Winding down Kandahar mission to cost Canada another $90 million
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By Matthew Fisher, Postmedia News January 31, 2011
SPANGDAHLEM, Germany — It will probably cost Canada an extra $90 million to sustain and then wind up its mission in Kandahar by the end of the year because its military aircraft are still banned from the United Arab Emirates, according to calculations by Postmedia News.
Several senior officers have confirmed that the previously cited $300 million — which was widely reported in the media and attacked by the opposition in November — was far too high as the cost of leaving the U.A.E. base.
But the military and the Harper government have not provided a breakdown of the additional costs that will be incurred because the military has had to shift its air hub for Kandahar from Camp Mirage in Dubai to a U.S. airbase at Spangdahlem, Germany.
A fairly accurate calculation was awaiting a decision on which alternate airfields the military might end up using and how much cargo would be shipped home or left behind in Afghanistan to be sold, donated or thrown away.
Enough information is available now, however, to make a rough estimate of the cost of closing down Mirage.
Based on conversations with planners and others who will work on the move, it appears that Canada's four C-17s may clock about 3,400 additional flying hours as the result of having lost access to Dubai. Those flights have been going directly to Germany since before Christmas, when a small military team was withdrawn from what was a temporary arrangement in Cyprus.
Right now, there are about one sustainment and two passenger flights to and from Germany every week. They have been using a southern route that loops around Iran before heading north again.
Each round trip to Kandahar generally involves about 20 hours of flying time, compared to about five hours in the air for a round trip between Kandahar and Dubai.
However, a shorter route north from Kandahar over Turkmenistan and then across eastern Europe, which was tested by a C-17 last week, will cut the round trip from southern Afghanistan to Germany by more than 4,000 kilometres and about 15 hours.
This new route is expected to become operational sometime in early February. From then on a team of C-17 pilots, loadmasters and technicians will be based at Kandahar Airfield.
Beginning sometime in the spring, when the pullout of materiel from Kandahar begins, cargo flights will land at Cyprus if, as seems likely, that Mediterranean island nation becomes the transit point, with the rest of the journey to Canada being made by sea.
A C-17 takes about 12 hours to make a return trip from Kandahar to Cyprus.
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By Matthew Fisher, Postmedia News January 31, 2011
SPANGDAHLEM, Germany — It will probably cost Canada an extra $90 million to sustain and then wind up its mission in Kandahar by the end of the year because its military aircraft are still banned from the United Arab Emirates, according to calculations by Postmedia News.
Several senior officers have confirmed that the previously cited $300 million — which was widely reported in the media and attacked by the opposition in November — was far too high as the cost of leaving the U.A.E. base.
But the military and the Harper government have not provided a breakdown of the additional costs that will be incurred because the military has had to shift its air hub for Kandahar from Camp Mirage in Dubai to a U.S. airbase at Spangdahlem, Germany.
A fairly accurate calculation was awaiting a decision on which alternate airfields the military might end up using and how much cargo would be shipped home or left behind in Afghanistan to be sold, donated or thrown away.
Enough information is available now, however, to make a rough estimate of the cost of closing down Mirage.
Based on conversations with planners and others who will work on the move, it appears that Canada's four C-17s may clock about 3,400 additional flying hours as the result of having lost access to Dubai. Those flights have been going directly to Germany since before Christmas, when a small military team was withdrawn from what was a temporary arrangement in Cyprus.
Right now, there are about one sustainment and two passenger flights to and from Germany every week. They have been using a southern route that loops around Iran before heading north again.
Each round trip to Kandahar generally involves about 20 hours of flying time, compared to about five hours in the air for a round trip between Kandahar and Dubai.
However, a shorter route north from Kandahar over Turkmenistan and then across eastern Europe, which was tested by a C-17 last week, will cut the round trip from southern Afghanistan to Germany by more than 4,000 kilometres and about 15 hours.
This new route is expected to become operational sometime in early February. From then on a team of C-17 pilots, loadmasters and technicians will be based at Kandahar Airfield.
Beginning sometime in the spring, when the pullout of materiel from Kandahar begins, cargo flights will land at Cyprus if, as seems likely, that Mediterranean island nation becomes the transit point, with the rest of the journey to Canada being made by sea.
A C-17 takes about 12 hours to make a return trip from Kandahar to Cyprus.
More on link
