I.E.D. ANSWER = AIRLIFTS?

Here’s a way to keep trucks from being blown up in Iraq: stop dri­ving ‘em, and fly instead.
The road­side bombs known as impro­vised explo­sive devices, or IEDs, are respon­si­ble for 100 American casu­al­ties per month — despite the American military’s best efforts to detect or shut down the bombs.
“To vault the prob­lem, [Air Force Gen. John] Gen. John Jumper is vol­un­teer­ing the service’s C-​​130 fleet to take a sub­stan­tial part of the Army’s truck traf­fic off the roads of Iraq and move those sup­plies by air,” Aviation Week reports.

“I saw a whole lot of activ­ity going into detect­ing IEDs, and we saw the enemy change his tac­tics from one sort of IED to another sort,” Jumper says. “I asked the sim­ple ques­tion, ‘What are we doing to get vehi­cles off the road to take their tar­gets away?’ I wasn’t sat­is­fied with the answer. I had a lit­tle fit.“
The 64 C-​​130s in the­ater have already begun car­ry­ing an extra 350 truck­loads of Army sup­plies per day, and Jumper has offered to fur­ther up the ante to replace 1,600 truck­loads per day in the most dan­ger­ous areas. Moreover, he has ordered Air Force logis­ti­cians to ana­lyze whether the proper things are being moved, if they are being moved to the right places and if the intrathe­ater air­lift fleet is large enough to meet the increased demand.

THERE’S MORE: An extra 350 truck­loads per day sure sounds like a lot. It ain’t. Since Nov. 9, “increased air­lift oper­a­tions has taken about 30 more peo­ple per day off the roads,” Lt. Col. Michael Caldwell, an Air Force spokesman, tells Inside Defense.

Prior to the uptick in flights, air­lift had already relieved 150 troops on the road per day.
The Army has moved a daily aver­age of 3,000 vehi­cles over Iraqi roads since last February, using about 215 daily con­voys, he said.
Jumper said the Air Force has offered the ground com­po­nents the imme­di­ate oppor­tu­nity to off­set 350 trucks a day using the exist­ing 64 C-​​130s in the region, and the ser­vice would be will­ing to ramp up more, if needed. The air­craft mostly carry repair parts and ammu­ni­tion, Caldwell noted.

December 20th, 2004 | Planes, Copters, Blimps | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.