NATO Supply Routes and Why Leaving Will Be Harder Than Going In

Foreign Affairs magazine has a great article about the logistics of the exit from Afghanistan, and this excerpt includes a map that should scare folks who realize how much stuff we have to move.

About halfway between Kabul and Kunduz lies the Salang Pass. NATO trucks have no option but to drive through this tunnel, but, at an elevation of over 12,000 feet, it is a deathtrap. Built in 1964 by the Soviets, it was designed to handle 1,000 vehicles a day. During the recent closure of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, some 10,000 tried to jostle their way through every 24 hours. Some get stalled for days. Carbon monoxide, and gas fumes, fill the air; if one of the fuel trucks were to blow, the others would all go with it. Exactly that happened in 1982, and, reportedly, some 900 Russians and Afghans were killed.

As if fumes and fire weren't enough, the tunnel is also plagued by water and ice. The ceiling and walls were never completed, so they leak. As winter snows come, the tunnel becomes one gigantic mud bath, opening onto a cliff-side ice rink on the other side. Given the extreme weather conditions and the fact that the road carries about four times the weight that a highway is supposed to withstand, it is unlikely that any pavement that Turkey or the United States or any of its allies could lay would last. The patching that ISAF did in 2010 is already long gone. Even so, ISAF is discussing repaving at least part of the road, at the cost of more than $60 million.

By: Brant

AfPak Border Crossing Reopens for NATO Trucks

Yep, the ground supply route is re-opened!

The first trucks supplying NATO troops in Afghanistan crossed the border from Pakistan on Thursday after Islamabad ended a seven-month blockade.
Pakistan closed overland routes for NATO convoys into its war-torn neighbour after a botched US air raid in November killed 24 Pakistani soldiers at a border post, plunging ties between the "war on terror" allies to a new low.
Following a bitter seven-month standoff, Islamabad agreed to reopen the routes on Tuesday after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said sorry for the air strike deaths.
Three trucks loaded with mineral water were cleared to enter Afghanistan from the Chaman border post in Pakistan's remote province of Baluchistan on Thursday, Chaman district customs official Abdul Razaq Imran told AFP.

And the first thing we ship through is mineral water?! WTF?!

By: Brant

Random Friday Wargaming: Logistics Command

OK Folks, we've have the game for the Fightin' S-4 out there. That's right, here comes Logistics Command! Yes, a board game of operational/low-strategic materiel movement. Wow.







You already know there's no CSW forum on this. Troll and Toad has one for sale, if you've got some cash laying around for something totally off-the-wall.

You can find some additional info out there on this game. This one's from The Big Game Hunter.

No[t] all educational material produced by or for companies was targeted at the individual worker. In 1978, Westinghouse’s Business System Group in Hunt Valley, Maryland, produced Logistics Command. The game itself bears the influence of another Maryland game company, Avalon Hill, both in its style of packaging and in its use of mounted game boards and cardboard counters in a wargame-type setting. The objective of the game was to show the value of maintaining proper support transport, spare parts, and other material not usually treated as wargame subject matter. At the time this game was published, Westinghouse was best noted in the Maryland area for its defense work. U.S. sales abroad of new military hardware (produced from older weapons systems designs by a number of defense contractors, including Westinghouse) was a regular news staple during that period. This game has jokingly been referred to as Westinghouse’s sales pitch to persuade Third World dictators that they should buy more spare parts along with their newly purchased weapons systems. It has been viewed more seriously in recent years, and is now somewhat prized by wargames collectors for its role in treating the issue of logistical support.

Something pretty funny over at Troll & Toad. There's a the usual "customer who bought this also bought..." at the bottom. Check out the recommendations for a board game about esoteric military logistics.

Master links/images from
Boardgamegeek.com; message boards linked to Consimworld. Other links to the actual game pages...


By: Brant

GameTalk - Logistics

An army that's out of bullets tends to be out of luck, too. Hungry soldiers don't fight well, and tanks without gas are a scaled-down Maginot Line. But how much logistics planning do we want to layer into games that are inherently not about logistics planning?

