The missing detail

Canadian air drops ‘save lives’, avoid risky Afghan roads

In order to keep the enemy guessing, the flight profiles and drop points always vary, as do the timings for such runs, which can also be conducted at night. Although Canada made a few such air drops to troops here last year, doing so regularly only became possible last month when several Canadian Hercules were based at Kandahar for the first time. Before that they were located at an airfield several hours away in the Middle East.

So what changed in the last month or so that allowed the CF to move the Hercs to Kandahar?

An educated guess would be that the first delivery of our new C-17 Globemaster III's is already paying dividends. The C-17 can take up a large part of the logistical load for Afghanistan, freeing up the necessary Hercs for forward deployment.

The Herc redeployment along with the arrival of the new Husky-Cougar-Buffalo mine detection systems are welcome news.

Update: others would have you believe that this represents a "retreat" in Afghanistan, that our FOB's are now "cutoff".