CentCom planners study massive move of equipment to Afghanistan
tampabay.com
By William R. Levesque
November 27, 2009
With President Barack Obama poised to ramp up troop levels in Afghanistan, U.S. Central Command planners are in the midst of the military’s biggest logistical challenge since the Vietnam War.
How do you marshal billions of dollars in equipment to escalate one war in Afghanistan while scaling back another in Iraq? …
In a wide-ranging interview with the St. Petersburg Times this week, [Army Maj. Gen.] Dowd said landlocked Afghanistan presents greater difficulties than Iraq with its fewer routes of supply.
CentCom is now conducting an assessment of air strips in Afghanistan, and Dowd said engineers will have to expand them in order to resupply larger numbers of troops by air.
“I’m a little concerned about” airfield capacity, Dowd said. “We’ve got to expand and make it better.” …
Obama is expected to announce next week an escalation of the U.S. effort in Afghanistan that will send as many as 30,000 additional troops on top of the 68,000 already there.
Much of the U.S. equipment in Iraq will never return to the states.
Often, it isn’t cost-efficient to do so, planners say.
Much of it will be sold to Iraqi security forces, Dowd said. Other gear not sent to Afghanistan after refurbishment in Kuwait might be placed in storage somewhere in CentCom’s area of responsibility, which includes 20 nations in the region. …