So where do you balance the two? How much logistics play is too much? And how do you track it? What *really* matters to log play in a wargame? What parts of the Logistics SITREP chart (below) might you try to tie into wargame tracking? If you were given that chart and told to track your log planning/execution from a wargame, could you do it? Would you want to do it?

FWIW - my take on logistics was (re)published a few weeks ago in the first of the Battle Lab articles.

By: Brant

Battle Lab: Logistics

Originally published in Battles Magazine #1, and republished by The Wargamer. This was due to run yesterday - and most of the reprints will hit on Mondays - but we pushed this one b/c of Memorial Day.

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Here’s a logic puzzle for you.

You have 4 snakes that have to get through a maze. They each have a destination, but there are only 3 start points and only 3 endpoints. Oh, and the routes through the maze cross in several places, which means you have to sequence your snakes through the maze. And by the way, there is a certain sequence the snakes need to depart and arrive.

Does your head hurt yet? What if we started putting some obstacles in the maze? How about if the snakes stop off for a bite to eat? What if we start including snakes going the other direction, too? Some passageways are too small for some snakes, do you route them through those pathways to free up space for other snakes even if the smaller ones now take longer to get where they’re going?

Welcome to the world of military logistics planning. As you can see, it’s a very intricate dance, and – quite honestly – a lousy game. There’s a limited amount of “oogah oogah grunt grunt” appeal to convoy route planning and sequencing, especially when compared against main battle tanks killing targets at 3500m, and infantry bayonet charges into the teeth of the enemy line.

more after the jump! (click the article header for the full article)

The Rucksack War

This just came in over the XVIII Airborne Corps' Facebook feed: The Rucksack War: U.S. Army Operational Logistics in Grenada by Edgar F. Raines, Jr. This is a 686-page monograph on operational logistics and other behind-the-scenes activity in Operation URGENT FURY, the U.S.-led invasion of Grenada in 1983.

I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but I'm very impressed by the level of detail that a quick scan reveals. It is available at no charge from scribd. I'll be putting it on my iPad for some light reading :).

By: Guardian

UK In Action: Replenishment Underway

RFA Argus photographed off the coast at Devonport, taking part in Replenishment at Sea (RAS) exercise with RFA Black Rover. This photograph was taken as part of a Photex from HMS Raleigh.

Image: UK MoD

By: Widow 6-7

Stryker Brigade Stryking on With No Strykers

Are they "Stryking out"? Or are they "Struck"?

Work has been fairly relaxed for thousands of infantrymen since they returned to Joint Base Lewis-McChord this summer from yearlong assignments in the Middle East. They've been going to classes, checking their gear and doing physical training in the mornings.

Anything more complicated would require the soldiers to have possession of their Strykers, the 21-ton combat vehicles they left behind in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan.

In any event, the worldwide whirlwind of whiplash on what's where and when says:

The route from the Middle East to Lewis-McChord has been different than in past deployments, when Strykers came directly to their home base for major maintenance.

This time, the 3rd Brigade handed its Strykers to a Hawaii-based brigade now in Iraq. The 2nd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division turned over its vehicles to a Germany-based brigade now deployed in Afghanistan. (The 2nd Brigade was flagged as the 5th Brigade during its yearlong deployment to southern Afghanistan.)

The Army took replacement Strykers at Fort Irwin, Calif., for the two Lewis-McChord brigades, which saved the costs of shipping vehicles to and from the battlefield. Afghanistan is a particularly expensive destination because Strykers must be flown into the landlocked country.

Meanwhile, Lewis-McChord's 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division is keeping its old Strykers; the soldiers last saw them as they headed for ships in Kuwait. They're now lined up for overhauls at the Army Depot in Anniston, Ala., where General Dynamics has centralized much of its Stryker production.

By: Brant

Pakistan Snit Over?

We hope you're happy, Pakistan. After all, it's your drivers that have been killed at the border checkpoint while you were standing in a corner holding your breath 'til you turned blue.

