Qualla: Airborne & Special Operations Museum

Airborne & Special Operations Museum: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Most of what happens at Fort Bragg never makes it to public view. The Airborne and Special Operations Museum is the deliberate exception. The Army built it off-post on purpose - a brick-and-glass building on Bragg Boulevard in downtown Fayetteville, just past the city's revitalized arts district - so anyone could walk in without a photo ID, a vehicle search, or a clearance. Since opening in 2000, ASOM has tried to do something difficult: tell the public story of a community whose work is mostly classified, whose names are mostly redacted, and whose history is still being made in places American newspapers don't reach.

Airborne & Special Operations Museum: A Civilian Front Door

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The museum is part of the U.S. Army Museum Enterprise, owned and administered by the Army through the Center of Military History, which itself sits under Training and Doctrine Command. But its staffing tells a different story. Day-to-day operations run primarily on civilians and ...

Airborne & Special Operations Museum: Super 6-1

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In October 2013, ASOM opened a permanent exhibit it had been planning for years: Task Force Ranger and the Battle of Mogadishu. The centerpiece is wreckage. The shattered remains of Super 6-1, the first Black Hawk shot down on October 3, 1993, sit on the gallery floor next to art...

Airborne & Special Operations Museum: The Monuments Men in Carolina

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In late 2016, ASOM hosted a temporary exhibit that surprised visitors expecting more rotors and parachutes. It was dedicated to the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives officers of World War II - the so-called Monuments Men, a small unit of art historians, curators, museum director...

Airborne & Special Operations Museum: Where the Building Sits

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

ASOM is located at 100 Bragg Boulevard, in what locals call the Festival Park district. The boulevard runs straight from the museum's parking lot to the gates of Fort Bragg about twelve miles north. From the steps of the entrance, you can see the converted warehouses that now hou...