Operation Nostos

Speaking to Australian Aviation in Al Minhad Air Base near Dubai in the UAE, Brigadier Andrew Bottrell, director general transition and redeployment said the task involved providing solutions for a range ofitems, including 2,700 pieces of infrastructure in Afghanistan, 3,000 pieces of fixed plant and equipment (generators and air conditioners and other supporting plants), and 8,000 computer information systems. All up, the redeployment team had to provide solutions for 4. 8 million individual items of materiel, including about four million items of explosive ordnance.

“We had to decide about what to return to Australia and what is not economically viable or not required to return to Australia, and we’ve then found disposal solutions for those items as well. We’ve organised for some of that materiel to be gifted to the Afghans, some of it to be sold, and some that has or will be destroyed because it was inappropriate to gift or sell. There’s been a whole industry around disposal. And all of that materiel

If you’ll pardon the pun it’s a Herculean body of work to do what they have.

that will return to Australia is really where the RAAF has come in to play,” BRIG Bottrell said.

Since February 2003 Australia has had two C-130 Hercules based in the MEAO, first in Al Udeid, Qatar and subsequently at Al Minhad as the Air Mobility Task Unit (AM TU). Those aircraft have been the backbone of airlift support for the ADF in the MEAO. Their primary role has been intra-theatre air movement support for Australian and Coalition forces throughout Afghanistan and the wider MEAO, both personnel and cargo, but that has all started to change.

While the drawdown in Afghanistan will see a gradual lowering of workload for Australia’s deployed personnel, the workload for the AM TU is about to ramp up. And the C-130 detachment has been joined by the deployment of two RAAF C-17s to Al Minhad to provide ongoing support in the return of personnel and cargo.

Dubai acts as the hub for the retrograde, with materiel either stopping in AMAB before being flown back to Australia or flown directly to Dubai World Central – Al Maktoum International Airport, where it undergoes certifiedquarantine cleaning and inspection before being shipped home, BRIG Bottrell said.

“By far the largest part of the Australian redeployment is out of Uruzgan province and specifically out of Tarin Kot. We’re one of the few countries that has the luxury of being able to do the majority of our redeployment by air and we deployed a deliberate planning team in early 2012 and worked through to November 2012 … Their analysis said that the ground lines of communication are too fragile and they’re unreliable. The border crossing points are problematic, and the route down to Karachi has some issues,” BRIG Bottrell said.

“All of that reinforced the notion that if we had the capacity to do it by air, then we should. The air situation was such that the risks could be mitigated to such an extent that we could operate our service into Tarin Kot and conduct the redeployment that way. It was a good decision and the RAAF has been at the forefront of our redeployment out of Tarin Kot.

“By the time we’re finished we will have had around 100 C-17 sorties out of Tarin Kot from November 2012 to the end of 2013 to clear the materiel. For the C-130s, we’ll be looking at about 350 sorties in and out of Afghanistan, and the majority of those are focused on Tarin Kot. If you’ll pardon the pun it’s a Herculean body of work to do what they have … They’re extremely professional, they’ve had very few missions that have had to be cancelled, and where something has gone wrong mechanically they’ve been able to pick it up by putting on additional aircraft. They’ve been very focused on the mission, they’ve operated in some very tough weather, in very tough terrain and they really have been the backbone of our redeployment. ” The logic behind the increased fixed-wing cargo presence is simple – flying cargo out reduces the risk and cost of overland road convoys, as well as providing mission assurance to meet the required timelines for the transition.

The C-17s really have been a game-changer for the ADF.

The C-17 deployment will bolster the sustainability of the air bridge between Afghanistan and the UAE, and allow the RAAF to further mature the capabilities of an extremely capable aircraft.

“The C-17s really have been a game-changer for the ADF. When we deployed the SOTG [Special Operations Task Group] into TK [Tarin Kot] many years ago, it was done most by C-17 and that would have taken weeks and weeks to do that by ground. I shudder to think how long it would have taken to do our redeployment by ground and the risks we would be exposing either commercial road transport operators or our own personnel to as we move things around what is a fragile road network,” BRIG Bottrell said.

