The U.S. plans to reinforce its troops in Afghanistan:
The Pentagon will be sending 12,000 to 15,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan, possibly as soon as the end of this year, with planning underway for a further force buildup in 2009.
Those are three brigades plus support units and maybe an extra brigade on top later on. Where will those troops come from? We don’t know yet, but there will likely be less forces in Iraq soon.
The outgoing ISAF Commander McNeill said 400,000 NATO/U.S. troops are needed in Afghanistan. Currently are some 60,000 to 70,000 are there. The new contingent will not make much of a difference.
But these additional forces in Afghanistan will be a much bigger logistic problem than they were in Iraq. Let us look at fuel consumption.
There are few official numbers but estimates range from between 16 gallons of fuel needed per soldier per day to 24 gl per soldier per day. This includes all needs: air support, electricity, climate, cooking, driving etc. We will use 20 gl/s/d for our further estimates.
Most of the fuel used in Afghanistan today comes through Pakistan. Without Russian now unlikely (or Iranian always unlikely) cooperation all fuel has to come through Pakistan. Pakistan has refinery capacities for only half the fuel it uses itself so the refined products the U.S. troops need have to be imported via the Pakistani port of Karachi.
From there the fuel goes by truck either through Quetta and the border town Chaman to Kandahar, or though Peshawar and Torkham at the Khyber Pass to Kabul and the huge U.S. base at Bagram north of Kabul (map).
With the additional troops there will be an additional need of 240,000 gl/day. Gleaned from photos the usual tank used by the contractors for the transports from Karachi to Afghanistan seems to be around 5,000 gl/truck. With the new troop’s fuel demand, about 50 additional fuel trucks will have to arrive per day. Accounting for the air force balance about 40 of those will go to Kabul and some 10 to Kandahar.
The direct line distance from Karachi to Kabul is about double the distance from Kuwait to Baghdad. But the mountainius roads are much worse than in Iraq and pure driving time from Karachi to Kandahar is 18 hours and to Kabul 36 hours. Driving at night on the snowy serpentines of Khyber with lots of bad folks around is not recommend.
The real round-trip ride Karachi-Kabul is thereby some 10 days, to Kandahar 5 days. In total 400 additional tank trucks will be needed on the road to/from Kabul and 50 to/from Kandahar. Add 50 or so trucks that will be in maintenance at any time. Where does one get 500 additional tank trucks in Pakistan between now and the end of the year?
One will also have to find, vet and train 500+ Pakistani drivers who are willing to risk their life on these rides. Note that each truck and its content is worth more than 95% of Pakistanis will ever make in their whole life. Who controls them? Will they drive in convoys? Who will guard those? How many troops will be needed to protect them? How many trucks will simply vanish?
A Mujaheddin in Afghanistan needs a tenth of a gallon per day, if any at all, on station and a bit more while traveling. These resistance fighters have no real logistic problem as they can live off the land.
The ‘western’ forces in Afghanistan have huge logistic problems. To put two feet on the ground they need twenty feet or more behind them shuffeling papers, organising and feeding the logistic queue. Their way of existence and fighting is incompatible with the country they are in. Too many trucks will not come through. The logistic lines are too long and to insecure. The road war will kill their mission.
