The Torch: NATO air buildup (read mainly US), esp. helicopters, in Afstan

With a Canadian Air Force general at the top (via Spotlight on Military News and International Affairs):

NATO air power doubling in Afghanistan
Added support aims to increase effectiveness of U.S. deployment of more ground troops

The whopping buildup of U.S. forces in Afghanistan ordered by President Barack Obama is not only about putting more boots on the ground.

Air power is being more than doubled in Afghanistan this spring and the "air czar" [sounds a tad excessive] orchestrating the surge is a Canadian fighter pilot.

"I will say up front that not all our land forces in Afghanistan have in past years had the critical support or the enablers they have needed to do their jobs properly," said Maj.-Gen. Duff Sullivan of Cornwall, Ont., who is director of the air co-ordination element and of joint operations for NATO's International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan [he's had quite a career].

That shortfall is about to be dramatically remedied. Where the Taliban insurgency is the worst, in the south, the number of helicopters is about to increase to 320 from 140. About 260 of those helicopters will be crammed into the Kandahar Airfield [emphasis added--see second part of this post], where Canada's [Joint] Task Force Afghanistan has its headquarters.

Also on the way to Afghanistan to join U.S., Belgian and French [more here, with video, here and here] fighter jets are Royal Air Force Tornadoes [more here and here] and an additional U.S. air force F-16 fighter jet squadron. Some American A-10 attack jets known as Warthogs now based in the north of the country are to shift to KAF soon, too [emphasis added].

A U.S. Marine Expeditionary Brigade is also bringing dozens of attack and transport helicopters and jets to southern Afghanistan. Furthermore, the USS Eisenhower carrier strike group, which includes almost 100 warplanes, is on call in the Arabian Sea.

"There is a huge difference [now] from when John Manley was over here identifying shortfalls and deficiencies," Sullivan said, referring to the retired Liberal politician who led a parliamentary panel that urged Canada to acquire its own helicopter airlift to reduce the risks to ground troops travelling in convoys on roads infested with improvised explosive devices. The Harper government responded by sending six Chinook heavy lift helicopters and eight lightly armed Griffon helicopters to Kandahar early this year.

"Every little bit helps," Sullivan said, adding that the arrival of the Canadian Chinooks had an "instantaneous" positive effect on ground operations.

"When we resupply our forward operating bases in Arghandab and Panjwaii, there is a significant decrease in risk to those forces by being lifted in. Suddenly those IEDs that are waiting for them, we are bypassing them. We are flying overtop [more on those chopper ops here]."
CREDIT: Stefano Rellandini, Reuters
Canadian soldiers from the NATO-led coalition board a CH 147 Chinook helicopter in Ma'sum Ghar base in Kandahar province, southern Afghanistan last week.

One of Sullivan's biggest challenges has been to figure out "bed space" for the aerial armada that is about to descend on Kandahar, which soon could be the busiest military airfield in the world.
"We are building ramp space like crazy, pouring concrete, building new maintenance facilities [more from December 2008]," said the 52-year-old general, who previously commanded a Canadian CF-18 squadron and flew combat missions for Canada over the Balkans and during the first Gulf War in 1991.
"It will be a total flow through of about 20,000 (troops). KAF is going to grow from 16,000 to 25,000 [emphasis added]. That one airfield will have twice the number of personnel as the entire Canadian air force."
Another significant change is that some of the attack helicopters coming to Afghanistan are, for the first time, going to be forward-deployed alongside ground units near routes used by the Taliban and al-Qaida [emphasis added] to travel from safe havens in Pakistan to the main fighting areas in Kandahar, Helmand and Uruzgan provinces.
Civilian casualties in air strikes has become a divisive issue in Afghanistan [by the way I have it on good authority that air strikes called in by Canadians have not killed any civilians].
Seventy-seven per cent of Afghans want air attacks to stop because they believe the risk of attacks on civilians is too high, according to an ABC/BBC poll. President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly demanded that much more be done by allied forces to stop what in military parlance is known as "collateral damage."
Reducing civilian casualties "was priority No. 1" for Sullivan and for U.S. army general David McKiernan, who commands NATO and U.S. forces in Afghanistan, the Canadian major-general said.
"It is all about protecting the population and trying to separate them from the insurgents," Sullivan said.
He added that this was often extremely difficult to do because the Taliban used civilians as human shields.
"The insurgents being who they are, the Taliban, throughout 2008 in all the most tragic events where we have had civilian casualties, we see time and again where the Taliban has demonstrated a flagrant disregard for the safety and security of the population.
"What happens is that the Taliban will set up situations where they know we are coming through trying to conduct security operations, where they will instigate an attack from positions that are blended and coincide directly with civilian population.
"That makes our job 10 times more difficult."
Since last year, NATO ground commanders have been given additional instructions "about how to do appropriate application of air power," Sullivan said.
"If they are face-to-face with insurgents, and the general population is involved, and there is a possibility of civilian casualties, what we ask our ground commanders is to re-position, to withdraw, to move back so that we can better assess what is going on."
If the Taliban persist, aircraft buzz them, hoping that the presence of the warplanes will convince them to fall back.
If that does not work and "the Taliban are still firing on friendly forces and harming civilians, we will then attempt to target their positions," Sullivan said.
"It is not carelessness on the part of the friendly force.
"We can show (in) most of these situations that it is a Taliban tactic to put themselves with the civilian population."

Good on Matthew Fisher of Canwest News for the sort of broader story about ISAF (with, naturally, a Canadian hook) that our media so rarely run. The story above is from the Edmonton Journal, a much fuller version of Mr Fisher's piece than that run in the Vancouver Province (which I used for the original version of this post) with the following headline--love those headline writers: