U.S. mulls alternatives to Manas Air Base

[unhappycamper]

U.S. mulls alternatives to Manas Air Base
By Kent Harris, Stars and Stripes
European edition, Sunday, February 8, 2009

President Barack Obama has repeatedly said he intends to focus more attention on U.S. military operations in Afghanistan and devote fewer resources and manpower to efforts in Iraq. But while the new administration and the Pentagon continue to discuss sending thousands of additional troops to Afghanistan, threats by Kyrgyzstan have shifted attention a few hundred miles to the northeast.

The potential closure of Manas Air Base — a key site the U.S. uses to ferry massive amounts of personnel and equipment into Afghanistan — has the U.S. scrambling for options.

Manas, located on a small part of Manas International Airport, is sometimes unofficially referred to as the "Gateway to Afghanistan," although some military cargo planes bypass it and fly directly into or out of locations such as Bagram and Kandahar. Still, Manas handles about 15,000 passengers and 500 tons of cargo monthly. KC-135s stationed there flew almost 3,300 missions in 2008, distributing gasoline to more than 11,400 aircraft over Afghanistan. The Air Force assigns several hundred airmen to the base, but most U.S. forces spend just a day or two there while transiting through.

Asked why the Air Force couldn’t just skip Manas entirely and fly all its cargo and personnel directly into Bagram, Kandahar or Kabul, officials said they wouldn’t discount the possibility of such an option — although no one was publicly endorsing it, either.

"It is important to have options in many locations," Col. Gus Schalkham, public affairs officer for U.S. Air Force Central, said in an e-mail response. "We never want to limit our logistics capabilities to just a few sites."


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=60560



uhc comment: If you wanted to have 'options in many locations', why did you rely on (prop up) Musharraf so long?