Somewhere further up there was the notion that aerial supply can be with commercial freighters, and the Berlin air lift also came up.

Uh, hello! If you can fly in with a commerical transporter, you don't need a lot of combat troops for the operation. Certainly not a "Airborne Expeditionary Unit".

And Berlin airlift was a non-contestetd ops. These days you could that with the CRAF.

No, the question is how to supply an air mobile unit after air drop.
Assuming that you can't drop them over the target, but only right outside the red zone, they have to have some motorisation/mechanization. At that moment the tonmile requirements explode.

And if you can drop them right OVER the target, then it's probably some sort of more-or-less unopposed grab-the-airstrip action. Secure the objective, wait for the C-17s to arrive. Not a big logistic challenge.

We did the numbers back then for Eurocorps and then the EU Battlegroups, and quite simply, even for a few hundred kilometers away from homebase (like accross the Med, or into Caucasus), there were not enough transporters in all of EU-land to sustain even a brigade sized mechanized combined arms formation purely from the air. No secret.

A dash-grab-and-hold (for some time) is possible. Exactly what the Soviets had planned for, btw. Against HQ, SAM sites, missiles launch areas, &c. Possible but suicide. None of these troops were expected to be welcomed back on Red Square.