Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire This IS Crazy, ..Hell, it DEFINES Crazy

"The challenges of geography are enormous," the official said. "I wish Afghanistan was a coastal country with a great port, but it's not."

....THIS is going to get REALLY interesting.

GTC


Link: http://news.yahoo.com/nato-pull-30b-worth-gear-afghanistan-115702172.html

NATO to pull $30B worth of gear from Afghanistan

By SLOBODAN LEKIC | AP � 2 hrs 17 mins ago


KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) � As the drawdown of U.S. troops from Afghanistan steps up in 2012, NATO military planners are trying to figure out the logistics of how to ship out the massive quantities of alliance vehicles, weapons and other equipment from the mountainous landlocked country.

The operation requires the removal of $30 billion worth of state-of-the-art military gear by the end of 2014, when U.S. and other coalition troops are to end their combat role, a senior NATO official said Tuesday.

Most of the American equipment will be shipped to military depots in the United States for refurbishment and then redistributed to bases around the country, but some assets will go to bases in Europe, primarily Germany, or in Asian nations such as South Korea.

"The stuff we have here is the very best the U.S. has ever produced," the NATO official said. "It's better than anything available (to military units) in the United States."

He spoke on condition of anonymity because the planning for the equipment pullout is still in its initial stages.

Aside from the armored vehicles and trucks, other gear that will be shipped out includes large quantities of armor, communications and optical equipment, and large crew-served artillery systems.

In 2011, the U.S.-led coalition began the withdrawal of nearly 140,000 foreign troops serving in Afghanistan, and 10,000 U.S. service members have already pulled out. By the end of this year, another 23,000 Americans are due to depart, along with thousands more allied soldiers, which will reduce the coalition force in Afghanistan to about 90,000.

The quantity of military equipment that was accumulated here by the United States and its allies in 10 years of war is formidable. Although small quantities have already been removed, the planning is complex due to inherent complications of moving so much heavy gear out of a landlocked nation with problematic relations with some of its neighbors, said the official.

Only a relatively small amount of the tens of thousands of vehicles can be flown out by air, due to the massive weight of some, such as the as the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, or MRAPs, and its all-terrain variety, the M-ATV.

Afghanistan's neighbor Pakistan has shut down NATO's main transit routes from the port of Karachi in November in response to a NATO aerial attack on a Pakistani border post that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers.

The alliance has been able to ship equipment and supplies in from the north, through Russia and the Central Asian nations. But there is no current agreement allowing the two-way traffic needed to transport it back to Europe via the northern route.

During the recent pullout from Iraq, the U.S. military was able to simply drive its vehicles in large convoys to neighboring Kuwait where a deep sea port was available. In contrast, the main routes out of Afghanistan require vehicles and containers to be loaded on trucks or trains for the onward journey.

"The challenges of geography are enormous," the official said. "I wish Afghanistan was a coastal country with a great port, but it's not."

It could be. Pakistan won't cooperate so we should just take a chunk of their country.

Well, they got the stuff in there...

Two choices. Find a route to a sea port, or leave it there. My guess is the latter. This is an election year and O's base would rather we give all our stuff away than take a chance on making somebody mad.

We have a long history of both abandonment and doling it out. My Dad still tells stories about the stuff left behind and destroyed in WWII.

A local Industry Trades Publication, "Arizona Metalworker" lists ALL of the Military Contracts awarded, and in play.
Contracts have been awarded to build a CRAPLOAD more MRAPS.
Where are THEY going to be shipped ?

This is not bringing up the question of 'Pro or Anti-Military', as noted in another thread, it's about being PRO COMMON SENSE.

The mismanagement and fiscal irresponsibility attendant to this sorta' acquisition and distribution of National Assets is Nothing to be grinning about, or shrugging off.

Particularly when we can clearly see a repeat of history ,.... the stuff being fired back at us, not so far in the future,....

GTC

I ain't grinning, but I know where the stuff comes, and goes from, and how it's transported. If it can't get to the water, it's left behind.

Disabling and destroying that much heavy equipment could cost as much as it's WORTH,......and would require and almost unimaginable amount of Thermite and HE

particularly if it's to be left in a nation of blacksmiths and firearms cobblers.

Those guys can take a file, leaf spring, a rock, and a charcoal fire,.....using their bare feet as a vice,....they'll build some sorta' weapon.

What a mess.

GTC

Prolly give it all to the chinese in the form of scrap metal.

Are they REALLY saying they don't have a plane big enough to transport some of that stuff????

Bullchit, sez I...

Take it through Pakistan and dare the bastiges to try and stop us!

sounds like they need to build a bunch of c17's, pronto

Drive it through Tehran and load it out in Iraq.

Wars are expensive. Unintended consequences abound.

While I support the war in Afganistan, and have from the beginning, this is yet another example of the above two truisms.

Greg's comment on the dangers of leaving even scrap metal there is spot-on.

Lurking behind the scenes here is the presence of vast quantities of insanely valuable rare-earth minerals in Afganistan, which WILL be mined in the next 50 years.

Oh my...

Just do what we always do..
leave it all there so they can turn it against us, in the next decade!

Yep. Can't simply throw it in the ocean like we've done in the past. Always seems to cost a fortune to produce, but has no value when it's time to ship it home.

Tell the Chinese they can have it for free, and they'll figure out a way to sell it back to us in a year.

Works for me,......but bearing in mind, the Khyber Pass has never been a cakewalk, either.

Maybe everybody is so numbed down, and hooked on hearing TRILLION these days that 30 BILLION is just chump change.

The original theme, e.g. CRAZY, is most appropriate.

GTC

What a way to run a country. Bob

It will be pulled out of town and left beside the rusting hulks of the Russian stuff that has also been left behind. Some parts of Afghanistan are junk yards of abandoned military equipment. It will be nothing new. Also, keep in mind that every bazaar has lots of British military rifles and bayonets left behind from their two forays into Afghanistan in the 1800's. kwg

Logisticians only prepare for War. Not Peace.