Supplying Troops in Afghanistan With Fuel is Challenge for U.S.

[tekisui]

Source: Washington Post

President Obama's decision to send more troops to Afghanistan will magnify one of the Pentagon's biggest challenges: getting aviation and diesel fuel to U.S. air and ground forces there.

As the number of U.S. and coalition troops grows, the military is planning for thousands of additional tanker truck deliveries a month, big new storage facilities and dozens of contractors to navigate the landlocked country's terrain, politics and perilous supply routes. And though Obama has vowed to start bringing U.S. forces home in 18 months, some of the fuel storage facilities will not be completed until then, according to the contract specifications issued by the Pentagon's logistics planners.

"Getting into Afghanistan, which we need to do as quickly as we can possibly do it, is very difficult because . . . next to Antarctica, Afghanistan is probably the most incommodious place, from a logistics point of view, to be trying to fight a war," Ashton Carter, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, said recently. "It's landlocked and rugged, and the road network is much, much thinner than in Iraq. Fewer airports, different geography."

Navy Vice Adm. Alan S. Thompson, who directs the Defense Logistics Agency, earlier this year called support for operations in landlocked Afghanistan "the most difficult logistics assignment we have faced since World War II."

The military's fuel needs are prodigious. According to the Government Accountability Office, about 300,000 gallons of jet fuel are delivered to Afghanistan each day, in addition to diesel, motor and aircraft gasoline. A typical Marine corps combat brigade requires almost 500,000 gallons of fuel per day, according to a recent study by Deloitte Analysis, a research group. Each of the more than 100 forward operating bases in Afghanistan requires a daily minimum of 300 gallons of diesel fuel, the study said.

The GAO report said that in June 2008 alone, 6.2 million gallons of fuel went for air and ground operations, while 917,000 gallons went for base support activities including lighting, running computers, and heating or cooling.

The U.S. military remains heavily dependent upon supplies traveling long, windy and dangerous roads in the south from Pakistan to Afghanistan. Along those mountainous routes, theft is common and cash payoffs to insurgents and tribal leaders are believed to be made frequently by truck drivers navigating the region. The Defense Department reported that in June 2008, 44 trucks and 220,000 gallons of fuel were lost because of attacks or other events, according to the GAO.

"This has become a business," said Tommy Hakimi, chief executive of Mondo International, which arranges deliveries by 300 to 500 trucks a month. "The Taliban doesn't have interest in taking the life of a driver. And instead of blowing trucks up, they take possession. It's an asset. . . . Most of the time, they will sell it on the black market."

more: http://ow.ly/169I1n

[tekisui]

1. Some of the fuel storage facilities will not be completed until AFTER

the 'withdrawal date'. More evidence the withdrawal plan is just words.

[unhappycamper]

2. At $400 per gallon, we spent almost $2.5 billion dollars in June.

2.48 but who's counting?