“The road network in Afghanistan, while ‘passable’, is subject to interdiction and they are subject to collapse and IEDs and all of the other vagaries of operating in an area of conflict. And then you have the well-publicised issues around border crossing points and the administration that has been quite frustrating. We had a proof of principle mission where we pushed some accommodation modules down across the border crossing point into Pakistan. It took us four months to get 60 containers down there, so if you can imagine extrapolating that over the hundreds of tonnes of materiel that we needed to move, we wouldn’t have been able to do it in the timeframe. Hence the reliance on service aircraft. ” As the ADF and Coalition footprint becomes smaller in Tarin Kot, there is a natural increase in potential risk as their presence dwindles. Nevertheless, BRIG Bottrell said, the ADF has put measures in place to ensure the maintenance of force protection standards.

“We have spent a great deal of time focused on this issue and have held many discussions with the commanders on the ground and the Air Component Commander in AMAB, and they’ve got a very robust plan to ensure force protection around Tarin Kot is maintained … and making sure that those force protection risks are mitigated and keeping a close eye on threats. Because we are very close to the end, we’re confident that most of those risks have been mitigated. We’ve got the last loads planned through to the end of our timeline and we’re on the glidepath to getting out of TK in really good shape,” he said.

The details of Tarin Kot’s security during the drawdown and retrograde remain classified to maintain operational security.

But the risks for RAAF aircrews don’t only come from the tactical environment. BRIG Bottrell noted the importance of maintaining a high standard of work regardless of the operational environment in which the retrograde is taking place.

“We all saw the tragedy of the US aircraft that crashed at Bagram several months ago [a National Air Cargo 747 freighter] and the popular belief was that the load shifted inside the aircraft. The professionalism of the air load teams as they build the loads and check everything, I have every confidence that they’ve got their job squared away,” he said.

“They have a huge job to do and they’ve been very keen to get in and do it. We’ve had additional air load teams pushed forward from the RAAF to assist in doing that work. ” Despite the huge workload, the transition and redeployment team have no concerns over meeting timelines. “I am quite confident that we have sufficient capacity with what we’ve been able to generate through the C-17s and C-130s, through to the end. There’s actually not a lot left to be able to move. We’re down to around our last 100 tonnes of materiel and a number of vehicles, but they are all programmed through to the end of our redeployment plan,” BRIG Bottrell said.

In fact, the plan is moving in such a way as to be ahead of schedule, allowing Australian forces to assist Coalition partners with the movement of personnel and materiel. It remains a delicate balance, however, to leave enoughmateriel for the forces on the ground to continue conducting their mission and coaxing them to free up what can be moved ahead of schedule, a process that required significant risk analysis and mitigation. “One example of that risk mitigation is that we have brought back some capabilities to AMAB that we will hold here and if they’re required at short notice, we can push them back in by C-130 or C-17. That allows us flexibility and capacity to move ahead of schedule while still providing adequate support to Tarin Kot,” BRIG Bottrell said.

“The C-17 is such a game changer that once you have a permanent aircraft or two here, it provides so much capacity that we actually can’t utilise it all. If everything was freed up quickly enough you’d only have them here for a much shorter time, but because the materiel is being freed up gradually across the period, there’s a judgement between using them most economically and having unused capacity between loads, or using them more frequently and taking less than an aircraft full of cargo. ” The redeployment effort has factored in contingencies for run-of-the-mill maintenance and weather interruptions, with time programmed into the schedule to account for unpredictable eventualities. Australia will have a self-contained maintenance cell for the two C-17s based at AMAB. But Al Minhad has other C-17 operators – including, but not limited to, the UAE – allowing for knowledge transfer, part supportability and general maintenance commonality.

Further, because of Australia’s participation in the global C‑17 fleet sustainment program, Boeing will manage the logistics of maintenance and sustainment for spares, meaning smaller stockpiles are required for the deployment. Instead, the C-17 maintainers will deploy with larger numbers of more frequently required spares, but require a smaller footprint for spares overall.