Pakistan reopened a key border crossing to NATO supply convoys heading into Afghanistan on Sunday, ending an 11-day blockade imposed after a U.S. helicopter strike killed two Pakistani soldiers.

The closing of the Torkham crossing to NATO vehicles stranded many fuel tankers at parking lots and on highways where they were vulnerable to militant attacks. More than 150 trucks were destroyed and some drivers and police were wounded in the near-daily attacks.

The reopening of the northwest crossing came four days after the U.S. apologized for the Sept. 30 helicopter attack, saying the pilots mistook the soldiers for insurgents being pursuing across the border from Afghanistan.

"I am very happy that our difficult days have finally ended and we are through now," driver Khan Rehman told The Associated Press minutes before he drove the first truck into Afghanistan just after noon. "I am thankful to the government of Pakistan for ending our hardship."

By early afternoon, around 10 vehicles had crossed into Afghanistan through Torkham and authorities were working to clear hundreds that had been stranded for days, said customs official Ataur Rehman.

images from the BBC
I mean, if you're the Taliban, why wouldn't you attack that?



By: Brant

BUB: Pakistani Snits, Dead Taliban Twits, Truck Drivers Quit

The Pakistani border closing has resulted in truck drivers walking off: "Nobody will drive and take fuel to NATO"...

Jan Mohammed led me across the muddy yard packed with burned and still smoldering fuel tankers.
"If we don't have any security, how can we go up there?" he asked. "Nobody will drive and take fuel to NATO. It's impossible."
He was referring to the Khyber Pass in Pakistan's northwest, a key route for supplies heading to the war in Afghanistan.

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And yet somehow, NATO says the campaign in unaffected by their supply lines being cut in half.

Nato insists its war effort in Afghanistan has not been impeded by a row with Pakistan that has left its supply routes vulnerable.

Attacks on convoys have soared since Pakistan shut a key border-crossing because of a Nato air-strike which killed at least two soldiers.

The US has now apologised for the attack, promising to work with Pakistan to prevent a repeat of the incident.

Nato says it expects the border dispute to be resolved soon.

But relations with Islamabad have been placed in further doubt by a White House report that has questioned Pakistan's willingness to curb militants.

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The US has now apologized for the helicopter strike.

The United States apologised on Wednesday for a recent NATO helicopter cross-border strike that killed Pakistani soldiers.

The deadly attack triggered a row between the two allies and Pakistan shut the main land route for NATO supplies into Afghanistan soon afterwards.

Authorities in the northwest said two soldiers died, while a Pakistan military spokesman put the toll at three.

US ambassador to Pakistan Anne Patterson said she was extending an apology on behalf of the American people over the "terrible accident". The statement said two Pakistani Frontier Scouts were killed and four injured.

The incident took place last Thursday in the Kurram district of Pakistan's northwestern tribal belt, which Washington has branded an Al-Qaeda headquarters and a hub for militants fighting in Afghanistan.

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And have gone right back to blasting Taliban leaders into dust.

An airstrike and a raid by ground troops killed eight insurgents, including a senior Taliban leader who spearheaded attacks against Afghan security forces, NATO said Thursday as the war in Afghanistan entered its 10th year.

Maulawi Jawadullah — accused of organizing deadly ambushes, roadside bomb attacks, and abductions of Afghan police and soldiers in northern Afghanistan — was killed in the airstrike Wednesday in Takhar province, an alliance statement said.

Jawadullah was linked to the recent deaths of 10 Afghan National Police officers during an attack on a police station in neighboring Kunduz province, it said.

Seven other Taliban also died in the assault, including three who opened fire from a forest when coalition forces moved in following the airstrike, NATO said.

Thursday was the ninth anniversary of the American invasion of Afghanistan, a frustrating benchmark for those who expected a quick exit after small targeted special forces toppled the Taliban from power in 2001.

By: Brant

Pakistan to End Snit, Open Supply Route?

Is Pakistani revenge close to over? They may be reopening supply route.

Pakistan indicated Sunday that its closure of a key NATO supply route into Afghanistan, shut down after a NATO helicopter attack killed three Pakistani soldiers, is a short-term measure.

