"Regional runway space is at a premium for U.S. forces, and Bagram's runway is where most airlifted cargo and troops headed for Afghanistan land."
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=1045749&C=asiapac Posted 08/22/05 08:08 Afghan Base Runways Challenge U.S. Pilots By BRUCE ROLFSEN, BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan The aging and cracked runways on airfields in Afghanistan drive rocks into aircraft tires and sometimes melt on cloudless days as the air temperature breaks 110 degrees. Solving the problems won't be cheap. The runways at Bagram and Kandahar airfields are going to cost more than $120 million to repair and enlarge, Air Force officials in Afghanistan said. But the work must be done. "If there is a center of gravity in Afghanistan, it is the Bagram runway," explained Col. John Dobbins, the senior A-10 pilot in Afghanistan and commander of Bagram's 455th Expeditionary Operations Group. Regional runway space is at a premium for U.S. forces, and Bagram's runway is where most airlifted cargo and troops headed for Afghanistan land. U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on July 26 won assurances from Kyrgyzstan officials that U.S. forces can use the base at Manas "as long as the situation in Afghanistan requires." An arrangement that permits U.S. military aircraft to "gas and go" from airfields in Tajikistan and to overfly Tajik territory on missions related to the Afghanistan war was also extended. But Uzbekistan's government has raised doubt about continued U.S. access to Karshi-Khanabad Air Base, which has been used as a staging point for operations in Afghanistan since October 2001. Rumsfeld said loss of access to the air base would not set back U.S. military operations in neighboring Afghanistan. "We're always thinking ahead. We'll be fine," Rumsfeld told reporters traveling with him from Washington. When U.S. forces arrived at Kandahar and Bagram in late 2001, they found runways that were built more than four decades before and falling apart. The 9,850-foot Bagram runway was built by the Soviet Union during the early years of the Cold War, Bagram wing leaders explained. Instead of laying down a large expanse of concrete, the Soviets cast sections of cement about 12-by-12 feet and wedged the blocks together to form a giant checkerboard pattern. Over the decades, the blocks have chipped at their edges and shifted away from each other. Two decades of war haven't helped. Battles from the Soviet invasion to the more recent American and Northern Alliance victory have left the runway pockmarked with holes and craters. Bagram's 455th Expeditionary Civil Engineering Flight, with help from Redhorse airmen and Slovakian military crews, keeps the runway open by constantly filling in holes or replacing entire blocks. The runway has to stay open, if only partially. Sometimes, only half of the runway's 180-foot width is available for use. That's not a big problem for pilots, said Lt. Col. Rich Anderson, deputy operations group commander and a C-17 pilot deployed from Charleston Air Force Base, S.C.'s 437th Airlift Wing. "When I landed here in 2002, the runway we used was just 45 feet wide," Anderson recalled. "It was cool. We had to just be a little careful." Things aren't much better at Kandahar. The 7,200-foot-long runway was built in the early 1960s for a commercial airport backed by the U.S. government. When new, the asphalt runway was fine for the passenger planes of the time, but today's C-17s weigh three times as much as the 1960s-vintage commercial jets, said Col. Eric Vollmecke, commander of the 451st Air Expeditionary Group at Kandahar. The long-term fixes at Bagram and Kandahar are new runways and more ramp space. At Kandahar, the Air Force is paying private construction firms $36.2 million to extend the runway to 10,000 feet by adding concrete sections at both ends, Vollmecke said. For Bagram, the Air Force has signed contracts worth about $55 million to build a second 9,850-foot runway that will parallel the existing runway and add more apron space. E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> <font face=arial size=-1><a href="http://us.ard.yahoo.com/SIG=12hju4v5v/M=362329.6886306.7839369.3040540/D=groups/S=1705323667:TM/Y=YAHOO/EXP=1124772497/A=2894321/R=0/SIG=11dvsfulr/*http://youthnoise.com/page.php?page_id=1992 ">Fair play? Video games influencing politics. Click and talk back!</a>.</font> --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [EMAIL PROTECTED] -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.intellnet.org Post message: [email protected] Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** FAIR USE NOTICE. 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