Summing up the transition and retrograde mission more broadly BRIG Bottrell said: “It’s a big job with lots of parts to it, and it’s required a lot of synchronisation. We’re almost there, we’re on track to meet the timelines and the RAAF are front and centre of that redeployment effort. ”

Broader drawdown considerations

The overarching transition and redeployment is being managed as part of Joint Task Force 633 (JTF633) the organisational construct with command responsibility for all Australian forces deployed to the MEAO. Ultimate responsibility falls on Commander JTF 633, Major General Craig Orme, who made it clear that Australia is not leaving Afghanistan, rather changing our contribution in line with the broader ISAF and NATO principles. “This is a transition, not a withdrawal. In a traditional military sense, a withdrawal involves leaving the position. We aren’t leaving Afghanistan, we’re changing our contribution. We’re transitioning our force from one that actively contributed to security in Uruzgan province. What a lot of people have been blind to is the other work that we’ve been doing in Afghanistan, and that work will continue,” MAJGEN Orme said.

“Our posture is very much in alignment and sympathetic with the overall ISAF one, which is to draw down in 2014, and to transition, not withdraw, until we have achieved a situation where the ANSF [Afghan National Security Forces] are capable of conducting security operations to move to a model where we assist them in their institutional capacity to sustain the gains they have made and also build their institutional capability to provide security to the nation,” he said.

“We’ll then move to a state for Operation Resolute Support that will build on what has been achieved so far. It’s not a traditional withdrawal out of Afghanistan, but significant numbers that we’ve had are being drawn down and transitioning to a new mission which is appropriate for the stage of the campaign. ” The drawdown will leave the ADF with six clear lines of operation in ongoing support of the Afghan mission, MAJGEN Orme said, including embedded staff at the various headquarters and organisations around the country, the contribution to the Afghan National Officer academy at Qarga, the contribution to 205 Corp through the Coalition Advisory Team, a Logistics Training and Advisory Team in Kabul at the central supply depot, the Special Operations elements that support the [General Directorate of Police Special Unit] in Kabul and a medical specialist support at the Role 3 medical facility in Kandahar.

“We’re transitioning into 2014 with those elements still in place as we draw off Uruzgan. And we’re in the phase where we decide what that will mean for the new mission that commences on January 1 2015, Operation Resolute Support, and how we contribute to that as a nation. And those are decisions that the new government will make.

“In 2014 that will leave us drawing down to about 400 personnel in Afghanistan and a further amount outside Afghanistan. The other element of our task force is that it’s not just Afghan-centric.

“We have the maritime component currently with HMAS Melbourne, and the elements we have in Bahrain, which support our commitment to the Coalition Maritime Force, and also our air component…the aircraft that are assigned to the theatre – C-130s and C-17s, and the A340 that comes in on a weekly basis. The work of JTF 633 encompasses all of those things, not just Afghanistan,” he said.

The future of AMAB

Al Minhad Air Base in the UAE has been the central staging area and logistics hub for Australian

Military operations are far more complex than people sometimes understand.

operations since the early 2000s. With the impending drawdown of combat operations in Afghanistan, the future of AMAB has been questioned by a wide variety of commentators. The decision, however, rests with government, MAJGEN Orme said.

“Generically, military operations are far more complex than people sometimes understand, particularly when you’re sustaining people at a distance from Australia. There are certain key elements you need in that, and the real trick to doing that at the higher level always sits around logistics and the sort of strategic logistics is about how you get people to theatre, how you sustain them while they’re in-theatre, how you prepare them (and the fact that we’ve really developed our doctrine around things like Reception, Staging, Onward movement and Integration [RSO&I], best done out of contact, but close to theatre,” he said.

“Those enduring components of a military operation will continue. And the flexibility that offers to do other things gives you a range of options. What we actually do is up to government, and they will make their decision in time, but the conduct of operations effectively dictates that you need certain things for sustainment and to maintain the operations.

“AMAB is a solution, but there would be others as well. The question would be: ‘Are those other solutions as effective? Or effective enough?’ Every time we have a military problem, there’s more than one solution. We’ve evolved into this one and it’s working very effectively, but as we drawdown and move to Resolute Support there may be other solutions which may be more appropriate and more effective or give us greater flexibility not only to support this operation but to support other activities, as well,” he said.