Darfur: New Air Expeditionary Wing (AEW) might make sense

I'm beginning to be less doubtful about the creation of the new AEW (though I still have doubts about stationing it at Bagotville).

A news story about what the wing is supposed to be able to do:

The new Air Expeditionary Wing will have the capacity to provide a control tower, radar, security engineers and any other infrastructure needed to establish and maintain an airfield anywhere in the world...

From a news story about what the new "hybrid" UN/African Union mission will need in Darfur (if it ever really gets there as an effective force):

The UN troops will have to build camps and airstrips in the vast, inhospitable desert of western Sudan to handle up to 20 flights a day just to bring in water for the peacekeepers, who use 85 litres each a day...

...The peacekeepers will have to build airstrips to supplement the only airfield in the region at El Fasher...

Looks like a fit to me. And a good way to meet the hue and cry in Canada that the CF must "do something" in Darfur--even if the AEW won't be available as the new force is setting up it still could help with the "maintaining". In any event Sudan has made it clear it won't accept any sizable contingents of Western ground troops (even if Canada had any to spare), a fact of which our opposition politicians and pundits seem utterly unaware.

Our C-17s--first to be delivered in early August, last scheduled for April 2008--might also be helpful in supporting the Darfur force if they have any time spare from Afstan.

More on Darfur here.

Update: Observations on the military facts in Sudan from a recently returned CF member.