known as USAID, is the lead Federal agency for delivering humanitarian assistance to other countries. AMC and joint service partners are working with USAID to see if HOPE packages and hydro-packs can be incorporated into humanitarian relief operations around the globe.


USAID carries out U.S. foreign policy by promoting broad-scale human progress at the same time it expands stable, free societies, creates markets and trade partners for the United States, and fosters good will abroad.

Headquartered at Scott Air Force Base, Ill, AMC provides worldwide cargo and passenger delivery, air refueling and aeromedical evacuation and also transports humanitarian supplies to hurricane, flood and earthquake victims at home and around the world.