What's What

Forty minutes by air from Ghazni, and back up to 7,500 feet is Forward Operating Base Airborne. With barely 400 residents, it is by far the smallest FOB we’ve been on this tour. Tucked into a mountain valley, it’s the most scenic as well.


If Congress says it’s okeydokey, we’ll plant a four place helipad here in FY 2011, and spend around a million and a half Yankee Dollars in the process. Elsewhere, we’re planning a number of C-17 capable runways, which may be downgraded to C-130 capable runways in the future (not that a C-130 runway is any shorter (generally) than a C-17 runway, just that we really don’t have that many C-17’s in theatre). It could be, as well, that we really don’t need that many C-130 runways either, but I’m sure Congress has a handle on that issue.

For this tour, the Team is looking at nine projects totaling just over $110 M. When we responded to the request for qualification, we expected 25 projects, which dropped to 15 by the time we signed a contract, which further dropped to eight by the time we got here, but then we added one more during the first couple of days. For nine. This is just a tenth of what is planned for this very specific pot of money in FY 2011 in the eastern and southern sections of Afghanistan. Naturally, there are all sorts of pots of money, each to be spent on various types of construction, men, and materiel. War ain’t cheap.

Along with the scope reduction was a corresponding schedule change, carving a week off of our stay here. The requirement for a post-tour report was also dropped, so two weeks effort in CONUS has disappeared. So, what would have been productive effort through the middle of next month has now been cut to another week and a half in country, then home. Worst, though, is that the actual deadline for the effort we’re doing is a week before we ship out.

Bottom line: Our last week here will be maddeningly boring.