Pakistan closed the Torkham border crossing in the country's northwest on Thursday in an apparent protest of the NATO helicopter attack on the frontier. It was the third such incursion into Pakistan in less than a week.

Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit said, however, that the route had been closed because of public reaction in the area to the NATO strikes, and that it would be reopened once things normalize.

"The supply has been suspended because of security reasons and it will be resumed as soon as these reasons are addressed," he told The Associated Press. He did not elaborate on when the route might be reopened.

The Torkham border crossing along the fabled Khyber Pass is used to bring fuel, military vehicles, spare parts, clothing and other non-lethal supplies for foreign troops in Afghanistan. Pakistan's other main route into landlocked Afghanistan, in Chaman in the southeast, has remained open.

By: Brant

Fallout From Pak Border Closing is Loss of Fuel Trucks (so far)

Following the closure of the border in another diplomatic snit, a NATO fuel convoy was attacked as it rerouted through parts of Pakistan.

Suspected militants in southern Pakistan set ablaze more than two dozen tankers carrying fuel for foreign troops in Afghanistan on Friday, highlighting the vulnerability of the U.S.-led mission a day after Pakistan closed a major border crossing.
The Pakistani government shut the Torkham border in the northwest in apparent protest at a NATO helicopter incursion that killed three of its soldiers on the border. The events raised tensions between Pakistan and the United States, which have a close but often troubled alliance in the fight against militants. Pakistan also lodged a formal protest with NATO on Friday.
The convoy of tankers attacked Friday was likely headed to a second crossing in southwest Pakistan that was not closed. It was not clear if the vehicles had been rerouted because of the closure at Torkham.
Around 80 percent of the fuel, spare parts, clothing and other non-lethal supplies for foreign forces in landlocked Afghanistan travels through Pakistan after arriving in the southern Arabian sea port of Karachi. The alliance has other supply routes to Afghanistan, but the Pakistani ones are the cheapest and most convenient.

By: Brant

UK In Action: Sling load

An Army Air Corps Bell 212 helicopter from 671 Squadron at Middle Wallop Aviation Centre, is pictured on exercise over Salibury plain, executing drills with an underslung load. The Bell 212 is used by the Army Air Corps in the jungle areas of Belize and Brunei. The Bell 212 HP AH Mk1 derives from the Bell 205, the Huey UH-1. The Bell 212 HP AH Mk1 was born by adding another engine to the single engine Huey, but retains the original teetering rotor system. Army Aviation operates a handful of Bell 212 helicopters, whose unique abilities include flying in hot and often humid conditions whilst also being able to carry considerable loads. A winch on the side of the aircraft also enables medical evacuation in otherwise difficult terrain. Consequently the Bell 212 is currently employed in predominantly jungle areas where its performance is a great advantage.

Image: UK MoD

By: Widow 6-7

The Metrics of Leaving Iraq

The Guardian has a good article about the US going home from Iraq.

The military has dubbed tomorrow as the beginning of stability operations, and the end of combat. They are buzzwords that have been met with scepticism – and fear – throughout Iraq. There are many who doubt the invasion force is actually leaving, yet many more who hope the announcement doesn't mean that the troops will actually leave.

Around the country though, the signs of a military on the way out are unmistakable. Over the past two years US forces have closed down 411 bases. They will maintain 94 bases nationwide, at least in the weeks immediately following tomorrow's ceremony. Many, however, will be outposts where a small number of US forces will train and mentor Iraqi soldiers. They may occasionally patrol with them or join in on raids, but the US mission is designed from now on to be very much in the background.

At least 12 large bases will remain initially; Camp Victory at Baghdad airport, the nearby Camp Liberty, two bases inside the Green Zone, Taji and Balad bases north of Baghdad, bases in Mosul, Kirkuk and Ramadi, as well as al-Assad to the west, and forward vases in Nasireyah and Basra.

There are now just over 49,000 US soldiers scattered throughout all of them, around 1,000 less than commanders had foreshadowed for the 1 September handover date. A total of 92,000 have left since the peak of the troop surge in 2007 – and their absence is obvious everywhere.

