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In the Land of Few Runways, the Cessna Is Not King

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As the latest American experiment in Afghanistan has come to close with all the grace and poise of the closing scenes of a Lifetime movie on Monica Lewinsky, the crack International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) team has been hard pressed to find stories that truly encompass the spirit of “Afghan good enough.

The kind of stories that show that the brown people are doing it for themselves. Not quite as good white people, but good enough that this won’t be a complete disaster. Nowhere is this kind of messaging more evident than in ISAF communications about the Afghan Air Force (AAF).

Afghan Air Force Brings Aid to Badakhshan [Image 3 of 5]

Badakhshan children pose with Afghan Air Force and Coalition forces Oct. 26 following a humanitarian assistance mission. More than 2,000 kilograms of toys, clothes and school supplies were presented to the children and villagers. 438th Air Expeditionary Wing Photo by Vladimir Potapenko

Given the American fascination with airpower in support of combat operations, it should come as no surprise that the US should try to give this same capability to their Afghan counterparts. This effort has met with varying degrees of success, and given decisions made by American lawmakers over the last year, it looks increasingly unlikely that the Afghans will end up with the kind of air force that will make it possible for them to achieve battlefield superiority. Here’s what I had to say back in March on the topic for the Afghan Analysts’ Network:

For the foreseeable future, however, the AAF and the ANSF as a whole are going to have to rely on the aircraft they currently have while decisions are made by the Americans about what the future support for the AAF is going to look like. If Blumenthal and other like-minded officials in the United States are able to convince Congress to provide Sikorsky aircraft, now is the time to make that happen, while significant US troop presence in Afghanistan allows for the needed levels of support to maintain those aircraft and train staff on the necessary routines. But that does not answer the question about the long-term sustainability and maintenance of those same AAF aircraft, particularly with the uncertainty surrounding the US presence in Afghanistan from 2015 onwards. This must be addressed urgently in order to determine the long-term viability of the Afghan Air Force.

Flash forward to May, and ISAF’s latest attempt to get us to believe in the power of the AAF (emphasis added).

Afghan National Security Forces personnel from all over Kandahar province spent the day safely loading each other onto and off a Cessna airplane on Forward Operating Base Spin Boldak, Afghanistan, May 25.

This heavy lifting was part of medical evacuation training provided by medical personnel attached to Task Force Gryphon, 4th Special Troops Battalion, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division. The training allowed the ANSF soldiers and police to broaden their MEDEVAC skills and to become less reliant on U.S. MEDEVACs.

“What we’re trying to do is transition from U.S. MEDEVAC to Afghan MEDEVAC,” said Staff Sgt. Robert Mustain, a Nome, Alaska, native serving as medical noncommissioned officer in charge, Task Force Gryphon, 4th STB, 4th BCT, 4th Inf. Div. “This mission is part of the medical train, advise and assist, and it’s really our focus right now.”

Sidebar — Frontrunner for “Most Macabre Quote Ever in an ISAF Press Release?” This guy:

“The 208 Cessna is fuel efficient. It can change from CASEVAC to passenger, to human remains, to cargo.” — Maj. Todd Abshire

 (ISAF photo by: Sargento OR-6 Juan Ardura Santa Engracia, Spanish Army, Regional Command West)

It’s an ambulance! It’s a station wagon! It’s a hearse! The super practical Cessna, everybody!  (ISAF photo by: Sargento OR-6 Juan Ardura Santa Engracia, Spanish Army, Regional Command West)

Which would be fine, if Afghanistan had a lot more, well, runways. While there are several areas that 208s could operate from to evacuate wounded Afghan troops, those areas are surrounded by a whole lot of bad roads. And as we learned this past week from the Daily Beastthe Afghans are still heavily reliant on American helicopters. Why? Simple: the roads are shit, and they don’t have enough helicopters of their own.  This is the entirety of the Afghan’s air force inventory:

  • 18 Cessna 208 light transport planes
  • 46 Mi-8 / Mi-17 helicopters — only 11 to 17 are operational at any one point in time
  • 6 Mi-35 gunships — only two are capable of flight operations
  • 9 UH-1H light transport helicopters
  • 6 MD-530 training helicopters
  • 2 C-130 transport aircraft

All of that to cover an area slightly smaller than the state of Texas. So while ISAF is sure that the Cessna is a great idea because “of its economical and versatile characteristics,” it lacks the capacity to land and take off vertically. Which, in a country with Afghanistan’s terrain and lack of road infrastructure, would be something one would think would be advisable in an airframe that foreign forces are going to leave behind for long-term Afghan use.

It’s not the concept of “Afghan good enough” that bothers me. I’ve spent enough time in this country to know that managing expectations of what we can actually leave behind is one of the larger challenges facing the international community here. But when “good enough” starts to sound a lot like “it’s what we’re leaving, so deal with it,” that’s when I hit James Franco levels of self-righteous indignation.

We do not understand his selfies, ‘murica, and I don’t understand ISAF’s logic, on this and a lot of other fronts. In a land where there are few runways, Cessnas are not the answer. But at least it’s good enough. It has to be. Because in our hubris and for the sake of politics, it’s what we’re leaving behind.

 

 


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