Huge Surge Logistics Bill Coming

[unhappycamper]

Huge Surge Logistics Bill Coming
By Robbin Laird Friday, December 11th, 2009 9:43 am
Posted in Air, International, Land, Naval, Policy

President Obama has com­mit­ted to a major new phase of the Afghan cam­paign. With the sub­stan­tial mis­sion expan­sion comes a sig­nif­i­cant demand for new resources to deal with the most ignored part of oper­a­tions to the out­sider, logis­tics and sus­tain­ment costs.

Afghanistan is not Iraq, to quote General Petraeus. This is true in mul­ti­ple ways, but no more so than in terms of oper­a­tions and logis­tics. The geog­ra­phy and ter­rain in Afghanistan require what the Marines call “dis­trib­uted oper­a­tions,” and with what the Corps calls “expe­di­tionary logis­tics.” And such logis­tics require air assets to con­nect deployed forces, and with those air assets come sig­nif­i­cant energy and bas­ing costs. For exam­ple, two mil­lion pounds of cargo were air dropped in the­ater. For September of 2009, the Air Force air-​​dropped nearly four mil­lion pounds with an esti­mated 20 mil­lion pounds to be air dropped for the cal­en­dar year.

The cost per deployed sol­dier in Afghanistan will be mul­ti­ples higher than for the deployed sol­dier in Iraq. Dependent on which ana­lyst is doing the assess­ment, the num­ber ranges from two to four times higher.

Not only are direct costs sig­nif­i­cant, but secu­rity con­sid­er­a­tions are as well. There are few major air­fields out of which to oper­ate; these air­fields pro­vide tar­gets for the use of bio or chem­i­cal weapons to dis­able those airfields.

And the surge car­ries with it a with­drawal imper­a­tive. This means that ramp­ing up forces in coun­try entails the very sig­nif­i­cant logis­tics costs of with­drawal as well. If we know any­thing from the expe­ri­ence of the cur­rent with­drawal from Iraq, logis­tics, even in the best of cir­cum­stances, costs tens of bil­lions of dol­lars to exe­cute a withdrawal.


Rest of article at: http://www.dodbuzz.com/2009/12/11/huge-bill-coming-for-surge-logistics/?wh=wh

[PuraVidaDreamin]

1. Can someone tie a single payer amendment to it PLEASE?

It would be only fair.