SCOTT AIR FORCE BASE, Ill. (USTCNS) --- A senior U.S. Transportation Command leader informed local members of the National Defense Transportation Association of the command's part in supporting Operation Enduring Freedom in a presentation here Nov. 29.

Frank Weber, USTRANSCOM deputy director of logistics and business operations, told a group of about 200 Scott Chapter NDTA members of the many challenges USTRANSCOM faced and will face to support the ongoing war effort.

"Today we're in places we never even thought about," said Weber. "We have doubled the amount of cargo we're moving through the system."

USTRANSCOM and its components have moved a tremendous number of personnel and amount of equipment so far in the operation.

"You can see some of the numbers…43,000 tons of cargo," and more than 2,100 air refueling missions, said Weber.

Besides combat focused movements, a simultaneous humanitarian operation is ongoing.

"The humanitarian assistance aspect of this operation commenced virtually at the same time as the military campaign," he said. "It was always part and parcel of the strategy and the need to relieve the suffering of the people of Afghanistan."

To date U.S. forces have delivered, "almost 2 million humanitarian daily rations," more than "a million pounds of wheat, soon to become 3 million pounds of wheat," more than 80,000 blankets, and other humanitarian material.

"It's been an impressive operation both from the warfighting (to) the support of the humanitarian (operation) aspects," said Weber.

The area of operations has created significant geographical challenges.

"You would be hard pressed to pick a more inhospitable place to wage war," said Weber. It has an "extremely poor transportation network." The country has "45 airports…only 10 of which (have) paved runways," and "21,000 kilometers of road, 2,000 (are) paved." Afghanistan has "a rail network not even worth talking about."

Such initial hurdles led to an early reliance on airlift operations.

To date "the vast preponderance of what we're moving today has been on air," said Weber.

USTRANSCOM's strategic partnership with American industry allowed a significant shift in the use of commercial carriers when it became necessary to use military assets for the area of operations.

"We began to pull organic aircraft back" shortly after the 11 Sep. attacks, said Weber. Existing partnerships allowed the military "to substitute commercial freighters into that system such to the fact that not only did we continue the level of support into Southwest Asia…we actually increased our velocity by roughly 10 percent or a couple of days, and the reason is pretty simple, when you put a 747 in it has a lot more pallet positions than a C-17 or a C-5."

Despite the clear success of airlift operations, it is not without limits.

Heavy use of air assets "comes with a heavy toll, as force buildups continue, the demand on airlift to sustain forces in place as well as support follow-on forces becomes a real limiting factor," he said.

USTRANSCOM and other key agencies are now examining "options for how we might start a surface flow and bring other elements of the defense transportation system into play," Weber said.

Some options may include rail or from the north or east of the area of operations or other surface means.

"We worked a lot of this in conjunction with our commercial sealift partners, our intermodal partners," said Weber, who already "operate into this area (the "Stans" region) today."

Throughout the defense transportation system, Operation Enduring Freedom has clearly required teamwork to ensure success.

"This has been an extraordinary process for the transportation community within the Department of Defense to execute."