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THE NETWORK
Accomplishing a project of that scale requires more than a
little innovation. To pull it off, the military has assembled
the most complex logistics network the world has ever seen.
And as formidable as its lift capability may be, the days
when the U.S. military had enough equipment to make it
happen by itself are long gone. The plan is to make heavy
use of commercial carriers.
Unfortunately, the effort does have one thing in common
with the situation in Berlin—there are no good surface
movement alternatives. Military logisticians have to launch
the retrograde from a starting point within a landlocked
country bordered by Iran on one side, Pakistan on another,
and the Central Asian Republics (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) on a third.
Relations with Pakistan have settled down enough to
allow surface movement to Karachi. Still, the government
of Pakistan can shut down that route at any time, as it has
in the past, so there is risk.
Even if the government of Pakistan doesn’t interfere on
this leg, the Taliban often does.
To create a safety net, another route has been developed.
A newly built 50-mile-long railroad spur drops down into
the country from Uzbekistan in the north, increasing the
capacity of what used to be just a truck route. But much
of the freight moving north through the Central Asian
Republics ends up crossing Russia en route to the Latvian
port of Riga.
Lately, things have been a little tense with Russia.
So, air freight figures heavily into the exit. Bagram Airfield
has been improved and improved again, and it is now the
busiest flight line operated by the Department of Defense
anywhere in the world. One of the Bagram runways is over
two miles long, able to land any aircraft in existence.
THE MULTIMODAL PROGRAM
The runway is the anchor for an extraordinary multimodal
program, operating under the understated handle of the
“Multimodal Contract.” The military couldn’t rely on the
surface lanes to get everything out and it couldn’t afford
to fly everything all the way home, so it has put together a
hybrid multimodal program that makes use of air, sea, rail,
and road.
The multimodal program includes a surface leg to
get goods to an aerial hub in Afghanistan, most often
Bagram, then an air leg to get them out of Afghanistan to a
trans-shipment point, usually Dubai. From there, the move
includes a journey by sea back to the United States, where
the cargo may move by rail, but more often by truck, and
sometimes both, to the final destination. The only mode
missing is a pipeline.
In all, five teams are participating in the program.
One guy can make a difference
Over a decade ago, Jay Cziraky set out in an SUV to
cross the border into Afghanistan. There is no cold like
the cold rolling off the Hindu Kush mountains, but his
survival concerns had nothing to do with the weather.
Operation Enduring Freedom was in full swing and he
was traveling the Ring Road deep in Afghanistan.
In the vernacular of those who work “outside the
wire” in what the United States calls “nonpermissive
environments,” he was “low profile.” In other words,
anonymity was his only real protection.
Cziraky pulled up at a checkpoint at the gate of a
muddy former Soviet airbase. A squad of soldiers guarding the entrance—a pair of Humvees outfitted with . 50
caliber machine guns aimed his way—looked at him like
he was nuts. He may well have been, but the forwarding
agent had a job to do and he was where he needed to
be.
It was December 2001. Emery Air Freight had arrived
to set up commercial operations at Bagram Airfield,
north of Kabul in Afghanistan. Just two months before,
a mix of strikes from land-based B- 1, B- 2, and B- 52
bombers; carrier-based F- 14 and F/A- 18 Hornet fighters;
and cruise missiles had marked the launch of the assault
on Southwest Asia. The American war in Afghanistan
had begun.
And Jay Cziraky was now in the middle of it.
Over the course of the next 12 years, Emery’s forwarding operations became Menlo Worldwide Forwarding,
which was itself eventually folded into UPS. But through
it all, that little freight forwarding office, launched out
of the back of an SUV, survived and thrived. UPS now
has an Authorized Service Agent organization on the
ground, 70 employees strong, managing operations
across Afghanistan.
Today, you may see a familiar brown truck driven by
somebody in that iconic brown uniform making deliveries at Bagram Airfield. In the middle of a war zone.