It has been rare in the 14 months since the Status of Forces Agreement signed on 30 June last year that set prescribed limits for the US role in Iraq to see an American convoy on the streets of the capital. The giant, crustacean-like convoys are now so few and far between, that their presence makes the news.

At a staging yard in one of the US military's main camps in southern Iraq columns of armour and reinforced trucks are lined up to be driven out of Iraq. More than 860,000 items have now left Iraq. Any truck marked with an A is off to fight another war. Those left unmarked are going home.

By: Brant

Packing Up Like They're Running Away From Home

Loading up all 7 years of stuff to leave Iraq takes a lot of work.

Everything from helicopters to printer cartridges is being wrapped and stamped and shipped out of Iraq. U.S. military bases that once resembled small towns have transformed into a cross between giant post offices and Office Depots.
Soldiers who battled through insurgents and roadside bombs are now doing inventory and accounting. Their task: reverse over the course of months a U.S. military presence that built up over seven years of war.
"We're moving out millions of pieces of equipment in one of the largest logistics operations that we've seen in decades," President Barack Obama said in a speech Monday hailing this month's planned withdrawal of all U.S. combat troops from Iraq.
The orderly withdrawal is a far cry from the testosterone-fueled push across the berm separating Kuwait and Iraq, when American Marines and soldiers pushed north in the 2003 invasion, battling Saddam Hussein's army while sleeping on the hoods of their vehicles and eating prepackaged meals.
"I think it's probably more challenging leaving, responsibly drawing down, than it is getting here, because you just have to figure out where everything is and getting it out of here. Are there enough airplanes, ships, containers, and do we have enough time to do that and meet the president's mandate?" said Col. David F. Demartino, who is responsible for infrastructure and support services at Balad, which is home to 25,000 troops and civilians.

By: Brant

Surge *out* of Iraq...

The logistical challenges of getting everything out of Iraq are daunting just in their volume.

The withdrawal of American combat troops and equipment from Iraq is 60 percent complete two months ahead of a deadline that will serve as a precursor for a complete US military pullout.

Camp Victory, a giant sprawling base on the edge of Baghdad airport, is one of eight sites where American soldiers are sorting through the mass of hardware and supplies that must either be taken home, sent to Afghanistan, or destroyed.

Although the military is anxious to avoid accusations that it is "cutting and running" from Iraq as operations in Afghanistan take precedence, US troop numbers are steadily falling and just 50,000 will remain beyond August 31.

"We are right-sizing the force," Brigadier General Gus Perna, the man in charge of the drawdown, told AFP at Camp Victory in a giant yard filled with 330 vehicles headed for neighbouring Kuwait to be moved out of the country.

"Over 32,000 pieces of rolling stock have been retrograded out of Iraq since February 2009," he said, referring to MRAP (Mine-resistant, armour-protected) and Humvee troop carriers used since the 2003 ouster of Saddam Hussein.

The vehicles are being driven south into Kuwait before they are moved to Afghanistan or back to the United States. Around 800,000 other pieces of equipment have so far left Iraq in cargo containers.

By: Brant

NATO Bypassing Pakistan for Logistics

In an attempt to cut their dependence on the volatile "protection" of Pakistan and their locals, NATO is opening the northern supply route to Afghanistan via Russia.

NATO has opened an alternate supply route to Afghanistan via Russia and central Asia — a critical development that gives it the ability to bypass the previous ambush-prone main routes through Pakistan, the alliance said Friday.

Until now, most supplies destined for the 140,000-strong international force in Afghanistan were shipped to the Pakistani port of Karachi, and then trucked to the landlocked nation. But with the Taliban and their sympathizers targeting the convoys, military planners sought other alternatives.

"We will take advantage of all transport routes available as soon as possible," NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said.

The development is important because it signals Russian willingness to indirectly support the NATO-led mission. Moscow has been warmer to the mission's success in recent years, fearing that a NATO defeat in Afghanistan could destabilize central Asia and endanger Russia's security.

By: Brant