Carter, under secretary of defense
for acquisition, technology, and
logistics, at a recent conference on
defense logistics modernization in
Washington, D.C.
No entrance
In the absence of solid alternatives,
the U.S. military has been forced to
rely mainly on roads to bring sup-
plies into Afghanistan. But the situ-
ation there isn’t much better.
Because the United States is barred
from moving goods through Iran,
points of entry into Afghanistan by
ground are limited to a handful of
mountain passes.
Until very recently, the only ground
route judged usable by the United States
and NATO was one that went in by way of
Pakistan. After the fall of the Taliban government in 2002, the United States began
sending truckloads of supplies picked up
at Pakistan’s Port of Karachi into
Afghanistan through the Khyber Pass. At
the time, the Khyber Pass was considered
to be much safer than the alternative, a
crossing in the Hindu Kush mountains at
a town called Spin Boldak.
But the military has since been forced to
revise its assessment of security on the
Khyber Pass route (as military leaders
often quip, “The enemy gets a vote.”). In
December 2008, 12 percent of the
Afghanistan-bound freight crossing
Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province en
route to the Khyber Pass disappeared,
most of it in flames, according to Vice
Adm. Mark Harnitchek, deputy commander of the U.S. Transportation
Command.
The attacks on the freight convoys led
logisticians to reroute shipments destined
for the southern part of Afghanistan to
the crossing at Spin Boldak. But Spin
Boldak hasn’t proved much better where
security is concerned. On Aug. 30, 2009, a
NATO convoy was attacked, and 20 fuel
tankers and other supply trucks were
destroyed.
The search for Plan B
Given the risks presented by the Pakistan
ground routes, it’s probably no surprise
that the U.S. Central Command (
CENT-COM) has been actively seeking other
options. In 2008—well before the surge—
Gen. Duncan McNabb, the commander of
the U.S. Transportation Command, handed down orders directing the Surface
Deployment and Distribution Command
(SDDC) to start working with CENT-COM to find alternatives.
To understand what happened next,
you have to know something about how
military logistics has changed since the
end of the Cold War. What many people
don’t realize is that the military is no
longer in the business of moving freight.
When it has cargo to move, it does exactly what a lot of its private-sector counter-
