War Is Boring

You can cram five M-ATV blast-proof trucks into the cargo hold of a chartered 747 freighter. But getting them out ain’t easy, as the aerial porters at Bagram Air Field can attest. It took then 90 minutes to download one 747 on March 21. The M-ATVs are bound for combat units across Afghanistan.

There’s a new Afghanistan war plan. Last fall, NATO commander General Stanley McChrystal rolled out more restrictive rules of engagement, heralding a “population-centric” approach to the war. U.S. President Barack Obama announced more U.S. troops. While U.S.-led forces in eastern Afghanistan doubled their efforts to prop up faltering local governance, troops in the south identified [...]

The Nevada Air National Guard Lockheed Martin C-130H Hercules, radio call sign “Torque 41,” lifted off from Bagram air base, outside Kabul, and turned south. In the cockpit, aircraft commander Lt. Col. Billy Tony threaded the aircraft through streams of aircraft over one of the world’s busiest military airports. In the 30-year-old C-130′s cargo hold on this cool October morning, loadmasters Chief Master Sgt. Gary Lanham and Staff Sgt. Renaye Lavin checked and re-checked the eight pallets of food and water, each attached to a disposable parachute made of recycled plastic.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/TQdSmZoMz90" width="490" height="400" wmode="transparent" /] by DAVID AXE U.S. President Barack Obama announced a new strategy for Afghanistan Tuesday that includes sending at least 30,000 more American troops to the war front. The increase will bring the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan to about 100,000. But the infrastructure to support U.S. military efforts [...]

by DAVID AXE On Oct. 27, 2004, a suicide bomber riding a motorcycle blew himself up alongside a U.S. Army flatbed truck in Balad, in north-central Iraq. The blast killed the truck’s driver, Staff Sgt. Jerome Lemon, from the South Carolina-based 1052nd Transportation Company. Nearly five years later, at a sandy outdoor range at the [...]

by DAVID AXE As the Obama administration debates the need for additional U.S. troops in Afghanistan, commanders at Bagram Air Base say their facilities already are overwhelmed by existing demand. Extra U.S. forces will require significant investment to ensure adequate flow of supplies and timely medical response to battlefield injuries. More than 3,000 wounded U.S. [...]

It was a war we thought we’d won. But after eight years of escalating violence, the Afghanistan conflict has morphed into something perhaps unwinnable. U.S.-led forces invaded Afghanistan in 2001 to deny sanctuary to Al Qaeda, a goal we’ve largely achieved. But in years of occupation, Washington has apparently conflated counter-terrorism with nation-building. Now the [...]

by DAVID AXE Tarin Kowt, in southern Afghanistan, is a remote, dusty town at the mouth of a strategic valley, leading to Pakistan. Just a few thousand NATO troops — mostly Dutch — occupy the area. They rely on airlift, flying into their base’s tiny, dirt airstrip, for much of their logistics. I witnessed supply [...]

by DAVID AXE Eleven European nations, plus the U.S., have pooled their resources to buy three Boeing C-17 airlifters, pictured. Each country can buy a share of 3,200 total flight hours per year, using the C-17s to support NATO deployments, E.U. peacekeeping operations or domestic missions. For many European powers, the shared C-17s represent their [...]

Thirty years ago, Fedex changed a lot of people’s assumptions about logistics. Skeptics laughed when Fred Smith proposed customers might pay a big premium to deliver small packages, fast, despite the seemingly disproportionate cost. Today, everybody accepts that sometimes it’s worth spending $10 to get a letter across the country, overnight. There’s a similar sea [...]

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/OAfi-5sHdS8" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /] Two years ago, Darpa, the Pentagon’s fringe research wing, hosted a robot race in the California desert, with a $3.5-million purse. Eleven robotic trucks gathered at a former Air Force Base in Victorville, going head-to-head on a 55-mile course crowded with tight turns, obstacles and cars driven by actual [...]

A shiny penny to anyone who can detect the contradiction in one general’s assessment of the Afghanistan supply-line problem. (Emphasis mine.) Despite dangers U.S. convoys face in delivering supplies to coalition forces in Afghanistan by way of Pakistan, military operations there aren’t susceptible to those threats, the Defense Department’s top uniformed logistician said Feb. 26. [...]