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.Additionally, because of the sometimes poor performance of military logisticscapabilities, the American Transportation Command has contracted out theOperational Support Services111delivery of freight to commercial providers on several occasions when commercial companies performed better and were cheaper than military transport.In respect to the US operations in Afghanistan and Iraq following 9/11, commercial providers of transportation played a key role in the success of these operations.The situation is slightly different for the other NATO members.Apart fromBritain and France, no other nations have significant military sealift capacities and no other nation than the US has a sufficient military airlift capacity for quickly airlifting large numbers of troops for contingency operations.The following section looks at practices and examples of how Western armed forces augment their limited lift capacity by using private companies for providing strategic sealift, strategic airlift and intra-theatre lift capacity.Strategic sealift Sealift is most important for getting supplies and heavy equipment into theatre.In the US there is the US Military Sealift Command (MSC), whichmanages a fleet of military cargo ships and military sealift operations.Additionally, MSC is augmented by commercial sealift capacity, which is ensured by the Voluntary Intermodal Sealift Agreement (VISA).Commercial cargoship companies can sign up for VISA and agree that they will provide a certain percentage of their overall sealift capacity for supporting contingency operations.Sealift in Desert Storm carried 95per cent of all equipment and supplies and about 80 per cent were delivered by commercial ships (Menarchik 1993, 10).US Transportation Command claims thatabout 90 per cent of the US flag cargo fleet is part of VISA.The majority of the 95,000 tons of supplies and equipment sealifted during Operation Iraqi Freedom was provided by commercial ships under VISA.Britain also has an arrangement with private industry to provide additional sealift when necessary.A large part of Britain’s sealift requirements is met by the Royal Fleet Auxiliary, which is a government owned fleet of civilian manned ships.In contrast to the MSC ships, the British auxiliaries are armed and the civilian crews are under naval discipline should they be involved in warlike situations.During the build-up for OIF in 2002/2003, the MoD chartered two commercial ships, the Sea Crusader and Sea Centurion.Using a PFI the Royal Navy had already decided to outsource part of its strategic sealift to a private provider in 2000, but the ships were not yet ready at the time of OIF.AWSR Shipping Ltd.was chosen for thePFI contract to provide six roll-on/roll-off commercial merchant ships to the Royal Navy and operate them.The roll-on/roll-off vessels are needed for the quick global deployment of UK forces in contingency operations.The ships themselves have no military features, but they need to operate in war zones and they are crewed by Sponsored Reserves.During OIF the Royal Navy deployed four new roll-on/roll-off ships and chartered 60 additional commercial freight ships (UK MoD 2003b).As Peter Singer has pointed out, the use of commercial shipping in support ofmilitary operations is not unproblematic, as illustrated by the case of a commercial ship company, which held a Canadian peacekeeping force hostage near Newfoundland in August 2000 (Singer 2003, 160).The peacekeepers were returning home froma mission in Bosnia and the shipping company refused to deliver the force toCanada because of a quarrel about the payment.Onboard the GTS Katie of ThirdOcean Marine Navigation were five tanks, 580 army vehicles and 390 ammunition112War as Businesscontainers, amounting to ten per cent of the Canadian armed forces equipment,which was for a period of several weeks unavailable.The Canadian military had to eventually seize the ship by dropping soldiers from helicopters.Strategic airlift The American Air Mobility Command (AMC) maintains a large fleet of heavy lift transport aircraft like the C-5, C-17, and C-141, which can provide lift capacity for up to one division.Despite this very impressive military airlift capacity, the AMC has to augment its airfleet with commercial aircraft during contingency operations, which form the US Civil Reserve Airfleet, an air transport equivalent to VISA.It was activated for the first time during the 1990 Desert Shield operation, where it made a major contribution for airlifting US personnel into theatre.An investigation by the US Congressional Budget Office states that‘During the Persian Gulf War, CRAF planes carried more than 400,000 personneland 171,000 tons of cargo on more than 3,600 missions.’ (US Congressional Budget Office 1997, 85) According to Douglas Menarchik, the relation of used airliftcapacity was as follows: 20 per cent active duty, 30 per cent reserve, and 50 per cent commercial (Menarchik 1993, 11).The overall volume of charter contracts awarded in connection to Desert Shield/Desert Storm amounted to $1.9 billion.The report also acknowledges the role of commercial providers of airlift capacity in smaller contingencies.Commercial airlift played a major role in OEF and OIF.Very recently the US military has awarded contracts with commercial air freight companies such as FedEx to provide airlift capacity worth $2.25 billion, which is a significant increase to the previous year’s (2004) airlift contracts worth $1.19 billion (Reuters 2005).Other armed forces also make use of commercial providers of airlift capacity and charter aircraft on an on-demand basis.For example, part of the British peacekeeper force, which served in Kosovo, was airlifted by commercial charter planes.The British MoD was in the end rather dissatisfied with the use of commercial air assets, as it pointed out that ‘The use of commercial airlift assets was constrained because it was unable to operate to all destinations, due to the risks involved and the difficulties in using aircraft from some countries opposed to the NATO operation.’ (UK MoD2000) Despite this criticism, it can be said that the limited availability of airlift capacity of most NATO members will leave them with few alternatives to hiringcommercial aircraft when needed.This fact is acknowledged in Germany’s initiative of creating a leasing/charter community for commercial Antonov-124 heavy-lift aircraft consisting of 15 NATO countries plus Finland, called Strategic Airlift Interim Solution (SALIS).Until the A-400M is available, the Ukrainian/Russian Antonov will carry the bulk of the military equipment of EU/NATO states into crisis areas (Koenig 2005).Intra-theatre lift When troops arrive in theatre for a contingency operation in a Third World country their own transportation capacities are fairly limited.Often they have no other choice than to contract out transportation services to local companies, or to international companies, which specialize in moving military personnel and equipment around.For example, when the US forces deployed in Uzbekistan andAfghanistan, it was a major problem getting the supplies to them.The containers with equipment and supplies arrived in Karachi, Pakistan, and had to be distributedOperational Support Services113on trucks and transported over hundreds of kilometres inland.Additionally,commercially contracted 747s, C5s and C17s were used to bring more supplies into theatre
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